tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/european-migrant-crisis-41028/articlesEuropean migrant crisis – The Conversation2024-03-27T09:52:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265302024-03-27T09:52:04Z2024-03-27T09:52:04ZWhy EU information campaigns are failing to deter migrants from leaving<p>It was everywhere on the news and social media. In September 2023, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230918-italy-extends-detention-period-to-deter-migrant-crossings-after-lampedusa-surge">10,000 migrants arrived on the island of Lampedusa</a>, more than doubling the island’s population of 6,000 and overwhelming its resources. The migrants – mostly men from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East – had to sleep outside, with the island’s reception centre only designed for 400 people.</p>
<p>Days after, Italy’s Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, visited the island with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who presented a <a href="https://cyprus.representation.ec.europa.eu/news/10-point-plan-lampedusa-2023-09-18_en">ten-point plan</a> to stem the migrant flow. These included calls to “increase awareness and communication campaigns to disincentivise the Mediterranean crossings” and to “step up cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM)”.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the fanfare with which these announcements were made, their methods were hardly new.</p>
<p>A leading actor in the field, the IOM has been organising <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230294882_9">such campaigns</a> for decades. One of the most notable ones was <a href="https://www.migrantsasmessengers.org/">“Migrants as Messengers”</a>, which took place across Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria from December 2017 to March 2019. Throughout the campaign, town halls screened video testimonies of migrant returnees, followed by Q&As with migrants who would act as “messengers” to deter them from embarking onto the perilous journey.</p>
<p>In 2022, the UNHCR also launched the <a href="https://www.tellingtherealstory.org/en/">“Telling the Real Story” campaign</a> across a number of African countries. Drawing mainly on a website and a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tellingtherealstory/">Facebook page</a>, the campaign aims at “telling the real story” by emphasising the terrible ordeals that await would-be irregular immigrants, such as human smuggling and trafficking.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Telling the Real Story”, a video aimed at dissuading would-be emigrants.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The argument is always the same: would-be emigrants in Africa are unaware of the risks and must be informed so that they make the right decision – which is to stay at home or migrate only if they have the right to do so. This message is complemented by information on the opportunities in the country of origin and on Africans’ duty to contribute to the development of their country.</p>
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<h2>Hundreds of campaigns</h2>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/EU-funded-information-campaigns-targeting-potential-migrants.pdf">report</a> from the <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/">European research programme “Bridges”</a>, the EU has spent more than €23 million since 2015 to organise nearly 130 information campaigns.</p>
<p>While Europe is at the forefront of such initiatives, it is not alone. Australia has distinguished itself with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/11/government-launches-new-graphic-campaign-to-deter-asylum-seekers">particularly biting messages</a>, with a 2014 <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2019/fa-190801764-document-released-p4.PDF">campaign</a> directly addressing people tempted by irregular immigration in stark terms: “NO WAY. You will not make Australia home”. Years later, in 2019, the strategy was enthusiastically touted by the then US president, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7186189/Trump-praises-Aust-asylum-seeker-policy.html">Donald Trump</a>.</p>
<p>Campaigns can also be organised by private companies or NGOs. For example, the social enterprise <a href="https://seefar.org/">Seefar</a> carried out an extensive information campaign on the risks of migration in Senegal in 2021, reaching 1,987 young people across the country, according to the organisation. In addition to its rescue missions in the Mediterranean, the Spanish association Proactiva Open Arms also ran an awareness campaign in the same country, the <a href="https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2020/04/ngos-dilemma">“Origin” project</a>.</p>
<p>However, all these initiatives and players are faced with a major problem: no one is able to demonstrate the effectiveness of these campaigns.</p>
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<h2>Difficult to assess effectiveness</h2>
<p>As the budgets devoted to them increase, however, some studies have begun to take a serious look at the impact of campaigns.</p>
<p>In 2018, an <a href="https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/evaluating_the_impact.pdf">IOM study</a> pointed out that campaigns are difficult to evaluate because they have a dual objective: to slash irregular immigration, but also to provide information.</p>
<p>Sometimes only one of the two objectives is achieved: in 2023, a <a href="https://publications.iom.int/books/irregular-migration-west-africa-robust-evaluation-peer-peer-awareness-raising-activities-four">study</a> devoted to the IOM’s “Migrants as Messengers” showed that this campaign did increase the level of information, while failing to reduce departures.</p>
<p>Overall, although it has been organising such campaigns for 30 years, the IOM has carried out only a few, belated impact studies. This is because seriously gauging campaigns’ effectiveness is expensive – but it also appears that European states prefer to multiply campaigns rather than fund evaluations.</p>
<p>The situation is even more confusing with other actors. Seefar, for example, <a href="https://seefar.org/the-migrant-project/#salamat-article">claims that</a>, in follow-up interviews, 58% of its campaign viewers reported having given up their migration project. But in the absence of basic information regarding this finding, like the number of interviews or the timeline over which interviewees were followed, it is difficult to know whether this is more than a wet-finger approach to justify the funds received by this private company.</p>
<p>In terms of independent research, a <a href="https://www.udi.no/globalassets/global/forskning-fou_i/rapport_11_19_web.pdf">study by the Institute for Social Research in Oslo</a> in 2019 looked at migrants from Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia in transit through Sudan with the intention of continuing on to Europe.</p>
<p>The aim was to evaluate a campaign launched in 2015 by Norway, entitled <a href="https://www.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-immigration-policy-norway/social-media-campaign-for-asylum-seekers-draws-angry-trolls/1448896">“Stricter asylum regulations in Norway”</a>, which used Facebook to inform potential migrants of the slim chances of obtaining asylum in that country. As with any advertisement, Facebook’s algorithm was designed to identify Internet users searching for information on immigration, Europe or visas, and to offer them targeted deterrent messages.</p>
<p>The study confirmed that migrants are connected and use social networks to obtain information and organise their migration. But while they have sometimes heard of European campaigns, most have not seen them. They know about the terrible living conditions of migrants in Libya, for example, but this does not dissuade them from leaving to escape the impasse of their situation.</p>
<h2>Migrants deported from Europe called to testify</h2>
<p>In 2023, a <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/publications/why-information-campaigns-struggle-to-dissuade-migrants-from-coming-to-europe/">team of political scientists from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel</a> analysed the information available to young people tempted to emigrate from the Gambia to Europe, and how the campaigns affected their decision to leave. As in Sudan, the information on the risks of irregular immigration happened to correspond to what these young people already know. But in the absence of prospects at home, they will leave anyway, fully aware of the facts.</p>
<p>Another study carried out <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/publications/a-comparative-study-on-the-role-of-narratives-in-migratory-decision-making/">with Afghans in transit through Turkey</a> came to similar conclusions.</p>
<p>However, this work also revealed another problem: the recipients of these campaigns do not take them seriously because they believe them to be biased by Europe’s political objectives – and so they prefer to get their information from relatives, or even smugglers.</p>
<p>This result has prompted new strategies. Following the example of “Migrants as Messengers”, campaigns known as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08865655.2022.2108111">“peer to peer”</a> (“de pair-à-pair”) ask migrants expelled from Europe to talk about their experience to <a href="https://jaspertjaden.com/policy/2019_migrants-as-messengers_the-impact-of-peer-to-peer-communication-on-potential-migrants-in-senegal/">those who might be tempted to imitate them</a>. This is part of a technique known as <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2611/">“unbranding”</a>, a marketing concept that refers to the omission of the brand name on a product in order to sell it better. In the case of the campaigns, this amounts to concealing the European and international institutions <a href="https://migrantprotection.iom.int/en/spotlight/articles/initiative/constantly-evolving-awareness-raising-campaign-aware-migrants">that fund them</a>.</p>
<p>Another strategy is not to target potential migrants, but the local actors who influence perceptions of migration, starting with the media and artists. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) works with <a href="https://theconversation.com/quand-la-lutte-contre-limmigration-irreguliere-devient-une-question-de-culture-112200">musicians popular with young Africans</a>, as well as with journalists.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://www.unesco.org/fr/articles/un-forum-dechanges-avec-des-journalistes-et-managers-de-medias-pour-une-narrative-diversifiee-et-de">Unesco</a> trains Senegalese journalists to talk about migration.</p>
<h2>Trade-offs with freedom of expression</h2>
<p>Against a backdrop of precariousness for media and cultural professionals, the support of international organisations is welcome, but raises the question of freedom of expression and freedom of the press on this politically sensitive subject.</p>
<p>In Morocco, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RMJMigrations/">Network of Moroccan Journalists on Migration</a> has been set up to deal with migration issues independently, although this does not prevent these journalists from taking part in training activities organised by international organisations and supported by European funding.</p>
<p>In Gambia, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08865655.2022.2156375">recent study</a> highlighted the dilemmas faced by local journalists who are asked to spread messages about the dangers of immigration while trying to maintain their independence.</p>
<p>In the eyes of their advocates, these campaigns are justified on the grounds that the migrants who die in the Mediterranean are the victims of misleading information from smugglers. Providing information would therefore save lives. But there are no studies to support this hypothesis: on the contrary, it appears that migrants leave in the full knowledge of the risks they are exposing themselves to.</p>
<p>Faced with this uncomfortable reality, it is possible that information campaigns only serve to give European leaders the feeling that they are acting to prevent the tragedies that result from their own policies. After all, it is partly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116516633299">due to a lack of opportunities to migrate</a> legally that many migrants try their luck irregularly, with all the risks that this entails.</p>
<p>The scarcity of available evaluations shows that the effectiveness of the campaigns is not a priority for European states. This migration policy tool would therefore have primarily symbolic value – as proof that Europe is concerned about the fate of the many people it does not want on its soil.</p>
