In the 2011 post-Arab Spring migration wave, over 64,000 migrants landed on the southern Italian coast, with many of them potentially working illegally on farms through caporalato, a widespread system of illegal recruitment of underpaid farm labor run by Italian agrimafias. To test this hypothesis, this paper evaluates the causal effects of the 2011 migration wave on reported labor productivity focusing on vineyards in southern Italy. Based on a dynamic panel data model, labor productivity is estimated to increase by about 11% on average for 2011 and 2012. We show that this corresponds to a total of around 10 million unreported work hours, or 21,000 full-time employees, in each year. We interpret this as an increase in employment of illegal workforce due to the migration wave. Magnitude, direction, and statistical significance of the effect are confirmed under various model specifications and using synthetic control and post-lasso approaches.

How do states attempt to use their position as destinations for labor migration to influence sending states, and under what conditions do they succeed? I argue that economically driven cross-border mobility generates reciprocal political economy effects on sending and host states. That is, it produces migration interdependence. Host states may leverage their position against a sending state by either deploying strategies of restriction — curbing remittances, strengthening immigration controls, or both — or displacement — forcefully expelling citizens of the sending state. These strategies’ success depends on whether the sending state is vulnerable to the political economy costs incurred by host states’ strategy, namely if it is unable to absorb them domestically and cannot procure the support of alternative host states. I also contend that displacement strategies involve higher costs than restriction efforts and are therefore more likely to succeed. I demonstrate my claims through a least-likely, two-case 25 study design of Libyan and Jordanian coercive migration diplomacy against Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. I examine how two weaker Arab states leveraged their position against Egypt, a stronger state but one vulnerable to migration interdependence, through the restriction and displacement of Egyptian migrants.

The beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts working in Libya, as shown in video footage released by the Islamic State on February 12, 2015, made headlines across the world. The story was variously framed as one more vicious murder of Middle Eastern Christians by militant Islamists, one more index of chaos in post-Qaddafi Libya and one more opportunity for an Arab state, in this case Egypt, to enlist in the latest phase of the war on terror. What was left unaddressed was the deep and long-standing enmeshment of the Libyan and Egyptian economies, embodied in the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who remain in Libya despite the civil war raging there. There is a history of maltreatment of Egyptian migrants in Libya spanning more than 60 years. The abuses date back to the organized migration of Egyptian teachers, bureaucrats and other professionals under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and have continued with increasing brutality until the present. From the beginning, whether under King Idris, under Muammar al-Qaddafi or following the colonel’s downfall, the causes of the violence have been distinctly political, with Egyptians in Libya always vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Egyptian-Libyan state relations as well as to regional crises. The welfare of these workers has always been subordinate to strategic concerns in the calculations of both states.

This paper represents a holistic study of the multifaceted notion of stranded migrants, which has gained renewed attention since the Arab Spring. This paper analyses the notion from a historical perspective, interrelated with a survey of the situation on the ground, and a review of the various conceptions proposed by the main actors (including IOM and UNHCR). The paper then focuses on the vulnerability of stranded migrants as a way of identifying their basic needs and providing a cogent frame of protection

This paper examines two recent events in which people on the move making their way from Libya to Europe across the Mediterranean were either abandoned to die at sea or ‘pushed back’ (Hirsi case). It argues that these two cases are not incidental or isolated but rather part of a broader situation of concern in the Mediterranean. The paper highlights this situation and also connects it to Europe’s response to migratory flows during the Arab Spring. On the basis of independent reports, case law and first-hand accounts, it attributes these tragedies to two fundamental structural deficiencies in Europe’s approach to people on the move in the Mediterranean: 1) a general lack of accountability, among the most salient of which are the lack of legal clarity for SAR (search & rescue) and disembarkation obligations as well as a lack of monitoring of what actually happens in the Mediterranean and 2) a lack of solidarity amongst European states as well as across the Mediterranean. The paper then goes on to propose recommendations to correct those cross-cutting deficiencies.

This study estimates the short-term effects of migration on employment of native workers in Italy using the exogenous, unanticipated and temporary migration resulting from the Arab Spring. While migration does not have overall effects on native employment, I find significant and offsetting short-term effects across industries. In negatively affected sectors, I estimate quarterly displacement effects that range between 0.68 and 0.8 displaced natives for every immigrant hired. The positive employment effects are consistent with a rise in sectoral employment operating through increased demand from immigrants. Both positive and negative effects on employment tend to dissipate over time.

Maritime migration is not new to the Central Mediterranean. For years boat people have crossed the “blue borders” separating Europe and North Africa. But the political changes in Tunisia and Libya have dramatically affected migration dynamics. The number of people ready to undertake the risky voyage has risen, and unfortunately, so has the number of victims. The purpose of this article is to highlight the main events and problems characterizing the years 2011 and 2012. The information used emanates from a website that I have been running for the last three years. Its core is a detailed chronology of Mediterranean crossings accompanied by an examination of related issues. The aim of this article is not to repeat details but to summarize the website’s main findings. It begins by discussing arrivals, departure areas and victims; it then deals with such topics as distress at sea, Search and Rescue, disembarkation, repatriation and resettlement. The situation in Italy (including Lampedusa), Malta, Tunisia and Libya is mentioned next. The article ends with a few remarks about the involvement of the European Union and the Council of Europe.

The so-called Arab Spring has thrown out of kilter the precarious balance on which the Euro-Mediterranean border-control regime has been built over the years, illustrating the need to set this regime on a new foundation. The breaking point in the crisis came when the flow of migrants landing on Italian shores in Lampedusa took a spike at the beginning of this year. I analyze how the Italian government manufactured the Lampedusa crisis by matching a discursive rhetoric to government strategy, and I highlight how the sovereign prerogative to define emergency was questioned at both a supranational and a subnational level. I also discuss the main assumption behind securitization theory, exploring the complex web of political and institutional relationships involved in the securitization process and illustrating the ambiguity of the security language deployed by the main securitizing actors. Finally, I look at the possible outcomes of the crisis by looking at the interests involved when it comes to reconfiguring the power to define and govern emergency within the framework of the European border-control regime.