a study of irregular migration through europe to britain
TRANSCRIPT
8/3/2019 A study of irregular migration through Europe to Britain
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Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship 2010
A better life?
A study of irregular migration
through Europe to Britain
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
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Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
6. FRANCE
3. GREECE
2. BACKGROUND
4. ITALY
7. CONCLUSION
5. SPAIN
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Why I chose to write about asylum and migration for my WinstonChurchill Travel Fellowship
Some context. Why write about immigration and why now
Greece is the main entry point for irregular migrants travelling to
Europe. What happens when they get there?
What happens to migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea once
they get to Italy?
Hundreds of migrants heading to Europe are trapped on Spain’s
tiny enclaves bordering north Africa. Why?
What happens to irregular migrants in France trying to smuggle
themselves int Britain?
A summary of my ndings and conclusions
A list of thanks and acknowledgements
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a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to sup-
port my research into these questions.
Doing my initial research for the project I
realized that indeed the European Union had a
role to play in helping Britain manage immigration.
In fact, for 20 years the European Union has been
moving (very slowly) towards a Common EuropeanAsylum System to better manage the continent’s
handling of refugees and irregular migrants.
One of the major developments of this was
the Dublin II regulations rst mooted at a meet-
ing of EU bureaucrats in Dublin in 1990, and later
revised in 2003. The idea was to create a pro-
cess to determine which European Union coun-
try was responsible for an asylum application
made in Europe. Under these rules the state of
entry takes responsibility for processing an ap-
plication. So when an asylum seeker enters theEU, his or her ngerprint is taken in the coun-
try of entry and stored in a database. If the asy-
lum seeker tries to restart an application in a
country other than the one he or she entered,
they are sent back to the country of entry.
The authors of Dublin felt that whichever
country someone sought asylum in would re-
ceive more or less the same treatment because
all EU countries could at least provide a fair and
humane asylum system aligned with the princi-
ples of the European Convention on Humanrights and the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The EU has since created many direc-
tives trying to harmonise standards of process-
ing asylum and immigration applications, creat-
ing best practice and providing protection for
those not protected by the refugee convention.
The documents setting out these various di-
rectives are certainly noble in aspiration. The
decision in the late 1990s, for example, to cre-
ate an area of “freedom, justice and security
in the European Union” was too include non-EU citizens, because to deny them freedom
would betray Europe’s “liberal tradition”.
And yet many European countries fall far
short of this tradition; Britain has opted out
of several asylum standard directives.
The latest phase of the EU’s ambition to
INTRODUCTION
At the start of this century Britain
was faced with an explosion in the
number of people migrating to its
shores. Most came to work or study,
while others ed conict or persecution.
Though the numbers have since eased,
the lasting effect has been a palpable sense of public unease with immigration. Politicians
have repackaged this hostility into a series of
policies, which have served only to hurt the
most vulnerable of the migrant groups: asy-
lum seekers and undocumented migrants.
This group is often overlooked in po-
litical debates about immigration, which tend
to focus on numbers and myths. The silence
means many live in abject poverty; are left to
languish for months and even years in im-
migration removal centres; are subject toeconomic exploitation, and are denied suf-
cient legal redress for their grievances.
What has struck me is the dispar-
ity between the discussion being had by politi-
cians and the media, and the miserable real-
ity of life for those increasingly marginalized
by what was once one of the most liberal
and welcoming societies in the world.
Even more puzzling is trying to recon-
cile the images of sub-Saharan Africans drown-
ing in the Mediterranean and Chinese mi-grants freezing to death in trucks entering
Britain, with the political rhetoric about bogus
asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
As a journalist I felt that the media
should play a more responsible role in its re-
porting of immigration. The right questions to
ask seem obvious to me but are never asked.
Why do people risk their lives to get to Brit-
ain? Who are they? Are there too many of
them and if so what can be done about it?
And, because Britain’s borders extend acrossthe European Union, is this a British phenomenon
or a European one? Why did so-called ‘illegal’ im-
migrants enter Britain without papers? How does
policy towards irregular migrants affect asylum
seekers who also travel without papers?
It was for this reason I applied for
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it needs to better understand why people trav-
el, develop ways to work with source coun-
tries and exercise fairer foreign policies.
And for ordinary British people, hearing
such stories, instead of the relentless scare-
mongering from the tabloids, might lead to a
better understanding, particularly in communi-ties where there is a real fear of immigration.
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
September 2011
INTRODUCTION
create a common system is scheduled for com-
pletion by 2014. The effect would be that which-
ever EU country an asylum seeker makes an
application to, they would receive a similar
standard of treatment. However, one MEP I in-
terviewed admitted that this was a long way off
and the deadline was unlikely to be met.With my Winston Churchill trav-
el fellowship, I decided to get away from
the bureaucracy of Europe and the super-
cial debate in the UK and speak to migrants
themselves to answer my questions.
