“Please, sir, please! This is very serious. My engine is off and I have children and pregnant women.”. The desperate plea comes from a rubber dinghy packed with 112 people who set off from the Libyan coast in the hope of reaching Europe.

Almost all the migrants who visit the Caritas center have avoided being identified by Italian authorities; European Union laws would make them unable to cross borders if they were identified.

In the first of our interviews with people at the centre of the year’s biggest stories, we meet Stephanie and her daughter Francesca.

Metal bars have been installed in the doors of an old newspaper office where scores of squatters - asylum seekers, refugees and a few Italians - fear a confrontation with Rome's riot police.

Humanitarian organisations and volunteers advocate for the use of drones technology to locate refugees at sea.

Forensic experts in Italy are working to identify the bodies of refugees drowned in the sea as they attempted to cross.

An EU initiative to screen and fingerprint all migrants and refugees arriving in Italy and Greece is creating chaos.

Sierra Leonean footballer escaped Ebola, kidnappers, and the Mediterranean capsize that killed 800 people in April.

Around 100 migrants have been put up in tents at new camp in shadow of Tiburtina railway station after news that France has increased security at the Italian border.

A leafy street in Rome is transformed into a hive of activity every lunchtime as Eritrean migrants queue up to collect a plate of food outside the Baobab cultural centre run by the local diaspora community.

The number of migrants to have arrived in Italy by boat this year passed 50,000 at the weekend as around 5,000 people were rescued in the Mediterranean.

Italians grow weary of asylum seekers amid the steady flow of migrants and the country's economic woes.

Walking slowly and uncertainly down a ramp, clutching onto the handrail as she goes, a heavily pregnant woman takes her first step onto Italian soil.

A baby girl has been born on an Italian navy vessel after her mother became one of nearly 6,800 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean in three days. In a nod to her naval rescuers – the Italian Marina Militare – the newborn was named Francesca Marina on Monday.

Few refugees imagine ending up in a field in the toe of Italy's boot. But this rural slope between Tarsia, a hilltop town in the Calabria region, and the remains of the country's largest fascist concentration camp, may soon become the final resting place for those who lose their lives en route to Italian shores.