How to address irregular sea crossings and the secondary mobility of migrants are igniting tensions at the border between Italy and France, and with other EU member states. But there is more to this than meets the eye. In this interview on BBC News, I argue that the European Parliament election campaign has already started and that opposing political factions are using migrants and migration to galvanize their political support – with PM Giorgia Meloni consolidating her alliance with Hungary PM Viktor Orban. Unfortunately, solutions are hard to come by in the current political climate.

I have also spoken to CNA (Singapore) about the EU responses and how measures that focus almost exclusively on migration facilitators do nothing to address the underlying drivers of migration and may offer some localised short-term ‘wins’ but are likely to just delay or move the migration routes elsewhere (due to copyright restrictions on some video footage only audio is available).