tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/detention-facility-30454/articlesdetention facility – The Conversation2018-06-20T23:03:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/985492018-06-20T23:03:49Z2018-06-20T23:03:49ZThe dreadful history of children in concentration camps<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224101/original/file-20180620-137720-1su7b84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Child survivors of Auschwitz are seen in this 1945 photograph.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children and family have been central to the institution of the concentration camp from its beginnings 120 years ago. Wikipedia has now added the notorious American border detention centres to its <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3kjma/wikipedia-us-detention-centers-concentration-camps-vgtrn">list of concentration camps</a>, and the #<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FamiliesBelongTogether&src=tyah">FamiliesBelongTogether</a> Twitter hashtag has brought up frequent comparisons. </p>
<p>The merits of the comparison between detention centres and concentration camps <a href="https://qz.com/1308141/are-us-immigrant-child-detention-centers-concentration-camps/">have been debated elsewhere</a>, but can we learn anything from this dreadful history of children behind barbed wire, even as the Trump administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-immigration-children-executive-order.html">finally moved to end the practice?</a></p>
<p>The British constructed camps during the 1899-1902 South African War in order to divide families. They hoped that Boer men who were fighting British forces would give up once they discovered that their wives and children were held in camps. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A deceased young girl is seen at a concentration camp where the British housed Boer women and children during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Similar to the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politics/family-separation-deterrence-dhs/index.html">Trump administration’s apparent hope that the breakup of families would deter unwanted migration</a>, the British sought to deter Boer fighters. British parliamentarians critical of the policy labelled these “concentration camps,” alluding to the Spanish policy of the “reconcentration” of civilians during the Spanish-American War (1898).</p>
<p>Conditions in the British-run camps were horrific, particularly for children, with <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591094">mortality rates upwards of 25 per cent</a>. An <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171343">epidemic of measles</a> accounted for roughly 40 per cent of childhood deaths in these camps, and other diseases such as typhus and dysentery were also devastating.</p>
<h2>Families broken up in former Soviet Union</h2>
<p>The Soviet Union’s system of camps that reached their peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s also reveals the destruction of families. While mass arrests broke up the family, and children of “enemies of the people” were separated from their parents, there were also many children in the Gulag itself.</p>
<p>Prison camps developed an infrastructure that, on the surface, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/579144">supported pregnancy and childbirth</a>. There were maternity wards in some camp clinics, as well as nurseries, and pregnant women and nursing mothers officially received increased rations. </p>
<p>In practice, the system was regularly a nightmare. Children born in the camps were separated from their mothers, who only managed to see them at set times for nursing. </p>
<p>Hava Volovich, whose own daughter died in the camps, remembers that hundreds of camp children died each year, meaning that there were “<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=YWHvXP7VfxAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=vilensky+till+my+tale+is+told&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2v7b_p-HbAhVdIDQIHUtmBBMQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=plenty%20of%20empty%20beds&f=false">plenty of empty beds in the infants’ shelter even though the birth rate in the camps was relatively high</a>.” </p>
<p>At the age of two, many of the surviving children were sent either to orphanages or to relatives — a forced redistribution of children away from their parents, who, as Gulag prisoners, were at best stigmatized, and at worst seen as a major threat to Soviet society. </p>
<p>The Gulag also held camps for young offenders, where teenagers worked as forced labourers and faced horrific living conditions.</p>
<h2>Nazis crushed families</h2>
<p>Nazi policy included both large-scale deportations and large-scale importations of population groups, with major implications for families. </p>
<p>The Nazis removed citizenship from German Jews then, during the Second World War, sent most Jews, from Germany and elsewhere, to camps outside the borders of pre-war Germany. Yet, as the war progressed, Germany brought in huge numbers of forced labourers from all over Europe (U.S. Attorney General <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-border-separation/index.html">Jeff Sessions’ claim that German-run camps were designed to keep Jews in</a>, rather than out, is unfounded). </p>
<p>Nazi family policy was a pivotal part of the concentration camp. Once the death camps were operational, the Nazis crushed the family unit among undesirable populations, focusing on Jews. </p>
<p>The selection process at Auschwitz could result in the temporary survival of one or both parents, if they were physically fit (or just lucky), but children were usually sent directly to their deaths.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.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">
