This year, refugees and migrants have not only faced unprecedented levels of displacement, but also a rise in deaths in transit, restrictive asylum policies, and increased xenophobia, racism and negativity.
In this context, we published a report in September analysing the costs of European governments’ efforts to deter migration and the different routes that refugees and migrants take, including the scale of potential ‘covert’ migration to Europe.
Three months on, what does the latest data mean for our analysis and projections – and what other trends are emerging?
The original analysis
Our report detailed that Europe spent at least €17 billion since 2014 on deterring refugees and migrants, through tighter border controls and bilateral agreements such as the EU-Turkey deal.
These measures were effective in reducing migration in terms of overall flows, most notably to Turkey and Greece.
But we also projected that Europe would still receive close to a million asylum applications in 2016. Of these, only 330,000 refugees and migrants would be likely to arrive via the Mediterranean, with over half a million arriving through more covert routes that we know very little about.
This suggests that border controls often simply re-route refugees and migrants towards alternative, possibly more dangerous, routes. Other recent reports came to similar conclusions.
So what does the latest data reveal?
1. There were fewer arrivals through covert routes than projected
Asylum applications actually slowed in the last three months of 2016 and show no signs of a strong seasonal rise in numbers (the norm in previous years). We revised our estimates and now predict that Europe will see just under half a million people coming through covert routes.
Cumulative arrivals in Europe, as a share of asylum applications
