Like the hotspots before them, the new “controlled centres” leave the Dublin asylum rules untouched. But there is a key lesson to be learnt: the new centres will need to guarantee access to adequate asylum procedures, unlike the hotspots. As the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, emphasised in a statement about the proposals, people will also need to be housed in dignifying living conditions.

This migration is the result of constructed economic dependence, new labour migration, exploitation, and colonial and post-colonial domination.

The demonstrations broke out in late January 2018, following the government’s announcement of the new budget in December 2017. The demonstrations did not pose a serious threat to the regime, but they sent a clear message that the Sudanese people’s patience with the economic crisis has ended.

The size of the European Muslim population is increasing as a result of immigration and relatively high (but declining) fertility rates. According to Pew Research, the Muslim population in Northern, Western and Southern Europe is set to increase with around 50% from 2010 to 2030, from around 25 million to 37 million.

An Amnesty International report accused European governments of being ‘knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants detained by Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions’. However, In the wake of the revelations of the Libyan slave trade, EU officials announced plans to team up with the African Union in a joint task force of police and intelligence agencies targeting human trafficking.

As a result of these measures, sub-Saharan migrants and refugees trying to cross North Africa have been forced to stay in Algeria, a trend that has fuelled anti-migrant sentiment and xenophobia among Algerians. In the spring of 2017, the controversial online campaign ‘No to Africans in Algeria’, which framed sub-Saharan migrants as a threat, went viral and heralded a significant political shift to the right.