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Results for illegal immigration (europe)

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Author: Morehouse, Christal

Title: Irregular Migration in Europe

Summary: Irregular migration frequently makes headlines, and in Europe, policymakers are under increasing public and political pressure to address both the flows and stocks of unauthorized migrants in each country. Within European Union (EU) Member States, national governments define, identify, and respond to irregular migration in very different ways. However, with the removal of internal borders within the Schengen area, European governments are collaborating intensively on the management of their external borders. They are doing this with the support of EU institutions, particularly the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, which coordinates Member States' joint border enforcement and return operations. This agency, better known as Frontex, has also led increased data collection and analysis on patterns of irregular migration to the European Union. The detected annual flow of irregular migration into Europe decreased from 2007 to 2012, although there was a notable quarterly surge in the summer of 2008. The estimated stock of irregular migrants in the EU-15 countries has declined on average for almost a decade since 2002. Yet due to increased entry at certain points along the EU external border, this trend has often been masked by localized surges. While detections along the EU's eastern border have remained traditionally low, the focus on unauthorized entry has shifted from the Southern Mediterranean (Spain and Italy), toward the Southeastern land border between Greece and Turkey. EU joint operations to combat illegal border crossing may merely displace, rather than reduce, the volume of unauthorized crossings, while the reduction in numbers may have more to do with reduced economic demand for foreign workers within the European Union itself. The total number of detected illegal entries to the European Union in 2010 remained stable with those in 2009. However, data for the third and fourth quarters showed a significant increase in detections compared to the same quarters the previous year. This was driven by a marked increase in the number detected illegal crossing of the European Union's external land borders, which was isolated to a single "hotspot" along the Greece-Turkey land border. The first quarter of 2011 saw a reversal of this trend. The data shows that during that period there were fewer detected illegal crossing of the European Union's external land borders than for any other quarter during the previous three years. This was attributed to a combination of poorer weather for migrants seeking to make the crossing along the Greece-Turkey border and an increase in operations to combat illegal crossings in the area. However, the first quarter of 2011 also witnessed a significant increase in the number of detected illegal crossings of the European Union's external sea borders, which had been in decline over the previous two years. This increase was almost exclusively due to higher rates of irregular migration from North Africa during the "Arab Spring," which led to the largest number of detected illegal border crossings into European Union of any first quarter in recent years. The deteced and estimated scope of irregular migration in the European Union has remained below the peak levels of summer 2008 in recent years. Yet combating irregular migration is likely to remain challenging as European economies recover from the recession and migratory flows begin to increase again. In comparison, irregular migration to the European Union is on a far smaller scale than that evidenced in the United States, despite the EU population being significantly larger than that of the United States (approximately 500 million and 300 million respectively). It is estimated that 1.9 million to 3.8 million unauthorized immigrants resided in the European Union in 2008, compared to over 11 million in the United States during that time. The reactive nature of EU irregular migration to border management operations and return policies suggest that continued and large-scale investments in border enforcement are likely to be needed alongside related policies that combat the root causes of such migration.

Details: Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2011. 22p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 22, 2012 at http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/TCMirregularmigration.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: Europe

URL: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/TCMirregularmigration.pdf

Shelf Number: 124232

Keywords:
Border Security
Illegal Immigration (Europe)
Migration