<p>But this political strategy nonetheless has very real effects on local players, and on the ability of societies in the South to debate independently the major political issues raised by international migration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mélodie Beaujeu is a member of Désinfox-Migrations, an association fighting disinformation around migration. The latter has received funding from the Porticus foundation as well as the Foundation for France.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antoine Pécoud ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The argument is a familiar one: African citizens are unaware of the risks tied to the perilous journey across the Mediterranean and the West must therefore enlighten them.Antoine Pécoud, Professeur de sociologie, Université Sorbonne Paris NordMélodie Beaujeu, Consultante et chercheuse, affiliée à l'Institut Convergences Migrations, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1519682021-05-19T14:11:43Z2021-05-19T14:11:43ZHow British community groups are helping refugees integrate – and the government is making it harder<p>For the last 12 years, <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/2019/8/5d4d63714/counting-sheep-refugees-lighten-uk-farmers-load-in-lambing-season.html">a farm in Yorkshire</a> has had refugees from Iran and Sudan volunteer during lambing season. These sessions, set up by the Darwen Asylum Seeker and Refugee Enterprise and the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, help counter the negative mental-health effect of being isolated and in limbo as they wait for their residency status to be confirmed. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in the Dales, the enterprise has arranged for volunteers to pitch in with building dry-stone walls and haymaking. And throughout the UK, as our <a href="https://huddersfield.app.box.com/s/qias4ks55sazc445jaili2zvf06krjst">recent report</a> shows, there are countless other examples of local people, and groups, doing their bit to support refugees in the <a href="http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/28_days_later.pdf">challenges</a> they face, including poverty, unemployment and difficulties in accessing local services. </p>
<p>However, while the government, as well as the public, appear to support the idea of integration, our research shows there is little policy guidance – and state support – about exactly how to do this in practice. </p>
<h2>Inadequate policy</h2>
<p>The so-called migrant <a href="https://theconversation.com/fortress-europe-continues-to-treat-migrants-as-criminals-49026">crisis</a>, which peaked in <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/2015/12/56ec1ebde/2015-year-europes-refugee-crisis.html">2015</a>, has been overshadowed by COVID-19. The situation facing refugees and migrants in Europe, however, has not improved. In some ways the pandemic has <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-self-isolate-in-a-refugee-camp-147777">made it worse</a>.</p>
<p>In this context, examining what support – public and private – there is to help refugees is both timely and important. Our research set out to do just that. </p>
<p>Over two years, we interviewed nearly 100 organisations from across the UK’s public sector, the voluntary and community sector and the private sector (from local businesses to transport companies). We focused on the Yorkshire and Humber region, but the findings are likely to be transferable to other areas of the country. </p>
<p>Organised support for refugees remains highly fragmented. Most of the organisations we interviewed said that there are no coherent national policies that positively guide their work. The government not only doesn’t have adequate guidance in place to help refugees settle, it also doesn’t allocate much of the national budget to supporting them. At a more local level too, there isn’t enough strategic leadership on how best to help refugees integrate into their communities.</p>
<p>Instead, most of the people we spoke to said policies designed to make life harder for migrants, which have become known as the “<a href="https://www.jcwi.org.uk/the-hostile-environment-explained">hostile environment</a>”, have made integration harder. While the hostile environment was designed to dissuade migration and remove illegal migrants, it has also created a basis for excluding refugees. It has led to confusion and inefficiencies for the organisations that work with them. </p>
<h2>Private involvement</h2>
<p>Increasingly, organisations including housing associations, arts, culture and heritage-focused charities are working to support refugees both <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/7-art-initiatives-that-are-transforming-the-lives-of-refugees/">internationally</a> and in the <a href="https://homesforcathy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Homes-for-refugees-July-2020.pdf">UK</a>. They are often, however, overlooked by research and policy and left to work in isolation from some local authorities and other mainstream partners. </p>
<p>Despite this, they play a huge role in helping refugees understand local culture and geography, access public services and connect with longer-standing residents. The <a href="https://allenlane.org.uk/doncaster-conversation-club/">Doncaster Conversation Club</a>, for example, offers asylum seekers a weekly cup of tea and a bowl of soup, with added English lessons, internet access and help to fill out forms. Crucially, instead of seeing refugees as defined by their status, such organisations treat them as people who have much to share with their non-refugee neighbours.</p>
<h2>Untapped resource</h2>
<p>Senior leaders from many organisations and, notably, employers are absent from the integration debate. While employees might be interested in the social impact their company has, from a business perspective, the companies themselves often don’t feel they have a role to play in helping refugees. </p>
<p>However, the latter often arrive with <a href="http://www.cara1933.org/">skills that are in need</a>, and the <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/value-of-diversity-and-inclusion/refugee-workers.html">motivation to use them</a>. They add to the cultural fabric of the UK – a largely untapped resource for social cohesion and economic growth. </p>
<p>In terms of employment specifically, interviewees said that having refugees in work was routinely seen as a way towards integration and independence. However, there are very few tailored recruitment or training schemes in place in the region offering genuine routes to paid employment. </p>
<p>Despite the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/1951-refugee-convention.html">international agreements</a> in place that those with the ability to provide refuge continue to do so, in times of economic crisis, governments might view pulling up the drawbridge and stopping migrant arrivals as the easy option. It is already happening in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/24/priti-patel-defends-inhumane-overhaul-of-uk-asylum-system">UK</a> and in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/france-suspend-immigration-ban-barnier-b1845533.html">Europe</a>. </p>
<p>Countries, including the UK, are proposing an even <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-immigration-plans-queens-speech-home-office-uk-b1845487.html">harder line against refugees</a> in the future. This, despite the <a href="https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sg_policy_brief_on_people_on_the_move.pdf">enormous contributions</a> made in the struggle against COVID-19 by migrants and refugees themselves. This has been particularly evident in the health system, where refugee doctors and nurses have played a significant role but also in the food supply system where refugees have filled a gap in the agricultural workforce in North America and Europe. </p>
<p>Recent protests in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/13/glasgow-residents-surround-and-block-immigration-van-from-leaving-street">Glasgow</a>, which saw local citizens force UK Immigration Enforcement officers to release two asylum seekers arrested during a dawn raid, show that there are networks of solidarity with refugees in the UK. However, post-pandemic, the resulting economic crisis could potentially lead to <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2020/12/11/when-inequality-is-high-pandemics-can-fuel-social-unrest/">heightened social tensions</a>. </p>
<p>Minority groups and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/01/refugee-crisis-in-greece-tensions-soar-between-migrants-and-locals.html">recent arrivals</a> are likely to suffer – as they have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/12/history.highereducation">throughout history</a> – by being subjected to increasingly restrictive policies that further control their immigration status and access to welfare. </p>
<p>Refugees will be excluded if we, the electorate, not to mention the policymakers we put in office, continue to think only about what refugees take from a society. Thinking about what they can bring, and helping them do so, as organisations across the country are doing, is central to creating a more <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/moving-up-and-getting-on">cohesive and equal society</a>. They need our support and encouragement to continue their important work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Brown undertook the work described here with the financial support of the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire undertook the work described here with the financial support of the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Martin undertook the work described here with the financial support of the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund </span></em></p>Amid rising inequality and social tensions, measures must be taken to protect refugees from the backlash and help them settle insteadPhilip Brown, Professor of Housing and Communities, University of HuddersfieldClaire Walkey, Research Assistant, The Centre for Citizenship, Conflict and Diversity, University of HuddersfieldPhilip Martin, Research Assistant, Sustainable Housing & Urban Studies Unit, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1344222020-04-29T17:03:49Z2020-04-29T17:03:49ZThe Schengen zone in the face of coronavirus<p>In <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/peur-Occident-XIVe-XVIIIe-si%C3%A8cles/dp/2213005567"><em>Fear in Western Countries</em></a>, a remarkable book first published in 1978, the French historian Jean Delumeau highlighted two phenomena that underlie collective behaviour: invasion and disease. In less than five years, Europe had to tackle both – the migrant crisis of 2015 and the Covid-19 epidemic of 2020. The comparison in terms of crisis management is striking.</p>
<h2>Migrant crisis and health crisis: two rapid and far-reaching phenomena</h2>
<p>The seriousness and scale of both phenomena are striking. In 2015, the European Union had to deal with a massive and unprecedented influx of non-European migrants. According to a <a href="https://frontex.europa.eu/publications/ara-2016-EZGrEA">Frontex report</a>, more than 1.8 million crossings were recorded that year. While it is difficult to put a figure on the Covid-19 epidemic given its evolving nature, the disease poses a serious crisis in terms of its scale. According to the <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/regional-director/statements/statement-every-country-needs-to-take-boldest-actions-to-stop-covid-19">regional director of the World Health Organisation</a>, Europe is currently regarded as the centre of the pandemic of coronavirus.</p>
<p>The speed of the phenomena and the lag in the political response should be noted. The European Parliament sounded the alarm on the migration crisis in a resolution approved after a <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/04/23/special-euco-statement/">European Council meeting on April 23, 2015</a>. However, the EU did not mobilise itself substantially until after the informal meeting of Heads of State and Government on September 23, 2015. By mid-October, that public action was effectively structured around the implementation of short- and medium-term measures – for example acceleration of the deployment of crisis management centres, the hotspots, in Greece and Italy.</p>
<p>At first glance, the Covid-19 epidemic presents similar characteristics – a rapid acceleration followed by a late political reaction. The meeting of EU heads of state and government didn’t take place until March 17, 2020, at the request of the President of the Republic, even though Italy had established a “protected area” targeting 15 million inhabitants on March 9, 2020.</p>
<h2>What re-establishment of boundaries?</h2>
