Earlier in the year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hoped to gain political leverage by threatening to send migrants and refugees into the EU. But numbers published by the European Commission show that his attempts were futile — largely because of the extent of the global pandemic slowing down migration patterns.
Following fires in cramped migrant worker settlements in southwest Spain and subsequent criticism by a UN official about "deplorable conditions" there, Spanish soldiers were deployed over the weekend to build a camp for migrant strawberry pickers.
Thousands of Moroccan seasonal workers were trapped in southern Spain with no work and no pay because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now they are finally heading home.
Spanish maritime rescue and civil guard teams are continuing to search for scores of migrants reportedly trying to cross by boat to the Canary Islands from western Africa. At least 190 people are understood to have attempted the crossing in the past week.
Thousands of migrant strawberry pickers from Morocco are trapped in Spain. Local groups call it a humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, companies are trying to end their dependence on Moroccan workers.
A UN special rapporteur has called out the "shocking abuse" of migrants picking strawberries in Spain. The migrants are mainly Moroccan women, who come in on seasonal visas to carry out the work. Their treatment has long been criticized by human rights groups working in the field of migrant rights.
A year after she was arrested for bringing 53 rescued migrants ashore in Italy without permission, sea captain Carola Rackete says nothing has fundamentally changed for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. The German activist also endorsed a campaign against the EU border agency Frontex.
Asylum applications in Europe increased by 11% in 2019 compared with the previous year. The European asylum support office expects the overall rise to continue, despite the current pandemic-related slump. Asylum applications in the EU account for one-third of the global total.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought a once reliable form of help to a halt: Remittances — that's money sent by people working abroad to their families back home. Many Africans working in Spain who were once able to support relatives in their home countries are now no longer able to do so. Although the strict lockdown measures are slowly being eased, many migrants lost their jobs.
49 migrants were rescued off the coast of the island Gran Canaria on Sunday and 38 migrants arrived near Fuerteventura in the early hours of Saturday morning. The latest arrivals are part of a month-long surge in the numbers of those arriving on the Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic.
More than 22,000 Moroccan workers have been stuck abroad since Morocco suspended flights into the country in mid-March due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Over the last month they have been demonstrating, demanding to be allowed to return home.
The International Organization for Migration said measures enacted by governments against the spread of the coronavirus, as well as the drop in the presence of search-and-rescue ships in the Mediterranean, are sparking concern over "invisible" migrant shipwrecks.