Damned for trying

Migrant crossings through the central Mediterranean jumped by more than four-fold after 2013. The International Organization for Migration estimates that nearly 182,000 migrants from Libya have landed in Italy since the start of last year, exacerbating a massive refugee crisis already spilling out of Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

Unlike the millions of people forcibly displaced by Syria’s brutal five-year civil war, migrants that pass through Libya do so amid a complex web of forces that have uprooted entire generations.

For years, broad regions of sub-Saharan Africa have been swallowed by squalor and extreme poverty, crushed under the rule of oppressive governments or caught in the crosshairs of deadly groups that thrive on terror.

But suddenly, technology made the world much smaller and dreams more concrete. Facebook feeds were now flooded with pictures of friends and family who had made it to Europe, projecting the notion that a dramatically improved lifestyle was easily within reach. Remittance packages from loved ones abroad proved that higher wages were not merely a myth. Connections to smugglers selling safe passage to a new life were all of a sudden just a phone call away.

Pictured here, a group of migrants rest beside the lorry they were traveling on. For roughly 180 U.S. dollars, migrants may pay to ride on top of lorries that shuttle goods across the desert between Niger and Libya. 

This is the latest in an on-going partnership between Magnum Photos and MSNBC Photography following the global migrant crisis.

For more of this special feature click here.