The Italian island of Lampedusa. Is this the place where all migration problems of Europe cumulate‪?‬

Lampedusa is definitely a hot spot in the great European migration debate. The tiny island of Lampedusa, “with its 5,000 inhabitants” (Telegraph Online), is located only 167 kilometres from the Tunisian coast and has become the front gate of Europe's south and a symbol for undocumented mobility. Lampedusa functions as a vicarious example of EU (external) borders all focused in one place. Borders consist of conflictive features: on the one hand border means exclusion of people from another state and on the other hand borders are always a zone of contact. Although the right to mobility is an important point of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “border regimes set up limits to the freedom of movement” and ignore the right of asylum.

In this text, the author argues that in the last two decades, Lampedusa has been made the main example for the grievance of migration.