<p>The comparison does not end there. The EU witnessed disorderly decisions of individual member states to seal off the internal borders of the Schengen area, both in 2015 and 2020. Political leadership in Brussels was <a href="http://eumigrationlawblog.eu/travel-bans-in-europe-a-legal-appraisal-part-i/">caught off guard</a> by the resurgence of travel restrictions during the Covid-19 spreading across Europe. According to the <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0399&from=EN">Schengen Borders Code</a>, member states are entitled to reintroduce police controls at the border within the Schengen area, in particular for a “threat to public health”. However, the code does not as such provide for the re-establishment of borders on such grounds.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the European Commission <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52020XC0316(03)&from=EN">accepts an interpretation from a public health perspective</a>, while recalling the importance for member states not to apply any measure that could jeopardise the integrity of the single market for goods, particularly with regard to supply chains. Rather, the disorganized movement as part of unilateral closure of internal borders within the Schengen area – that is to say, without consultation – infringes the code despite the commission’s flexible interpretation. Here again, the progressive re-establishment of border controls in disarray is reminiscent of those of 2015, in violation of the provisions of the code as revised at the end of the 2011 migration crisis.</p>
<h2>Under-utilisation of existing means</h2>
<p>Yet another point of convergence between the two events is the under-utilisation of existing European instruments. In 2015, member states had to faced up with the influx of migrants, yet were slow in deploying EU tools related to civil protection, among others. In 2020, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which is the European structure responsible for the early detection of emerging epidemic threats to the EU, was not sufficiently supplied with health data by the member states.</p>
<p>To put it another way, this reflects the prevalence of individual and uncoordinated responses to health emergencies. Italy deplored the refusal of France and Germany to send masks and denounced the EU’s <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/14/coronavirus-eu-abandoning-italy-china-aid/">lack of solidarity</a>. When a shortage of face masks gravely affected France, the country’s border guards stopped two trucks carrying 130,000 of them bound for the UK health care service, <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11221578/french-snatch-lorries-130000-coronavirus-masks/">sparking anger in the UK</a>.</p>
<p>Here again, the re-partitioning of the Schengen area is a symptom of member states’ individual management of the crisis. In 2015, those situated downstream on the Balkan migration route (successively Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary) allowed the transit of migrants through their territory, leaving the responsibility for settling the migration issue to the states situated upstream (successively Serbia, Hungary and Austria). This was what the European Commission had termed a <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016DC0120&from=EN">laissez-passer policy</a>. Consequently, downstream states introduced controls to block the flows of migrants at their southern borders. This lack of coordination brought about a bottleneck at the border, tasking the upstream state – Serbia in the example of the Hungarian border – with the management of the massive influx of migrants at a portion of its northern border.</p>
<h2>What division of competences between the EU and the Member States?</h2>
<p>This lack of solidarity is aggravated by the fact that migration policies competences (in the sense of entry and residence of more than three months) are not conferred upon the Union and its action is strictly constrained within the provisions of the <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12012M/TXT&from=FR">Treaty on the Functioning of the EU</a> (TFEU). Member states have not made the same choices, to say the least: Germany had, for a time at least, opted for a more open policy, while Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were hostile to any admissions.</p>
<p>In current situation, member states control the choices to be made in their fight against the Covid-19 epidemic – the Union cannot impose any specific options upon them. Although there seems to be some convergence, the Netherlands and Sweden have opted for <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-herd-immunity-route-to-fighting-coronavirus-is-unethical-and-potentially-dangerous-133765">distinct health choices</a>. Despite the April 15 <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication_-_a_european_roadmap_to_lifting_coronavirus_containment_measures_0.pdf">joint European roadmap</a> intended to enhance the coordination between member states on the lifting of Covid-19 containment measures, the de-escalating process is going forward in disarray. Indeed, it seems that the pandemic is afflicting not only European citizens, but also <a href="http://eumigrationlawblog.eu/the-pandemic-kills-also-the-european-solidarity/">European solidarity</a>.</p>
<p>Are we therefore heading toward an institutional crisis on the same scale as that of 2015? While the crisis is undeniable, the EU appears to have learned the lessons of the migration crisis. Indeed it is important to note that the process of building the Union’s response is more rapid. This is reflected in the <a href="https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6038-2020-INIT/fr/pdf">measures identified by the Council of Health Minister</a> on March 13, as well as the aforementioned Commission guidelines adopted on March 16, which are intended to both issue a wide range of recommendations in the field of public health and strengthen the external borders by applying a temporary ban on travel to the EU for a period of 30 days (since prolonged). This stringent restriction is one of the five priorities identified by the European Council on March 17. Moreover, much improvement have been made, for instance the new project of reinforcement of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism or the impending <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0175&from=FR">activation of the emergency funds</a>. The goal is to create medical supplies at the European level to provide assistance to any affected member states and to support the administration of large-scale application of medical tests.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, all these measures can’t really paper over the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/eu-coronavirus-fund-share-crisis-soul-european-parliament-fiscal">need for solidarity</a>: unlike the declaration of the European council promoting a better co-ordination between Member States, some of them are currently discussing of an intra-Schengen border lift selection beneficial to central and eastern EU countries, paving the way for a bilateral system of pick-and-choose tourist migration during this summer.**</p>
<p>“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”, as Benjamin Franklin wrote. The health public choices leading to unpreparedness for the pandemic and competition between member states in terms of medical supplies, the crying need for solidarity and the blatant lack of coordination impairing a forceful political response, all these aspects must be scrutinised, but in the future.</p>
<p>As the European Council president, Charles Michel, <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2020/03/18/charles-michel-cette-crise-va-nous-obliger-a-changer-nos-paradigmes-economiques-et-sociaux_1782261">stated</a>, we have to stay focus on the fight against the virus. “The debate is not institutional: when the house burns down, we don’t have to shilly-shally about the water bill”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre Berthelet ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>What parallel can be drawn between the Schengen countries’ management of the migrant crisis in 2015 and their response to the current health epidemic?Pierre Berthelet, Docteur en droit (UE) & chercheur associé à l'Univ. Grenoble-Alpes (CESICE) & univ. Aix-Marseille (CERIC), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1258622019-10-28T14:44:18Z2019-10-28T14:44:18ZRefugees and migrants know the risks of stowing away on a lorry – but feel they must take them<p>It is still unclear what circumstances led to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-50162617">deaths of 39 people</a> who were found in the refrigerated trailer in a lorry park outside London. It is not known how these 31 men and eight women, some of whom are thought to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/27/essex-lorry-deaths-vietnamese-families-fear-for-missing-loved-ones">Vietnamese nationals</a>, ended up in the trailer, where they thought they were going, who put them there, and to what extent they went voluntarily or were forced. And why would migrants, refugees or other stowaways make the decision to travel like freight, and do they know the risks?</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50154883">number of migrants have died</a> trying to enter the UK since it began recording statistics in 2014. In 2000, 54 Chinese nationals were found dead <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/796791.stm">having suffocated in a lorry trailer</a>. The UN <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50154883">estimates</a> that around 500 have died trying to enter European countries since 2014 – excluding the estimated 18,500 that have <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int">died crossing the Mediterranean</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinese-irregular-migration-to-britain-has-a-tragic-history-how-routes-have-evolved-125839">Chinese irregular migration to Britain has a tragic history – how routes have evolved</a>
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<p>Suffocating or freezing to death in a sealed lorry, which can be chilled up to -25 degrees, is just one of the risks that refugees and other migrants face on their journeys towards countries where they hope to find safety, security and dignity. And yet they continue to make these journeys, often well aware of the risks they entail. </p>
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<p>Our research focuses on the decision making of refugees and other migrants engaged in these fraught international journeys, which often take them through several different countries and dangerous border crossings. We recently interviewed Syrian and Afghan refugees migrants, for example, who had survived long and arduous journeys along the Balkans route from Turkey into the European Union. </p>
<p>Hiding in lorries is a key strategy used to cross borders along the Balkans Route, which is used by refugees and other migrants who move onwards from Turkey, travelling through Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and North Macedonia, through Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovenia, to entry to the EU via Hungary or Croatia. Lorries provide cover from border guards and are frequently used to evade the authorities. </p>
<p>Some of those making the journey organise travel in lorries themselves: there was a young Afghan man who knew where he and his travelling companions could most safely stowaway underneath the truck because he had been a truck driver himself in Afghanistan. For him, it was an informed decision.</p>
<p>But others rely on smugglers who place refugees and other migrants in lorries for parts of the journey. Some of our interviewees neither understood nor consented to the conditions in which their smugglers then forced them to travel. This was the case for one Syrian man, who explained that the smuggler had put so many people in the lorry in which they were travelling from Turkey to Greece that he lost consciousness. He said:</p>
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<p>It was like this small space in which there were 20 people, so there was no space to breathe. So it was our good luck that the police caught us because it was possible that we would die before reaching Greece.</p>
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<p>Smugglers frequently pack lorries as full as possible. After all, smuggling is a business, and more passengers means more dollars. </p>
<h2>Knowing the risks, accepting the risks</h2>
<p>Most commonly, migrants and other refugees are acutely aware of the risks they will face in their journeys. They do not know what exactly will happen to them, and can only hope for the best. One Syrian man who travelled in 2015 told us: </p>
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<p>You go to die, you know? This journey, everyone calls this journey the journey of death. So everyone knows that, and when I was in Turkey I knew it and I knew it would be difficult, it would be dangerous, maybe I would die, but yeah … Sometimes life does not give you a lot of choices, so that’s the only choice I had when I was in Turkey, so I told myself ‘I’ll just make it’.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/migration-new-map-of-europe-reveals-real-frontiers-for-refugees-103458">Migration: new map of Europe reveals real frontiers for refugees</a>
