Climate change and socio-economic crisis will lead to large-scale migration in the coming decades, according to Social Europe.
In the first three quarters of 2023, around 85,000 migrants reached Italy, with almost 40,000 rescued at sea and more than 5,000 arriving on boats belonging to various non-governmental organisations.
Despite the relatively small number of migrants, when compared to the total European population of around 450 million, immigration is perceived on the content as a crisis of European identity and a threat to the common way of life.
It is worth noting that almost every EU country experience a labour shortage, face an ageing population and declining birth rates. All these problems could be solved by increasing immigration.
EU governments are channelling efforts to combat climate change that results in extreme weather conditions, as the threat of such changes fundamentally affects economic policies and financial strategies.
However, despite these efforts, the world is already facing the consequences of illiterate environmental policies: some parts of the modern world are becoming too hot or too dry, causing people to migrate to regions with more favourable living conditions.
Climate experts believe that people will move en masse to the north of the planet as tropical and equatorial regions become less and less habitable, while previously cold places in the northernmost parts of the Americas, Europe and Asia begin to heat up.
Africans, who now make up about one and a half billion of the world’s population, will be hardest hit by climate change, forced to seek refuge in more northerly, wealthier and less populated neighbouring nations.
Migration is already happening, and there is no way to stop it. Instead, attention should be paid to the fact that an influx of new people can solve the problems of regions with economic stagnation, ageing populations and declining birth rates.
Moreover, the issue of immigration will remain unresolved as long as countries perceive it as a “crisis” or “emergency”. The trend of people moving uncontrollably is evidence of the beginning of a radical redistribution of the human population on a rapidly warming planet.
Countries facing a surge of irregular migrants have two options: strategically manage the migration phenomenon or ignore and radically confront the “problem”, which will eventually lead to a series of new crises.
However, there are glimmers of hope. This summer, the Italian government discreetly approved a new programme of immigration flows that envisages more than 450,000 legal entries into Italy over the next three years. If the most right-wing government in the history of the Italian republic has begun to ease immigration, we can hope that developed countries will soon begin to approach the issue of inevitable migration more consciously.