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<span class="caption">The late Elie Wiesel is seen in this 2012 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jewish writer <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007176">Elie Wiesel</a> lost his mother and sister right away, and only survived selection because he lied about his age, claiming he was 18 and not 15, his actual age. </p>
<p>The unimaginable cruelty of many practices —the smashing of babies’ heads against walls, the medical experimentation, particularly on twins —reveals an extreme dehumanization. </p>
<p>Even at the show camp of Terezin, which included a family camp, <a href="http://www.terezin.org/the-history-of-terezin/">only 150 of the roughly 15,000 children sent there survived</a>.</p>
<h2>High mortality rates</h2>
<p>What do these historical cases have in common? All involved the separation, either immediate or eventual, of children from one or both parents, and all involved horrific conditions and extremely high mortality rates for the children. </p>
<p>In all cases, the dehumanization of the unwanted population was a key starting point. As <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591094">historian Aidan Forth writes</a> of the South African case, Gen. Herbert Kitchener referred to the Boers as “savages with only a thin white veneer,” and British officials often described the Afrikaners as “dirty, careless, [and lazy.]”</p>
<p>Former Gulag prisoners frequently reported that guards and officials <a href="http://gulaghistory.org/exhibits/days-and-lives/guards/4">referred to them as animals or as “scum.”</a> As <a href="https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=page&num=11058">one former prisoner wrote</a>, quoting a camp boss: “A person? … There aren’t any here! Here are enemies of the people, traitors of the motherland, bandits, crooks. The dregs of humanity, scum, riff raff, that’s who is here!” </p>
<p>The dehumanization of the Nazi camps is well known, as Nazi propaganda frequently likened the Jews to vermin or to an infectious disease, making Trump’s tweet about asylum seekers particularly chilling:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1009071403918864385"}"></div></p>
<p>Another commonality can be found in the experiences of the victims.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-long-term-separation-from-parents-harms-kids-97515">Why long-term separation from parents harms kids</a>
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<p>In all cases, children separated from parents could not have known if they would ever see their parents again, or under what circumstances. The children of the camps had to rely, for the most part, on other children, for any support or security. Often, the separation was permanent.</p>
<p>These comparisons only take us so far, however. Some commentators have looked not at European powers, but to a long North American history — <a href="http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/americas-legacy-slavery-seen-trump-policy-separating-children-families/">including slavery</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Goodeeeeee/status/1009272719257604097">residential schools</a> — of separating non-white children from their parents.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children at a residential school in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, are seen in this undated photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If there is any optimism to be found in the historical examples of children in concentration camps, perhaps the history of public reactions can provide some hope. </p>
<p>In South Africa, reports by Emily Hobhouse and then the Fawcett Commission, particularly on starving children, galvanized public pressure to force the British government to <a href="https://www.angloboerwar.com/other-information/16-other-information/1847-emily-hobhouse">improve conditions at the camps</a>. </p>
<h2>Outcry helped end practice</h2>
<p>In contrast, in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, there could be neither public nor parliamentary discussion of inhumane internment conditions. </p>
<p>Bu today, some U.S. reporters and lawmakers have visited the American detention centres, and non-governmental organizations such as <a href="https://act.amnestyusa.org/page/25820/action/1">Amnesty International</a> and even the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/methodists-bring-church-charges-against-jeff-sessions_us_5b28fc2ee4b0a4dc9920b9dd">Methodist Church</a>, as well as many elected officials, maligned the policy. </p>
<p>The public discussion, and the public outcry against the separation of children from their parents that eventually caused U.S. President Donald Trump to cave and end the policy, perhaps makes the American case more similar to that of South Africa than either the Nazi or Soviet camps. </p>
<p>This similarity, however, depends on the actions now of the Trump administration, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-war-on-children-is-an-act-of-state-terrorism-98612">which for several weeks before its reversal included denial, deflecting blame and even justification</a>. </p>
