Two absolutely chilling numbers signpost any approach to this volume one chooses to take: some 13,500 desperate people lost their life crossing from North Africa to Southern Europe in the last 14 years, of which 1,500 last year. This massacre by indifference gives the human measure of the recent, intense migratory turbulence in the Mediterranean covered by this book.

Prof. Peter Xuereb starts the debate with a splendidly profound phrase: “Treating others with humanity is what saves us all from losing ours.” He handpicked and brought together a staggering team of 16 experts and academic scholars who contributed their findings and observations, their reflections and conclusions on migration and asylum, in so far as Malta and the European Union are concerned. I believe that the unwritten verdict of almost every chapter coincides with Prof. Xuereb’s maxim.

It is all very well and easy to disclaim racism. Almost everyone does that. Many see it as the only politically correct thing to do. But the real litmus test is hardly whether you deny you are racist, but whether you are still able to think and behave non-racist after your country starts having a race ‘problem’. It is supremely easy not to be racist when your country is racially homogeneous.

Malta appeared not to be racist so long as the Africans were invisible. The moment they became a real, unhideable presence, the thin facade cracked and today the horrid face of racism leers in full view. We are now ardently advertising the insecurity provoked by diversity, the fear of the unknown, the regression of all culture when confronting multiculturalism. St Paul is on record as saying that the Maltese treated the shipwrecked with great kindness. Had he read the hundreds of hate-filled comments that overflow from the hate-filled sewers of the minds of many who comment on-line, he might have been more careful with his choice of words. Sickening are not so much the comments in themselves, but the common perception that those violently racist attitudes are part of ‘normality’. So normal that editors have no compunction in publishing them and the police no urge to haul the sickos to justice.

It would be naive to deny that having considerable influxes of migrants and asylum seekers does not disturb established paradigms. It would be inhabiting the dafter spheres of denial to ignore the bewilderment that uninvited diversity naturally provokes. The problems are there and do not go away by looking sideways. How to deal with these issues is what divides us: with hate, fear and rejection? Or with compassion, responsibility and international solidarity?

This book only targets those focused on the latter options, and shuns, frontally or laterally, the crusaders of the former. It harvests the facts, analyses the problems, puts them in perspective, and shines light on their extent and management, the redeeming light of a shared humanity. The editor dedicates the book to “the hundreds who lost their life in their bid for freedom and in seeking to escape from persecution and injustice”. In many cases, let me be the one to say so, to find themselves the targets of different persecution and more joyless injustice.

The essays fall broadly into three categories: the EU’s legal and practical framework relating to asylum and migration – what the EU should be doing according to its own guiding legislation, what it does, where it succeeds and where it fails. Twelve essays focus on the interaction of migrants with Malta. The third part swings again towards the EU – how the Union laws affect and define migrants, the transitions from the status of illegal immigrant to that of EU citizen, and closes with some poignant reflections on the final agenda, or maybe the final utopia: the universality of the fundamental right of asylum.

Prof. Henry Frendo raises the curtain with personal reminiscences from his previous careers with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and then as president of the Refugees Appeal Tribunal. Few will have garnered such a vast amount of hands-on experience as Frendo in the various migration phenomena. His having belonged, in a manner of speaking, with the establishment has not silenced him or reduced his utterings to watered-down diplomatic legalese or platitudes. He has strong criticism for the lukewarm European response to burden-sharing, and also some justified sense of achievement: “Malta ended up having record rates of granting some kind of protection to asylum seekers.”

This collection of essays mainly looks at our own recent experiences with these collective movements of peoples – probably the first large scale migratory fall on our islands since the Arabised Sicilians repopulated Malta around the end of the Islamic period. No other mass movement has been recorded – the transient human traffic of the celibate knights of Malta would not qualify as migration or asylum-seeking – nor would the consistent, though slow trickle of European fugitives from justice seeking asylum in Malta in the pre-British period.

Perhaps the considerable influx of political exiles finding refuge in Malta from hostile regimes in Italy in the 19th century would constitute a precedent, as would the mass exodus of Europeans to Malta after the Egyptian uprising in 1882, or of the Russian aristocracy after the Bolshevik Revolution. Malta’s historical immunity from ethnic, non-European ‘invasions’ has left it ill-equipped to face wave after wave of immigrants from Africa. Ill-equipped in aptitude, in facilities, in structures, in awareness. But mostly in the soul. We had little or no previous experiences to fall back on.

