Executive summary
This Policy Paper sets out strategic guidance to reduce vulnerabilities along migration routes and weaken the criminal economies that shape them, moving beyond an approach focused solely on reducing visible flows. Its aim is to promote a coherent strategy that combines the protection of migrants with action against exploitation.
The paper builds on the work of the Spanish Institute for Migration Analysis (IEAM) and draws on a collective intelligence workshop held in Rome at Niccolò Cusano University, jointly organised by IEAM and the independent Italian research centre AMIStaDeS.
The workshop brought together representatives of United Nations agencies, European institutions and national ministries, humanitarian and civil society organisations, businesses and African experts. This diversity enabled participants to compare institutional, operational and analytical perspectives on Euro-African migration corridors, identify common ground and formulate recommendations to improve coherence between security, humanitarian and development policies.
The analysis examines migration routes as an integrated regional system encompassing both regular and irregular movements. Policies focused on security controls at individual points tend to displace corridors, increase transit costs and shift risks towards less monitored segments, without reducing the underlying economic incentives.
These displacement effects are compounded by cumulative vulnerability. As journeys become longer, people on the move face a progressive deterioration in their physical and mental health, coercive debt to facilitation networks and gender-specific forms of exploitation.
Transit economies also involve a wide range of actors, from criminal networks to certain quasi-state actors, whose profitability can become more entrenched as security pressure intensifies.