In January and Ferbuary 2011 I spent
two months in France, Spain, Italy and
Greece. I interviewed undocumented mi-
grants, asylum seekers, NGOs, govern-
ment ofcials and border police.
I chose to visit Spain, Italy and Greece be-cause of their position as border countries to
the European Union and thus the most popu-
lar entry point for irregular migrants. I picked
France because it is here that many migrants
end their journey and try to enter the UK.
I decided to focus on asylum seekers and
migrants entering Europe irregularly, who are
the people dened in popular discussions as ‘il-
legal immigrant’. I focus on both asylum seekers
and migrants. While they leave their countries
for different reasons, in Britain, and across Eu-rope, they are treated similarly by authorities un-
til one is granted full refugee status. They also
complete the same migration routes and use
the same entry points into Europe. Throughout
my report where I refer to ‘migrants’, ‘irregular
migrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’, I am talking of
those entering the country without papers.
One of the aims of my project is to con-
tribute to political and cultural debate on immi-
gration in a way that the media has thus far failed
to do. To that end I have written my report upin a journalistic style as series of feature articles.
I hope my research will shed light on the mo-
tives and experiences of irregular migrants jour-
neying through Europe to get to the UK. This is
important for the UK in many ways. If the govern-
ment is serious about plans to control immigration,
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LET’S TALK ABOUT
IMMIGRATION
“The new army of global migrants is not the conscious, politicized international working class
that Marx imagined in the 1848 Communist manifesto. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which
‘globalization from above’, driven by powerful countries and transnational corporations, is now
being paralleled and to a degree subverted by ‘globalization from below’, driven by the enhanced
mobility of labour.”
Migration and its Enemies: Global Capital, Migrant Labour and the Nation-State Robin Cohen 2006
SHEER MOHAMED TANHA is ecstatic. “I
am in UK. I am in Manchester,” he says over
the phone in his perfect English, spoken
with a thick Persian accent. It is an aston-
ishing feat. To reach Britain, Sheer Mohamed has
deed the Taliban, mountains, rivers, Europe’s high
tech border patrol, Calais’s unrelenting migrant
police and the UK Borders Agency (UKBA). I rst
met him living in some woodlands just outside
Dunkirk where he waited with other asylum seek-
ers for the chance to stow away to Britain.But Sheer Mohamed won’t make it into
any record books; hundreds of thousands of mi-
grants and asylum seekers make similarly dan-
gerous journeys each year, all drawn to Europe,
and many to Britain. Mostly they are driven by
a burning desire and hope for work, freedom
and success. Borders, immigration caps and
points-based skills systems mean very little to
them.
Most have idealized Britain not
just as a land of opportunity, but as a place
where liberty, justice and decency prevail. As one
Eritrean asylum seeker sleeping rough in Calais
put it: “It is better for me to go to England, even
when they reject me, they treat me well.”
But back in the UK, the mood is very
much against this sort of hospitality. In a re-
cent Ipsos MORI poll 71% of Britons said thereare too many immigrants in the UK, 62% said
immigration had made it harder to get jobs
and 76% felt immigration had placed too much
pressure on public services. For many Brit-
ons immigration is a major concern even in-
uencing the way they vote in elections.
The dramatic increase in migration to Britain
BACKGROUND
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since the mid-nineties explains some of this
concern.
According statistics from a European
Commission report on migration to the UK,
net migration between 1997 and 2006 was
around 1.6 million, peaking in 2004 at 244,000
with the enlargement of the European Union.This gure does not include those seeking politi-
cal asylum.
The report also shows that asylum appli-
cations to the UK shot up from 46,015 applica-
tions in 1998, mainly from Serbia and Montene-
gro, Somalia and Sri Lanka, to 84,130 in 2002, with
nearly 15,000 of these from Iraq alone. Asylum ap-
plications have been steadily falling ever since; in
2010 there were just 22,085 applications. To put
these numbers in context, South Africa alone re-
ceived 222,000 asylum applications in 2009.But context, facts and gures do not fea-
ture in public discussions about immigration.
What drives the anti-immigrant sentiment in one
of the most charitable nations in the world?
Politicians play a role, who are in turn inu-
enced by partisan campaign groups and the press.
Opposition politicians use immigration as a tool
to whip up anti-government sen-
timent during elections. It is the
bread and butter for far right
parties like the British Nation-al Party, whose agship policy
is to stop all immigration.
