Migration

The Green Observatory provides a round-up of perspectives on a current political issue from the Green European Journal’s partners around Europe. This edition focuses its lens on the so-called ‘refugee crisis’: how is this crisis perceived and does the perception at all correlate to facts? Are the new EU proposals responding to the situation and are EU member states willing to shoulder each other?

We find ourselves living in a society where increasingly our actions and our right to freedom of cross-border movements – or lack thereof – are being constantly monitored, both physically and digitally. But as we enter the surveillance age, forms of digital civil disobedience are fighting to go beyond these new borders and to protect our scrutinised values and movements, and our right to privacy.

It would be an illusion to believe that irregular migration will come to an end as a result of the legally dubious deal agreed between EU leaders and Turkey on 18 March 2016. Instead, we should recognise that migration is a natural human phenomenon, which has to be managed as such, and reform the dysfunctional EU framework on asylum and migration.

A shadow looms over Europe. Everywhere, new borders are sprouting up overnight like mushrooms.

For Turkish citizens, entering and traveling within the EU can be a frustrating struggle, with many bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Although this state of affairs seems a great injustice, the prospect of easier access for Turks to countries within Schengen seems fraught with difficulties – both linked to Turkey’s turbulent domestic politics as well as the increasingly uncertain state of the EU’s internal borders.

When we imagine a “green utopia”, an ideal world to live in, one thing is certain – that such a place is free of oppressive and restricting borders.

The idea of Europe becomes much more than simply an idea when people, overcoming the uncertainty – if not outright hostility – of states, act according to borderless solidarity.

Confronted with the obscene images that have been reaching us ever since the influx of refugees entered new dimensions in the summer 2015, we may wonder: why is it that Germany behaves with much more dignity and efficiency than France, let alone the UK or Hungary?

Over the past year, Europe, besides the economic crisis, has had to face another big challenge: the largest refugee flow since the Second World War.

The political Left in Europe appears to have given up on trying to put forward a positive picture of migration.