Thousands die along the Atlantic migration route: Where are the headlines?

NGO Walking Borders released statistics in June this year, revealing that nearly 1,000 people have died on migration routes to Spain in the first six months of 2023 alone.

By far the most deadly route to refuge in Spain, and amongst the deadliest to Europe in general, has proven to be the Atlantic Migration Route, whereby migrants move from Northern Africa to seek refuge in the Canaries via the Atlantic Ocean.

"Fatalities along the route have increased every year since 2017, from just one in 2017 to over 1,100 in 2022"

In this attempt to reach the Canaries, refugees are tackling ferocious seas in tiny boats, and casualties are common. Just recently on June 22, more than 30 migrants died when their dinghy sank, and hundreds more required rescuing. 

Info Migrants has also released data revealing that fatalities along the route have increased every year since 2017, from just one in 2017 to over 1,100 in 2022.

So far in 2023, there are already more than 700 fatalities across 28 separate tragedies. There are likely even more undocumented.

Walking Borders have attributed the alarming scale of the fatalities along the route to poor communication between Spanish and Moroccan states, significant delays in activating rescue missions, insufficient resources and bad practices during rescues.

There have been numerous documented cases of human rights violations against victims and their families, from forced displacements, detentions, physical attacks and more.

Despite horrifying tragedies amongst refugee journeys to Europe, mainstream news exposure seems sparse and lacklustre. Why? Is there truly a widespread lack of empathy? Is it easier to sweep under the rug?

On August 9, the BBC homepage featured an article regarding 41 migrant deaths off the coast of Italy. These kinds of high fatality incidents tend to make more mainstream press coverage, and it’s a perfect example of the Tunisia – Italy route receiving higher press coverage than the Canary route, despite its consistent danger and fatalities.

Comparatively, on searching ‘Atlantic Migration’ on the BBC news site, you get sparse results. Not until page 3 does news regarding the route appear, one podcast appearing being from 2015, and the other being a 10-minute piece on Europe’s response to migration.

The Guardian, one of the UK’s leading left-wing papers, also features the recent tragedy regarding the shipwreck off the coast of Italy and multiple recent articles regarding the UK’s Rwanda policy and the channel crossings.

While their search returns do suggest there is more content from this news outlet, the most recent article regarding the Atlantic route that came up on an initial search was dated back to November 2022.

Other mainstream news outlets provide even fewer results: The Telegraph, a comparable right-wing counterpart, returns only one article under the same search term. The article in question is about Britain’s seabirds. Under the search term ‘refugee’, the outlet has a mixed catalogue of articles.

Of those about contemporary refugee journeys, most are regarding Ukraine. On the same search term, as far back as April 2022, there are none regarding the Canaries and Northern Africa. The search term “Canary” offers one article since the start of the year regarding the route.

El Pais, Spain’s most-read newspaper, returns a range of articles under the search term “refugee”, including migrations in Cuba and Sudan, and also about domestic relations within Spain – from the refusal to build refugee shelters in northern Spain, to feature pieces on attitudes towards migration in Europe, Syrian refugees in Turkey.

However, there is still insufficient coverage of Spain’s own refugee responses and crises. The search term ‘Canary Islands’ is more fruitful, and whilst there are articles describing the island's idyllic tropes as the perfect sandy getaway, the results are permeated with frequent updates on the refugee situation.

As well as reporting on the recent arrivals, articles inform readers that almost 60% of Spain’s refugees arrive via the Canaries. Other articles report on Spanish delays in crisis relief.

But looking at quantities of articles isn’t enough. Are our news outlets centring refugee voices and providing nuanced understandings of the circumstances that lead to people seeking asylum abroad?

Further to that, perhaps the most pertinent question is why. Why do newspapers from country to country and across the political spectrum, underreport on the monstrosities that migrants face, on the frequency of these tragedies, and the fact that Europe could be doing a lot more to help?

Leah Pattem, grassroots journalist and activist of Madrid-based No Frills Madrid reflects that one of the key issues that journalists face when trying to do justice to refugee journeys is that it’s notoriously hard to get hold of refugee charities and organisations.

On Walking Borders, she said they are "probably the most powerful, informed and important group in this network, but also the most difficult to get hold of" and draws attention to dehumanising language and anti-immigration discourse in mainstream journalism in the past which has stung refugee-journalist relations.

"It’s pretty clear that that's a result of racism and also a result of people's idea of educational backgrounds"

Indeed, she has said that of those helping refugees and bringing their issues to the forefront, "it’s the associations and the organisations — they are doing the full bulk of this work and they are doing this despite the governments and despite the media."

One El Pais article, dated July 20, comments on a trend in Europe of people voting for parties in rejection of migrants. This pattern is palpable here in the UK – from Brexit to the Rwanda Policy.

The article comments on the fact that many European countries leapt to accept Ukrainian refugees at the outset of the war, and not those of Northern Africa, the Middle East, and so on.

YouGov has conducted research into this discrepancy and found statistics to consolidate the above. There is plenty of discourse highlighting Ukraine as a European, largely white and largely Christian population, and that these prevailing biases only further perpetuate an existing misnomer of there being a ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant.

Pattem comments, "It’s pretty clear that that's a result of racism and also a result of people's idea of educational backgrounds."

Let us also address the fact that, ultimately, bad news is hard to listen to and uncomfortable to address. As the Reuters Digital Audience Report 2023 found, there’s an all-time high of news avoiders, now making up 34% of all consumers across various platforms.

Of this demographic, many specifically avoid negative news. Perhaps part of the lack of coverage of the deadly Atlantic route lies in people not wanting to hear the unsavoury truth that thousands of people die during desperate flees from danger.

Perhaps grievances such as the cost of living crisis are leaving people feeling squeezed and with less capacity to donate time and money to causes such as refugees and more likely to outsource blame for our own domestic crises.

Likely, it’s a combination of all the above and more. One thing we know for sure is that refugees aren’t receiving the coverage they should amid European animosity toward them.

Taryn Read is a London based journalist specialising in politics and culture