Moderate parties use it to
illustrate how the government
of the day has failed to keep the
country safe and secure. Hence
the evocation of the bogus asy-
lum seeker and the illegal im-
migrant; both are criminals and
seek to invade the country.
However, the debate hasbecome more nuanced in recent
years and questions are being
asked about the cultural and socio-
economic effect of immigration on
white working class Britons.
There is a growing consensus
in centre-left politics that immigration
has played a role in pushing down wages
for the low skilled and imposed unwant-
ed cultural changes in communities.
Several senior labour politicians have
blamed the party’s defeat in the 2010 election on
their failure to grasp the importance these issues.In opposition, the party is working hard to
distance itself from its perceived image as ‘soft’
on immigration. An inuential thinker within the
party, Maurice Glasman, recently told the Daily Tel-
egraph: “Britain is not an outpost of the UN. We
have to put people in this country rst.”
I
ndeed Britain is not an outpost of the UN.
According to UKBA, Britain gave ref-
uge to just under 5,000 asylum seekers in
2009. This amounts to barely one percentof the 15 million refugees worldwide.
Though asylum seekers and migrants who
enter the country irregularly make up a tiny
proportion of migration to the UK, this is the
group that resonates most with the public.
Most often the public are fed
stories about asylum seekers who
have committed a heinous crime
but cannot be deported to a war-
zone or despotic regime, these
then come to symbolize theproblem with immigration.
But when they are left to
make up their own minds, most
Brits are less hostile to migrants.
The Institute for Public Policy
Research found that in areas with
high immigration people were less
likely to vote for the far right anti-
immigrant parties. And when an
irregular migrant made it through
to the nal stages of the populartalent show X-Factor, a national
media campaign was launched to
stop her being deported.
This illustrates the big-
gest problem with immigra-
tion in Britain: perception.
Whatdrives anti-
immigrant
sentiment
in one of
the most
charitable
nations inthe world?
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The issue of immigration and its effect on
British society has been chopped and changed
till its suits the agenda of those discussing it.
Rarely are facts and gures used in their prop-
er context; rarely are immigrants properly de-
ned, rarely do we ask pertinent questions.
In Britain the failure to ask the right questionshas created an information decit about the most
vulnerable groups and how they treated not just in
Britain, but as they make their journeys here.
It took nearly 10 years, for example, before
politicians agreed to end the detention of children
for immigration purposes.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister
and leader of the Liberal Democrats, called the
detention of children for immigration pruposes
“state sponsored cruelty” and promised to stop
it. And there is plenty of evidence to show thedamaging effects on the children involved.
Medical Justice, a charity of independent
doctors supporting people in immigration remov-
al centres, found that children held in these cen-
tres experienced serious psychological harm. The
charity assessed 141 cases between 2004 and 2010;
the children involved spent an average 26 days in
detention. Symptoms included food refusal, in-
creased anxiety, self-harm, bed-wetting and per-
sistent crying. Three girls attempted suicide.
Another issue rarely discussed is the in-creasingly long periods adults are being kept in
immigration removal centres. As of June 2011,
2,685 were held in immigration removal cen-
tres across the UK according to Home Ofce
statistics; it is UK Border Agency (UKBA) pol-
icy to hold people for the shortest time possi-
ble to facilitate removal. But there are a num-
ber of people who cannot be removed. Stateless
people, for example, refused entry to their
countries of origin. Many languish in detention,
which costs the government around £40,000 ayear, according to the independent monitoring
board at Harmondsworth removal centre.
As of June 2011, 143 people had
been in detention for one to two years,
and 74 had been held for two years or
more, according to Home Ofce statistics.
“A big gap in the whole of the European
system,” says Jean Lambert, the Green Mem-
ber of the European Parliament for London,
“is what do we do with people who don’t have
refugee status whose claims don’t meet the
standards either for that or humanitarian pro-
tection, but who cannot be returned becausethe country they should be going back to
wont recognise them. What do you do you?”
JOHN, (not his real name) an African man
in his late twenties, has been in immigra-
tion detention for nearly two years.
In 2010, the UK Border Agency made a
cursory attempt to deport him. The authori-
ties in his home country refused to accept him
and so he remains, locked in limbo. Prior to hisincarceration, John worked illegally, without pa-
pers, in a food-packing factory. He worked hard
and was promoted to quality control.
But with promotion came the stress and
misery of living a life of deception that became
too much. In the end, he tried to leave Brit-
ain with a false passport, seeking a fresh start
elsewhere. He was caught, imprisoned for 12
months and then sent to an immigration removal
centre where he has remained ever since.
“I’m coping by the grace of God, oth-erwise I would have gone mental by now. And
two people have died in space of one month,
because they could not cope,” he says.
