Investigating human rights violations: informal readmissions to Greece of asylum seekers and unaccompained migrant children from Italian Adriatic harbours and the hovering specter of Dublin regulation

Abstract

This thesis collocates the issue of readmissions of asylum seekers from Italian Adriatic harbours to Greece in the broader context of the Common Asylum System in Europe, considering it as a “side effect” of the System’s shortcomings, per se. Within these premises, the paper illustrates the abuses experienced by the victims in each phases of readmissions: at Italian harbours, during the return journey by ship and, once back to Greece, the human rights violations they are exposed to. It also assesses whether the phenomenon persists up today, after several years of systemic readmissions to Greece, as documented by credible NGOs and the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, in his Italy country mission report of 2012. In doing that, it examines the outcome of a filed research carried out between April and July 2015, which included, among others, exchange of information with Italian NGOs operating in Adriatic harbours, interviews with asylum seekers in Patras and a scrupulous analysis of Italian media. Eventually, it identifies possible and durable solutions to the issue, entailing a radical change in the EU approach to migration and asylum matters and makes predictions for the future.