The politics of search-and-rescue and the migration flow through the Central Mediterranean Route

According to certain political discourses, state-led and private-led search-and-rescue is an explanatory factor of the observed increase during the period 2013-2016 in the inflow of migrants along the Central Mediterranean route towards Europe, which would imply search-and-rescue constitutes a 'pull factor' of migration. However, throughout these years, various changes in the laws, policies and practices of search-and-rescue operations took place resulting in three distinct periods: The MARE NOSTRUM period, the private-led search-and-rescue, and the period of coordinated pushbacks made by possible by EU-cooperation with the Libyan Coast Guard. These three different periods allow us to test whether the 'pull factor' claim has any empirical support in available data on migration movements along this route. Based on aggregate counts of arrivals, pushbacks and deaths, we employ a Bayesian structural time series model to estimate the effects of these three intervention periods on the migration flow as measured by attempted crossings, net of various drivers of irregular migration from Africa to Europe. We collect multiple sources of traditional and non-traditional data on economic time series, and other 'push factors' to build a synthetic, predicted counterfactual flow. We show that our predictive model can capture the behavior of the target time series in the various pre-intervention periods. Our findings suggest there is no substantial difference between the observed flow through this route and our counterfactual scenario during the search-and-rescue periods, which implies state- and private-led search-and-rescue did not increase the migration flow. Pushback policies, however, did reduce this flow drastically.