Suicides in removal centres and hunger
strikes do not make the front pages, but the
death of Jimmy Mubenga did. A father of ve liv-
ing in Britain since 1994, Jimmy died while being
deported to Angola in 2010. He was accompanied
on a ight from Heathrow by two private securi-
ty guards. According to the Guardian newspaper
Jimmy was forcibly restrained by three securityguards and was shouting that he could not breathe
before collapsing and losing consciousness.
For years charities supporting immigra-
tion detainees have accused the private securi-
ty rms employed by UKBA of using excessive
force when deporting people from the country.
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With Jimmy’s a death came an oppor-
tunity, the Home Ofce is now conduct-
ing and inquiry into restraint measures used
during deportations and removals.
Another issue is access to legal advice for
asylum seekers seeking citizenship. The British
government’s austerity plans includes large cutsto legal aid, which will make it harder for asy-
lum seekers to get proper representation.
On top of that in the last year, the two ma-
jor charities providing free legal advice for refu-
gees and immigrants have led for administration
leaving tens of thousands without representation.
Recently the Law Society, a body represent-
ing solicitors in England and Wales, wrote to UN-
HCR complaining about the treatment received
by asylum seekers and their representatives at
the UK’s Asylum Screening Unit in South London.In a letter published in the Guardian, the Society
said: ”In recent months [we have] received re-
ports of asylum seekers who are nding it increas-
ingly difcult, if not impossible, to register their
claim for asylum, or who experience what ap-
pear to be quite unnecessary difculties ...”
One of the biggest concerns is the fast track
system introduced by the previous government to
deal with the massive asylum backlog they inher-
ited and the inux of cases earlier in the decade.
Fast track means that asylum seekers with sim-ple cases are detained from start to nish of the
application process to make it easier to deport
them soon after a decision if necessary.
According to Detention Action, a Lon-
don-based NGO, the government’s fast
track system is in need of reform. In a re-
cent report on the issue, the group says:
“The UK is one of the few coun-
tries in the world which detains
people from the moment they claim
asylum to the minute they are re-
moved from the country. UK gov-
ernment policy now states that from
arrival at a detention centre the
asylum process should take 22 days.
“In contrast, the evidence that
Detention Action gathered
from detainees shows over half of
the people they interviewed were
detained, mostly without access to
legal advice, for two weeks, and onequarter were detained for 3 weeks
before the asylum process had even
started..”Most asylum seekers struggle to navigate
these hurdles. Osman Rasul, an Iraqi Kurd, cap-
tured the British media’s attention by throwing
himself off a tower block in Nottingham last year.
He had lost legal aid to continue his asylum ap-
peal, still unresolved since his arrival in 2001.
There have been three suicides at immigration re-
moval centres across the UK this summer.
What happens once they leave the sys-
tem? Many rejected asylum seekers or immi-
grants without papers live in destitution or
work for rogue businesses for little money.
In February 2011 Oxfam reported that
large numbers of refused asylum seekers were
living in extreme poverty. It is against the law for
them to work so many are exploited by employ-
ers, sometimes receiving as little as £1 an hour.
Oxfam blames the government’s asylum poli-
cy for their destitution and exploitation.
Only during the asylum process does the
British government provide most asylum seek-
ers with accommodation and food vouchers
worth around £35 a week. But it is also ille-
gal for them to work during this time, increas-
ing the chances of them living in poverty.
SHEER Mohamed Tanha is now being held at
an immigration removal centre. The plucki-
ness that set him apart from his friends in a
muddy eld outside Dunkirk is wavering and
he sounds tired. He could soon be a plane back to
the war torn country he wanted to escape.
If we look back on his journey through
Europe and nally to Britain, has he been
treated fairly? And should Britain’s response
to the plight others like Sheer be different?
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WE AREHERE
AND
WE AREHUMAN
MOHAMMED SULTAN arrives inGreece early one cold January
morning. His hazel eyes are sad and
downcast, his feet and trousers cov-
ered in mud and he can barely stand upright.
In faltering English, he asks softly, “If I go to
the police station, will they deport me?”
The 38-year-old left his wife and children
in Palestine, and paid nearly $2,000 to get to Eu-
rope. The plan now is to nd work, start a new
life, so they can eventually join him. It sounds
simple, but on a chilly morning in a sleepy vil-lage in northern Greece crawling with border
police and the air heavy with Greece’s econom-
ic woes, it seems impossible. How much fur-
ther will this weary man’s hope take him?
Mohammed and his friend Ahmed crossed
the River Evros, which divides Greece and Turkey,
the day before in a tiny inatable boat with eight
Greece is like a big concentration
camp for irregular migrants and asylum seekers, according to one
politician I interviewed in Athens.
