A key assumption of European policy makers is that the introduction of migration restrictions reduces the volume of irregular migration. Our analysis addresses this assumption by looking at the spike of irregular migration on the Aegean in 2015-2016 through a stylized model. Our stylized model does not pretend to fully capture the decision-making process of either people in need of international protection or of people considering to act as smugglers. We have abstracted from many aspects which are known to be relevant.
Our model does allow us to examine the impact of restrictive migration policies. While policy makers and much of the academic literature assume that restrictive policies reduce the flow of migrants, our analysis shows that the restrictive measures which migrants and smugglers expect considerably increase the flow before the introduction of restrictive policy measures, while resulting in a reduction only after their enforcement. In other words, restrictive migration policies have ambiguous effects. On the one hand they result in spikes (perceived in 2015-2016 as a migration crisis), while on the other hand restrictive migration policies may contribute to a lower aggregate volume of migration in the long run.
This means that the peaking number of asylum seekers in Europe in 2015-2016 (resulting in the perceived migration crisis) were an unintended effect of restrictive European migration policies. If people in need of international protection would not have had reason to expect restrictive policy measures any moment, the peak of people crossing the Aegean would, according to our stylized model, have been at 70.000 people in the spring of 2016, instead of the 212.168 people who actually crossed in October 2015. This is an unintended effect of restrictive policy; this effect has been a key ingredient of the perceived migration crisis in 2015-2016.
According to our stylized model, if people in need of international protection would not have had reason to expect restrictive policies, the total number of people crossing the Aegean over the period 2015-2020 may have been up to 20 percent higher. However, this possibly larger number of people would have arrived more gradually, which would have been more manageable in terms of reception of asylum seekers, asylum procedures, and security checks.
And finally, according to our model, financially supporting hosting countries for providing humanitarian and socio-economical aid to refugees has reduced the number of people who were willing to pay a smuggler in order to travel to Europe. In other words, the effects of providing funding for refugees in Turkey has had unambiguous, positive effects on reducing the volume of irregular migration towards Europe and deaths at the borders.
Gerard van der Meijden, Orçun Ulusoy, Erik Verhoef & Thomas Spijkerboer: Towards A Stylized Model of Dynamics on the Market for Smuggling Services, Brussels: Centre for European policy Studies (CEPS), December 2023
