The ongoing crisis in the Mediterranean, which has seen more than 30 times as many people die as in the same period last year, has evoked unprecedented media attention. What should be about a humanitarian tragedy has become hijacked by opportunist politicians, who in many cases have fundamentally and wilfully misrepresented the underlying causes of the problem. If solutions are based on that misrepresentation, they will fail and have harmful consequences.
From early in the week, Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, focused on proclaiming a “war on trafficking”, describing it as “the slavery of our time”.
UK foreign secretary, Phillip Hammond and others followed suit. Yet there are at least two problems with this narrative. First, it fails to distinguish between “trafficking” and “smuggling”, the former being irrelevant in this context.
Second, and more importantly, it fails to recognise that smuggling does not cause migration, it responds to an underlying demand. Criminalising the smugglers serves as a convenient scapegoat. But it cannot solve the problem. It will simply displace the problem, increase prices, introduce ever less scrupulous market entrants, and make journey ever more perilous.