Migrants’ integration at stake in countries around the Mediterranean

Abstract

International migration patterns south and north of the Mediterranean have more similarities than disparities. The Arab world and the EU27 share the critical challenge of integrating migrants to preserve social cohesion. The paper reviews the most salient features of migration at regional level: war induced population and refugee movements in the Mashreq; labor migrants’ economic centrality but civic exclusion in the Gulf States; blurred lines between transit migrants, foreign workers, and refugees in the Maghreb; need for replacement migration but rising xenophobia as paradoxical corollaries of aging in Europe. The paper concludes that the risk for migrants to feel closer to origin than destination societies, which is attributable to political failures, undermines social cohesion in destination countries where they live in reality.