<p>But with reports of children being torn away from <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/migrant-children-border-facility-w521518">their mothers’ arms while breastfeeding</a>, the more notorious concentration camps of the 20th century must serve as a stark reminder that the act of dehumanization is a slippery slope towards violence and further atrocities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98549/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wilson T. Bell received an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), June 2015-May 2018. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Slavists and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. </span></em></p>The more notorious concentration camps of the 20th century must serve as a stark reminder of the depravity of tearing children away from their parents and putting them in camps.Wilson T. Bell, Assistant Professor of History and Politics, Thompson Rivers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986602018-06-20T19:53:28Z2018-06-20T19:53:28ZBreaking up families? America looks like a Dickens novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224113/original/file-20180620-137714-1vt2rup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Almost 1,500 immigrant boys, aged 10 to 17, were separated from their parents and brought to stay at Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Health and Human Services</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news has been <a href="https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS782US782&ei=wI0qW_CfBOy3jwTDkbHIBQ&q=families+immigrant+detention&oq=families+immigrant+detention&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l2.18943.21969.0.22372.19.19.0.0.0.0.158.1849.15j4.19.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.19.1843...0j0i22i10i30k1.0.Ryohcidtjn4">full these past few weeks</a> of disturbing stories from the nation’s borders. The Trump administration has separated immigrant children from their parents precisely to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-discussed-separating-moms-kids-deter-asylum-seekers-feb-n884371">discourage others</a> from trying to enter the country. </p>
<p>Trump has signed an order <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/gop-leaders-voice-hope-that-bill-addressing-family-separations-will-pass-thursday/2018/06/20/cc79db9a-7480-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.6c05eee4e74e">to end the practice</a>. But thousands of children have been traumatized as part of an explicit effort to, in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s words, send a powerful “message” to other potential immigrants. Sessions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/06/15/on-looking-to-the-bible-to-support-hard-line-immigration-policies/?utm_term=.81c22f4587ab">used the Bible</a> to defend the practice: “I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Please sir, may I have some more?’ James Mahoney’s illustration for chapter one of Dickens’s ‘Adventures of Oliver Twist.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What has struck me, as a <a href="https://www.sarahbilston.org/">professor of English literature</a>, are the startling parallels between the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant families and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/shp/britishsociety/thepoorrev1.shtml">“New” Poor Laws of England</a> in the 1830s, whose cruelty was illuminated by Charles Dickens in novels and other writings.</p>
<p>England tried much the same kind of tactics that Trump’s administration has used. Americans may remember the suffering face of <a href="http://www.dickenslit.com/Oliver_Twist/">Oliver Twist, begging</a> for just a little more food. It may surprise some to realize that Dickens wrote the novel specifically <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">to shine a light on new and brutal laws</a>. Dickens was particularly concerned by the state’s assault on the integrity of the family.</p>
<h2>‘Fraud, indolence or improvidence’</h2>
<p>England’s <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/1834act.shtml">“New” Poor Laws of the 1830s</a> were designed to “solve” what was believed to be a common problem: the existence of a body of weak, lazy people leeching off the state. How could the government end abuses of the system? How could money be saved, diverted back to the honest hard-working citizens who paid their way? </p>
<p>In 1834, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/senior-poor-law-commissioners-report-of-1834">a Royal Commission issued a report</a> insisting that poverty was almost always a result of “fraud, indolence or improvidence.” Good news: This, apparently, could be fixed.</p>
<p>The commission rolled out a series of recommendations. At the center of these was a core idea: The poor should be cared for <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/19thcentury/overview/poorlaw/">in conditions so abject, so truly humiliating</a>, only the really desperate would turn to them. </p>
<p>Under the “<a href="https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/u4/Besley,%20Coate,%20%26%20Guinnane_Incentives,%20Information,%20and%20Welfare.pdf">workhouse test</a>,” relief would only be given to those willing to relinquish their independence, their human dignity, their spouses and their children. Others, the argument went, would buck up, get a job and stop bothering the righteous rest. Their <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">rights, needs and humanity were disregarded</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1834/may/09/amendment-of-the-poor-laws-england#s3v0023p0_18340509_hoc_36">The new rules went into effect</a> on June 1, 1835, two years before Victoria became queen. </p>
<h2>Families torn apart</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/">Children forced into the workhouse system</a> were either housed in separate buildings from their parents or sent miles away, to live in government-run <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/workhouse.shtml#District">district schools</a>. The “reformers” proudly trumpeted that children <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510022989380;view=1up;seq=4">could be fed less than adults when families were separated.</a> They also argued children would learn new and better values once isolated from their parents. </p>