Is this a purely academic publication? I mean, a book by academics meant for academics? It is also that, but it is hardly only that. The several authors deal with vital, red-hot issues; in fact, according to those who will never read it, threatening issues that can corrupt irreversibly the apparently unitary fabric of Maltese society. This book does not indulge in theoretical conundrums, it does not try to find convincing replies to questions like how many angels fit on the head of a pin or whether the Nazareners changed the course of art. Here we are dealing with real people running terrible risks, many escaping really terrible problems and, according to some, exporting equally terrible problems to their host country. Anything that helps us contemplate and comprehend better the two extremes, together with all the in-betweens, is surely most welcome.

The thrust of this collection of essays is essentially the analysis of factual situations and legal regulation, documented or observed over the previous years. But no way does this make the book any less ‘prophetic’. It ends up being a detailed recording of the past that turns into an indispensable manual for the future. No viable forward-looking strategies can be devised without its contents being first digested by the policymakers and by the legislator. Different from stock-market investments, history has its own perverse ways of proving that the future is often a mirror of the past.

As a book reviewer, I am confronted with an ungrateful, almost impossible task. I wish I had the space to comment on each individual contribution, but a skeleton précis would not do justice to any of these essays, even if any form of condensation were to be at all possible. Most are of such critical density that they could do with further expansion, not with further compression. Nor will I fall into the invidious trap of reviewing some and not others, as all deserve attention and admiration. Some come across as clinically factual, others as more provocative, or, at least, challenging.

We have here a relatively large book by several authors, and yet there is very little overlapping. I found it amazing how much can be reflected upon in the limited areas of migration and asylum, without giving the vaguest impression of over-exploiting the subject matter, in fact, still leaving space for further exploration. Definitely not a case of more and more about less and less.

Let me just pay tribute to all the authors, at least by mentioning their names. Starting from the general editor, Professor Xuereb, all gave of their best, generously and wisely. Here is the roll of honour:

Martin Watson, owner and manager of SW Visions SPRL, who previously worked at the EU Council on Refugees and Exiles; Marija Shisheva, doctoral researcher in international studies at the Trento University; Christina Gortazar Rotaeche, Professor of International Law at the Comillas Pontifical University of Madrid.

Paul James Cardwell, senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield; Derek Lutterbech, deputy Director and holder of the chair of the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies at the University of Malta; Patricia Mallia, head of the International Law Department at the University of Malta.

Alison Gatt, from the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, dedicated to immigration policy; Saviour Rizzo, former director of the Centre for Labour Studies; Robert Suban, assistant lecturer in the department of Banking and Finance; Isabelle Calleja Ragonesi, Head of the Department of International Relations.

Maria Pisani, visiting lecturer, reading for her Ph.D; Daniela Debono, doctorate student at the University of Sussex, Centre for Migration Studies; Elspeth Guild, Jean Monnet Professor in law at the Radboud University of Nijmegen and at Queen Mary University, London.

Ivan Sammut, senior lecturer in European and Comparative Law; Charles Pace, Social Policy Course coordinator and developer, both at the University of Malta.

What a formidable array of talent! And if the book is, to a large extent, an insight in the ugly tensions of multiculturalism, here is some lovely multiculturalism at work. Almost as many non-Maltese as nationals figure in this fine example of trans-frontier understanding and co-operation. What it misses is some scientific contribution by a couple of immigrants or asylum-seekers able to give their academic input into a mostly western European cauldron of thought. But I would guess that was not available on the ground.

This book is not about learning for learning’s sake. It has a sombre message to convey to us all. The noble paper-work, the intricate legal structures put in place by the EU have not yet translated into action sufficiently concrete to benefit significantly the two ultimate players: the migrants themselves and the Maltese community.

Over a decade has passed since the human stream started rushing northwards, and the situation has still not had many meaningful, satisfactory outcomes. Not at the African end, not in the EU thought laboratories. Over those we have little control. But perhaps the saddest reflection is that a decade has not brought with it increased wisdom or at least any noticeable craving to understand. Our compassion is still mostly at sea, rudderless, heading we hardly know where, much like the immense, disconsolate misery of a boatful of migrants.