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<p>There are risks at every stage of the journey. Refugees and migrants <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/16/bodies-of-migrants-who-died-at-sea-located-by-italian-authorities">drown at sea</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/20/finding-migrants-who-died-crossing-the-us-border">dehydrate</a> during desert or sea crossings, fall victim to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/06/100-people-kidnapped-migrant-caravan-drug-cartels-mexico/">kidnapping</a> and extortion, <a href="https://unu.edu/publications/articles/fleeing-to-mexico-for-safety-the-perilous-journey-for-migrant-women.html">torture and rape</a>, and are beaten, shot and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/25/mexico-massacre-central-american-migrants">killed by criminals</a> or border officials. How they move in each stage of the journey becomes a trade off between risk, chance encounters, and often sheer luck. </p>
<p>When faced with the next dangerous border crossing, they do not consider stopping or going back because, as another Syrian refugee told us, “if you make the first step you can’t go back”. Having spent so much money, time and energy, and having already been through so much, refugees and other migrants cannot imagine giving up mid way, all their efforts coming to nothing. So they attempt what they hope to be the most safe and reliable routes and modes of transport. This often depends on what they can afford to pay smugglers.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/business-will-suffer-if-border-crossings-between-european-neighbours-are-shut-47022">Business will suffer if border crossings between European neighbours are shut</a>
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<p>The options for getting to Europe are growing increasingly dangerous, due to the aggressive border controls used to keep refugees and other migrants out. Since the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/2015/12/56ec1ebde/2015-year-europes-refugee-crisis.html">height of the “migrant crisis” in 2015</a>, borders along the route have been dramatically transformed. Turkey has tried to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/world/europe/turkey-moves-to-close-all-gates-at-border-with-syria.html">close off its border with Syria</a> by building border walls, defences and surveillance infrastructure. Syrian respondents that fled Syria between 2015 and 2018 told us that they were shot at while trying to cross into Turkey, and had to cross in the dark in order not to be killed. </p>
<p>In the Western Balkans, more walls and fences have gone up, with Hungary effectively <a href="https://theconversation.com/fencing-off-the-east-how-the-refugee-crisis-is-dividing-the-european-union-47586">sealing off its border with Serbia</a>, letting only two asylum seekers through each day. In Bulgaria and Croatia, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/03/croatia-eu-complicit-in-violence-and-abuse-by-police-against-refugees-and-migrants/">border officials use brutal violence</a> to push back refugees and migrants who walk across their borders. </p>
<p>Without any legal or safe routes available to them, refugees and migrants accept the risks of other, more desperate efforts to reach their destinations. Often they do not make it. The deaths of the 39 people in Essex are a great tragedy, and unfortunately these perilous situations are common for those making dangerous journeys to Europe. They know the risks, but are driven on by the hope of a life in safety and dignity that they have been unable to find at home or thus far in their journey.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Talitha Dubow receives funding from the European Commission (H2020), the Research and Documentation Centre of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice and Security (WODC), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Kuschminder receives funding from the European Commission for H2020 ADMIGOV project, the Research and Documentation Centre of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice and Security, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and has completed research consultancy work for several governments and organizations.</span></em></p>The 39 migrants who froze to death in a lorry crossing the channel join hundreds more who have died trying to get into Europe over land.Talitha Dubow, Researcher, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), United Nations UniversityKatie Kuschminder, Assistant Professor, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251952019-10-22T11:39:17Z2019-10-22T11:39:17ZDeportation to Syria could mean death for women, children and LGBTQ refugees in Turkey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297977/original/file-20191021-56203-159jer0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3960%2C2855&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Refugees awaiting municipal bread distribution in Akcakale, Turkey, Oct. 20, 2019. Three-quarters of the Syrian refugees in Turkey are women and children. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Turkey-Syria/b35a047850364daa9a335f7cfb7695e9/4/0">AP Photo/Mehmet Guzel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t limiting his assault on neighboring Syria to attacking Kurdish troops that run the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkish-attack-on-syria-endangers-a-remarkable-democratic-experiment-by-the-kurds-125105">country’s northern region</a>. He says the 3.6 million Syrians <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-europe/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-to-send-syrian-refugees-to-europe-idUSKBN1WP1ED">now living as war refugees in Turkey may also be returned</a> “to their own homes” once northern Syria is wrenched from Kurdish control. </p>
<p>This could be an empty threat. After eight years of welcoming people fleeing Syria’s civil war, the Turkish public is <a href="https://now.tufts.edu/articles/why-turkey-pushing-refugees-return-syria">beginning to turn against Syrian refugees</a>. Erdogan may see anti-refugee rhetoric as a way to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics-akparty/erdogans-ak-party-membership-seen-sliding-further-as-dissent-grows-idUSKBN1WC1CR">boost his popularity</a>, which is slumping due to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/world/europe/turkey-election-erdogan.html">recession in Turkey and years of controversial power grabs</a>.</p>
<p>But if the Turkish president does deport Syrian refugees, he won’t be sending them to a “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50064546">safe zone</a>,” as promised. These extremely vulnerable people would be deported into the lines of combat in this <a href="https://www.apnews.com/a66bf441fdfb43ca80d200dcbfb5d09d">contested, oil-rich zone</a>.</p>
<h2>The forgotten half: Women Syrian refugees</h2>
<p>In my experience <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1601151?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">researching minorities at risk in the Middle East</a>, governments dealing with mass migration often overlook the particular challenges facing the most vulnerable refugees: women, children and LGBTQ people. </p>
<p>The Syrian refugees in Turkey are majorly Sunni Muslim – the same faith that predominates in both Turkey and <a href="https://cpa.ca/docs/File/Cultural/EN%20Syrian%20Population%20Profile.pdf">Syria</a>. However, Syrians are <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/03/13/467183/turkeys-refugee-dilemma/">ethnically and linguistically different</a> than Turks.</p>
<p>Syrian refugees differ from the broader Turkish and Syrian public in another way, too: <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/thinking-outside-camp-syrian-refugees-istanbul">75% of them are women and children</a>, according to the global nonprofit Migration Policy Institute. Between 2011 and 2017, more than 224,000 babies were <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/thinking-outside-camp-syrian-refugees-istanbul">born in Turkey to Syrian refugee families</a>. Those children are now stateless, granted neither Turkish nor Syrian citizenship at birth. </p>
<p>Syrian women refugees suffer more discrimination and racism in Turkey than their male counterparts, <a href="https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Turkey/The-fragility-of-Syrian-refugee-women-in-Turkey-191805">research shows</a>. </p>
<p>This is partially due to a big gap in Turkish language acquisition: 20% of Syrian refugee women complained that lack of language causes exclusion and discrimination, <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/54518">U.N. survey data from 2016 shows</a>, compared to 13% of men.</p>
<p>Even so, 73% of Syrian refugee women told the U.N. that they feel safe in Turkey. That may be related to their resettlement in <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/turkey/unhcr-turkey-fact-sheet-july-2019">cities and towns</a> across Turkey, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/thinking-outside-camp-syrian-refugees-istanbul">primarily in Istanbul</a>, where they usually live in poor neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Those areas surely feel secure compared to war-torn Syria. They are safer, too, than refugee camps along the Turkish-Syrian border, where <a href="https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Turkey/The-fragility-of-Syrian-refugee-women-in-Turkey-191805">rape, human trafficking, prostitution and child marriages have all been reported</a>, according to OBC Transeuropa, a think tank.</p>
<p>Half of all Syrian female refugees were <a href="https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Turkey/The-fragility-of-Syrian-refugee-women-in-Turkey-191805">under the age of 18</a> when they were displaced by war to the Turkish border area. </p>
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<span class="caption">Children in al-Bab, northern Syria, which was seized from the Islamic State by Turkey and Syrian opposition fighters last year, May 29, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Syria-Turkey/f225f44b72194f7abb8aa7f251e49c00/57/0">AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis</a></span>
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<h2>LGBTQ Syrian refugees: An untold story</h2>
<p>Turkey’s Syrian refugee community includes other marginalized groups that would face unique dangers back home, including <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lgbtq-syrian-refugees-forced-chose-between-their-families-identity-n1062446">gay, lesbian and trans people</a>. </p>
<p>The exact number of LGBTQ Syrian refugees displaced across the region is unknown, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lgbtq-syrian-refugees-forced-chose-between-their-families-identity-n1062446">human rights groups say</a>. But Syria – like much of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/04/16/audacity-adversity/lgbt-activism-middle-east-and-north-africa">the Middle East and North Africa region</a> – is a dangerous place to be gay.</p>
<p>Homosexuality <a href="http://www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org/syria-lgbti-resources">is illegal in Syria</a>, and both the government and terror groups like the Islamic State <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/it-cant-get-any-worse-than-being-gay-in-syria-today-20151001-gjze4o.html">persecute sexual minorities</a>. Being gay is culturally unacceptable <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-lgbt-issues-islam">according to traditional Islamic mores</a>.</p>
<p>Though Turkey does not criminalize homosexuality, it is not always safe for LGBTQ Syrian refugees, either. Gay Syrians have suffered <a href="https://journo.com.tr/syrian-lgbti-refugees-struggle-in-turkey">physical and verbal attacks</a>, often with little response from law enforcement or the government.</p>
<p>In August 2016, Muhammed Wisam Sankari was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/04/body-missing-gay-syrian-refugee-muhammed-wisam-sankari-found-beheaded-istanbul">found mutilated and killed</a> in Istanbul, two days after he went missing. Sankari had told police he feared for his life after having previously been abducted, tortured and raped by unknown attackers, according to reports. </p>
<p>Recent crackdowns by the Turkish police in Syrian refugee communities, have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/23/its-not-legal-un-stands-by-as-turkey-deports-vulnerable-syrians">detaining and deporting thousands of Syrian refugees, including LGBTQ people</a>. </p>
<p>The Turkish government <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-06/turkey-denies-deporting-refugees-syria-activists-say-they-ve-sent-back-thousands">denies</a> that it is forcibly returning refugees to a war zone, which would be <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/excom/scip/3ae68ccd10/note-non-refoulement-submitted-high-commissioner.html">illegal</a> under Turkish and international law.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297987/original/file-20191021-56198-6dmql5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fighting continues in northeast Syria near the Turkish border despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Turkey-Syria/40fdde21f6f24994bb9d2523b7dd9024/108/0">AP Photo/Emrah Gurel</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For LGBTQ Syrians, going home may be a death sentence.</p>
