The enormity of the migrant crisis will upend European politics

When hundreds of mostly African migrants escaped from the transfer centre in Porto Empedocle, Sicily, last weekend and began roaming the town’s bakeries and shops begging for food, the mayor took to social media to explain. There were 2,000 migrants squeezed into a facility meant for 250, he told terrified locals. The conditions were inhumane. The repeated attempts to escape were inevitable.

On the island of Lampedusa, 11,000 migrants had arrived in the space of five days. There were 6,000 migrants in a facility meant for 600. The Sub-Saharan Africans were fighting with the North Africans. ‘To get food is a problem,’ one migrant told a television interviewer. ‘If you don’t fight, you don’t have food.’ Public transport was at a standstill as authorities commandeered buses to shift the migrants. Locals – and an increasing number of Italian politicians – refer to what is going on as an invasion. Migrant arrivals have doubled this year to 130,000 and the enormity of the crisis is about to shake European politics to its core.