The Impact of Sea Rescue on Irregular Migration

• In Event: Human Smuggling and the Criminalization of Rescue

Abstract

Sea rescue, particularly civil sea rescue by non-governmental organizations, has been a central point of political and humanitarian contention in the European discourse on how to respond to increasing migration inflows. A widely discussed argument against the provision of sea rescue is the so-called pull factor hypothesis which argues that search and rescue (SAR) activities encourage more irregular migration attempts, leading to higher mortality in the Mediterranean. This widely held claim purportedly led to reduced rescue missions, yet its empirical validity remains unclear. This project aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating empirically how civil sea rescue operations affect irregular migration behavior in which humans are willing to risk their lives in an attempt to reach the shores of the European Union. We study this question from two different perspectives. First, we employ a novel data set in combination with quasi-experimental methods to estimate the causal effect of sea rescue presence on irregular migration attempts across the Central Mediterranean. The newly compiled data geo-references high-resolution vessel position data and information about crossing attempts. Second, we analyze how the sea rescue situation in the Mediterranean affects attitudes toward migration using an original survey fielded to respondents in Nigeria, the largest country of origin of irregular migrants arrving in Europe via the Central Mediterranean passage since 2016.

Author

• Paul Michel, University of Cologne