Migrants are bankers, tech workers, and other members of the global elite. They are pensioners, students, agricultural workers and day labourers. They have different ages, skin colours, languages and faiths. They are young and old, single and married, pregnant and not pregnant, able and disabled, healthy and ill, heterosexual and LGBTQ. Many are travelling to escape something, while all are travelling to find something. And all are on the move.
Europe’s failure to listen to people on the move has left it blind to why many people end up going there.
As refugees try to cross the Mediterranean Sea – women are more likely to drown.
Syrian refugees are in the news, but Europe is full of other refugees. They languish in centres while they wait for decisions, then trying again after they are almost certainly refused.
Becky is deadBecky’s life represents the world in microcosm. She isn’t the first of the migrants I’ve worked with to have died and will unlikely be the last. Becky was 28 years old.
Almost all central and east European Roma migrants to western Europe are not trafficked. They seek opportunities denied at home and escape from the racism perpetuating their marginalisation.
Read on...The long year of migration and the Balkan corridor
Refugees, displacement, and the European ‘politics of exhaustion’
Send us to the moonTrapped on a Greek island for more than 300 days, the story of a Syrian refugee's peaceful protest against Europe's oppressive border regime.
Refugee camps are neither all milk and honey nor are they all misery and suffering. To find a way forward, we must first understand where we are.
Many of the people evicted from Calais’ ‘Jungle camp’ are now sleeping in intersections around central Paris. Is this what the French authorities call improvement?
Europe has privileged Syrians over asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere, making it even more difficult for them to access protection. But just because they’ve been forgotten doesn’t mean they’ve left.
Read on...Humans of Calais: a photo essay
All the statistics and research in the world won't create empathy where there is none. Script writers, novelists, painters, graffiti artists, dancers, poets – they can all portray experience to bring the stories home.
Art and the refugee ‘crisis’: Mediterranean bluesArtists are mapping new itineraries of the Mediterranean, throwing into relief an incurable colonial wound that continues to bleed into the present.
The Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants uses the arts to support refugees to make new lives - but government cuts mean it may be forced to close.
A British actress uses songs, puppets and disarmingly introspective honesty to open a conversation on refugees, life in Europe’s camps, and the ambiguous role of privileged volunteers.
A new installation at the Tate Gallery in London combines scholarship and art to inspire empathy with those crossing the Mediterranean.
Protectors to some and tormentors to others, these professional obstacles serve the express purpose making sure borders are not breached. Their role, and how they carry out that role, is a vital part of how migration takes place.
Migrant smuggling to the EU – the need for a coordinated responseFrom national authorities to EU institutions and international organisations, it is imperative that efforts to tackle the threats are coordinated.
The perspective of those who are at sea, whatever the conditions, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year, to make the maritime environment safer and more secure.
Warfare on the logistics of migrant movements: EU and NATO military operations in the MediterraneanOperations in the Mediterranean are billed as either humanitarian or necessary to prevent human trafficking, however the expansion of the military presence there means nothing less than warfare on migrants.
A witness account of a small sample of the ongoing police racism that is playing out all over Calais every day, since the eviction of the ‘Jungle’. Two hours. Seventeen people of colour detained. Nine arrested.
The flip side of the guard, the smuggler finds a path where there is none, for a fee. Regardless of whether they are monsters or saviours, they are the only reason many irregular migrants reach their destination.
Migrant smuggling is often cruel and exploitative, yet it is often the only way to escape poverty or conflict. Addressing this problem requires a fundamental re-think of migration regimes, including refugee policy.
Changing country outside of legal pathways relies on trust and community support, yet the ties that bind become more tenuous the farther a migrant is from home.
Human smugglers are widely portrayed as marketeers, yet the smuggler-migrant relationship is often coloured by moral, social, and even religious obligations. Heightened border policing has the potential to undermine all that.
The emergency management of migration crises tends to focus on policing while overlooking the broader socio-economics that both support smuggling and push people into the hands of smugglers.