It is such a terrible comparison,
could there really be any truth in it?
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other people. Having dodged Frontex, the Eu-
ropean border police, the two men walked for
miles through the night, across the sprawling
farms that back the river, following the railway
line till they came to the village of Soui.
They are not alone. Straggles of people
shufe through Soui’s deserted streets, hun-
gry eyes downcast, hugging themselves against
the winter chill, searching for Athens. Their
muddy feet give them away. Locals say many
migrants pass through their villages usually
very early in the morning or very late at night.
“There are lots of immigrants passing through,
but they create no problems for us,” says local
butcher Raphael. He is more concerned about
the economy. “There are no jobs. Every day
shops get closed. People have no money.”
Yet a few streets away Ersham is blissfully
unaware of this.unaware of this. “We want to
work, we want freedom, we want a nice life.”
That is why he left Layounne, another deserted
village, in Morocco. “We are poor people,” he
says when asked why he left home. The 20-year-
old is euphoric; he hasn’t slept for two days,
his feet are caked in mud but he cannot stop smil-
ing. His two friends are more cautious, they look
older, and less certain that the most difcult part
of their journey is over. The three are trying to
use water collected in a small puddle to clean
their shoes and trousers. A baker opens up his
shop nearby and looks unsurprised at the scene.
Speaking in French, Ersham says they must clean
their shoes to prevent the police from catching
them and sending them back to Morocco.
MOST European countries think there
are too many migrants knocking at
the door, but Greece has the stats
to back up its complaints. Between
75-90% of migrants entering the European Un-
ion in 2009 came through Greece. According to
Frontex, the EU’s border patrol, this is up from
50% the year before. Greece’s citizen protection
ministry reported that 95,000 entered the coun-
try from January to September last year.
The Greek government’s response has been
to focus on its 206km border with Turkey, which
includes the River Evros and a 12.5km strip of
“ We want to work,
we want freedom,
we want a nice life.”
Ersham, 20
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land, where 47,000 migrants entered in 2010.
George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minis-
ter, has mooted the idea of a fence on the
land border to stop people getting in. The
UNHCR and other NGOs have condemned
the idea, fearing it would incur huge human
costs and hurt genuine asylum seekers.But the human cost of crossing the bor-
der between Greece and Turkey is already high;
45 people died trying to cross in 2010. Often
smugglers crowd inatable boats with people
and send them across the River Evros. They
aren’t given life jackets and many drown if the
imsy boat bursts. Others die from the cold and
sheer exhaustion from their journey. In the rst
two weeks of this year alone the frozen bod-
ies of four young African men were found.
Georgios Salamagkas, a formidable man witha heavy moustache and a penchant for cigarettes,
heads up the police directory of Orestiada, a city
in Northern Greece just a few kilometres from the
border. His ofcers have felt the pressure as the
number of migrants entering this tiny area explod-
ed from 3,500 in 2009 to 36,000 last year.
The role of the Greek police is to con-
trol immigration but often they are forced to
rescue desperate migrants trying to cross the
border. Salamagkas remembers last summer
when he sent rescue teams to 42 migrants hud-dled on a tiny island on the River Evros, aban-
doned by people smugglers. As they waited the
water rose around them, some tried to climb
trees for safety. Others had cell phones and
called relatives, who then called the police. Re-
ceiving those calls was terrifying, he says.
Salamagkas has pictures of frozen bodies
being shed out of the river. “They drown in the
river to cross the border to reach a better life. You
feel sad about the drowned people but you also feel
anger for the trafckers who do not take the meas-ures to keep human life safe. If they put them in life
jackets they would be safe, it costs just €3.”
Partly to blame for the problems in Greece
is the government’s failure to cope with the in-
ux of asylum seekers and migrants over the past
decade. But also to blame is the sudden change in
90% of irregular
migrants and
asylum seekers enter the European Union
through Greece
migration routes, a result of Italy and Spain making
deals with countries in North Africa to stop mi-
grants reaching their shores. This has meant mi-
grants from sub-Saharan Africa, north Africa are
joining those from the Middle East and Asia, and
choosing to enter Europe through Greece.
Reluctantly the European Union (EU) hastaken some responsibility for Greece’s porous
borders. In October last year Frontex, an inde-
pendent body responsible for managing the EU’s
borders, sent 175 ofcers from all over Europe
to “increase the control and surveillance lev-
els at Greece’s external border with Turkey”.
What does this mean on the ground?
