Attachments
Around 14,000 Bangladeshi nationals arrived irregularly in Italy via Libya in 2024 and an estimated 20,000 in 2025. Bangladesh has become the leading nationality on the Central Mediterranean route, but there has been limited research on how and why the Bangladesh–Libya–Italy corridor has become so prominent.
Although these arrivals remain small compared to the more than one million documented labour departures from Bangladesh each year — primarily to Gulf states and Malaysia — they raise a central question: why would migrants from a country so embedded in formal labour migration systems travel thousands of kilometres to Libya and take this long and risky route to Italy?
Based on 80 in-depth interviews in Bangladesh, Libya and Italy, this report examines how journeys are structured and financed, and how recruitment networks linked to formal labour migration increasingly intersect with irregular movement and smuggling.