Political and environmental risks influence migration and human smuggling across the Mediterranean Sea

Camarena, Kara Ross; Claudy, Sarah; Wang, Jijun; Wright, Austin L.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0236646

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Indeed, few researchers have analyzed incident-level data on crossings, limiting their ability to study the evolution of smuggler strategy at the boat level. While [8,11] do use incident data, they aggregate it at the daily level for their analysis.…”

Section: To What Extent Does the Shift Toward Libyan Interceptions An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While a number of researchers have attempted to model adaptive responses to migration conditions in the Central Mediterranean [7][8][9][10][11], much of this work focuses on analyzing the rise in NGO rescues and the surge in crossings from 2015-2017, when arrivals to Italy by sea peaked at over 27,000 people in a given month [12]. There has been less systematic analysis of the region after mid-2017, when the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) began to intercept a growing share of migrants with Italian and European Union (EU) support, and information on the activity of migrants and smugglers became harder to obtain due to the LCG's lack of consistent and detailed reporting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Strategic choices of migrants and smugglers in the Central Mediterranean sea

Hoffmann Pham,

Komiyama

2024

PLoS ONE

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The sea crossing from Libya to Italy is one of the world’s most dangerous and politically contentious migration routes, and yet over half a million people have attempted the crossing since 2014. Leveraging data on aggregate migration flows and individual migration incidents, we estimate how migrants and smugglers have reacted to changes in the border enforcement regime, namely the rise in interceptions by the Libyan Coast Guard starting in 2017 and the corresponding decrease in the probability of rescue to Europe. We find support for a deterrence effect in which attempted crossings along the Central Mediterranean route declined, and a diversion effect in which some migrants substituted to the Western Mediterranean route. At the same time, smugglers adapted their tactics. Using a strategic model of the smuggler’s choice of boat size, we estimate how smugglers trade off between the short-run payoffs to launching overcrowded boats and the long-run costs of making less successful crossing attempts under different levels of enforcement. Taken together, these analyses shed light on how the integration of incident- and flow-level datasets can inform ongoing migration policy debates and identify potential consequences of changing enforcement regimes.

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Section: To What Extent Does the Shift Toward Libyan Interceptions An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic choices of migrants and smugglers in the Central Mediterranean sea

Hoffmann Pham,

Komiyama

2024

PLoS ONE

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“…This research addresses a number of prominent, open questions in the social sciences. Prior work has considered how civilians respond to weather shocks and natural disasters ( 4 ), localized economic shocks ( 5 ), and political crises ( 6 ). Other work has considered how civilians’ decisions to flee are shaped by exposure to violence during war ( 7 , 8 ).…”

Section: Literature and Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public response to government alerts saves lives during Russian invasion of Ukraine

Dijcke

Wright

Polyak³

2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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War is the cause of tremendous human suffering. To reduce such harm, governments have developed tools to alert civilians of imminent threats. Whether these systems are effective remains largely unknown. We study the introduction of an innovative smartphone application that notifies civilians of impending military operations developed in coordination with the Ukrainian government after the Russian invasion. We leverage quasi-experimental variation in the timing of more than 3,000 alerts to study civilian sheltering behavior, using high-frequency geolocation pings tied to 17 million mobile devices, 60% of the connected population in Ukraine. We find that, overall, civilians respond sharply to alerts, quickly seeking shelter. These rapid postalert changes in population movement attenuate over time, however, in a manner that cannot be explained by adaptive sheltering behavior or calibration to the signal quality of alerts. Responsiveness is weakest when civilians have been living under an extended state of emergency, consistent with the presence of an alert fatigue effect. Our results suggest that 35 to 45% of observed civilian casualties were avoided because of public responsiveness to the messaging system. Importantly, an additional 8 to 15% of civilian casualties observed during the later periods of the conflict could have been avoided with sustained public responsiveness to government alerts. We provide evidence that increasing civilians’ risk salience through targeted government messaging can increase responsiveness, suggesting a potential policy lever for sustaining public engagement during prolonged episodes of conflict.

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“…Nationalists became increasingly strong, as they emphasized anti-migration policies, a purist identity, and an anti-EU platform (Abbondanza and Bailo, 2018). During the 2018 general election, the anti-migration, anti-establishment (Northern) League, or Lega (Nord) spread throughout the country, transforming from a regional to a national party, and, soon after, becoming the de facto leader within a peculiar coalition government (D'Alimonte, 2019) .2 Political unrest, religious persecution, and economic precarity drive migrants and refugees to Italy (Camarena et al, 2020). Given its geographic location and historical attachment, it makes sense that many people leaving North Africa look towards the Italian shores as a gateway to the EU and Germany--a preferred destination (Frazzeta and Piazza, 2020).…”

Section: Sicilian Schism In the Debate On Migration And The Diciottimentioning

confidence: 99%

Arancini, Identity, and the Refugee Debate in Sicily

Zaccardelli

Cohen

2021

Migrat. Lett.

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In August of 2018, the Italian national government prohibited North African passengers onboard the Diciotti from disembarking in Catania, Sicily. The ship had docked amid an ongoing debate over how Italy should respond to an increasing number of immigrants and refugees arriving to the nation’s shores. Pro-migrant Sicilians came to the dock wielding arancini--fried rice balls--which are emblematic of the island's history and culture, as a way to symbolically welcome the migrants onboard the Diciotti. Nationalist Sicilians came as well to counter-protest the pro-migrant group. This paper asks first, who are the opposing groups (pro-migrant and nationalist Sicilians) and why did they adopt arancini? Second, how does arancini become a symbol of welcome and at the same time inhospitality? Third, how does the encounter become a stage for the larger debate over the meaning of identity in Sicily? By shifting the focus towards the host population and how it contests the meanings of such important local symbols, we capture the complexities of reception and debates over how natives perceive and receive migrants.

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Political and environmental risks influence migration and human smuggling across the Mediterranean Sea

Cited by 8 publications

References 20 publications

Strategic choices of migrants and smugglers in the Central Mediterranean sea

Strategic choices of migrants and smugglers in the Central Mediterranean sea

Public response to government alerts saves lives during Russian invasion of Ukraine

Arancini, Identity, and the Refugee Debate in Sicily

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