Walking towards Rome's Tiburtina train station early in the morning, you don't immediately notice men lying on the ground with blankets hung up as makeshift tents.

But there are dozens of migrants and refugees here, sleeping rough.

As workers catch trains into the city, migrants also start moving. Rolling up blankets, washing their faces and brushing teeth. Some of them lift weights and do press-ups. They've developed a routine of sorts.

By 8am, volunteers arrive to give the refugees and migrants breakfast, tea with lots of sugar and a croissant.

They're from an organization called Baobab Experience. It started in Italy during the peak of the refugee crisis. For a while, it had a camp near the train station with tents, toilets and showers. Sometimes there were close to 1,000 refugees and migrants staying there.

But since then, the numbers have dwindled and so have the group's resources.

The previous government under the far-right League party and its interior minister, Matteo Salvini, forced the camp to close. Now Baobab Experience can only offer breakfast and an evening meal.

"We had a big issue with the criminalization of solidarity with migrants," volunteer Andrea Costa says. "So we were kicked out and the only place we could go to was this bus stop right near the station. We can't put up tents. Now it's winter and we don't know where people are going to sleep," he adds.

The migrants we met were frustrated and angry. Many of them were embarrassed about living on the streets.

When Italy's League party was in power, it was openly hostile towards refugees.

It introduced legislation banning charity rescue boats from Italian waters and making it illegal for migrants to disembark in Italy.

Jacopo Morrone, a member of the League party, says migration has caused a lot of "trouble."

"We had many migrants in small towns and villages," Morrone says. "It fed the mafia and organized crime."

But since the League party lost government Italy's refugee policy has started to change.

Its new interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, is a migration expert and the country is again allowing rescue ships from the Mediterranean to dock.

The League warns against it.

"The risk is that this can be a push factor for the arrivals from north African shores," says Morrone. "We had a deal with the Libyan coastguard and the boats stopped coming. But now they're leaving again. 

Meanwhile, France, Germany, Italy and Malta are trying to get the rest of the European Union to agree to a joint proposal to relocate people rescued at sea.

But the bloc is deeply divided on the issue of migration. They've tried deals like this before. And hardline countries such as Hungary have refused to participate.

Since then, Hungary's position has only hardened. There are no signs the deadlock will be broken anytime soon.

 

The 'pull factor'

Angeliki Dimitriadi, a migration expert from non-profit institution Eliamep, says if the EU relocates migrants and refugees without applying a strict criteria it could create a "pull factor," encouraging them to come.

For the past two years, the EU has also outsourced its border control policy to Libya.

It has paid the Libyan Coast Guard to rescue ships and return refugees and migrants to Libya. There they have been held in appalling refugee camps and in some cases treated like slaves.

"I would say, from the perspective of policy makers, the Libya policy is semi working," Dimitriadi says. "It has reduced the numbers going to Italy, but it's not going to work in the long term because people will find alternative routes."

The numbers of refugees taking the dangerous Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy has fallen from more than 100,000 refugees a year during the peak of the crisis to just over 20,000.

But for refugee volunteer Andrea Costa, the issue isn't numbers, it is the public's sympathy. People are getting weary of the debate and the refugees.

"Our hope is not to consider all migrants as criminals but to consider them as people who need help," Costa says. "They should have a refugee center where they can stay, especially after the journey they did staying in Libyan camps, the desert and also shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea."

The new government in Italy may agree with him yet.