On a farm track outside the huge migrants’ camp hidden away among cornfields near Venice, a young Nigerian is telling me of his hopes for a new life.

With pink varnish on his nails and a paisley bandana on his head, he does a Michael Jackson-style shimmy under the searing July sun.

Osarume Ehiz, 16, has lived in the camp with 1,000 other male migrants, many of them fellow Nigerians, for 11 months.

‘I’m a dancer,’ he says, eyes sparkling and his feet moving fast in his white plastic sandals. ‘But I can’t make a career in Italy. I’m waiting for a special visa, so I can go anywhere in Europe. I hope the paperwork will come soon.’

The ‘special visa’ he refers to is at the centre of a furious row that is dividing EU governments and escalating border tensions as the continent struggles to cope with the biggest migration crisis since World War II.

Rescued: Migrants disembark from an Italian Coast Guard ship at the harbour of Augusta, Sicily

Earlier this month, Italy, which because of its geographical position is bearing the brunt of a huge influx of migrants from Africa, threatened to disperse them by providing EU temporary visas to up to 200,000.

The move would let thousands of migrants — many of whom have made the treacherous and illegal journey by sea on flimsy boats from Libya — spread across the rest of Europe.

It follows growing anger in Italy that other EU nations have reneged on promises to help with the migrant crisis engulfing the country. Up to 95,000 people have arrived on Italian shores so far this year.

Last weekend alone, several thousand were rescued and brought into port by naval vessels and charity boats.

Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni’s contentious plan would allow visa holders to travel freely into Austria — and beyond.

Austria has retaliated by threatening to close its key Alpine border with Italy, at the Brenner Pass, and enforce it with tanks and troops.

Its foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, has said that ‘being saved in the Mediterranean cannot be connected with a ticket to Central Europe’. To say emotions are running high between the two countries is an understatement, but the stand-off reflects hardening public opinion across the EU about levels of migration and the pathetic response from politicians to what is, arguably, the greatest issue of our times.

'Last weekend alone, several thousand were rescued and brought into port by naval vessels and charity boats'

Under the EU’s migrant quota scheme, all member countries are meant to accept a mandatory share of migrants whose landing point is Italy.

But the growing realisation, as confirmed by the UN, that most of the current influx of migrants are no longer Syrian refugees fleeing civil war or Islamic State horror, but economic desperados from countries including Bangladesh, Guinea as well as Nigeria, is having an impact.

Even the European Commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, recently admitted that most migrants are not escaping persecution but simply searching for a better life.

Poland and Hungary are jibbing at taking in migrants (citing cultural difficulties in view of the fact that many are Muslim and both countries have strong Christian traditions), while the Czech Republic is dragging its feet, too.

So in this febrile atmosphere, Italy’s border with Austria has become a potential flashpoint.

And, as I witnessed this week, few migrants seem to be in need of special visas as they cross with apparent ease from one country desperate to be rid of them to another which is no more welcoming.

Italy is the major recipient of migrants and refugees on the Central Mediterranean Route from Libya. It now takes in far more than Greece, where the numbers arriving have fallen thanks to a deal negotiated with Turkey last year — at a cost of several billion euros to the EU.

'Italy is the major recipient of migrants and refugees on the Central Mediterranean Route from Libya'

(Turkey agreed to take back those migrants who had travelled from the Middle East and elsewhere, via Turkey, and then across the Aegean Sea to Greece, but who did not qualify for asylum in the EU.)

Increasingly, migrant holding camps, which have been set up all over Italy, are close to overflowing. The young Nigerian I met this week, Osarume Ehiz, who gets €75 a month from the Italian government if he stays in the camp, says conditions are dreadful.

‘I live in a room with ten others in bunk beds,’ he complains. ‘There are mosquitos, the food is uneatable and we get no education. Italy is a bad country. The clothes they give us are unusable, so I buy mine from the market stalls.’

Every day, like other migrants at his camp, a former military base in Bagnoli di Sopri, he uses a charity bike to cycle around the countryside, simply for something to do.

‘The Italians in the villages don’t say “hello” to us. They are not rude, but avoid our eyes. I think it is because we are black,’ he adds.

Four miles away at another camp housing 2,000 migrants in the village of Conetta, it is much the same story. There, the 190 locals feel overwhelmed. Some have got fed up and, at one stage, put up protest messages scrawled on sheets in the village square. One said simply: ‘Repatriate the migrants.’

The local mayor Albero Panfilio said it was wrong to ‘squash human beings together with no hope for the future. I call the camp a human warehouse. The migrants arrive, the authorities don’t know where to put them, so they dump them here. They are treated like garbage.’

