The Mediterranean has long been sold as a space of sun and leisure, yet its shorelines now also function as hard borders of the European Union. This tension is most visible in frontline states such as Italy and Greece, where mass tourism overlaps with migration routes, policing operations and public anxiety about crime.
Greece: Larger Inflow, More Attrocities
In Greece, people who remember the 1990s describe a country where everyday security concerns centred on local offenders and specific groups such as some Roma communities or early Albanian arrivals. Today, many residents say that petty crime and harassment have become more frequent and more visible, often linking this change to the larger inflows of migrants from the 2010s onwards. Women recount repeated experiences of harassment, including incidents involving underage girls. These are personal accounts rather than official statistics, but they shape how urban spaces are perceived – by locals and by the visitors who share those spaces.
Along the Greek–Turkish land and sea borders, the security landscape is even harsher. Refugees and illegal migrants arriving at the River Evros or on islands such as Lesvos have faced armed vigilante groups, tear gas, water cannon and efforts by some islanders to prevent boats from landing. Only a few years earlier, many of these same communities had mobilised to receive and integrate newcomers. The shift from humanitarian zeal to hostility is tied to austerity, the erosion of welfare states and the sense that scarce public services are being stretched.
Italy’s Cycle of Criminalisation and Insecurity
Italy operates in the same Mediterranean theatre but with its own dynamics. For over a decade, the country has experimented with restrictive migration measures, including the “crime of irregular migration”, which allows fines for irregular entry and stay. Critics inside the justice system argue that such rules do little to control arrivals but contribute to a feedback loop: migration is cast as a security emergency; expectations of control rise; when deterrence fails, demands grow for even tougher measures. Politicians worry that repealing criminal provisions would be punished at the ballot box, reinforcing a permanent state of emergency.
On the ground, this approach pushes many people into irregularity. Migrants who cannot regularise their status or be returned are forced into underground economies and informal housing, making them more visible in the very city centres, ports and markets frequented by tourists. Organised crime groups, from historic mafias to newer organisations, profit from this vulnerability – securing contracts to run reception facilities, exploiting underpaid labour and, in some cases, coercing people into prostitution or other illegal activities. Migrants are both blamed for insecurity and exposed to violence and exploitation themselves.
Italian officials now speak of the need to make migration “orderly, legal and sustainable”, and to work with countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Algeria to manage routes and “attack the business of traffickers” along the entire chain. At the same time, people steering or simply travelling on boats have been arrested and prosecuted as “smugglers”, often with limited public attention. Similar patterns are reported in Greece and Spain’s Canary Islands. The criminalisation of migration and of those who assist or travel with migrants runs in parallel with the criminalisation of solidarity, reinforcing the idea that people on the move are primarily a security problem.
Tourism at the Edge of a Border Regime
For tourists, most of this remains in the background. Beaches, historic centres and island harbours continue to function as holiday settings, but they are embedded in a landscape of camps, patrols, courtrooms and fragile welfare systems.
Perceptions of safety in the Mediterranean are no longer shaped only by concerns about petty crime. They are also influenced by how societies at the border of Europe choose to govern mobility – and by who is seen as deserving of protection in the first place.
