In 2025, Bangladeshis represent 31% of illicit entries by sea. The report that overturns common beliefs about landings in Italy.
There is a big misunderstanding when it comes to the landings of illegal immigrants in our country. It is often thought that most of them originate from North Africa or the Middle East. But the truth is another: the greatest number of entries comes from Asian nations. One in the head: the Bangladesh. Just read the data collected by Mixed Migration Centre to realize it: 15,228 in 2022; 12,774 in 2023; 14 thousand in 2024: around 20 thousand in 2025, 31% of all illicit entries by sea into Italy. Yes, because the Bangladeshis, before arriving in Italy, pass through Libya.
According to the report, many of them arrive legally in the country that was ruled by Muammar Gaddafi, landing mainly in Benghazi. Finding a reason to travel to North Africa isn’t that difficult. All you need is a work permit or some excuse related to tourism. Once here, the Bengalis meet the traffickers, with whom they had already made agreements previously. They thus move towards the West – in the vicinity of ZawiyaSabratha and Tripoli – from where boats depart for our coasts. Notoriously, the migrant sets out alone, taking with him the expectations of his family of origin, who helps him pay the costs of the journey (from 6 to 10 thousand dollars), distributed to a chain of intermediaries found both in small Bangladeshi villages and in the main Libyan coastal cities.
The secret route from Bangladesh to Italy and the weight of the Asian landings
«Bangladesh», he explains to Panorama Vas Shenoyterrorism expert and author of the book The seeds of hatred, which documents the presence of extremist groups in the area, «is a state that is in a very delicate phase. The coup against Sheikh Hasina and the so-called “student revolution” have brought power back to Islamic movements such as Jamaat-e-Islami. Many of these migrants undoubtedly leave for economic reasons, but others are financed by extremist networks, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, who consider the conquest of the West to be a demographic and theological process. And this happens in a country with over 150 million followers of Allah.”
Obviously, there are causes related to poverty behind the great migration coming from Asia. After all, we see many Bangladeshi citizens employed on piecework in the countryside. Infernal hours and very low wages mark their days. Then there are also those who reach our shores with other purposes. Shenoy continues: «When migratory flows become opaque and difficult to trace, a gray space is created in which it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between those seeking opportunities and those who can be exploited by illegal or ideological networks. It is not a question of criminalizing migration in six, but of recognizing that the absence of control generates vulnerability.”
Territorial dynamics and economic impact in Monfalcone
One of the most striking cases is that of Monfalcone (Gorizia). Here, in fact, there are around 5 thousand Bangladeshis. An impressive number if you consider that the total population is made up of just over 30 thousand units. Those who arrived in this city in Friuli Venezia-Giulia did so mainly for work-related reasons. Shipyards, it is known, represent excellent earning opportunities. But then, little by little, figures linked to radical Islam also began to arrive. It should be remembered that one of the strategies most used by preachers and jihadist sympathizers is precisely that of contacting large Muslim settlements, exploiting economic discontent or personal dissatisfaction.
It was the tactic implemented by the twenty-seven year old Turk arrested here a year and a half ago, on 25 December 2024. In Monfalcone he had opened two kebab places which had become the meeting point of the various Islamic communities. He called himself the “Turkish Bro” and, before long, he had tried to enlist several people to fight the holy war. He had contacts throughout Italy and thought, shortly after the closure of the city’s mosques, of opening another one. Projects vanished at the moment of his arrest. Anna Maria Cisintnow a League MEP after having been mayor for a long time, explains that the nature of the “Monfalcone case” is to be found «in the annihilation of the dignity of work and in the elimination of workers’ rights, while mass immigration was used as a tool to impose new industrial models based on “reverse delocalization”. Thanks to an overly mild law on family reunification, desired by the left, and which we have already partly contributed to modifying, which has allowed the massive arrival of Islamic immigrants who currently absorb 90 percent of municipal welfare.”
The map of urban settlements from Gorizia to the capital
What is striking, walking through the streets, are the veiled women, the long beards, the tunics that run down to the wearer’s feet. «Between illegal mosques that we have closed» continues Cisint, «ethnic shops and Koranic schools, a tug of war has started to try to impose Shariacreating a city within the city. Fully veiled women, Ramadan in the classrooms and an increasingly higher risk of terrorist radicalization, which we are averting and stemming thanks to our great battle for legality, the defense of our values and for the dignity of our citizens.”
The province of Gorizia However, it is not the only reality to find itself in a similar situation. In Rome, where there is the largest representation of Bangladeshis in Europe, there is a municipality, the Fifth, which has been renamed “Banglatown”. Includes the Pigneto and Tor Pignattara. In this area, citizens from Bangladesh make up, according to the latest estimates, more than 20% of the population. Even in this case, coexistence is not easy. Illegality, often conducted behind the counters of foreign citizens, is accompanied by racist attacks. A fragile balance that risks changing at any moment. The large Bengali family, at any latitude, is united within itself. It represents a closed circle, difficult to penetrate. And also to be integrated, in most cases. Everything revolves around the family, the clan.
According to Shenoy, «ignoring the possible link between irregular migration and the risk of extremist infiltration would be a mistake. But it would be equally good to address the topic in an ideological or simplified way. We need a third way. More supervision, more international cooperation, more capacity for real integration. The numbers on migrants from Bangladesh do not raise an ideological alarm, but rather an operational one. It concerns the ability of European states, Italy first and foremost, to govern complex phenomena before they become unmanageable.” Assuming they aren’t already.