FRONTEX patrols in Greece are stationed
along the border with Turkey, while ofc-
ers patrol the border villages waiting forclandestine migrants. One Greek police
ofcer is relieved Frontex have been sent to
help. They have made her job considerably less
hazardous. “Imagine on this road of 12km, 400
people trying to cross the border. Imagine it
was only two or three patrols [each patrol has
eight people] to guard the border line,” she says.
“Imagine the job they have to do inside of the
immigration station. Fingerprints, pictures, nd
the countries … it was a little bit difcult.”
The Frontex operation is slick; policemenin military observation towers monitor the area
with thermal vision cameras. If they see any mi-
grants, they radio ofcers on the ground. They are
reluctant to talk on the record about their work,
and say very little about the politics of their situ-
ation. How, for example, can distinguish between
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the asylum seekers and ‘unwanted’ migrants?
One Frontex ofcer explains that if any
migrants are spotted, they are “prevented”
from crossing. How? “Just by being there,” he
replies. So the EU’s border security is there to
frighten away people trying to enter Europe il-
legally. But what if they aren’t afraid? The ofc-er shrugs. He adds: “They stay and they try to
convince us to let them come here to Greece.
It is not our job to let them come through. Our
job is to prevent them from coming here.
“If they touch Greek soil and as a result Eu-
ropean territory, then the only thing we can do is
to arrest them. The orders are specic, there is
no violence. And they usually don’t run. As long as
they are coming to Greece, they don’t want any-
thing more, they just stand there and you tell them
follow us and they follow. It is very simple.”
THE European Union is rooted in a
commitment to liberty and justice,
every EU directive relating to immi-
gration and asylum reminds members
states of their shared commitment to the 1951
Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol. The
following excerpt is from a European Coun-
cil report on meetings held at Tampere in 1999,
where ofcials rst agreed on the need for a
unied approach to asylum and immigration.
“Our job is
to prevent them
from coming
here.”
Frontex patrol ofcer
in Greece
how the migrants are treated
if the tussle at the border ends
in their favour, and they man-
age to set foot on Greek soil,
they are bundled into a Fron-
tex four by four and dropped
off at the nearest town.
As the sun rises over one
such town, Nea Vyssa, several
Frontex ofcers and Greek
police, wait, drinking Greek Nescafe and watching for
muddy-footed migrants.
Also up early is Mr Four-
glias, who has run Nea Vyssa’s
bakery for 35 years. He has
plenty of stories about the
Discussing freedom of move-
ment it said:
“This freedom should
not, however, be
regarded as the exclusive
preserve of the Union’s
own citizens. Its very ex-
istence acts as a draw to
many others world-widewho cannot enjoy the
freedom Union citizens
take for granted.
“It would be in contradic-
tion with Europe’s tradi-
tions to deny such freedom
to those whose circumstances
lead them justiably to seek ac-
cess to our territory.”
Increasingly the EU’s approach to irregu-
lar non-EU migration betrays these principles.
Lumping together immigration and border secu-
rity in practise means that keeping Europe safe is
equated with stopping migrants getting in.
This in turn has led to the criminalisa-
tion of migrants. An asylum seeker, for ex-
ample, becomes a criminal the moment
they enter Europe without papers.
In the words of Andrew Geddes, a migrationexpert and professor of politics at Shefeld Uni-
versity: “There may well be other consequences
of the focus on reinforcing territorial borders, as
efforts to tighten external frontier controls may
make it increasingly difcult for asylum seekers to
enter the territory of EU member states.
“This is in turn risks creating the previously
unknown category of the ‘illegal asylum seeker,
because the only routes of entry will be those
rendered ‘illegal’ by member state policies.”
In Greece this criminalisation dictates
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bedraggled migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and sometimes Somalia, that turn up intermittent-
ly in the village square, in a neighbour’s garden or
hidden in abandoned buildings. “They come here
wet and ready to die. They come because they
think will nd something better,” he says.
A few hours later, a windowless vanparks up next to the Frontex coach with the
rst migrant of the day. The driver releases a
bewildered young man, who says he is from
Palestine. His ngers are pink from the bit-
ing chill of northern Greece’s winter. Under-
neath his jumper, his chest is bare and his trou-
sers are held together by a piece of rope.
After being searched, he is sent on the
coach. A few times a day, depending on the
number of people to make it across the bor-
der, the Frontex coach delivers them either toan immigration reception centre in Filakio.
Greece’s reception centres can detain mi-
grants and asylum seekers for up to six months
when they rst arrive in the country. There are cen-
tres all over the country, but people who cross at
the border are usually sent to Filakio or a police cell
in one of the small villages along the border.
HALF a mile down the road from a police
cell holding migrants in the village of
Tychero three brothers sit huddled un-der an old bus shelter. The shelter offers
little relief from the icy cold, but two of the brothers
manage to smile, pleased at their freedom.
