Crossing the white line: Migrants crossing the Alps to France

“Plink, plink, plink,” water droplets keep hitting the ground. It was 7pm high up in the Hautes-Alps. One day before the full moon on Dec.4th, 2025, the 2,000 metres tall mountains are covered with snow with exposed rock cliffs and trees.

Four Sudanese migrants, Michael, Abraham, Muhammad and Hamazan wait the sky to turn darker inside a hidden cave in Claviere, a small village in the Italian Alps that is seen as the gateway to France. After dark, they will be crossing the Hautes-Alps to reach France, guarded with French border police.

Back at 3pm, “good luck. Danger – call 112,” a volunteer from Rifugio Fraternità Massi, an Italian refugee shelter in Oulx, is saying repetitively to a group of around 15 migrants before they take the bus from Oulx to Claviere. Soon the bus arrives in Claviere a hour later, the group quickly hide inside a cave close to the village.

Some wrap their limps with thermal blankets; some lay down on the floor for a nap; some thrilled to play with snow and take pictures of the landscape near the entrance.

Abraham and Michael were stopped yesterday by French police, after being seen getting off the bus at Claviere. They are then sent back to Oulx. “I don’t know the reason too. It feels as if they already knew that we would be taking off the bus there at that time,” Michael says.

At 6pm when the sunset, two separate teams leave to start their journey to France, but not for the four-Sudanese men. “They don’t have a plan at all, they don’t even know the way if I didn’t show him the map,” Michael says.

They wait until the sky turned completely dark so the police cannot easily notice them. They do a final check on their clothes, backpack, also their route through their phones. As the clock turned 8pm, they passed through highways, hotels and houses in Claviere then vanish behind the woods covered with deep snow. Ahead them were 2,000 meters tall mountains in the Hautes-Alps.

When it all started

France reinstated border control following the November 2015 Paris attacks. In the Hautes-Alpes, migrants have since faced pushbacks by French border authorities.

The Court of Justice of the European Union on Sept.21st, 2023 ruled that France cannot “refuse entry” at an internal Schengen border as a short cut to remove people. Migrants have the right to apply for asylum.

How many crossings are there?

Between the Italian Susa Valley settled a sub-quarter of the Italian Red Cross, parked with tens of jeeps and rescuing ambulances. For humanitarian purposes, the Italian Red Cross started rescuing migrants attempting to cross the border since 2018.

The real number of crossing attempts is unknown. Still, an estimate of around a hundred migrants try to cross the Hautes-Alps to France daily, according to Jessica Ostorero Xhixha, a rescuer and spokesperson for the Italian Red Cross.

While some made it into France without being caught and pushed back by the border police, 4,562 migrants were arrested and refused entry in 2024 in Montgenèvre, a French town right next to Claviere, according to the French government.

The number of crossings varies in different periods. “By these days we have just a few 20-25 people every day, we have more like two weeks ago. We are like a hundred every day,” Jessica says.

How does the migrants cross the border?

Oulx, with Rifugio Fraternità Massi as a key refugee shelter is as a major transition point. They either go to the southwest Claviere, the more used option, or the northwest Bardonecchia before their crossing. 

From Claviere, migrants take on an around 20km trek for around eight hours, eventually reaching Refugees Solidaires, a French refugee shelter located in Briançon, which is considered safe not to be pushed back by the border police.

Oulx, with Rifugio Fraternità Massi as a key refugee shelter, is a major transition point prior to the migrants’ departure to either the more popular southwest Claviere or the northwest Bardonecchia before crossing the border.

From Claviere, migrants take on an around 20km trek for around eight hours, eventually reaching Refugees Solidaires, a French refugee shelter located in Briançon, which is considered safe not to be pushed back by the border police.

How dangerous is it?

Climbing above 2,000 meters Alps to escape being caught by border police, migrants face altitude sickness, hypothermia, and even the risk of death.