American and European border policies defend economic inequality far more than national sovereignty or security.
Niger would be in for a rough ride if efforts to end human smuggling were taken seriously, and the European Union knows it.
Underage human smugglers: the story behind Mexico’s “circuit children”Activists and social workers in Juarez are working to understand underage participation in human smuggling and prevent minors from being caught up in illegal cross-border transactions.
Indonesian fishermen started smuggling people to Australia after their other sources of income dried up, even though it often meant jail time. Indeed, that was part of their livelihood strategy.
Cities and towns are where integration and resistance takes place. Municipal leaders are vital to helping migrants to build new homes, localities to adapt, and fears from going out of control.
The Think Project, Brexit and the urgent need for better citizenship educationThe Think Project in Wales, born from a project to combat home-grown Islamic extremism, demonstrates that open discussion can effectively draw at-risk youth away from far-right ideologies as well.
In a world stuck between neoliberal crisis and authoritarianism, a reinvigorated municipalist movement is proving a powerful tool to build emancipatory alternatives from the ground up.
Barcelona seeks to welcome refugees and migrants into the fabric of the city, but its efforts have been stymied by the national government.
When refugees appear, we take them to the art museumThe German city of Karlsruhe uses art to bring new arrivals together with local citizens, creating a dialogue that is the foundation of integration.
Uncertainty is plaguing the transition to a post-Brexit Britain. Cities can, and must, address it head on in ways that work best for them.
What does one do when they feel their home turning against them?
When politicians fail to step up to the plate, the generosity and understanding of community members can be the decisive factor for migrants arriving in a new place.
Unjust to everyone? Responses to deportation of asylum seekers in FinlandHow does Finland’s unjust asylum policy reflect on its citizens? The Government’s stance is harming both asylum seekers and Finns.
We only asked for shelter for a few hours while the worst storm raged, but no charity organizations or churches we contacted were willing to help — an important turning point.
From insecurity to insecurity: Black and Ethnic Minority Europeans in the UK“If all the Europeans leave, who work so hard and they pay taxes, how are they going to manage to keep the benefit system in the first place?”
To the astonishment of both their supporters and opponents, the populist Finns Party are likely to be influential players in the new Finnish coalition government. What does this mean for Finland...and for Europe?
Often, things that are seen as a problem in society are not: the house where locals and refugees live and work together.
Conflicts arising from refugee integration are perhaps inevitable, but public mediation techniques offer a blueprint for how governments and civil society can help cities adjust.
“Not really. It’s a crisis of everybody’s values and everybody’s solidarity, and how far they’re willing to go to ensure human rights for everybody.”
Where would the policy makers be without their critics? Maligned as they are, the job of critics is to ensure that the next iteration of a policy is better than the last.
We must talk about population movements in terms of gross inequality, unfair trade patterns, failed states, demographic change, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and American hegemony.
The globalisation of migration controlA truly liberal approach to migration includes the right to exit and to enter - anything restricting these rights should only be seen as tyranny.
Politicians and the press are locked in a cycle of increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric, presented as 'uncomfortable truth'. Yet the problem is not immigration but socio-economic inequality. Poverty and exclusion are faced by working class people of all backgrounds.
All summer, the news has broadcast images of overloaded boats, discarded life-jackets, and dead children on Mediterranean beaches. When the violence of inequality becomes ordinary, we no longer imagine alternatives.
The US is failing in its moral obligation to Syrian refugees
A thoughtful analysis should deconstruct narratives portraying migrants as a ‘weapon’ and identify them for what they are: people looking for international protection or, at most, better living conditions.
Who will think of the EU as a global actor with normative power, now that it finds itself in the role of rubberstamping and in fact facilitating Turkey's slide into the abyss?
The ‘humanitarianism’ of military control, detention, and deportation, will not solve the refugee crisis facing Europe. Substantial changes in thought and practice are desperately needed.
Deaths in the Mediterranean are directly linked to xenophobic politics in Britain.
