Because the islands are on the southern boundary of Europe, because of their proximity to the African continent, and because of the difference in standards of living, this island territory generates a series of scenarios and contexts that are quite new for transnational mobility models. The migration can be analyzed in two stages. The first one was led by males who migrated at the end of the 1990s, mostly from southern Morocco, and travelled in small boats known as "pateras".
El hecho de ser frontera sur de Europa, la cercanía con el continente africano y la diferencia de estándares de vida, confiere a este territorio insular unos escenarios y contextos muy novedosos de modelos de movilidad transnacional que se pueden analizar en dos etapas: la primera protagonizada por varones que migraron a finales de 1990 procedentes en su mayoría del sur de Marruecos y que viajaban en "pateras".