Chapter 11 - The Euro-Mediterranean process and the root causes of migration

Abstract

Mobility of people has always been at the core of Mediterranean civilizations. Historically, this shared sea has seen civilizations meeting and mingling, spurring trade, new agricultural techniques and innovations. As migration is at the heart of the Euro-Mediterranean process, one has to reject the claim that movements of people in this basin may be defined as starkly as a security threat to the Mediterranean, as it has always been one of the engines of its development since the times of the Phoenicians, Magna Graecia, the Roman Mare Nostrum, and the Islamic Empires (from the Umayyads to the Ottomans), spreading languages, ideas and technologies.