From the UK to Italy to the U.S., the declarations by politicians that they only want to stop illegal immigration become meaningless if there are virtually no ways to request asylum before leaving home and arriving in a foreign country.
Category: Migrant Lives
Since 2015, Europe’s strategy to stop irregular migration has focused on arresting so-called smugglers. But those steering the vessels are usually desperate migrants themselves, forced to take the helm.
With the right support, Ukrainians are ready to return, even to new parts of the country where they’ve never lived.
With dimmed hopes of a transition from the economic crisis and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro, many Venezuelans increasingly see the United States, rather than Latin America, as the place to rebuild a life.
After a visit to a holding facility, a group of lawyers and human rights activists have charged the Italian government is mistreating nearly 100 survivors of the tragic shipwreck 10 days ago.
The death toll from a shipwrecked migrant boat off the coast of Italy has reached 63. Relatives of the victims and survivors, who have begun to arrive in the southern town, are all mostly immigrants themselves.
Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed’s xenophobic claims that a conspiracy aims to replace Tunisians with sub-Saharan migrants has unleashed racist violence in the country. It’s a sign of the growing authoritarianism of the popular but powerless president.
Keeping out the poor from one country to another, or even within a country, is not a new idea, though former U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have set off a new wave across the region, and the world.
Acclaimed Italian writer Roberto Saviano is in court this month facing defamation charges from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. With this essay, Saviano stands by his words, and his right to use them.
Vladimiro Zagrebelsky, an Italian jurist and former judge on the European Court of Human Rights, says Italy’s new government’s blocking rescued migrants from coming ashore is a likely violation of international law, and indication of what it thinks of basic human rights.
In Turkey, resentment against Syrian refugees is growing. And President Erdogan – once their patron – is now busy seeking good relations with the man the Syrians fled, the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In West and North Africa, survivors of migrants who’ve vanished have come together to support each other and pay tribute to their family members. But above all, they’re trying any means possible to find out the truth and get justice after years of silence.
As Italy prepares to vote, migration from Africa is once again a hot topic, even as the number of arrivals is dropping. A view from the tiny Italian island that has been at the center of the debate for more than a decade, where the specter of migrants is rolled out as prime election propaganda.
Denial and indifference drive the way ordinary Australians face the mistreatment of refugees.
Staying in a theocracy whose rulers subjugate women was not an option, but trying to get to destinations in Europe and beyond comes with unthinkable perils of its own.
Guatemala has become a transit country for migrants seeking to reach the United States, but it is also a hub for those seeking refuge. Hundreds of migrants remain trapped waiting to be considered as refugees. The chances of receiving a positive response are slim, especially for the LGBTQ community.
The European far-right’s sympathies for “white and Christian” Ukrainians shows its devotion to the idea of the “clash of civilizations.” But it fails to see the basic paradoxes of war, where you may be fighting those who most resemble you and be forced to welcome those who look different.
As people open their homes to Ukrainian refugees, some in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are criticizing the lack of a similar welcome for Syrians in 2015. Do we have a responsibility to offer the same level of help to all those in need — and are we even capable of that? The answer might just be found in philosophy.
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
The deaths of 27 migrants off the French coast of Calais is one more tragedy on a long list in the European Union. After the initial shock, however, we tend to forget, get used to it and in the end, become indifferent.
Migrant associations and activists are saying there are not enough politicians of migrant origin in the new German Bundestag. But are such politicians guaranteed to support policies that benefit migrants? There are prominent examples that suggest otherwise.
A German politician lashed out after Angela Merkel spoke on the phone with Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko. But like in other hot spots, avoiding the worst along the Belarus-Poland border means casting aside moral superiority and naiveté.
Revelations of slavery-like conditions for migrant workers in Malaysia manufacturing hospital supplies says much about how worker exploitation has extends across the supply chain through the pandemic.
Hundreds of migrants arrive in Germany every day from Poland, which makes the Belarus border a national issue for Germany. It’s long past time that Europe acknowledge that tough measures are needed — maybe even walls…
As the Taliban closed in on Afghanistan, the European Union co-signed a joint statement with dozens of nations agreeing that “the Afghan people deserve to live in safety, security and dignity” and that the international community was “ready to assist them”. As someone who has been researching the refugee crisis on Europe’s borders for years, I found the statement surprising. Before it was making bold statements about events in Kabul, the EU had spent years failing to help thousands of Afghans seeking help at its borders. Since 2015, more than 570,000 Afghan citizens have sought protection in the EU. Thousands […]
Over the past 30 years, more than 170,000 Chinese-born children have been raised by U.S. families. Most of the parents are white and many live in areas where Asians are almost nonexistent.
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Over the past decade, as Italy has become one of Europe’s prime destinations for immigrants, stereotypes spread about those arriving from foreign lands. It’s a story that has come full circle.
The pandemic has prompted many city workers to seek refuge back in the countryside roots. For the government, it’s an extra challenge, but also an opportunity for long-term rural development.
Lebanese have long emigrated to Europe and elsewhere. But not like during this crisis: on clandestine boats, in a perilous trip toward the island of Cyprus.
In mid-September, fires destroyed Greece’s largest migrant camp, the vastly overcrowded Moria facility on the island of Lesbos. The disaster left some 13,000 already desperate people with no shelter at all, and raises new questions about Europe’s collective responsibilities toward migrants five years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously opened her nation’s doors to fleeing […]
Testimony from Afghan and Somali migrants, as well as locals on Greek island of Lesbos, where Europe’s largest migrant camp has burned to the ground, leaving 13,000 migrants without shelter.
As borders closed and lockdowns were rolled out around the world, the steady flow of illegal immigration that has plagued southern Europe for years was also temporarily halted. But new arrivals are now accelerating again, and some of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic are now also forced to deal with a worsening refugee […]
Even as the total number of cases of COVID-19 decreased In Italy, an outbreak flared up in the southern province of Caserta among migrant agricultural laborers. Writing in the Italian daily La Stampa, Mattia Feltri recounts how, once again, the pandemic is bringing long-simmering tensions, economic inequity and social injustice to the surface. Almost all […]
Italy reached a preliminary agreement with other EU countries on rescuing migrants at sea. But Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has not shared the news at home, and has kept attacking his supposed partners, especially Germany.
Today, young women like Carola Rackete and Greta Thunberg have the power to conquer hearts and instill idealism into politics. But ultimately, their admirers have to act themselves if they want change.
Social media dialogue and reader comments on news stories suggest that the far-right’s xenophobic rhetoric resonates for immigrants.
By distinguishing between refugees and migrants, international law underestimates the plight of people displaced by poverty and climate change.
There are now 1.2 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. How they are treated may help determine a post-Maduro future.
From films to photography, artwork can help arouse the empathy we need to counter these dark days of border walls and White nationalist terrorism, not yet extinct, and art foments it.