At least 125 migrants have died in their journey since 2015, according to Pacte, a French research unit; nearly one in five migrants suffered musculoskeletal injuries. One in ten of them sustained frostbite during the winter period, according to an excerpt from Tous Migrants, an advocacy organisation based in Briançon, France.

Back on Dec.4th, Muhammad fell twice while walking up a steep slope with snow covering half of his feet. Soon later he gave up and took the Italian Red Cross ambulance from Claviere back to Oulx.

“The roads (in Claviere) were easy, until I started walking up the slope,” “I will do it next time when there is less snow,” Muhamad says.

On Dec.4th, 2025, the temperature in the Hautes-Alpes is expected to drop to minus seven degrees at midnight. Photos: Leung Chi-ngai

Composition of nationalities

Being a rescuer and a member of the Italian Red Cross, Jessica talked and took care of migrants who were trying to cross the border for years. She observed two times when border crossings peaked in 2021 and 2023.

In 2021, people fled from Balkans, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. “In 2023, everything starts again with people coming from Libya and Tunisa,” “there were like 6,000 people arriving each day here and we have like 300 people every day on the field,” she says.

Now in 2025, single men, minors without parents from Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea are observed. Jessica says that most migrants here are pushed by war, most are looking for a better life in another place.

Why do they want to go to France?

Abraham, 20 and Michael, 21 both been friends since school. Since the outbreak of Sudanese civil war in 2023, they spent nearly one and half year in Libya while escaping from human traffickers and kidnappers.

“In our country, there is no hope at all. We lost everything back in our country,” “I was running for my safety. So that is why I came to Europe,” Abraham says.

“Then I came to Libya, maybe it is the best country (for Libyans), but if you are a migrant, it’s not good for you. We are black people. They hate us a lot. When they see you, they even look at you like a monkey,” Abraham says.

In 2023, United Nations-appointed independent human rights investigators observed “overwhelming” evidence of systematic torture, sexual slavery, forced labour, imprisonment against migrants in Libya.

On their eighth attempt crossing the mediterranean sea using a tiny “gumbo boat” that ran out of fuel for weeks, they finally got rescued by the Italian Navies and NGOs, bringing them to Italy.

They spent few weeks in Turino, Italy, tried to go to local school, but struggled to integrate into the Italian-speaking society. If they cross the border safely, they will be heading to Netherlands for better language inclusiveness as they can speak English well.

In the afternoon of Dec. 5th, 2025, Abraham told us they made it to France. They climbed through the mountain and successfully descend to Refuge Solidaire, a shelter in Briançon, France. Later that night, they took the train to Paris and transited to Amsterdam. Now, they are waiting for an interview for their asylum application in Netherlands.

“I faced a lot of difficulties. This one (crossing the mountains) even seems easy to me,” he says.

As a Christian, Abraham reacalls his faith in God supports him through the journeys he took. “If you trust God, everything is going to work out,” he says. Still, he says he need to take some rest after a week of journey.

Legal Grey Zones at the Alpine Border

At the refugee shelter in Oulx, the legal advice desk is run each morning by Silvia Chicco, a migration law expert with ASGI (Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione) and Diaconia Valdese. Her role is to brief migrants before they attempt to cross into France — and to identify vulnerable individuals such as unaccompanied minors, pregnant women or potential victims of trafficking.

Chicco says many people arriving at the shelter know almost nothing about their rights in Europe. “People know they need protection, but they don’t know how to ask for it,” she explains. Her job is to provide the most basic legal information: what asylum is, how the procedure works, and what the police are — and are not — allowed to do at the border.

But the law on paper and the practice on the ground often diverge. According to Chicco, French pushbacks are illegal when the person expresses the intention to seek asylum, yet they remain common. “If someone says they want asylum, French police must take the request. There is no legal procedure they can use to send back an asylum seeker,” she says.

When Returns Are Legal, and When They Aren’t

Only people who have not asked for asylum can be returned through a bilateral “readmission” mechanism between Italy and France. All others fall under the Dublin Regulation, which determines the EU country responsible for examining the claim. That decision must be taken through a formal administrative process, not at the border.