Rubbing his pink ngers together and shiver-
ing in his thin trousers and jumper, the eldest broth-
er Wahwdmure explains that they come from a
poor family in a small village in Pakistan. They left
home to nd work in Europe and arrived in Greece
three days before, after a long, difcult journey
through Afghanistan, Iran and eventually Turkey.
After crossing the River Evros they walkedfor hours until they were arrested and taken to
Tychero police station. “Tomorrow we will go to
Athens, inshallah,” says 23-year-old Wahwdmure,
beaming. His youngest brother Shafqatrehman, is
stony faced, his eyes red, tired and full of suspicion.
They are reluctant to reveal their nal
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Using medical data collected while work-
ing in several centres in northern Greece (in-
cluding Tychero), MSF Greece found that more
than 60% of diseases they diagnosed were as
a result of centre conditions such as over-crowding, poor hygiene, water and sanita-
tion problems, and lack of ventilation.
Ioanna’s boss, Reveka Papadopoulou went
so far as to call it a “medieval hellhole”.
“Men, women, babies, families [and] pregnant
women are detained under miserable conditions
that have no precedent in ‘civilized’ Europe,” she
wrote in an open letter to the prime minister.
“Médecins Sans Frontières meet these peo-
ple in the countries of their origin and crossing
-Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Morocco...We know rst-hand the entire ‘desperate’ journey
they make to escape the brutality and misery and
it is with unspeakable grief that now we see our-
selves forced to help them in our own country.”
destination, but their perfect English and lack
of Greek suggest they have not arrived.
Approaching the police station where
the three brothers were held, Wahwdmure’s
stoicism seems incredible. The stench of urine
hovers before you even enter the building. A
menacing, armed security ofcer guards the
cells, adamant that Greece’s reception cen-
tres are banned from the public, an order thathas come straight from the government.
Outside, however, at the top of the build-
ing, a strip of thick rusted bars reveals the young
faces of the inmates. They call out excitedly at the
sight of possible visitors. “Take the photos,” they
yell. The guard storms out ending all communica-
tion; a string of insults in broken Greek ring out
from behind the bars: “Malakas, malakas!”
Last year conditions in receptions centres
deteriorated so badly that the Greek govern-
ment allowed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)to intervene providing much-needed health and
hygiene care for people detained. MSF’s doctors
were aghast at what they found. “No human being
should be subjected to such treatment,” says Io-
anna Pertsinidou, MSF’s emergency coordinator,
who worked in Evros, for several months.
“Every day we are seeing people who are
obliged to stay for weeks or even for months
in extremely overcrowded and squalid cells,
without the right to go out in the yard … while
the heating often does not work, leaving mi-grants freezing in sub-zero temperatures. In
one of the detention centres, the toilet often
does not work and excrements ood sections
of the cell where migrants live and sleep.”
At Tychero police station more
than 100 men, women and children were
held in cells designed for 35 prisoners.
More than 100 men,
women and children
were held in cells
designed for 35prisoners
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“It makes me sad. The rst
day is always sad, but the second
day is better because they set-
tle in. They have nobody to help
them. If sometimes a mother
needs milk for her baby, we give
them money.
I don’t know why these people
come to Greece. Where will
they live and sleep? How can they
go to Athens? There is always
someone in Athens telling them
to come. There is no work for all
these people.”
Reception centre guard, Greece
WHEN released from the recep-
tion centres migrants are given
a piece of paper in either Greek
or English which says they must
leave the country within one month. The ones
who have no money are released onto the
streets, where they rely on the kindness of vil-lagers for food and directions to the nearest
city bus station in Alexandropolis. At the Filak-
io reception centre, the inmates with money
can buy a bus ticket for €65 to Athens.
On the afternoon of a big release from Filak-
io, around 50 migrants from the Congo, Afghani-
stan, Senegal and Iraq desperately try to squeeze
themselves on a coach bound for Athens.
Away from the connes of the reception
centre the hope that bought them to Europe re-
turns. Everyone is happy and they are expecting
better luck in Athens. Hadim, 30, from Senegal,
is able to laugh as he remembers the horror of
crossing Evros on an inatable boat with 20 other
people. “Man, if you laugh, the boat will fall. Don’t
laugh, don’t laugh,” he says. Hadim paid a smuggler
in Istanbul $100 to help him get to Greece.
Uhmert, above, an 18-year-old Af-ghan, is less jubilant; he found the journey dif-
cult and at times regretted leaving his fam-
ily. Why did he leave? “You know why our
country is not good for living,” he replies.
