Monitoring Migration in the Central Mediterranean: A Matter of Border Controlling or Rescuing Lives?

Over the past decades, the number of migrants trying to reach Europe have increased dramatically. With the establishment of European Union and a policy of strengthening border surveillance, the main paths taken in the past have changed. The dangerous journey through the Mediterranean Sea became an opportunity for many to arrive in Italy and now, culminates in one of the deadliest migration routes in the world. Considering the protection of irregular migrants and the challenge of monitoring Italian frontiers, the paper aims to contribute to the debate on the current migration dilemma, where Libya represents the departure point from Africa and Italy the arrival in Europe. The main question posed is if this situation has being dealt as a humanitarian crisis or as purely matter of a intensifying border control strategies. Through a comparative study, the paper is divided in two main sections, whereas important elements such as policy making, actors/institutions and legal framework are evaluated under a Security Approach or a Humanitarian Approach. Furthermore, they are subdivided into three different levels of application, being the Italian Government, the European Union and the International actors. By analyzing each part with its peculiarities and comparing, it is viable to point out the general tendency on focusing in Border Control actions rather than promoting Search and Rescue operations as a way to deal with the migration pressure. Not only, it shows how Human Rights are ignored and how it leads to a disorganized strategy on protecting migrant’s life and reducing the sea border pressure in this particular region. In the end, write general guidelines were proposed, acknowledging that a balanced approach is possible.