<p>In August 2019 a transgender Syrian woman named Ward <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/23/its-not-legal-un-stands-by-as-turkey-deports-vulnerable-syrians">told The Guardian newspaper</a> that she feared being deported to the Turkey-Syria border because the <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-nusra-front-al-qaedas-affiliate-syria">al-Nusra terrorist group</a>, a branch of al-Qaida with 5,000 to 10,000 fighters in western Syria, would kill her. </p>
<p>Ward was deported days later. She was last seen in late August being forced into the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/23/its-not-legal-un-stands-by-as-turkey-deports-vulnerable-syrians">trunk of a car by militants in Syria</a>, according to the Guardian report.</p>
<h2>Collateral damage</h2>
<p>Erdogan’s stated purpose in invading Syria is to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/17/turkey-claim-syrian-kurds-terrorists-not-isis-ypg-pkk-sdf/">rid its northern region of the Kurdish Worker’s Party</a> – an armed militia and political party known as the PKK – and create a “buffer zone” between the two countries. </p>
<p>The PKK has been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-kurdish-conflict-in-turkey-is-so-intractable-125101">thorn in Turkey’s side</a> for the past 41 years.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mar.umd.edu">With Syrian government support</a>, PKK leader Abdallah Ocallan has been threatening the Turkish government with a Kurdish separatist insurgency long before Erdogan’s presidency. </p>
<p>The United States, like Turkey, considers the PKK to be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-foreign-terrorist-designation-is-more-punishment-than-threat-detector-116049">terrorist organization</a>. </p>
<p>But in Syria the U.S. had, until its recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-turkish-troops-move-in-to-syria-the-risks-are-great-including-for-turkey-itself-124782">military withdrawal</a>, allied itself with other secular and progressive Syrian groups, namely the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/who-are-the-syrian-kurds-the-us-has-abandoned/2019/10/17/24759880-f0f8-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html">Syrian Democratic Forces</a>.</p>
<p>The Kurdish minority in northern Syria, as in nearby Iraq, has long been stuck between Ocallan’s armed militia, the Turkish government and their own authoritarian leaders – used and abused, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1601151?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">my research finds</a>, by politicians seeking to further their own regional agenda in the Mideast. </p>
<p>Returning Syrian refugees to this battleground would make them the “buffer” between these warring forces, turning more vulnerable people into collateral damage of a greater geopolitical war. </p>
<p>[ <em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125195/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deina Abdelkader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Turkey is threatening to send 3.6 million refugees back to the Syrian territory it just invaded. Deporting these vulnerable people would make them the collateral damage of a chaotic, many-sided war.Deina Abdelkader, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1228342019-10-16T17:00:48Z2019-10-16T17:00:48ZForms and outcomes of citizens’ mobilisations during Europe’s refugee reception crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292502/original/file-20190915-8678-1vquf13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1790%2C1198&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mass mobilization of citizens and organizations around Brussels-North railway station.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=735478233328234&set=a.735474743328583&type=3&theater">FRANÇOIS DVORAK/fdvphotoreporter.wixsite.com/monsite</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The long summer of migration in 2015 had a profound impact on civil society throughout Europe. Whether countries were arrival points, on transit routes or were final destinations, and regardless of their geopolitical situations, a large and diversified set of attitudes and practices emerged.</p>
<p>The actions taken by citizens, whether they were negative or positive, intended to reject or welcome newcomers, made visible their dissatisfaction and criticism toward the way their political elites and institutions attempted to manage the situation. Over time they became systematic and structured, ultimately questioning the <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/issue/view/107">relationship between citizens and political institutions</a>. They also give a sense of what political participation means today.</p>
<p>As shown in <a href="https://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1005529">our research</a>, while public opinions remained relatively stable throughout from 2015 to 2018, civil-society mobilisation rose and became polarised in all European countries. The profiles of those involved differed, as did their relationships with institutions and the outcomes. The range of motivations themselves showed to be relatively stable, and determined by sociocultural and political motivations.</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Positive mobilisations</strong>: Humanitarian solidarity is the strongest catalyst and has an important impact on support activities. Donations and emergency help such as the distribution of food and clothes are the most common practices among individual volunteers and civil society groups. This is also true in those contexts where public opinion is more critical of migration, where institutions take a more restrictive approach, or where civil society is generally less proactive.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Negative mobilisations</strong>: These are inspired by tropes about the demographic threat from the Global South, including conspiracy theories on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory">“ethnic substitution”</a>, opposition to “foreignisation”, the conception of the national territory as “private property”, and the depiction of nations as victims of an <a href="https://www.leganord.org/component/tags/tag/stop-invasione">“invasion”</a>. During the reception crisis, perceived cultural threats revolving around national identity, cultural norms and values have significantly increased, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Negative sociocultural beliefs are also embodied by political parties or movements. In Italy, far-right organisations as well as the anti-immigration mainstream party, the League and its leader Matteo Salvini, played this role. In Hungary, xenophobia is completely integrated into the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/21/hungary-accused-of-fuelling-xenophobia-human-rights-violations">rhetoric of the Orbán government</a>.</p>
<h2>From the social to the political</h2>
<p>In a second phase of the reception crisis, groups motivated by solidarity shifted to politically driven mobilisation, showing that sociocultural and the political forms of mobilisation are not exclusive or conflictual, but <a href="http://www.uninomade.org/the-gaze-of-autonomy-capitalism-migration-and-social-struggles/">overlapping</a>.</p>
<p>Only in rare instances did citizens’ reactions align with the governments’ stance. Instead, initiatives often aimed to correct – or more precisely, to suggest corrections to – state policies. When politically driven, positive mobilisation embraced the issue of formal access to rights, including questions of citizenship and <a href="https://sanspapiers.be/qui-sommes-nous/">recognition of undocumented people</a>. It aimed to have a direct impact on national politics, the policymaking process and field practices, as well as in those contexts where institutions show relative tolerance toward asylum seekers. Similarly, mobilisation against asylum seekers sought to integrate the government’s restrictive field practices such as <a href="https://euobserver.com/justice/142739">border and access control</a>. This happened especially when the reception systems in transit countries were overwhelmed and clearly no longer effective.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while positive mobilisation rarely sprang directly from political organisations or got backing from formal political parties, the most evident cases of negative mobilisation were structured around political groups that existed before 2015 – <a href="https://www.pegida.de">Pegida</a> in Germany, the Greek far-right party <a href="http://www.xrisiavgi.com">Golden Dawn</a> or Jobbik’s paramilitary wing, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/hungarys-future-antiimmigration-antimulticulturalism-and-antiro/">Hungarian Guard</a>. Italy is a case where the connection between negative mobilisation and formal politics is particularly evident: opposition to asylum seekers <a href="http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/cronache/sindaco-non-vuole-i-profughi-e-prefetto-deve-arrendersi-1150548.html">came directly from local governments</a>, and saw the spontaneous mobilisation of citizens only in rare cases.</p>
<p>The reception crisis also allowed far-right groups to portray asylum seekers as a national threat, and to gain space in the public debate. Golden Dawn had a strong impact, shaping the widespread impression that <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d88eab00-5d30-11e5-a28b-50226830d644">Greece was a xenophobic country</a>. In Italy, the reception crisis was an opportunity for different segments of the right-wing and far-right spectrum to <a href="https://www.open.online/2019/05/02/matteo-salvini-e-casapound-un-rapporto-lungo-cinque-anni/">work together</a>. Even in Germany, where the concept of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/germany-refugee-crisis-syrian"><em>Willkommenskultur</em></a> shaped the mainstream debate and inspired the humanitarian response at the international level, a strong representation of anti-migration views and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-222-refugee-homes-burned-or-attacked-arrests-a6763506.html">extreme violence</a> against immigrants emerged in 2015.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297127/original/file-20191015-98653-34r8vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On December 17, 2015, German chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders sought to establish a new border and coast guard force to slow the influx of migrants across the EU’s external frontiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Jocard/AFP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mobilisation outcomes</h2>
<p>The long summer of migration in 2015 had an impact on the relationship between civil society and the state. This happened in the way the former represents claims and takes actions within the public affairs, and how the latter interacts with – and reacts to – citizens’ sentiments and engagement.</p>
<p>There was an unprecedented wave of solidarity from Europeans who hadn’t previously been active supporters of asylum seekers or migration-related issues. Mobilisation was primarily in urban settings, with the exception of areas such as the Serbian/Croatian border in Hungary and the Greek islands that experienced mass arrivals. The crisis of reception structures led to the creation, consolidation, interaction and evolution of heterogeneous organisations, citizen initiatives and networks at the <a href="http://www.bxlrefugees.be">national</a> and <a href="https://www.refugees-welcome.net">international level</a>.</p>
<p>Mobilisation also occurred when dormant organisations reactivated and existing ones embraced the issue of asylum seekers and refugees. The nature of their activities and their principles adapted to the situation, the needs of newcomers and the policy structures surrounding them. European civil society reacted more or less explicitly to the problems, gaps and failures of political institutions and institutional policy measures. In doing so, citizen organisations and NGOs made visible the <a href="https://books.google.be/books?id=JSlWDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT88&lpg=PT88&dq=organized+non-responsibility+pries&source=bl&ots=ji-emGEMoj&sig=ACfU3U13Zmyl6FAWnIR544gyhTlHK5runw&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj628nI6bHkAhXKEVAKHU79DYAQ6AEwC3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=organiz&f=false">“organized non-responsibility”</a> that characterised the institutional approach of the European Union and the indifference of many countries during the emergency.</p>
