Migrant Deaths In The Mediterranean: Why It's Gotten Worse

05:48

April 22, 2015

Rescued migrants are assisted down the gangplank by Italian Red Cross workers as they disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Bettica after arriving in the Sicilian harbor of Augusta on April 22, 2015. European governments came under increasing pressure to tackle the Mediterranean's migrant crisis ahead of an emergency summit, as harrowing details emerged of the fate of hundreds who died in the latest tragedy. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

As survivors of last Sunday's shipwreck in the Mediterranean recover in Italy, European leaders are debating how the continent should deal with this crisis of people from Africa and beyond risking their lives to flee poverty and violence.

Sunday's boat sinking is being called the worst ever in the Mediterranean, and Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat called the tragedy, in which hundreds drowned, a "game changer."

Alexander Betts, head of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, joins Here & Now's Robin Young to discuss how it came to this, and why so many more migrants are dying in the waters between Africa and Europe.

Guest

Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University and an associate professor of refugee and forced migration studies. He tweets @alexander_betts.

This segment aired on April 22, 2015.

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