How Europe’s (anti-)migration policies are fuelling a humanitarian crisis (2021)

The International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) recently published a special issue of International Migration journal, based on contributions to their conference in The Hague (2018). On the 9th of September IHSA and KUNO organized a webinar in which key findings of a special issue of the International Migration Journal on 'Politics, humanitarianism and migration to Europe' were presented.

When some one million people crossed the Mediterranean in the course of 2015 to seek refuge, European countries called it a crisis. Yet the real crisis was created by European immigration and asylum policies and by the challenges they posed for aid providers. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the violence experienced by people seeking safety in countries such as Italy, Greece, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and the UK.

Policies such as strengthening border controls, the externalisation of borders, and a focus on smuggling and trafficking rather than on the causes of forced migration all result in humanitarian crisis. The new reality affects humanitarian organizations, including the criminalisation of assistance provision, as well as the rise in resistance and activism by newly created volunteer groups.

Speakers: prof. Thea Hilhorst, dr. Susanne Jaspars, Marte Welander, Francesca Pusterla, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, and Adil Izemrane.