Transit migration is a term that is used to describe mixed flows of different types of temporary migrants, including refugees and labor migrants. In the popular press, it is often confused with illegal or irregular migration and carries associations with human smuggling and organized crime. This volume addresses that confusion, and the uncertainty of terminology and analysis that underlies it, offering an evidence-based, comprehensive approach to defining and understanding transit migration in Europe.

In recent years, Europe has seen its largest influx of migrants and refugees in decades, with 1.9 million arrivals to the continent between 2014 and 2017. Peak arrivals in 2015, and sustained flows since then, have found the European Union and its 28 member states unable to face what has been called the “European migration crisis.” Part of their response has focused on cooperation with third countries of transit or origin, by leveraging development, humanitarian, and foreign policy tools to try and reduce migrant flows to Europe, including through many funding and budgetary decisions. This report attempts to quantify, through budgetary analysis, what shifts occurred in the external dimension of Europe’s migration policy following the crisis, and in three member states (Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands). These short-term shifts, representing policy priorities, carry long-term consequences for the European Union’s role as a foreign policy and soft power actor.

Even as the 2013-2017 “migration crisis” is increasingly in the past, EU countries still struggle to come up with alternative solutions to foster safe, orderly, and regular migration pathways, Europeans continue to look in the rear-view mirror.This Report is an attempt to reverse the perspective, by taking a glimpse into the future of migration to Europe. What are the structural trends underlying migration flows to Europe, and how are they going to change over the next two decades? How does migration interact with specific policy fields, such as development, border management, and integration? And what are the policies and best practicies to manage migration in a more coherent and evidence-based way?

Turkey has recently become a transit country for migrants, especially for asylum seekers from the Middle East intending to reach western and northern countries. This timely publication examines the long, costly and uncertain migratory process through Turkey that migrants endure, their motivations, their lives during the transit period in Turkey, and their expectations, as well as the intervention of traffickers and smugglers.

Challenging traditional approaches to migration, which puts migrants in narrow categories (legal and illegal, newcomer and settler), 'Transit Migration' shows that migrants and refugees live in transit for years, a stage in the migration course profoundly affecting destination countries and the migrants themselves.

Troubled Transit considers the situation of asylum seekers stuck in limbo in Indonesia from a number of perspectives. It presents not only the narratives of many transit migrants but also the perceptions of Indonesian authorities and of representatives of international and non-government organizations responsible for the care of transiting asylum seekers. Fascinated by the extraordinary and seemingly limitless resilience shown by asylum seekers during their often lengthy and dangerous journeys, the author highlights one particular fragment of their journeys — their time in Indonesia, which many expect to be the last stepping stone to a new life. While they long for their new life to unfold, most asylum seekers become embroiled in the complexities of living in transit. Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is more than a location where people spend time waiting; it is a nation state that interacts with transiting asylum seekers and formulates policies that have a profound impact on their experience in transit there. Troubled Transit tries to explain the complexities faced by the transiting migrants within the context of the Indonesian government and its political challenges, including its relationship with Australia. The Australia-centric view of recent asylum seeker issues has tended to ignore the larger socio-political context of the migratory routes and the perspectives of transit states towards asylum seekers stuck in transit. This book hopes to direct the Australia-centric gaze northwards to take Indonesian policies and policymaking into account, thereby giving Indonesia more relevance as a transit country and as an important partner in regional protection schemes and migration management. Even though some Indonesian policies and practices are less than favourable for asylum seekers, and even reprehensible from a human rights perspective, more attention must be paid to ongoing developments that impact on transiting asylum seekers in Indonesia if any of the hardships they suffer there are to be alleviated.

The New Asylum and Transit Countries in Europe during and in the Aftermath of the 2015/2016 Crisis provides an essential cartography of the state of asylum during the crisis and explores how law shapes and distorts refugee protection practices in frontline states.