Following uprisings in Tunisia and Libya, more than 40,000 people have arrived in Italy since mid-January. Most of them have come to Sicily and the tiny island of Lampedusa.
Many have already been deported.
Lampedusa relies on tourism for its livelihood in the summer, and the influx of migrants has destroyed this year's tourism season
But as Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports, the people there do not blame the refugees - they blame their government.