<p>Many families were never reunited. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">Dickens was appalled</a>. “Oliver Twist” exposes, on every page, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html">the hypocrisy</a> of those who brutalize vulnerable children and claim to be virtuous in the process. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Dickens in an 1861 photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/New York Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an early scene, Oliver sobs when the Board of the Workhouse condemns him because he does not know how to pray. Oliver has never been taught to pray – has never been shown kindness, sympathy or compassion of any kind. </p>
<p>“What a noble illustration of the tender laws of this favored country,” Dickens <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SU0eBhqFpuAC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=%22What+a+noble+illustration+of+the+tender+laws+of+this+favored+country,%22&source=bl&ots=x2FyjAaMbV&sig=xSmT7aegoNk_BL6VK6eVppgeofU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZuMP1xuLbAhVB7IMKHfgFBrAQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22What%20a%20noble%20illustration%20of%20the%20tender%20laws%20of%20this%20favored%20country%2C%22&f=false">remarks bitterly</a>, as Oliver weeps himself into unconsciousness. “They let the paupers go to sleep!”</p>
<p>In later novels, Dickens continued to expose the hypocrisy of those in power. He particularly loathed all those <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S2_2UZdT3kwC&pg=PA264&lpg=PA264&dq=Mrs.+Pardiggle+christian&source=bl&ots=i6l1ktUnvN&sig=nVM4lHwaYRjw_QaQULXFnaIwm9w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianczvyOLbAhWL4IMKHaAMCLgQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=Mrs.%20Pardiggle%20christian&f=false">who used Christianity</a> as a <a href="http://www.literaturepage.com/read/dickens-bleak-house-123.html">“constable’s staff</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm">“Bleak House"’s</a> horrific <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305995?rskey=avT0HU&result=17">Mrs. Pardiggle</a> is, as Dickens put it, an "inexorable moral Policeman.” She shouts Christian teachings at the poor and suffering and fails in her most basic duties of care. She’s so busy spouting religious text, she does not notice when a baby dies in front of her. </p>
<p>Dickens was not the only writer to expose the horrors of the poor laws. The separation of <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/separate.html">children from their parents</a> was a flashpoint then, as now. </p>
<p>A famous 1843 cartoon in Punch, called <a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/houses/workhouses.htm">“The Milk of Poor-Law ‘Kindness,’”</a> was the Victorian equivalent of the recent photo of a sobbing two-year-old by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/06/18/i-wanted-to-stop-her-crying-the-image-of-a-migrant-child-that-broke-a-photographers-heart/?utm_term=.390a27301519*">her immigrant mother’s knees</a>. It showed a crone-like workhouse matron dragging a baby from its horrified mother, as a devil sneers and an angel hides its face in horror. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crone steals a child from her mother’s arms in an 1843 cartoon from Britain’s Punch Magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">public doman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marches and acts of political disobedience followed, including <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-workhouse/">riots and arson against</a> the new-built workhouses, with many Victorians uniting around the sanctity of the family.</p>
<p>The depiction of paupers as suffering people, not just leeches on the system, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html">helped shock the population</a> and precipitate social change. With deliberate use of sentiment and tear-jerking scenes of tragedy and loss, Charles Dickens gave a human face to those who were being treated with profound inhumanity. </p>
<p>I’ve taught the novels of Charles Dickens for more than 20 years. My students have tended to approach his era as a bizarre and strangely cruel period in human history. But Dickens’s world has come to life again. Our government has detained children as young as infants in “tender age” centers in south Texas. </p>
<p>It’s 2018, but it sure feels like 1834.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bilston 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>There are strong parallels between the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant families and the 19th century’s ‘New’ Poor Laws of England, whose cruelty was illuminated by writer Charles Dickens.Sarah Bilston, Associate Professor of English, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722472017-02-07T03:40:16Z2017-02-07T03:40:16ZHistory shows Trump will face legal challenges to detaining immigrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155762/original/image-20170206-27197-1skave0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protests after death of a 36-year-old woman in custody at immigration detention facility in Arizona.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump has followed through on his promise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-policies-will-pick-up-where-obamas-left-off-70187">ramp up</a> immigrant detention as part of immigration enforcement. His <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/executive-order-border-security-and-immigration-enforcement-improvements">executive order</a> on border security and immigration describes a “new normal” that will include the detention of immigrants while they await removal hearings and removal.</p>
