Thirty-nine people have been found dead in Essex in a lorry which came from Belgium. It’s suspected the group are migrants – but how many people are attempting the journey and which methods are they using?

How are they travelling?

Using tiny boats to cross the Channel is still one of the most popular methods – mainly because it is more difficult to complete the whole journey from country of origin to the UK by lorry.

Dozens of dinghies – often dangerously overloaded with people – have been intercepted off southeast England this year.

A mile-long wall was built on the road to Calais in 2016 to try to deter migrants and in early 2018, the British government pledged to spend another £45m on extra security measures at Channel ports.

Despite the measures, it is common for traffickers to walk among the areas where migrants camp out in France, offering to take them by boat.

What’s the most popular route?

The lorry found with 39 bodies in Essex entered Britain at Purfleet and docked in the Thurrock area.

However, the Kent coast, particularly near Dover, is by far the most likely area for migrants to be intercepted, with some boats also picked up this summer off Sussex.

Most set off from the northern French coast around Calais.

How many are attempting the journey?

The Home Office has refused to say how many migrants have crossed the Channel from France into the UK on small boats between December 2018 and October this year.

Sky News collated data from multiple sources, including police records and local reports of arrivals, and calculated the number to be 1,456.

The Home Office says it has returned “over 85” this year, which means that only around 6% – or one in 17 – have been sent back.

Eighty-six migrants were intercepted by the Border Force in one day in the Channel in September – the highest in a single day.

The spike in sea crossings began in late 2018 and after a lull during the roughest seas of winter, the numbers began to pick up until 349 successfully crossed in August.

Many of the boats are picked up by Border Force and the RNLI before they make it to shore, as the government has a policy of taking action to prevent loss of life.

So far, only one migrant who was on a boat is believed to have died – an Iranian woman reportedly called Mitra Mehrad, whose body was found after she fell off a dinghy in the Channel on 9 August.

There have also been reports that another man drowned while trying to swim across using flippers and an improvised flotation device.

Several people, many of them British, have also been arrested for suspected trafficking offences.

Where are most migrants from?

Sky analysis shows that out of the 100 incidents for which the nationality of a boat’s occupants was made public (up to 15 September), 95 contained at least one Iranian and the majority contained mostly or all Iranians.

People from 28 different countries were found to have entered the UK, according to a census last November by a coalition of NGOs including Help Refugees.

It said Iranians were the largest group in Calais (38.8%), but did not form the majority, with Eritreans, Afghans and Sudanese forming a similar proportion overall.

Changing migration patterns

Frontex, the EU body responsible for the bloc’s borders, says patterns have changed since the 2016 crisis that saw hundreds of thousands cross the Mediterranean and travel overland through the Balkans.

Data suggests that part of the explanation for a spike in Iranians arriving in Calais may be down to visa requirements – or lack of them – in countries along the route.

Turkey does not require visas for Iranians staying less than 90 days, meaning they are free to enter as they wish.

And, in 2017, Serbia unilaterally removed visa requirements for citizens of Iran.

Frontex said in its 2018 report that the changes in Serbia’s visa policy made it more likely Iranians would use it as a jump off point if they wanted to reach western Europe as migrants, in addition to taking advantage of Turkey’s liberal visa policy.

The possibility grew in spring 2018, when two of Iran’s air carriers began regular flights from Tehran to Belgrade.

Bosnian TV channel N1 reported that the number of Iranians entering their country had increased by 10,000%, after 20,000 people arrived in Belgrade using the visa system.

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