Food security and European migrant crisis: Case of Mediterranean area

Abstract

This paper focuses on a possible connection between food security and the migrant crisis that began in 2015, which had a tremendous impact on the European Union as well as on the Mediterranean area. The goal of this paper is to determine if there is a correlation between the number of migrants and the levels of food security in both their homeland countries and destination countries. The Promethee method was used to attempt to answer this question. Unfortunately, the analysis is limited due to lack of data for certain countries concerning food security caused by current poor political situations. Nevertheless, the results showed that the best-ranked countries by food security are mostly EU countries. These countries do not have issues with food security, especially in comparison to countries in the Middle East. Also, countries with a high level of food security and political stability have the highest influx of migrants, which suggests there is also an economic motivation for migration. Finally, the analysis confirmed a strong correlation between countries’ achieved level of food security and the number of migrants.