'Increasingly, migrant holding camps, which have been set up all over Italy, are close to overflowing'

Certainly, the Italian public is losing patience. In an appalling but telling scenario in January, a migrant drowned in the Grand Canal in Venice as passers-by watched but did little to help.

There were even ugly shouts of ‘Go home’ and ‘Let him die’. Patel Sabelly, a Gambian in his 20s, had jumped to his death from a bridge after reaching Italy by boat from Libya and being refused asylum.

Although the Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, in a gesture of respect, paid for the man’s funeral out of his own pocket, his statement at the time was in tune with public attitudes and officials’ frustration. ‘We can’t continue to nurture the hopes of half the world of coming to Italy,’ he said.

‘It is impossible for our country to continue managing such a large-scale phenomenon in the way it has done so far.’

Meanwhile, Austria is still reeling from the impact of the 2015 migrant influx when Angela Merkel controversially opened Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Of the million or so heading for Germany, 90,000 decided to stay in Austria as they passed through. In this fiercely nationalistic nation, politicians and the people were soon saying ‘enough is enough’.

The burka has been banned by Austria, compulsory German lessons introduced for migrants, and after a spate of attacks across the EU on women in public places, signs have gone up in Arabic at a market town near Vienna, telling male migrants not to touch female bathers or follow them into swimming pool changing rooms.

'Even the European Commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, recently admitted that most migrants are not escaping persecution but simply searching for a better life'

This week, I observed migrants on their way from those camps in Bagnoli di Sopri and Conetta, near Venice, up to the town of Brenner marking the border with Austria. I followed them to Innsbruck, a major city and popular ski resort which hosted the 1976 Winter Olympics. It was clear this is a well-used route for migrants, many of whom refuse to stay in the Italian camps more than 24 hours, walking out after a meal and a shower. They are anxious to avoid being fingerprinted and escape being tangled up in the Italian asylum system, preferring to take their chances in northern Europe.

Their journey often begins in the pretty Italian town of Bolzano, about 50 miles south of Brenner, where trains go to Innsbruck.

Outside the railway station, I met Musa, 23, from Guinea, who arrived by boat from Libya seven months ago. ‘I am sad and tired,’ he tells me. ‘Europe is not what I hoped for. I sleep on the streets and now I am going to Austria.’

No Italian official intervened as he bought a ticket for Innsbruck and boarded a train.

When trains arrive at Brenner, there appear to be no onboard checks. Indeed, on Wednesday and Thursday this week, the only visible security at the border was an Italian army truck. Its three occupants occasionally got out to stretch their legs and at one stage could be seen pointing the way to migrants who preferred to simply walk into Austria.

Other migrants sat on benches outside the station, waiting for trains, eating hot dogs and sending messages on their phones. One, a 23-year-old from the Ivory Coast, told me he expected to be in Innsbruck by nightfall.

‘It is easy,’ he said laughing. ‘No one likes to stay in Italy when there are opportunities further north in Austria, Sweden, Germany and Britain.’ Inside Brenner station, another trio of Italian soldiers walked along the platform as an Innsbruck-bound train rolled in. Migrants boarded under their noses and were soon leaving Italy.

At Innsbruck’s main station, I saw migrants newly arrived from Italy being greeted by a Somalian called Hussein, 30, who has lived in Austria for five years.

'Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni’s contentious plan would allow visa holders to travel freely into Austria — and beyond'

‘They come in all the time, every day and at all times of the day,’ he told me. ‘I take them to the mosque across the road. They often need clothes, food and help.

‘The Italians turn a blind eye. They see the migrants on the platform back at the Brenner Pass and say “go now” when the train for Austria comes.

‘It’s not only the trains, there are cars and trucks, too. If a migrant has money to give a trafficker, then it is easy as there are no regular road checks into Austria either.’

If the Italian government’s threat of special visas becomes a reality, then this constant stream of migrants towards the Austrian border may well become a deluge.

Adding to the sense of crisis, this week the European Court of Justice endorsed an important EU law that requires migrants to seek asylum in the first EU country they reach, overruling arguments that it is not equipped to deal with the huge numbers of migrants arriving in Italy.

So might this be the tipping point for the Italian government? Only time will tell, but Mattia Toaldo, senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, fears the worst.

He recently warned that Italy’s threat to assist the onward journey of migrants with temporary EU visas was a ‘nuclear option’.

‘Italians had lost all hope of getting help from the EU,’ he said, and might yet tell Brussels: ‘If you won’t make migration a common challenge [for all the member nations], then we will.’

This week, looking at dispirited, overstretched Italy struggling to cope, it’s difficult not to have sympathy if that is the incendiary path this nation chooses to take — with awesome consequences for its neighbours and beyond.