International Migration and Containment Policies: Lessons from Libya

Abstract

The author argues in this study that over the past three decades Libya has been a true laboratory for European and especially Italian migration policies. The years from the 1990s until the present have been characterised by two conflicting tendencies in Libya: on the one hand, the policies of the Qadhafi regime, characterised by an open-door policy towards the influx of low-cost labour from sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab countries; on the other hand, the containment policies put in place by Italy to halt illegal migration flows through the Mediterranean Sea, which were however an infinitely small proportion of the total number of migrants in Libya. Therefore, the study offers an analysis of the objectives of the migration containment policies in the international relations between Italy and Libya, as well as their current extension to other African countries and regions, also examining the effectiveness of these policies.