The EU Migration Crisis in Terms of Asylum Applications Received. A Cluster Analysis over the Period 2015-2018

This research sets out the importance of studying the refugee crisis and the phenomenon of migration, the way refugees reach European territory and in which states they aim to settle. The first part of the article shows the evolution of illegal entries on the routes that refugees use to enter the European continent in the period between 2009-2018. The second part of the article aims to highlight the European States which were affected by the refugee crisis in light of the asylum requests submitted by the applicants for international protection in the EU between 2015-2018. Therefore the analysis led to the classification of the European States into four clusters: (i) states with a high number of asylum applications; (ii) states with a medium to high number of asylum applications; (iii) states with a small to medium number of asylum applications; (iv) states with a small number of asylum applications. The objective of this classification is to identify the states that were affected by the refugee crisis.