Hungary may have been first to literally wall off some of its frontiers, but its example has since been copied, by the French and the British.
Refugees are using other, often more dangerous, routes, contributing to the increase in migrant deaths that we have seen in 2016.
More than 300 slavery and migration scholars respond to those advocating for military force against migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean. This is no slave trade. Where is the moral justification for actions that cost lives?
Read on...
At the coal face of trying to structure society, this thankless job comes with both real power and real responsibility. What they do can affect millions.
The answer to the refugee crisis? A return to European idealsThe refugee crisis is symbolic of the political crisis in Europe. To avoid systemic collapse, Europe must return to solidarity and protecting those fleeing war and persecution.
Protecting the rights of refugees and migrants requires a response based in hospitality not hostility.
National governments must cede some control over immigration to EU-level institutions if migrants are ever to be received and dealt with humanely.
People flow: migration and EuropeThe existing European approach to migration does not match reality or recognise the evolving complexity of human mobility. openDemocracy and Demos proposed a model that does.
The new EU Agency for Asylum will play a crucial part in the near future in making a robust migration management system for the EU come true.
The EU Commission needs to satisfy both a majority in the European Parliament and a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers.
Curbing labour migration involves macroeconomic risks the government needs to address. However, Theresa May’s impasse between electorate and market promises prevents pragmatic dialogue on this.
The root cause leading people to leave their homes should be addressed first, and failing that, refugees should be granted asylum without hesitation, as the ultimate himan right.
The UN Convention on Migrant Workers' Rights has not yet been ratified by a single western migrant-receiving state, despite being one of the UN's core human rights instruments.
The world needs a global migration organisation to regulate and supervise the movement of peoples.
The outcome of the summits must be about sharing responsibility, not shirking or shifting it. It can be done.
Increased security at Calais might prevent migrants risking life and limb to get to the UK, but it will not deal with the migrants currently living rough in the Pas de Calais, nor the wider problem of refugee and migrant flows into the EU.
Read on...
For all the talk of 'economic migrants', in a capitalist society one cannot have integration without jobs. Both migrant and national entrepreneurs are needed to make that economic opportunity possible.
Three humanitarian proposals"The people we rescue are increasingly reporting having been exploited, abused, beaten, kidnapped for ransom or tortured along the journey from their country of origin to the Libyan coast."
Bristol’s creative industries give the city a strong starting point for taking the city global post-Brexit. But it will need support to succeed.
Business was never unified on its stance towards Brexit, and very few assessments have studied how it will affect local economies.Might Bristol be the place to start?
Curbing labour migration involves macroeconomic risks the government needs to address. However, Theresa May’s impasse between electorate and market promises prevents pragmatic dialogue on this.
The possible, the practical, and the realistic are rarely enough to make the world a better place. If we ever want to stop tinkering around the edges we need some radical ideas from those who see no limits.
Changing the racialized ‘common sense’ of everyday borderingThe out-sourcing of border-guarding is not (just) going to paid expert agencies but is imposed as part of the unpaid daily citizenship duties of untrained people in Britain.
While freedoms, such as the principles of equality and non-discrimination, the presumption of innocence and respect for privacy, undoubtedly still exist, they have been relegated to the margins.
We must fight for more transparency, and against technologies of decision-making. We cannot not do it. But this is not enough. We must learn the language of becoming other.
Force and denial are not going to solve the migrant crisis—instead we must turn to long-term economic, political, and cultural solutions.
If a progressive migration policy is not installed, the reverse will take effect and will have catastrophic consequences.
Should people be deported for being who they are? What if we were to scrap all anti-immigrant laws? An Open Borders politics could kick-start the transformation of society.
The discretionary control that states exercise over immigration is unjust. People should normally be free to cross borders and live wherever they choose.
The free movement of people across international borders is a taboo in international political debates, making a thorough and much-needed rethinking of migration politics impossible. This must change.