<h2>The emergence of the local dimension</h2>
<p>As a consequence of the reception crisis, volunteer groups, citizen initiatives and civil-society organisations paved the way for inclusive approaches toward asylum seekers and migration in general. These approaches are specific to regions, municipalities and local areas. A new paradigm of integration established in these contexts, and marked a “local turn” in the management of the contemporary migration issue. Recent scientific articles published by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1368371">Younes Ahouga</a> or <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0020852316688426">Zapata-Barrero, Caponio and Scholten</a> have observed this paradigm to be growing in Europe.</p>
<p>The crisis created opportunities for citizens to transform spontaneous mobilisation – negative and positive – into forms of political action and advocacy. In several instances at the local level, groups of citizens and volunteers working alongside the state-designated reception actors took on a formal organisational structure and became involved in the decision-making process.</p>
<p>While strong civil-society mobilisation provided an alternative to anti-migrant rhetoric and violence, it did not always have positive political repercussions. This is reflected in the strategies of anti-migrant governments to challenge the leadership of non-institutional actors, as well as in the attempts to criminalise NGOs and obstruct their support activities. Examples of such institutional strategies are Hungary’s so-called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/hungary-passes-anti-immigrant-stop-soros-laws">“Stop Soros” laws</a>, or Italy’s second <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/italy-adopts-decree-that-could-fine-migrant-rescue-ngo-aid-up-to-50000">“Security Decree”</a>.</p>
<p>A few years before than international migration was turned into a political problem and the EU sought to fortify its external borders, sociologist <a href="http://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/la-double-absence-des-illusions-de-l-emigre-aux-souffrances-de-l-immigre-abdelmalek-sayad/9782020385961">Abdelmalek Sayad</a> reminded us that contemporary migration has a mirror function. It makes visible how governmental trends in the treatment of immigrants anticipate the way forms of social control and legal measures are designed to be directed toward native citizens. The 2015-2018 refugee reception crisis is no exception.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122834/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The author does not work for, consults, owns shares in or receives funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 2015 reception crisis had a profound impact on civil society in Europe. A significant set of attitudes and practices emerged that give a sense of what political participation means today.Alessandro Mazzola, Post-doc Research Fellow, Sociologist, Université de LiègeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095222019-01-09T07:25:45Z2019-01-09T07:25:45ZHow foreign backing is keeping Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir in power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252847/original/file-20190108-32145-3r0bzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir at the 2015 AU Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Day after day Sudanese are <a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article66878&utm_source=Media+Review+for+January+7%2C+2019&utm_campaign=Media+Review+for+January+7%2C+2019&utm_medium=email">taking to the streets to protest</a> against the rule of Omar al-Bashir. The president, who himself seized power in 1989 when he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-warcrimes-sudan-bashir-profile/factbox-sudans-president-omar-hassan-al-bashir-idUKL1435274220080714">led a coup</a>, is facing the most serious challenge in his three decades in power. Fury at sharp rises in the cost of bread and fuel, and allegations of corruption, have fuelled the protests.</p>
<p>Thus far the president has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bashir-will-not-budge-nationwide-protests-in-sudan-take-aim-at-the-president/2019/01/06/550ebf9a-0fac-11e9-8f0c-6f878a26288a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_campaign=Media%20Review%20for%20January%207%2C%202019&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Media%20Review%20for%20January%207%2C%202019&utm_term=.34a805320c64">managed to resist the anger of his people</a>. But Sudanese have a long history of overthrowing unpopular regimes. Twice before – in 1964 and then again in 1985 – revolts led to changes of government. On each occasion the armed forces abandoned the regime and sided with the people. This has not occurred during the current protests for good reasons, as university lecturer and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/civil-uprisings-in-modern-sudan-9781472574015/">author of Civil Uprisings in Modern Sudan</a> Willow Berridge <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2019/01/07/sudan-protests-learn-1964-1985/">points out</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Al-Bashir’s regime clearly learnt from the mistakes of its predecessors. It has created a much stronger National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) as well as a host of other parallel security organisations and armed militias that it uses to police Khartoum instead of the regular army. This set up, combined with various commanders’ mutual fears of being held to account for war crimes if the regime falls, means an army intervention will not occur easily as in 1964 or 1985. This is one reason the current uprising has already lasted longer than its precedents.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the regime’s survival cannot simply be seen as a domestic issue. He has strong international allies. The West once reviled Omar al-Bashir as an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/21/omar-bashir-travels-world-despite-war-crime-arrest-warrant">indicted war criminal</a>. However, more recently they have begun to view him as a source of stability and intelligence in a troubled region. The president also has the backing – both political and financial – of key Arab allies.</p>
<h2>Arab support</h2>
<p>Sudanese have traditionally been said to look North to Cairo for support. This crisis is no exception. In December Egypt’s foreign minister and intelligence chief visited Khartoum, <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/world/africa/egypt-backs-sudan-government-amid-deadly-protests-1.807138">pledging their support for Al-Bashir</a>. </p>
<p>Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who flew to Sudan with intelligence chief General Abbas Kamel, confidently stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Egypt is confident that Sudan will overcome the present situation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was followed earlier this month during a reciprocal trip to Cairo by the Sudanese president at which President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/sudan-fresh-protests-planned-bashir-sacks-health-minister-190106061946232.html">commented</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Egypt fully supports the security and stability of Sudan, which is integral to Egypt’s national security.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But political support alone wouldn’t be enough to keep the Sudanese regime in power. There is also financial backing from across the Red Sea. In return for Sudan entering the Yemeni war Khartoum is <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/sudan-saudi-arabia-war-yemen-houthi-economy.html">reported to have received investments worth US$2.2 billion</a>. More than 10,000 Sudanese troops are fighting on the Yemeni frontline. Some are said to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/africa/saudi-sudan-yemen-child-fighters.html">child soldiers</a> who were recruited by the Saudis, with offers of US$10,000 for each recruit.</p>
<h2>Other allies</h2>
<p>The rehabilitation of al-Bashir in the US goes back to President Barack Obama’s era. As one of the last acts of his office, he <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41531855">lifted a range of US sanctions against the Sudanese regime</a>. The CIA’s large office in Khartoum was cited as <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/10/10/why-america-has-lifted-sanctions-on-sudan">one of the key reasons for his policy shift</a>.</p>
<p>Nor is Washington alone in this view. As Europe battles to restrict the number of Africans crossing the Mediterranean it has seen the Sudanese government as an ally. The <a href="https://www.khartoumprocess.net/about/the-khartoum-process">“Khartoum Process”</a>, signed in the Sudanese capital, is critical to this relationship. In November 2015 European leaders met their African counterparts in the Maltese capital, Valletta, to try to put flesh on the bones of this agreement. The aim was made clear in the accompanying EU press release which <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4832_en.htm">concluded that</a>;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The number of migrants arriving to the European Union is unprecedented, and this increased flow is likely to continue. The EU, together with the member states, is taking a wide range of measures to address the challenges, and to establish an effective, humanitarian and safe European migration policy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The summit led to the drafting of an <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/21839/action_plan_en.pdf">Action Plan</a> which has guided the EU’s policy objectives on migration and mobility ever since.</p>
<p>The plan detailed how European institutions would cooperate with their African partners to fight</p>
<blockquote>
<p>irregular migration, migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Europe promised to offer training to “law enforcement and judicial authorities” in new methods of investigation and</p>
<blockquote>
<p>assisting in setting up specialised anti-trafficking and smuggling police units.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These commitments were an explicit pledge to support and strengthen elements of the Sudanese state. A Regional Operational Centre (ROCK) has been <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/region/horn-africa/regional/regional-operational-centre-support-khartoum-process-and-au-horn-africa_en">established in Khartoum</a> whose <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/africa/migration-european-union-sudan.html">chief aim</a> it to halt people smuggling and refugee flows by allowing European officials to work directly with their Sudanese opposite numbers. The counter-trafficking coordination centre in Khartoum — staffed jointly by police officers from Sudan and several European countries, including Britain, France and Italy — will partly rely on information sourced by the Sudanese national intelligence service.</p>
<p>Finally there is some evidence of Russian involvement in the Sudanese crisis. Russian troops, working for a private contractor, are <a href="https://defence-blog.com/army/russian-private-military-contractors-spotted-in-sudan.html">reported to have been seen on the streets of Khartoum, suppressing the uprising</a>.</p>
<p>Given the range of support for al-Bashir it isn’t surprising that he’s managed to resist popular pressure to step down. Much depends on how long demonstrations can be maintained, and how much force the regime is prepared to deploy to crush its opponents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>Given the range of support for President Omar al-Bashir it isn’t surprising that he’s managed to resist pressure to step down.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1034582018-10-09T14:27:52Z2018-10-09T14:27:52ZMigration: new map of Europe reveals real frontiers for refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239875/original/file-20181009-72117-13sx7yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lesvos-island-greece-29-october-2015-367744034">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the EU declared a “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/tag/europes-migration-crisis">refugee crisis</a>” in 2015 that was followed by an unprecedented number of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/sharp-rise-in-proportion-of-migrants-dying-in-mediterranean-says-un">deaths in the Mediterranean</a>, maps explaining the routes of migrants to and within Europe have been used widely in newspapers and social media.</p>