<p>Trump’s order expressly announces the end of “catch and release” of undocumented immigrants after their apprehension, which allowed them to post a bond and be released from detention while their removal proceedings moved forward.</p>
<p>Rather than doing something new, President Trump is simply expanding the use of immigrant detention. Immigrant detention has long been a tool in the arsenal of the U.S. government in immigration enforcement. It goes as far back as the detention of Chinese immigrants on <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130380169">Angel Island in San Francisco Bay</a>, which began processing immigrants in the late 1800s. Detention of immigrants as a method of immigration enforcement saw an upswing at the tail end of the 20th century. In the 1980s, President Reagan’s administration used detention to discourage Central Americans, thousands of whom were fleeing civil wars, from migrating to the United States.</p>
<p>Other groups have also been detained on a broad scale. Several U.S. presidents responded to mass <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1146031.html">migrations</a> of Cubans in the 1980s, who came in the Mariel boatlift, and <a href="http://openjurist.org/919/f2d/549/orantes-hernandez-v-thornburgh">Haitians</a> fleeing political violence, with detention. </p>
<p>The Obama administration still allowed for noncitizens to bond out of custody while their removal proceedings were pending. But it also employed immigrant detention liberally – including the mass detention of Central American families. Obama set records for the number of removals during his first term.</p>
<p>The long history of detention has an equally long history of legal challenges. These are likely to continue in the Trump administration, which has made detention a cornerstone of its immigration enforcement plan.</p>
<h2>History of immigrant detention</h2>
<p>Courts have regularly been asked to intervene to curb the excesses of immigrant detention.</p>
<p>In 1989, during the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and later George H.W. Bush, a class action lawsuit was brought against the U.S. government by asylum applicants from El Salvador and Guatemala in <a href="http://openjurist.org/919/f2d/549/orantes-hernandez-v-thornburgh">Orantes-Hernandez v. Thornburgh</a>. In class actions, a group of similarly situated persons band together to challenge a policy or practice.</p>
<p>In this case, the asylum applicants challenged mass immigrant detention and various policies that violated their right to counsel. The court found that the U.S. government had been transferring Central American asylum seekers from major urban areas where they could readily secure counsel to remote locations where they could not. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a broad injunction barring the U.S. government from restricting access to counsel.</p>
<p>The Orantes-Hernandez decision was the culmination of a coordinated <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/conlr29&id=1657">litigation strategy</a> pursued by public interest lawyers to challenge the U.S. government’s treatment of Central American asylum seekers. Leading immigrant rights advocates, along with private law firms doing the legal work pro bono, planned the suits and divided up the work.</p>
<p>In a 1991 case, <a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/760/796/1421304/">American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh</a>, the executive branch settled a suit brought by Salvadorans and Guatemalans. The plaintiffs claimed the U.S. government was biased against their asylum claims because the U.S. was allied with the governments in power in those countries. The settlement required the U.S. government to hear again the asylum claims of more than 100,000 Central Americans. </p>
<p>This line of litigation ultimately contributed to legislative reform. </p>
<p>In 1990, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/358">Congress passed legislation</a> that created <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-immigration-policies-will-pick-up-where-obamas-left-off-70187">Temporary Protected Status</a> for noncitizens who fled the violent conditions in El Salvador, and additional countries designated by the president. Temporary Protected Status has permitted thousands of noncitizens to remain in the United States until the violence has calmed.</p>
<p>Despite these successful challenges, the use of detention in immigration enforcement increased with the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Gulag-Inside-Immigration-Prisons/dp/0520246691">immigration reforms of 1996</a>. Immigrant detention continues to be criticized – and litigated. For example, in response to an increase in women and children fleeing widespread violence in Central America, the Obama administration began detaining thousands of unaccompanied minors and entire families.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12780774456837741811&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarre=12780774456837741811&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">Flores v. Lynch</a> in 2016, the Ninth Circuit stated the detention of Central American minors was not required by law. However, the court did not protect parents from detention in the same way.</p>
<h2>Class action for reform</h2>