Through no fault of their own these young migrants need special attention to survive their own circumstances, and how they are treated as they grow up will shape our societies for generations to come.
I am a human, speaking to youThis is a collaborative article, written by a Syrian refugee minor with additional information from the refugee communities of Konitsa Refugee Camp, Greece, with support from a collective of non-aligned academics.
According to the UNHCR, some 46,000 refugees are stranded in mainland Greece - trapped in an archipelago of camps that stretches from the northern borderlands to Athens.
No one country in Europe will create lasting solutions by themselves. Europeans will need to work both nationally and at the European level to make meaningful progress.
There are answers to the Mediterranean migrant-deaths crisis. They just require the European Union, whose foreign ministers met yesterday, to grasp the political nettle.
How prevalent is the discourse that describes Muslims as making unreasonable demands on European society? Why do we so often hear Muslims described as 'them' instead of 'us'?
Humanitarian aid has become sidelined for a political agenda – the EU-Turkey deal – something that should be unacceptable for the EU: “humanitarian aid should be neutral, impartial.”
What will Brexit mean for asylum in the UK?Brexit was a vote largely against regular movement from the EU, but what about refugees? A new series seek to explore what Brexit will mean for those in search of safety.
Read the complete Brexit migration watch series
Changes in the political scene may lead to the reformation of migration policy in EU countries, and that in turn may be another impulse towards weakening the community as a whole.
Europe's war on migrants
The unending series of mass drownings in the Mediterranean of migrants and refugees are not unfortunate tragedies: they are the dread outworking of the occluding of humanitarian concern by the rhetoric of border control.
It is guarantees of safe passage and access to asylum that are crucial, not border fortifications. We must respect the universal basic right to seek asylum.
An anthropologist's day in "The Jungle", the patch of land in Calais that brings shame to British and French governance
Brexit is the second time Britain has moved to strip citizenship rights from many of its existing citizens.
The UK Supreme Court will soon decide whether parliament has a say on Brexit. A lot rides on the decision, but either way one side will claim victory for ‘the people’.
Labour needs to resist its drift toward a more ambivalent position on free movement.
Even where populists don’t win power through the ballot box, they gain it through shaping policy and public debate.
Brexit could prompt hundreds of thousands of British retirees to return from continental Europe, placing additional strain on the UK’s health and social welfare systems.
How best can we Europeans re-establish at least a semblance of moral and economic justice in the future conduct of EU migration policy?
While European leaders continue to hail the EU-Turkey deal – under which refugees arriving in Greece since March are threatened with deportation – its human toll ruins the lives of thousands.
The collapse of the Mediterranean neighbourhood, once Europe’s success story, is the casualty of both terror and the financial crisis. It threatens to transform mare nostrum into a moat.
Detention has become a preferred from of migration management, and many of those on the move have more than one story of spending time in a pen. What will Europe do with the people it would rather lock up than let reach their destinations?
The migrant camps of Chios: Greece's ongoing refugee crisisThere are three refugee camps on the Greek island of Chios. Your quality of life depends a great deal on where you've been placed, and where you’ve been placed is mostly down to luck.
According to the UNHCR, some 46,000 refugees are stranded in mainland Greece - trapped in an archipelago of camps that stretches from the northern borderlands to Athens.
Seeking asylum in the UK is like falling from the frying pan into the fire. The first in Transformation's series on prison abolition.
Australia’s detention regime offers an ugly vision of where UK asylum policy may be headed.
The lucky few who get through the asylum process successfully now have the task of building themselves a new life. What will make or break that experience for them?
This is what life is like for an asylum seekerSurvival on £35 a week, the everyday boredom of waiting for a trial, and how the system needs to be humanised: a UK asylum seeker speaks out.
What does it mean to be undocumented in the USA? Drawing from her own experiences of the asylum system, mónica enríquez-enríquez presents two short films on queer migration, violence, loss and finding identity in the margins.
