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Issue 2 Editorial: Border Solidarity

Donya Alinejad and Maral Jefroudi

Rather than mere utopian naiveté, the idea of “open borders” is a guiding political vision. But its meaning doesn’t always translate easily into the here-and-now. This issue of Crisis Magazine gathers together a range of progressieve perspectives on EU border politics with the aim of shifting the discussion beyond simplistic interpretations of a right-closed/left-open binary.

How the arms industry drives Fortress Europe’s Expansion

Mark Akkerman

In recent years, rising calls for deterrence have intensified the physical violence migrants face at the EU border. The externalization of the border through deals made with sending and transit countries signals the expansion of this securitization process. Financial gains by international arms firms in this militarization trend form an obstacle for policy change. 

No more Morias?

Mariana Gkliati

The burning of Moria camp seemed like an exceptional tragedy. But this event and the EU response to it reflect a decades-long policy approach. As long as securitization remains the guiding principle of EU migration policy, the calls of Moria will remain unanswered.

What does the East-West divide tell us about Europe’s external borders?

Raluca Bejan

European Union expansion produces legal routes for Eastern European migrants to move westwards. But the discriminatory conditions they often face reflect unfair intra-EU agreements. Responses to migration from outside Europe must address the forms of structural precarity and inequality already produced within its borders.

From Afghanistan to Europe: migration’s misunderstood routes and reasons

Melissa Kerr Chiovenda and Andrea Chiovenda

While international audiences have grown weary of the conflict in Afghanistan, the violence continues. But a focus on gruesome, isolated attacks ignores the structural conditions that make life unlivable for many Afghanis. Current European border and asylum regimes lack the legal and policy frameworks for acknowledging these long-term, social conditions.

The marble life: a year of limbo on Lesvos

Nazanin Froghi

News coverage of the situation at the border often focuses on isolated events. But those who have made dangerous crossings and become long-time residents of camps have their own accounts to share. On Lesvos, this past year has been a particularly turbulent one.

Fund but disregard: the EU’s relationship to academic research on mobility

Barak Kalir and Céline Cantat

The European Union funds extensive academic research with the potential to inform humane and effective border policies. Yet evidence-based immigration policy is undermined by the EU’s increasingly repressive border regime. How do we make sense of this contradiction? And which transformations are needed to address it?

Bordered imagination

Shahram Khosravi

What is strange about the stranger? Do we really see her face or do we only see our own imagination? By using the metaphor of prosopagnosia (face-blindness), this essay interrogates the racialised gaze through a creative focus on seeing and unseeing.