| Description |
Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) countries have become receivers of international migrants without the instruments and policies for integrating them. As a result, irregular migration has grown faster that regular migration. The paper establishes that the SEM currently hosts more than 3.6 million irregular migrants: irregular labour migrants targeting local labour markets are the largest category, followed by unrecognised refugees waiting for return or resettlement, then, in much smaller numbers, by transit migrants waiting for a passage to Europe. Regardless the different reasons behind migration, these three categories tend to merge into one group of population that has no legal access to labour, welfare and protection, that acts as a regulator of labour markets while escaping governments' control.
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