<p>U.S. immigration agencies have proved resistant to change. In an empirical study of immigration litigation in the 1980s, Professor Peter Schuck of Yale and attorney Theodore Wang <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1228986?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">concluded</a> that the success of immigrants in class actions suggest the U.S. government’s immigration agencies are uncompromising. They are enforcement-oriented to a fault, they said.</p>
<p>Recent years have continued to see challenges to immigration detention. In <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/jennings-v-rodriguez/">Jennings v. Rodriguez</a>, the Supreme Court currently has before it a class action raising the question of whether immigrants, like virtually all U.S. citizens placed in criminal detention, must be guaranteed a bond hearing and possible release from custody. This case challenges, on constitutional and statutory grounds, lengthy immigration detentions without any opportunity for release.</p>
<p>Detention appears as if will be an important part of Trump’s immigration enforcement plan. As historically has been the case, legal challenges will almost certainly follow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Johnson 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>A short history of legal challenges to immigrant detention practices in the U.S. may shed light on what’s to come for the new administration.Kevin Johnson, Dean and Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640222016-08-21T17:53:27Z2016-08-21T17:53:27ZMigration is the story of most of us because ‘we all move’: a visit to Lesbos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134757/original/image-20160819-30363-oye9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A child plays in the Kara Tepe camp close to Mytilene on Lesbos island</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This is a story about people and movement. We all move, physically and
emotionally. We are moved by others and circumstance. We move in thoughts, in countries, in loyalties, between forefathers and mothers from different places and cultures. We could all be placed in vulnerable positions that force us to move. In 2016 so far – as at August 18 – the UNHCR <a href="http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php">reported</a> that 161,599 people moved by sea to reach Europe. </p>
<p>Recently I travelled with my husband Paul to the Greek island of Lesbos. Paul is supporting an initiative with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Changemakerslab/">Changemakers Lab</a> to provide skills and opportunities to locals and refugees with events like the “Startup Weekend”. Paul has been supportive of such collaborative initiatives in South Africa and has been involved in this particular initiative for the past year. In the course of our stay we met people from both Lesbos and other parts of the world who have told us their stories.</p>
<p>It began with us walking off the plane and visiting a self-sustaining refugee camp
called <a href="http://www.lesvossolidarity.org">Pikpa</a>. The people of Pikpa manage themselves by cooking their own food, arranging initiatives and upcycling life vests into bags and pouches. Monies from the sale of items go towards sustainability of the camp. <a href="http://www.msf.gr/en">Medecins Sans Frontiers</a> has a strong presence because Pikpa is home to some of the most vulnerable refugees.</p>
<p>At the Mayor’s office we got a letter allowing us access to
the next camp – <a href="http://alkhair.org/kara-tepe-refugee-camp-lesbos-1/">Kara Tepe</a>. It is run by the local municipality and, like Pikpa, is also home to some of the most vulnerable refugees.</p>
<p>The director of the camp, a man called Stavros, had a unique approach to refugees. He referred to the camp as a hospitality centre while speaking about guests who stayed for an average of nine months before moving to another destination in Europe. Stavros emphasised normal everyday routine with calm, dignity and safety – things we all desire in our daily lives.</p>
<h2>The woman who stopped talking</h2>
<p>At Kara Tepe we met a young man (28 years old) who spoke English. He told us about escaping the <a href="http://www.yazda.org">Yazidi genocide</a> which occurred on August 3 2014 in northern Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (Isis) group <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20113&LangID=E">forcibly transferred</a> Yazidis into Syria after launching its attacks on Iraq’s Sinjar region. Roughly 40,000 Yazidis were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/who-yazidi-isis-iraq-religion-ethnicity-mountains">forced to flee</a> or face slaughter by an encircling group of Isis militants.</p>
<p>The militants killed at least 500 members of this Iraqi ethnic and religious minority, burying some alive and taking hundreds of women as slaves according to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/10/yazidis-islamic-state-massacre_n_5665655.html">news reports</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.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">Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodi Said/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The young man’s wife (23 years old) had stopped speaking. She had a vacant look about her. She had witnessed the genocide in her village.</p>
<p>A few days into our stay we returned to Kara Tepe because we promised the young Yazidi couple that we would visit them again. We met the young man at the entrance to the camp. He was alone. He said his wife had tried to commit suicide and was in hospital.</p>