Still, Chicco notes that pushbacks can vary from day to day: “It depends on the policemen they meet. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t.” She links the most recent surge in illegal returns to a change in France’s Interior Ministry in late 2024.

Looking ahead, Chicco warns that the situation may become even more restrictive. In 2026, the EU will introduce a new Migration Pact, replacing the Dublin system. According to her, “the new pact is going to worsen the condition of asylum seekers in Europe,” with faster procedures and fewer guarantees.

For the people crossing the Alps, the legal landscape is becoming harder to navigate — and, as Chicco sees daily, far more dangerous than it should be.

Migration law at the Italian-French border

Issues/problems with migrant flow in Oulx (Mayor’s opinion)

Structural Problems: What Mayor Mauro Cassi Says the System Gets Wrong

For Mauro Cassi, mayor of Oulx, the migration pressure on the Alpine border is not merely a humanitarian emergency, but the result of deeper structural failures; political, social, cultural, and economic, that no local municipality is equipped to manage.

“The municipality does not manage transit in any way,” Cassi said. “It is a passive entity, as the transit of migrants takes place either through the direct involvement of the state or through private cooperative associations.”

He describes Oulx as a town pulled into a crisis it cannot control,

“We have an influx of citizens who are unprotected, unassisted… they too are passive subjects. It is practically impossible for the municipality to control integration and reception activities, which do not exist. Only hypocrisy.”

Residents caught in an unmanaged flow

Cassi said that early on, local residents were unsettled by what he bluntly calls “instances of unlawful behaviour,” mainly thefts.

“The presence of theft and the uncontrollability of this flow, especially at night, caused us turmoil,” he says.

But he also noted that a “small number of private citizens” stepped in to help families with young children, offering support at an “interpersonal, inter-subjective level.”

France’s pushbacks created ‘irritation’

Cassi is sharply critical of France’s former approach at the border.

“The French have always implemented a policy of so-called repatriation… ‘I do not accept them so I send them back.’”

He says the effect on Oulx was immediate and damaging:

“On many occasions, the gendarmerie has dumped people out of their vans in Italy, including in the town of Oulx, simply bringing them and abandoning them on our territory. In that phase there was irritation towards the French system.”

Though France now allows more migrants through, Cassi does not interpret this as a humanitarian shift.

“It’s probably part of an economic strategy that plays out at the expense of poor people,” he says.

“Western propaganda” and false expectations

When asked why so many attempt the dangerous crossing, Cassi links the movement directly to how Europe presents itself to the world:

“Western propaganda tells them. We show them our football matches, our cities, our crowded beaches, and our mountains. Here there is a different life that we show you, but not that we offer you.”

He argues that migrants — often fleeing political and social systems where “religious, political and administrative powers… already enslave human beings” — are encouraged to believe that Europe will offer them a radically better life.

But instead, Cassi says, many fall into the same economic marginalization.

“The Western system uses poverty and turns poverty into a business… a business based on state interventions that are not given to the individual migrant, not given to create a reception system worthy of a human being.”

A cultural gap Europe refuses to acknowledge

Cassi also warns that integration is fundamentally challenged by deep cultural differences, especially for those arriving from North African and Muslim-majority countries.

“They find themselves immersed in a completely different social, economic and interpersonal reality,” he says. “Concepts like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are still not accepted in their countries.”

He continued with an example he knows may be uncomfortable: “The difference between the Muslim god and the Christian god is enormous. Allah is a god who imposes himself, while Christ is a god who offers himself. These are two different things that affect human freedom.”

In his view, ignoring these differences makes integration impossible.

Despite the structural failures he describes, Cassi insists the moral responsibility remains.

Meaningful integration, he believes, requires a transformation on both sides:

“Integration must be preceded by a change between those who give and those who receive. It must not be a simple civic act or personal pity; it must be something much deeper.”

“It is right to welcome, it is right to help, it is right to integrate,” he said.

“The problem is to be honest with those who ask. They may be asking for things that we cannot give them, except in a capitalist sense.”