This article sets out the main findings of the research project Documenting the Humanitarian Migration Crisis in the Mediterranean, which maps migration trajectories and transit points across Europe in order to develop a humanitarian response to the Mediterranean migration ‘crisis’. On their long journeys, people seeking refuge in Europe pass through various places of transit, both informal spaces such as railways stations, parks and makeshift camps, and institutionalised spaces such as reception centres, detention centres and hotspots. The focus on transit points helps to understand migrants as subjects rather than objects and journeys as fractured and complex movements rather than linear routes from A to B. In addition, it sheds light on the effects of migration management policies on people on the move and puts forward a set of recommendations to EU policy-makers.
Dr Leonie Ansems de Vries is Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London. Prof. Elspeth Guild is Senior Associate Research Fellow at CEPS, Jean Monnet Professor ad personam of European immigration law at Radboud University Nijmegen and Queen Mary University of London. Dr Sergio Carrera is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) research unit at CEPS and Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of Maastricht, and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London.
