Introduction: Small States and the Migrant Crisis in Context

Abstract

In 2015 and 2016, the European Union (EU) faced an unprecedented arrival of asylum claimants and illegal migrants, with more than one million people reaching EU territories. This mass movement of people created a humanitarian crisis as well as posing serious public policy problems for individual member states of the Union, as well as for the EU as a whole. The migrant crisis demonstrated that the EU’s ability to deal with migration issues is complicated and contradictory. Migration goes beyond borders, both literally and figuratively, and thus a communal and united European approach was (and is) required. However, the 2015 crisis showed that the challenges and costs were not evenly distributed. With regard to the smaller states a number of specific problems became apparent, which this volume seeks to address and analyse. The key element is that a structural weakness vis-a-vis their size became apparent in a number of cases. In terms of their geographic areas, populations and economies, most small states simply have less resources and space to accept large numbers of migrants. Moreover, depending on their geographic position within Europe, the response of the populations with regard to the crisis varied.