The word 'refugee' conjures up images of rows of tents, barefoot children and saddened faces. The reality is more complex. My research shows that Afghan refugees have developed lives alongside Pakistani nationals in Karachi's poor katchi abadi areas: marrying, working, loving and learning together.
Brexit was a vote largely against regular movement from the EU, but what about refugees? A new series seek to explore what Brexit will mean for those in search of safety.
Migration is regularly misrepresented by politicians and has become a prime target for fake news. Without journalists we would lose our primary way of knowing what's going on on our borders and in our towns.
Europe in despair: refugee crisis and press freedom in TurkeyEurope needs to show that it actually cares about the cornerstones of democracy by putting pressure on Ankara to restore the free flow of information and ideas.
The Sun columnist's violent words about the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean are indefensible. They should be condemned as hate speech.
The political parties, professions and media that were registered as the most active in the Twitter storm #DiaMundialdelosRefugiados were those from the centre left.
Migrant parents must not only keep themselves alive on the move but also ensure that their children make it through safely to the other side as well.
The migrant camps of Chios: Greece's ongoing refugee crisisThere are three refugee camps on the Greek island of Chios. Your quality of life depends a great deal on where you've been placed, and where you’ve been placed is mostly down to luck.
As refugees try to cross the Mediterranean Sea - women are more likely to drown.
Sharing food and mutually teaching each other can help bring people together. In the Jungle camp of Calais, one woman from Brighton has started a new project to demonstrate this truth.
In a distracted and apathetic world, we need people willing to jump into the fray when their blood beings to boil.
Who cares for the refugees?Refugee welfare infrastructures are run thanks to self-organised, spontaneous social activists: not by the receivers of EU aid packages.
The term ‘economic migrant’ has been a key weapon in the authorities’ war against refugees, yet it hides much more than it reveals.
Cities and activists across Europe are fighting their national governments to better welcome refugees.
"The fence must go!" - reflections on the meaning of Europe's most recent fortifications in Hungary25 years ago, a fence in Hungary made history. Today a new fence in the country is also making history - but for entirely different reasons.
Refugees and humanitarian workers alike are drained by years of uncertainty, movement, destitution, and the threat of criminal sanction or deportation, created by EU and state policies.
Solidarity is a political struggle: free and forced mobility between Italy and FranceRecent European migratory policies and practices are determined to push people back out of Europe. How do activists use international solidarity to combat this in Marseille?
Whether they see to the health of migrants, are migrants themselves, or both, doctors working in the field are one reason why the death toll from migration isn't even higher than it already is.
Why migrant mothers die in childbirth in the UKMaternal mortality among black African women in the UK is up to seven times higher than it is among white women. Doctors’ surgeries are misunderstanding their obligations to migrant patients, says Dr Ramya Ramaswami.
With international humanitarian access and staff limited by the Assad government, liberated areas see not only deteriorating conditions but also new roles for Syrians outside and inside the country confronting the consequences.
The toxic debate leading up to the Brexit vote has sharpened the risk that NHS staff and patients experience racial & xenophobic abuse - and highlighted the problems that are already there. How should those running the NHS respond?
Some lawyers defend a system that makes some travellers 'illegal' while others not, and some fight against it. Their battlefield is the backdrop to the entire story of modern migration.
Kafka on the shore: European asylum law and the slow death of due processThese are not simply draconian measures to curb refugee movement towards Europe, but populist ideals presented to the European Parliament as an authentic means of terminating its “refugee crisis”.
The world is at a crossroads for refugee protection. The UN Summit provides a rare opportunity to engineer a system that is equitable both for refugees and for host countries.
Solidarity in EU asylum policies has become a euphemism for bargaining responsibility, and proposed reforms to the Dublin regulations will only entrench that misuse of the concept.
Unsafe Turkey, unsafe EuropeWe need to look at the profound political, legal and ethical costs of reducing refugee flows.
The increase in the flows of asylum seekers towards the European Union in recent years has re-awakened the discussion over the meaning of European solidarity.
