Migrants at the gates, lives in the balance along the shores of Europe

Panos Pictures photographer Carlos Spottorno has been documenting incoming immigrants and their experience along various European coastal cities for years. “They leave their home countries because poverty, war and hunger have made their lives intolerable, and they’re determined to find a better life for themselves, and maybe their families back home,”  he describes about his series via Panos Pictures. “Some of them travel for years, being passed from one trafficker to the other at the mercy of unscrupulous criminals who see them as a commodity and play on their desperation.”