euro-Mediterranean Migration futures 45
migration, increasing border controls in Southern Spain and Italy caused
a diversif ication of attempted sea-crossing points, with migrants now
crossing from the Eastern Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan and even
West African coasts to the European islands of Malta, Sicily, Lampedusa,
Sardinia and Crete and, in recent years, the Canary Islands (de Haas 2007c;
de Haas & Sigona 2012).
The wave of political unrest that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and
spread throughout the Arab world caused the death of thousands of people,
while more than 2 million others had been forced to leave their homes by
mid-2012. While the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt remained relatively
peaceful, the violent conf licts in Libya and Syria generated large f lows of
refugees, most of whom went to neighbouring countries such as Tunisia and
Egypt in the case of Libyans, and Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and even Libya
for Syrians (de Haas & Sigona 2012).
In early 2011, the violence in Libya led to large-scale outf lows of Libyan
citizens and migrant workers. The hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan
and other migrant workers stranded in Libya who sought refuge across
the Egyptian and Tunisian borders suddenly exposed to the global public
the scale of intra-African migration. Overall, migrant workers from more
than 120 countries were displaced during the conf lict. The most vulnerable
group were African migrants who were not able to return because they
often lacked the resources and connections. This coincided with an upsurge
in racist violence against African migrant workers – some of whom were
accused of having fought in Gaddaf i’s militias. Many Africans thus got
trapped inside Libya.
In the wake of the revolution, European politicians sowed panic that
these people would cross the Mediterranean en masse to land on European
shores. The Italian government warned of an exodus of ‘biblical proportions’.
This panic had no basis, as most migrants wanted to return home. Only 4
per cent of all people f leeing Libya (27,465 persons out of 790,000) ended up
in Italy or Malta (Aghazarm, Quesada & Tishler 2012). The large majority of
them found refuge in neighbouring Egypt and, particularly, Tunisia. After
the death of Gaddaf i in October 2011, most Libyans returned and migrant
workers started to come back, although African migrants, in particular,
continued to experience racist violence.
Nevertheless, the Arab Spring has not radically transformed long-term
migration patterns in the Mediterranean. Mass f light has been largely
conf ined to Libya and Syria, and there has been no major increase of emigra-
tion from other North African or Middle Eastern countries. The increase in
Tunisian emigration to Lampedusa, an Italian island 113 km off the Tunisian