<p>Some of these maps came out of refugee projects, while others are produced by global organisations, NGOs and agencies such as <a href="https://frontex.europa.eu/along-eu-borders/migratory-map/">Frontex</a>, the European Border and Coastguard Agency, and the International Organisation for Migration’s project, <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int">Missing Migrants</a>. The <a href="http://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/2546/the-balkan-route-explained">Balkan route</a>, for example, shows the trail along which hundred of thousands of Syrian refugees trekked after their towns and cities were reduced to rubble in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Syrian-Civil-War">civil war</a>.</p>
<p>However, migration maps tend to produce an image of Europe being “invaded” and overwhelmed by desperate women, men and children in search of asylum. At the same time, migrants’ journeys are represented as fundamentally linear, going from a point A to a point B. But what about the places where migrants have remained stranded for a long time, due to the closure of national borders and the suspension of the <a href="https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-agreement/">Schengen Agreement</a>, which establishes people’s free internal movement in Europe? What memories and impressions remain in the memory of the European citizens of migrants’ passage and presence in their cities? And how is this most recent history of migration in Europe being recorded?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239869/original/file-20181009-72124-1t0ecs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://cherish-de.uk/migrant-digitalities/#/2017/df035e05dcf5aa6dd1f7b52dc7af3fbb">Cherishde.uk/Mapbox</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Time and memory</h2>
<p>Our collective project, <a href="http://cherish-de.uk/migrant-digitalities/#/">a map archive of Europe’s migrant spaces</a>, engages with with these questions by representing border zones in Europe – places that have functioned as frontiers for fleeing migrants. Some of these border zones, such as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37750368/the-history-of-the-calais-jungle-camp-and-how-its-changed-since-1999">Calais</a>, have a long history, while other places have become effective borders for migrants in transit more recently, such as Como in Italy and Menton in France. The result of a collaborative work by researchers in the UK, Greece, Germany, Italy and the US, the project records memories of places in Europe where migrants remained in limbo for a long time, were confronted with violence, or found humanitarian aid, as well as marking sites of organised migrant protest.</p>
<p>All the cities and places represented in this map archive have over time become frontiers and hostile environments for migrants in transit. Take for instance the Italian city of Ventimiglia on the French-Italian border. This became a frontier for migrants heading to France in 2011, when the French government suspended Schengen to deter the passage of migrants who had landed in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/30/berlusconi-empty-island-lampedusa-migrants">Lampedusa</a> in Italy in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/12/tunisian-revolution-151215102459580.html">Tunisian revolution</a> in 2011.</p>
<p>Four years later in 2015, after border controls were loosened, Ventimiglia again became a difficult border to cross, when France suspended Schengen for the second time. But far from being just a place where migrants were stranded and forced to go back, our map archive shows that Ventimiglia also became an important place of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/world/europe/migrants-journeys-stall-in-italy-near-the-french-border.html">collective migrant protest</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239876/original/file-20181009-72130-j14h1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ventigmilia on the French-Italian border became a place of migrant protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ventimiglia-italy-september-21-2015-undocumented-714512812">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Images of migrants on the cliffs holding banners saying “We are not going back” circulated widely in 2015 and became a powerful slogan for other migrant groups across Europe. The most innovative aspect of our map-archive consists in bringing the context of time, showing the transformations of spaces over time into a map about migration that explains the history of border zones over the last decade and how they proliferated across Europe. Every place represented – Paris, Calais, Rome, Lesbos, Kos, and Athens, for example – has been transformed over the years by migrants’ presence.</p>
<h2>Which Europe?</h2>
<p>This archive project visualises these European sites in a way that differs from the conventional geopolitical map: instead of highlighting national frontiers and cities, it foregrounds places that have been actual borders for migrants in transit and which became sites of protest and struggle. In this way the map archive produces another image of Europe, as a space that has been shaped by the presence migrants – the border violence, confinement and their struggle to advance.</p>
<p>The geopolitical map of Europe is transformed into Europe’s migrant spaces – that is, Europe as it is experienced by migrants and shaped by their presence. So another picture of Europe emerges: a space where migrants’ struggle to stay has contributed to the political history of the continent. In this Europe migrants are subjected to legal restrictions and human rights violations, but at the same time they open up spaces for living, creating community and as a backdrop for their collective struggles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239872/original/file-20181009-72100-xgjibp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A local volunteer says goodbye as refugees are evicted from ‘the Jungle’ camp in Calais.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/calais-october-27-2016-refugee-say-508619647">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is also where they find solidarity with European citizens who have sympathy with their plight. These border zones highlighted by our map have been characterised by alliances between citizens and migrants in transit, where voluntary groups have set up to provide food, shelter and services such as medical and legal support. </p>
<p>So how does this map engage with debate on the “migrant crisis” and the “refugee crisis” in Europe? By imposing a time structure and retracing the history of these ephemeral border zone spaces of struggle, it upends the image of migrants’ presence as something exceptional, as a crisis. The map gives an account of how European cities and border zones have been transformed over time by migrants’ presence.</p>
<p>By providing the history of border zones and recording memories of citizens’ solidarity with migrants in these places, this map dissipates the hardline view of migrants as invaders, intruders and parasites – in other words, as a threat. This way, migrants appear as part of Europe’s unfolding history. Their struggle to stay is now becoming part of Europe’s history.</p>
<p>But the increasing <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42858838">criminalisation</a> of migrant solidarity in Europe is telling of how such collaboration disturbs state policies on containing migrants. This map-archive helps to erode the image of migrants as faceless masses and unruly mobs, bringing to the fore the spaces they create to live and commune in, embraced by ordinary European citizens who defy the politics of control and the violent borders enacted by their states.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martina Tazzioli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new refugee mapping project has revealed an alternative image of Europe as a space that is being shaped by migrants and their struggle.Martina Tazzioli, Lecturer in Geography, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/989172018-07-18T10:41:25Z2018-07-18T10:41:25ZHow refugees in Britain went from living in old bunkers and stately homes to being detained in cells<p>Mass movement of refugees has turned into mass detention in many liberal democracies.</p>
<p>These are strange days to be writing about camps and refugees. As a historian of Britain and a scholar of refugee studies, I have <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unsettled-9780198814214?cc=us&lang=en&">studied</a> how the U.K. handled mass encampments in its recent past, from the First World War to the 1980s.</p>
<p>As I write, the U.S. Department of Justice is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/trump-immigration-border-family-separation.html">preparing to house</a> 200,000 migrants on military bases. These measures accompany the Trump administration’s recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-travel-ban-in-numbers-why-families-and-refugees-lose-big-99064">travel ban</a>, denials of asylum to those who cite fears of <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-abused-women-need-asylum-4-essential-reads-98223">domestic violence</a> and gangs in their home countries, and detention of asylum-seekers crossing the Mexico border into the U.S. as criminals. At the same time, immigration detention centers in the U.K. have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/03/uk-immigration-authorities-separating-children-from-parents">separated</a> scores or possibly hundreds of children from their parents every year.</p>
<p>At this moment, it is worth looking back at how liberal democracies across the world have struggled with the moral dilemmas of holding tens or hundreds of thousands of people under the pretext of helping them. Very few states today can evade the moral problems of encampment – even if they try to do so by stopping refugees at their borders.</p>
<p>Under tremendous political pressure, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently reversed her policy of welcoming refugees, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to Germany. Merkel agreed to construct <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/world/europe/angela-merkel-migration-coalition.html">refugee camps</a>, instead, for asylum-seekers on the German border. This was proposed despite recent analyses that suggest migration to Europe is actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis-change.html">sharply in decline</a>. </p>
<p>So-called “border crises” are not about mass arrivals, but about how the people arriving at borders are perceived and treated.</p>
<h2>Refugee camps in the 20th century</h2>
<p>During the 20th century, dozens of camps in Britain housed tens of thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians and Vietnamese.</p>
<p>Even when the British government was warned well in advance of their arrival, it often treated refugee influxes as unannounced emergencies. A welter of state actors and voluntary organizations assigned refugees to temporary housing in holiday chalets and concrete bunkers, military bases, prisons and stately homes. </p>
<p>Some camps were tightly controlled by state actors and aid organizations with armed guards and barbed-wire perimeters where refugees waited to be officially “resettled.” Some camps were ignored by locals; others transformed the nature of nearby towns by introducing Britons to new foods and music. Depending on the availability of housing and their own willingness to be resettled, people could be encamped for just a few days, or for decades.</p>
<p>For example, one refugee worker described how Earl’s Court, a massive entertainment center in London, held nearly 100,000 Belgian refugees who had escaped the German invasion of the First World War. They lived with the menagerie of animals left behind in the old ballroom from Earl’s Court’s days as a recreational resort, wandering among the elephants’ legs and kicking the bars of the tigers’ and lions’ cages. The Belgians at Earl’s Court were able to move freely within the camp and around London, though all Belgians had to register with the police and they were not allowed to settle in areas of national defense.</p>
<p>In the 1970s and 1980s, the Home Office, the British department responsible for immigration, security, and law and order, placed the Ugandan Asian and Vietnamese camps in remote locations partly to discourage refugees of color from settling in cities with large immigrant populations. At Tonfanau, a remote camp for Ugandan Asians in the 1970s in Welsh-speaking North Wales, residents often traveled six hours by train for job interviews in urban centers. According to one reporter, the bleak barracks looked more like a concentration camp than a place of welcome and refuge.</p>
<p>At another Ugandan Asian camp at West Malling, residents had a curfew of 7 p.m. for fear that they might cause disruptions in the town. The gates at many Ugandan Asian and Vietnamese camps were manned by Securicor, now called G4S – a highly lucrative private security company that today staffs numerous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/09/g4s-welfare-support-families-children-deportation-gatwick">immigration detention</a> centers.</p>
