Who are the million migrants who entered Europe without a visa in 2015?

Abstract

The Mediterranean has become, in the twenty-first century, the world’s most lethal migratory route, with a 1.5% annual probability of death during the sea crossing between 2000 and 2015. The majority of the most recent migrants are refugees. Their proportion has risen from 33% to 76% among migrants smuggled into Italy and Greece over the last five years. The “refugee crisis” is taking place against a backdrop of a looming population crisis across Europe. Replacement migration might thus be one of the solutions to Europe’s demographic predicament.