Telling Stories

Telling stories is important, but change takes time. For things to change, there must be enough people asking why bother, and deciding to act.

Europe rejects refugees

Flowing from Bulgaria to the Aegean Sea, the River Evros forms a natural border between Greece and Turkey. At night the shallow waters and islands provide a lifeline for the migrants and asylum seekers using the river as a passage into Europe. Many drown attempting to cross. Or they are deliberately pushed back by EU border patrol. A Syrian refugee tells his story.

In search of the European dream

Abdarrazaq’s family is bewildered. They cannot understand why he lives in a hostel or why he does not have a job. After all, he is in Europe. Back home in Somalia, he earned $500 a month as a teacher, a salary that supported his wife, three sisters and mother. For two years he saved to fund his migration to Europe.

Book review

Hinterland is the disturbing story of two Afghan children, who embark on a journey across continents when their family is destroyed by the conflict in Afghanistan. Aryan and Kabir seek sanctuary in Europe, but instead find themselves lost in a dangerous, adult underworld, where desperate migrants are fair game for criminals and brutal police officers with unchecked power.

Paradise Lost

Europe is El Dorado for clandestine migrants arriving from Africa. Many survive journeys spanning thousands of miles across the harshest terrain, sustained by the vision of a golden continent of freedom and work. But for those who step off the ferry in Sicily, just 145km from the continent they have left behind, how long does Europe, the gilded continent, retain its’ shine?

Sweet prison: migrants in Spanish limbo II

Mention CETI to a taxi driver anywhere in Ceuta and he will know what you mean. Everyone in Ceuta knows about the immigration removal centre perched upon a steep hill overlooking the sea. The conditions are humane, even inviting, compared to similar immigrant-holding centres elsewhere in Europe. This is why the migrants call it a ‘sweet prison’.

Sweet prison: migrants in Spanish limbo

Rocky is the epitome of the torment that afflicts irregular migrants across Europe. The perils of returning home for asylum seekers are clear, whether it is persecution, death or torture, and it is a sensible assumption that for ordinary migrants no such danger exists. Yet, for many who begin as labour migrants, the thought of return is equally incomprehensible.

Dying to get to Europe

The blackened, skeletal bodies of dead men scattered across the Sahara desert is a haunting image. Their empty eye sockets and stiff, scorched limbs belong to a horror film. One of the dead men is frozen in a prayer-like position, on his knees, torso horizontal, arms splayed in front of him, forehead touching the sand. An asylum seeker who escaped this fate, captured the desperate scene on his mobile phone.

Ordinary Europeans welcome migrants and asylum seekers

Many undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, having lost faith in the dreams of a better life in the West, often regain it through friendship with ordinary Europeans. There are hundreds of committed Europeans working to alleviate the problems faced by migrants, even when their own governments refuse to acknowledge the situation.

A humanitarian crisis in the forests of northern France

A better life? The European Union’s other problem France –  part III Many asylum seekers and migrants intent on getting to Britain set up camps close to the ferry ports and lorry depots along the […]

“Since I put my leg in Europe I suffer”

Everyone thinks Europe is like heaven,” says Sharaf. “Since I put my leg in Europe I suffer. Since I left my country two years and three months ago. I didn’t sleep on the bed. I don’t think that I am in Europe.”

A better life? The European Union’s other problem

Reading through my notes and transcribing the interviews from my trip earlier this year, I was struck again and again at the bleakness of life for many undocumented migrants in Europe. It pains me that […]