<p>There was always a lot of variety in refugees’ freedom of movement, but the 20th century saw a general tendency toward increased detention measures. Belgians in 1914 had much more physical freedom than the Ugandan Asians in the 1970s. Refugees of color were subject to more physical restrictions, and the types of spaces they inhabited, such as military barracks, tended to be more easily policed.</p>
<h2>The future of refuge</h2>
<p>Today, very few people think of Britain as a land of camps – and it no longer is. Refugee camps have been made obsolete in Britain in two ways. The first is simply by denying refuge to most people who seek it. Since the 1980s, Britain’s increasingly restrictive asylum policies have pushed refugees across the Channel.</p>
<p>Second, refugees who manage to make it to Britain today enter a rapidly expanding network of prison-like <a href="https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/europe/united-kingdom">immigration detention centers</a> where they are held while their cases await review. Britain’s detention centers have been widely <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094mhsn">criticized</a> for their lack of oversight and physical and psychological abuses, which have produced numerous incidents in which detainees <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-befriend-women-detained-at-yarls-wood-their-life-in-immigration-limbo-is-excruciating-92905">try to resist</a> and <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/news/2017-the-deadliest-year-in-immigration-detention/">hurt themselves</a>. Some <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/09/war-and-slavery-prison-life-inside-immigration-detention-centre">detainees</a> have described their conditions as worse than those of convicted criminals, since prisoners have a time-limited sentence and the right to education. </p>
<p>According to government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-april-to-june-2017/how-many-people-are-detained-or-returned">data from 2017</a>, around 48 percent of detainees are deported or voluntarily returned on leaving detention; just over half are released back into the community, many in traumatized condition. Since immigration laws in Britain currently allow for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/indefinite-detention-refugees-journeys-refugee-tales">indefinite detention</a>, these centers are likely to become permanent.</p>
<p>The camps of the 20th century offered a precedent for today’s detention center in restricting and controlling the movement of refugees.</p>
<p>They also provided the physical structures and personnel that could be repurposed for detention centers when the laws of asylum shifted.</p>
<p>Some of the same spaces that housed refugees in the 20th century have been redeployed as immigration detention centers in the 21st century. For example, <a href="https://detentionaction.org.uk/aboutus/about-harmondsworth-detention-centre">Harmondsworth</a>, a site used for stateless Ugandan Asians seeking refuge in the 1970s, is in use as an immigration detention center today. </p>
<p>The future of refuge in Britain – and perhaps in other liberal democracies as well – is no longer in a camp, but in a cell. </p>
<p>Britain’s history suggests how the trajectory from camps to cells has unfolded in one liberal democracy, a path other nations should be wary of following.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordanna Bailkin received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct this research. </span></em></p>Camps of the 20th century were focused on resettlement. Today, the focus is on confining movement and deportation. What changed?Jordanna Bailkin, Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765162017-07-24T06:19:59Z2017-07-24T06:19:59ZIs life in Norway as happy as it’s cracked up to be?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179278/original/file-20170721-24759-162a4dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freedom and tolerance are Norwegian values that don't apply equally to all.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kongevold/3571950995/in/photolist-6rDbzZ-TzfvEk-jZ1gNm-SSqCaY-eC45mE-oED3TU-eYkDRR-eBZS2g-eC455y-VkWcF2-Wfr3qS-WFmDpj-b2xrwz-eC44Kh-dKMVw4-efx8ov-rbj4JV-9kBade-p1cDda-oMQNjF-91JQc1-nJwGiS-eRw6FB-f24avG-TPTN6q-p6eGEW-9ZTB9S-Dsf8RB-WDidtv-osnbbp-qmGcoy-oJuSsE-ddeUzp-eBZUv4-akp7b6-pVEyt8-fAwfQQ-U6CZbA-8unRwN-pQjzqL-y9TMxj-rr3mcb-jAeWeS-nsRv9X-69bTSJ-ptHMMp-q1ddj9-8f8jdh-qQNmxu-p6gLYb">André Kongevold / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For progressives around the world, it has become almost a pastime to romanticise the quasi-socialist Scandinavian countries. Nations such as Norway, Finland and Sweden are – to many – not only examples of wealth and well-being but also bastions of social progress and tolerance.</p>
<p>Norway, in particular, consistently leads the world in <a href="http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111">quality of life</a> and <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/">happiness</a>, and the country is <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/02/10/norway-syria-crisis/80164696/">responding compassionately</a> to the Syrian refugee crisis, unlike its many critics in Europe. But is life in Norway really so great? </p>
<p>I’m not so sure. </p>
<p>As an Australian who worked in Oslo for three years, I found that while freedom, tolerance and happiness are indeed important values there, you can expect to enjoy them only if you’re Norwegian.</p>
<h2>You’re welcome?</h2>
<p>After the the 2011 <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-inexplicable">mass shooting by Anders Breivik</a>, which he carried out in the name of rejecting a “Muslim colonisation” of Europe, Norway emerged determined to defy xenophobia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flowers and candles in Oslo after the 2011 Norway attacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrkbeta/5977743910/in/photolist-a7ev1b-3drpmD-6b7TxJ-93Qn72-cUTSRu-e4Z7AL-deyHDe-bkVKjS-8nCcwN-byQBgX-deyG5d-a7NjLA-8ft6Ln-VsnWAm-a7KrZF-8fwn8o-6p5jBj-cPN6Jh-e4Tswp-a7Krdc-eaqooP-aagfY6-9RRwfz-b5qCUa-9RRwzX-6p5jLh-aiAV7b-e19dE3-S9wgAf-bz3xAs-6p5i1G-p84ahc-aagfEe-aJ19QH-6p5iYw-6b5zHf-e4Z7jA-ptb3SQ-afZwoz-6b1pGr-MHdXuy-e13v3H-ptb51S-oH4S61-VQZKB4-pbHr2q-e19fP7-6R5TTR-6J3s4T-awbhY8">Henrik Lied / NRK/flickr</a></span>
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<p>In 2015, during the height of the European refugee crisis, the country, which has a population of 5.2 million, considered some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/24/norway-halts-return-of-asylum-seekers-who-entered-via-russia">31,000 asylum cases</a>, a national record. And in contrast to most European countries, Norway extends full social support and protections to all asylees while they await a ruling.</p>
<p>Still, Norway’s far-right Progress Party – to which Breivik belonged in his youth and which holds 29 seats in parliament – has fought to roll back migration and benefits. </p>
<p>Since 2015, Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug has pursued aggressive restrictions on immigration, particularly for Muslims. As a result, the country deported a <a href="https://www.thelocal.no/20161230/norway-deported-record-number-in-2016">record number</a> of migrants in 2016, including <a href="https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/norway-send-back-half-unaccompanied-refugee-minors">minors between the ages of 16 and 18</a>, as per new restrictions.</p>
<h2>A history of exclusion</h2>
<p>This fear-mongering taps into a dark strain of Norwegian history. As recently as 1977, the Norwegian government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/09/2">forcibly sterilised members of its Romani minority population</a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zhiEiCfECws?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Such policies also echo Norway’s treatment of its indigenous population, which I have been studying. Indeed, it seems forgotten in post-colonial societies that Norwegian history is blighted with atrocities against the native Sámi.</p>
<p>Until the second half of the 20th century, the Norwegian government forcibly <a href="http://minorityrights.org/minorities/sami-2/">seized Sámi lands in middle and northern Norway</a> and sought to eradicate Sámi culture. A policy of Norweginisation, known as <em>fornorsking</em>, meant that Sámi children were sent to Norwegian boarding schools, where they were <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/awards-and-festivals/tiff/sami-blood-shines-spotlight-on-assimilation-of-indigenous-children-in-scandinavia/article31892290/">beaten for speaking their native language</a>. </p>
<p>The Sámi were also denied the right to purchase property if they could not speak Norwegian. Today, Sámi people are still suppressed by Norwegian policy and experience <a href="http://www.unric.org/en/indigenous-people/27307-the-sami-of-northern-europe--one-people-four-countries">ten times more discrimination</a> than ethnic Norwegians.</p>
<p>Many Sámi live throughout the country, and though their right to an education in Sámi and to the use of their language for public purposes has now been recognised, these rights are enjoyed only in small municipalities in the rural north that have been designated as Sámi territories. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, to participate in Norway’s society and economy, you must forgo being and speaking Sámi.</p>
<p>While popular and even academic writing in Norway describes immigrants from the Middle East as speaking “kebab Norwegian”, my <a href="http://jhlr.org.nz/">2016 analysis</a> of online comments to Sámi-themed news found a similarly pervasive prejudice. </p>
<p>The analysis shows that Norwegians argue that the Sámi threaten the purity of Norwegian ethnicity and way of life. Some say Sámi cannot be seen as Norwegian citizens, do not deserve indigenous status and have invented their historic oppression.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Art work ‘Spor’ by Hilde Skancke Pedersen inside the Sámi parliament. ‘Sámediggi’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/samediggi/11081728335/in/photolist-hTfKKD-ceGxaj-hTnTMV-hTddWZ-hTe3MB-aEfAVk-cgVN5q-aEiTKL-TaF3R4-UpfKcz-kEjH41-hTwz3o-aEiTnG-hTdKzG-hTnhTY-hTwuF9-kTN2Kt-kEi8o6-kTEorn-kTJXQa-nFWB15-kTFoNJ-hTnLV1-kTNFAr-hTnHRn-npuafj-kEhCPK-kTKCmB-kEjJzh-hTnpCu-oJK3HU-hTnpFA-oGK26G-kTFpJG-kTNFEV-kTNG2g-hTnSy2-kTEohK-kTPEBS-kTJXN6-kTPD91-kTPDC7-kTKCqe-hTnjr9-kTPDdQ-UpfL6i-kTEnbg-kEhBDD-kTFmmE-kTFiVs">Denis Caviglia /Sámediggi Sametinget/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>In another display of discrimination, when Tromsø, the major town of the far north, considered designating itself a Sámi zone, opposing voices were filled with hate. Opponents even fired bullets at bilingual signs to express displeasure.</p>
<h2>Assimilation nation</h2>
<p>This racist undercurrent in Norway may derive from an American-style exceptionalism in Norway, whereby Norwegians are told and truly believe that they are world leaders in social policy. </p>
<p>But to survive in Norway, those of a non-Norwegian culture are expected to adopt a Norwegian world view. The compulsory language courses given to migrants really brings that message home. Its curriculum celebrates Norway but presents almost hegemonic views on nearly everything else, from alcohol consumption to social values and Norwegian history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1600%2C1061&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sculpture in Vigeland Park, Oslo. Life in Norway is great for some, but not for all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ceekay/3526274817/in/photolist-6nB5DF-djfNTE-cepefy-69Q98R-6awsAJ-59uH7r-5DMNdZ-dH1AnT-aHJk2-isV5LP-jWAMF6-7jbQWW-6awsEh-bFNBtg-59yWX3-7DusLb-59uHte-59yWSq-69UkiG-629WpC-62DE6B-9pKiyg-3GFwFm-8nKKEg-629WGj-7DusL3-5EbL6k-f6DtcF-jgBF4-6diuqQ-aGu6sB-6oy9KN-aDrQwX-4WBXDu-dH74vU-9LiF2h-2Z7572-69UkgE-7DusL9-5V1g3i-ow31mi-d5gwqd-d3DZjW-cy8CES-DVAqa-6awugL-6asifr-a7eFJL-9jWhP-4vdx7">PROC.K. Koay / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>The Sámi and Romani are almost entirely absent from the language-course curriculum.</p>
<p>To suggest that all is bad in Norway would be false. I, too, have been thankful for Norway’s affordable health care and generous leave entitlements. And the upcoming <a href="http://europedecides.eu/2016/08/a-forecast-for-the-2017-norwegian-elections/">parliamentary election</a>, to be held in September 2017, presents an opportunity for a broader change, including on immigration.</p>
<p>But not all is rosy in the Norwegian utopia. Next time someone extols the virtues of this “perfect” Scandinavian society, remind them that the Norwegian dream is not available to all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan John Albury was recently a research fellow at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo.</span></em></p>Freedom, social progress and tolerance are Norwegian values, but not everyone there gets to enjoy them equally.Nathan John Albury, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.