Migration into Europe: Old Routes Are New Routes

It reads like a cliché, but that doesn't make it less true: migration can't be stopped simply by shutting down borders. Nor it happened in North America,  neither is happening in Europe.

When people flee from war, poverty or extreme inequality, nothing stops them.

If the authorities manage to close one route, the smugglers quickly open a new one. Sometimes, they don't even have to be creative and can simply return to routes already used in the past.

That's the case of Greece's river border with Turkey, which has seen a recent increasing of crossings. Last April, more than 3,600 entered the European Union through the Evros river (known as Meriç in Turkish). That month, for the first time since 2012, the number of arrivals in Greece through the river surpassed those made by sea.

No one is quite sure what prompted the flood of people in the first place. And plenty of of people are still making their way to Evros – 9,480 by the end of July, taking a gamble on a border that looks safe but can be deadly – 29 people have died this year during the crossing or shortly after.

IRIN, the news website focused on humanitarian issues, has taken a close look into the new trend. The first thing they have found out is that, despite being an old route, the Evros region isn't ready for giving proper services to migrants and asylum seekers. 

Whatever the reason for the surge, migrants and asylum seekers people will likely continue to take their chances on the way to Greece. And Koros, the lawyer with the Greek Council for Refugees, worries that new arrivals will continue to struggle, as they move away from the squalid conditions at the border itself and into a wider region unequipped to help.

IRIN News has put together a special report on the wider picture: Europe. The image is quite grim as a whole, but the case of Evros highlights how Europe wasn't able to develop decent and humane border policies a decade ago. And how it isn't yet able today.