Convened by: Franck Düvell

COMPAS Seminar Series, Thursdays, Hilary Term 2016

During the ‘Summer of Migration 2015’ over one million people, mostly refugees, arrived in the EU; around 3,700 died in search of protection. In Edirne (Turkey), Idomeni (Greece), Budapest (Hungary) and elsewhere, refugees demonstrated and demanded ‘Open the Way’. Sometimes, they overran border control posts, control operations became rescue operations and subsequently borders were opened and onward migration facilitated. Thousands of volunteers lined the routes to welcome the arrivals and provide humanitarian assistance. But the German mantra ‘we will manage’ successively turned into  ‘enough is enough’, and across Europe tensions reach new heights. The events have led to multiple crises: a migration and refugee crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of border controls and a crisis of the EU. This seminar series contributes to unravelling the migration and refugee crisis, looking at issues such as the dynamics of migration, the politics of number games, the ‘dirty deal’ of the EU with Turkey, and responses by civil society as well as the suffering of individuals.

The seminar series is related to the ESRC project Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis

Seminars