WHEN the European Union picked Malta as the site for this week’s EU-Africa migration summit, it seemed a logical choice. The island nation is perched in the Mediterranean halfway between Libya and Italy. For a time, it was one of the top destinations for migrants from Africa trying to reach Europe. And Valletta, Malta’s fortified Baroque capital, is a very telegenic spot for a summit. (In “Game of Thrones”, a television series, it serves as the backdrop for the port city of Pentos, whose own asylum seekers include the Targaryans, an exiled royal family.) But Malta is also apt in a way EU leaders may not have intended: as a standpoint from which to observe Europe’s increasingly confused attitude towards refugees and other immigrants.

African migrants encounter as much undisguised hostility here as anywhere in Europe. Neil Falzon, who runs Aditus, a local human rights organisation, says many have been spat upon in the street. As in much of eastern Europe, unfamiliarity breeds contempt. Until the turn of the century, the island had one of the most ethnically homogenous societies in Europe, though its unique identity is actually the product of centuries of racial mingling. (The result is a native population who look a bit like Italians, speak a bit like Arabs and drive on the left like the British.)

In the early 2000s, when thousands of African asylum seekers began landing here annually, it came as a shock. “A lot of elderly people had never seen a coloured person,” says the leader of the opposition Nationalist Party, who condemns racism (while unwittingly using a politically incorrect term). Maltese xenophobes can fall back on a rational argument: Malta is both the EU’s smallest state and its most densely populated one. Maltese feel they should have to take fewer migrants than larger states.

Yet strangely, without anyone much noticing, they seem to have got what they want. Malta is barely 200 miles from Libya, still a major transit country for refugees though no longer as important as Turkey. But the flow to Malta has virtually shut down—and no one knows why. Over 140,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in the year to November 10th; in Malta, since the end of January, the number is just 20. Meanwhile, the economy has been thriving. Malta has succeeded in becoming something Viktor Orban, the eurosceptic Hungarian prime minister, might dream of: an EU state with enviable growth figures and almost no migrants.

The signs of prosperity are everywhere. Winter sun-seekers throng Republic Street, Valletta’s main thoroughfare. Everywhere one looks, sandstone palazzos are being converted into plush offices for foreign firms. Tower cranes dot the horizon. The Maltese economy grew in the second quarter at an annual rate of more than 5%. Unemployment is the third-lowest in the EU. The budget deficit this year is expected to be 1.6% of GDP.

Malta has undoubtedly benefited from an “Arab winter” effect, as tourists who might otherwise be in Egypt or Tunisia opt for a safer alternative. But the government prefers to stress its own contributions. In 2013 Joseph Muscat, the leader of the Labour party, swept to office with an implausible pledge to cut the island’s sky-high energy tariffs by 25%. Helped by the fall in oil prices, he managed it (though at the cost of getting the state-owned power company to set artificially low prices and rack up debt). “I think that we can do what Singapore has done,” says the 41-year-old Mr Muscat, who has the same missionary zeal as Matteo Renzi, prime minister of neighbouring Italy.

One would think such talk would have migrants hastening to his island. Yet there are virtually no new arrivals, no rickety fishing vessels full of human cargo. Not a single large boat has landed on Malta this year. Even migrants rescued by Maltese vessels in Malta’s search-and-rescue area are being taken to Italy instead.

Conspiracy theorists speculate that the Italians are helping in return for a chunk of Malta’s lucrative air space, or have secretly been granted prospecting rights for oil and gas. The prime minister denies any secret deal with his friend Mr Renzi, and protests that Malta has taken its share of refugees under burden-sharing arrangements with Italy and Greece. But Mr Falzon estimates there are today only about 2,000 migrants on Malta who arrived irregularly, less than 0.5% of the population.

Fortress Malta, Fortress Europa?

At the EU-Africa migration summit, European leaders pleaded with African countries to help them to bring their migrant problem under control. Countries that arrest people-smugglers, and accept the return of migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected, will be given aid—€1.8 billion ($2 billion) of it, says the European Commission—as well as more access to European markets and more visas for their citizens. As the summit was meeting, Sweden, one of Europe’s friendliest countries to refugees, announced it would set limits on asylum applications. Could Europe as a whole aim for the same migrant-free prosperity as Malta?

Perhaps, were it not that Malta’s economic renaissance depends heavily on migration. According to the Malta Employers’ Association, expatriates (European or otherwise) now make up 12% of the labour force. Foreign workers have flocked to the island nation to work in growth industries such as financial services, generic pharmaceuticals and online gaming. Locals say some asylum-seekers who have been accepted in other Mediterranean countries, like Spain, are coming to Malta in search of jobs. The country even offers passports to anyone who invests €1m.

Malta is not keeping immigrants out; it welcomes them, but preferably if they are European, skilled or wealthy. This may be a viable strategy for small Mediterranean islands, but not for an entire continent of greying workers. Leaders who draw lessons from Malta’s success should keep in mind that if Europe wants to bring in immigrants to grow its economy, they will by definition have to come from outside Europe. From Africa, perhaps.