<p>We subsequently found out that she had several failed attempts at suicide. We took him for a drink before visiting his wife in hospital. She was glad to see us even though she was dazed. She spoke, albeit a little. We spent some time with her and then dropped the husband back at Kara Tepe. Before we left we visited the couple again in hospital.</p>
<p>On our visits to Kara Tepe we met Geert van der Veen, a school teacher from Holland, volunteering with the Dutch NGO <a href="http://www.bootvluchteling.nl">Bootvluchteling</a>. He was spending three of his six weeks’ annual summer vacation driving refugees around the island. He was responsible for taking the young Yazidi man to hospital to visit his wife. </p>
<p>Van der Veen worked eight-hour shifts throughout the day with breaks for rest and sleep. He and others gave their time and energy to help out in small and big ways. We realised that going for one week was not sufficient time to volunteer at a camp. We needed to spend more time with people to develop trust.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A little girl stands next to a placard at the Moria refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, prior to the arrival of Pope Francis, April 16 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Filippo Monteforte/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a third refugee camp in Lesbos called <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/inside-the-moria-refugee-camp-on-greece-s-lesbos-island-1.3221630">Moria</a>. Paul and I spent an afternoon sitting outside Moria, a detention facility managed by the national government, operated by the military and secured with barbed wire. It is a hostile sight on the landscape and access is given only to a couple of organisations, <a href="http://www.rescue.org/country/greece">International Rescue Committee</a> and <a href="https://www.savethechildren.net/">Save the Children</a>. </p>
<h2>Psychological traumas</h2>
<p>People from Kara Tepe and Pikpa are usually transferred from Moria, presenting medical and psychological traumas, or both. People speak about Moria as “very bad”. What that means I can only imagine. </p>
<p>One such person was Lukman. We met him and his family at the canteen outside Moria. He had been staying in Moria for one and a half months and said he could not sleep well there. His wife Zoviat and his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Mydia came on the boat on Wednesday, 13 July 2016.</p>
<p>There were two boats that day. One capsized and a family drowned. Hundreds of people have died crossing that stretch of sea. Lukman’s mother and the couple’s then newborn baby were sent earlier to Lesbos to safety and were now in Germany for the past seven months.</p>
<p>Meeting Lukman, Zoviat and Mydia, I was struck by the precariousness of their lives. Lukman was relieved that his wife and child survived the boat ride from the Turkish coastal city of Izmir to Lesbos. It costs locals €10 for a day trip to Turkey yet refugees pay nothing less than €600 per person to make the treacherous journey to Lesbos. So many lives have become disposable with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/20/eu-refugee-deal-turkey-condemned-council-of-europe">EU restrictions</a>. </p>
<h2>Refugees are dignified people</h2>
<p>Molyvos, a picturesque town on the hill overlooking Turkey, was our home for a
few nights. We had dinner at Tropicana, a family-run restaurant. Taxia, the wife, waitresses in the restaurant. She speaks about how her family and many ethnic Greeks fled Turkey and sought refuge in Greece when Ataturk declared Turkey a nation state in 1921. </p>
<p>Taxia’s family remembers the distrust towards them and how three generations later they are fully assimilated into the island. Of course, assimilation is easier because they share a language and religion but migration is the story of most of us, says Taxia: “We all move”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Syrian refugee holds onto his children as he struggles to walk off a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yannis Behrakis/Reuters</span></span>
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<p>Since the <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/paradox-eu-turkey-refugee-deal">deal</a> the 28 EU heads of state forged with Turkey on March 18 2016 many refugees have been stuck in Greece and on Lesbos without knowing if and when they can find placement within Europe. Perceptions of hordes of refugees on the island have damaged tourism on the island. But what we saw showed that refugees were dignified people, not beggars. They were organised and registered at one of the camps.</p>
<p>Resentments have been brewing among the locals because their livelihoods have been affected. We hope that an initiative to bring tourists back to the island, creating opportunities for skills and collaboration between islanders and refugees can bridge the gaps that we have failed to bridge. Locals just want to earn an honest living.</p>
<p>At the end of our trip we’d had a memorable time, with a sense of wanting to return. We learnt that we all live with precarity and could become vulnerable at any given time. It is our collective responsibility to find a solution to end wars by ending the arms industry and, failing that, to find ways to help bring people to safety.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64022/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadira Omarjee 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>Perceptions of hordes of refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos have damaged tourism. But the refugees are dignified people, not beggars. An initiative is needed to bring tourists back to the island.Nadira Omarjee, Visiting scholar of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.