For restless young men, little can deter their dreams of flight. Ehab Nasser, 21, said he hated his job as a fisherman. Life at sea was cruel and lonely, he said — long trips into the dangerous waters of war-torn Libya in search of fish, often for as little as $100 a month. Two years ago he smuggled himself into Greece, after pawning his mother’s wedding dowry, at a price of 2,500 euros (about $2,800).

That trip ended in a Greek detention center, and with eventual deportation back to Egypt. But he will try again soon. His eyes lit up as he showed a picture on Facebook of his neighbor Ismail, now in London. In the picture, a young man fanned a wad of British pounds, his thumb raised, while casually dragging on a cigarette.

“That’s what I want,” Mr. Nasser said.

But every success story is countered by a tear-stained episode. At a farmhouse surrounding by towering date palms, Mohamed El Ghatani, a farmer, told of how he learned that his 16-year-old nephew, Amir, drowned on his way to Europe last month.

Only two years earlier, Mr. Ghatani said, his own son died in the same manner. “It’s terrible,” he said, his eyes reddening at the memory. “They think they’ll get to Europe and find an amazing life. That’s not true, of course, but they don’t know that.”

More than 7,000 unaccompanied minors from different countries arrived in Italy in the first five months of this year, twice as many as last year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The main problem, said Naela Gabr, a senior diplomat who heads Egypt’s official efforts to stem illegal migration, is Italian law, which forbids the involuntary deportation of unaccompanied minors.