Setting the EU scene: a management crisis, not a refugee crisisThe EU can and must show leadership in managing refugee movements effectively in accordance with international law.
A meaningful legal response would be the establishment of global privacy standards – a ‘new universal law on surveillance’. Undoubtedly, EU law and case law could provide a guiding light.
There is a disconnect between law and practice whereby the EU is continually reforming the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) but seems incapable of implementing it.
Dublin IV is built on deterrence… the overriding imperative being to prevent asylum seekers from arriving spontaneously; and block them in the member state of first entry.
Most people who are or were on the move keep their heads down to avoid trouble. Some – both with and without legal statuses – raise their voice up for themselves and others.
Subverting neoliberal slavery: migrant struggles against labour exploitation in ItalyWe are witnessing cumulative processes of politicization – struggles and organization involving migrant workers and activists setting out to build awareness locally, and link up globally.
The UK Feminista’s summer school heard how female asylum seekers fight back against the intersecting injustices they face.
This is a collaborative article, written by a Syrian refugee minor with additional information from the refugee communities of Konitsa Refugee Camp, Greece, with support from a collective of non-aligned academics.
A novel migration and refugee accommodation project in Athens organised by refugee, student, and solidarity activists is offering crucial assistance where governments and international agencies are not.
Activists are using a multi-van in Germany to help female refugees cope with violence and harassment.
While many Amazigh were marginalized and discriminated against during the Gaddafi era, they are now the vanguard in promoting minority rights.
Campaigners have the drive to push change through without the pull toward direct action. They serve as an important link between civil society and the political establishment.
The myths of migrationThe conversation surrounding migration is full of disinformation. Challenging the resulting misconceptions could change the everyday cost-benefit analysis of migration.
The 2016 Global Forum on Migration and Development just opened in Bangladesh. Two return delegates from civil society explain what would make this year’s conference, in their eyes, better than the last.
The pragmatic development of alternatives to detention with civil society at the fore can help to arrest the slide into the abyss of mass detention of migrants in Europe.
The remain campaign shouldn't pander to Leave's lies about migration.
“We are an organization with one staff member, and a limited amount of energy because nobody in the political and activist left wants to talk about Brexit!"
In today’s world, it is essential to take welcoming into account in the cycle of reproduction of social life.
A skewed debate on immigration has lost touch with reality and become fuel for fear, anxiety and prejudice. Never have reasoned argument been more needed.
In a political field full of assumptions and knee-jerk reactions, we need people with enough stamina and patience to move our understanding beyond the simple snapshot.
“Recognising the need to question our categorisation and how we pigeon-hole society doesn’t only have analytical power. It also provides us with a different way of looking at society.” An interview.
As its northern and western neighbours close their doors to asylum seekers through policies, borders and distance, Greece continues to welcome them to the best of its ability.
It is at once an informal encampment of makeshift shelters; a town under construction, with shops, restaurants and schools; and, a space subject to institutional violence, at risk of imminent destruction.
The fracturing demands a rethink of the terms usually employed for describing migration movements, such as ‘route’ and ‘border crossing.’ Introduction to a rethink.
From the perspective of deportees, a certain amount of luck has been needed to be in the right place at the right time in order to be saved.
Five years ago Syria’s uprising began and the ensuing war forced millions to flee to neighboring Jordan, a land whose present holds some lessons for Europe’s future.
The refugee protection regime works if it remains limited to those genuinely fleeing persecution — though the Syrian crisis proves again that ways must also be found to protect those at risk of generalized violence.
The EU is creating an ever-growing population of illegally detained refugees, including vulnerable men, women and children, who are forced to live in appalling conditions and without recourse to justice.
The hotspot works as a preemptive frontier, with the double goal of blocking migrants at Europe’s southern borders, and simultaneously impeding the highest number possible of refugees from claiming asylum.
Red doors made asylum seekers targets for abuse. Deliberate?Why did UK commercial contractors G4S and Jomast paint asylum seekers’ doors red? Why did they ignore complaints for years?
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