Mediterranean islands represent the new borders for migrants trying to reach Europe from the South.

Caught up between rich migrants coming from wealthy countries for tourism, retirement or investments, and poor migrants looking for a chance to better their lives in Europe, these islands are now struggling to cope with these two opposite movements of people.

Thus need to come to balance their aspirations to develop and promote their tourism industry and their new European border control duties.

Malta, Cyprus, Canary Islands, Lampedusa, Sicily are all facing similar problems related to their key geographical positions and emphasized by other issues concerning islands in general. Moreover, these islands, some of which are independent states, tend to share a similar recent past of emigration and seem to struggle when coping with the new de-facto role as outposts of fortress Europe.

Migration Island is an independent organisation which promotes research in the field of island migration studies with a focus on Mediterranean islands. We believe that further research is needed to understand the complex relations between islands and migrants in the European context. The organisation was founded in 2005 and is based in the South-East corner of Sicily. The first projects focused on Malta and Sicily.