Nearly a decade has passed since migration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East reached a peak in 2015, referred to as the year of the “migrant crisis”. Over a million people from Africa and the Middle East applied for asylum in the European Union (EU).
Since then, numbers have continued to be high. In 2023 the number of migrants who reached Europe’s shores through the Mediterranean Sea was 275,000, up from about 180,000 in 2022.
To control the influx of migrants, the EU and several of its member states have introduced closed door policies – strict control measures at the EU’s external borders and anti-migration policies which are increasingly turning Europe into a “fortress”.