He paid out a total of $6,000 to various
smugglers as he made his way across the Middle
East to Europe. His young face looks suddenly
tired when another Afghan says he paid $2,000.
The smugglers take what they can get. Hadim
simply said he had no money, so the smuggler in
Turkey was happy with his $100, while Uhmertpaid $1,500 at this stage of his journey.
This is not the end of Uhmert’s difcul-
ties. He and the others will join the tens of
thousands of migrants already in Athens with-
out papers. He might escape to another Eu-
ropean country, but a wave of anti-immigrant
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In effect Greece receives around 80,000
irregular migrants a year, processes very few
of them and prevents them from leaving.
More than 250,000 “illegal” asylum
seekers and migrants live in and around Ath-
ens, according to the Red Cross. Many sleep
in the city’s grand squares and picturesque
parks, others seek shelter in abandoned build-
ings. The lucky ones pay to rent rooms.
Conditions vary, for example, in one placea group of 70 people share around 80sqm. They
pay daily (€3), weekly (€10) or monthly (€70).
Others talk of 20-30 people sharing one or two
rooms.The ats are usually in the most run down
parts of Athens, hidden away from the glitz of
shops and café bars of the city’s central district.
C hristos Neradzakis’s detached house
backs a series of undulating elds lead -
ing to the River Evros. His daughter Chris-
tine lives close by in a two-storey house heconverted for her. Over the years both have
witnessed hundreds of migrants making the
journey from Turkey. Most of the migrants
want to go to police because who they ex-
pect to get their papers and enter paradise,
Christos says. Like many villagers from local
Greek border towns, illegal immigration is
huge part of their lives. They often feed and
clothe the more desperate migrants.
feeling across the continent means it is un-
likely he will be able to settle unless he is
one of the few given refugee status.
While economic migrants form part of
irregular immigration to Greece, the major-
ity of immigrants come from Afghanistan, Pal-
estine, Somalia, Iran and Iraq. People fromthese places have a strong claim to asylum.
Yet the number of asylum seekers recognised
as refugees in Greece is less than 1%, the low-
est in the European Union. The inference is
that there are many genuine asylum seekers
who the Greek system is not recognising.
Compounding this problem is the Euro-
pean Union’s Dublin II regulation. Under the
Dublin system, asylum seekers can make only
one asylum claim and that must be in the rst
EU country they enter. On applying for asylumtheir nger prints are taken and stored an EU
wide database. If an asylum seeker has had his
ngerprints taken in Greece, but leaves for Brit-
ain and tries to register there, he will automati-
cally be deported back to Greece where he will
have less chance of being granted asylum.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact
that more migrants are entering through Greece.
Up until a year or so ago, border countries such
as Spain and Italy dealt with most asylum applica-
tions from people who entered Europe ‘illegally’.But since Spain and Italy made special agree-
ments with North African countries, who prom-
ised to guard Europe’s borders from Africa, it is
almost impossible for migrants to enter Europe
across the Mediterranean. Instead they travel via
Turkey and enter Europe through Greece and
their chances of asylum are diminished.
AFTER being released from recep-
tion centres, migrants have one
month to leave the country. Un-less they know someone in Greece
already, it is nearly impossible for them to
access a lawyer to help appeal the permit
and make an application for asylum.
If they do nd out how to make an applica-
tion, the place to do it is a centre on an industrial
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In one such area, 24 people from Iran and Af-
ghanistan share a few unfurnished rooms. The din-
gy at is on the third oor of a grey block of ats on
a faded street near Victoria Square, a tense ghet-
to shared by immigrants and poor Greeks.
There are no beds or even mattresses; they
all sleep on a tatty rug covering a wooden oor.Once a week they can use the shower and there is
a kitchen, though they have very little to eat. Two
young women sit crossed-legged on rug, adjusting
their headscarves shyly, they tell their story.
Like many Afghans in Greece, they have
tried to start afresh in countries closer to home.
Both women and their families lived in Iran for
years before trying their luck in Europe. They
recount the familiar tale of discrimination and
poverty for Afghanis in Iran. Esmarael, 25, and
her husband sold everything they owned and leftthe country with their three children. The tough-
est part of her journey was the seven-hour walk
through mountains in Iran and to the border with
Turkey. It took 15 days to get to Greece.
Having been in Greece for ve months Es-
marael feels trapped and is desperate to leave.
She and her husband can’t nd work, they have
no social assistance from the Greek government
and their applications have joined a queue of
thousands, some who have been waiting years
for a decision. Until a decision has been madeon their application, they cannot leave the coun-
try legally because they have no papers. They
paid their life savings to people smugglers and
have no money left. It is better to die there than
come here, she tells people back home.
Farida, the older of the two women, says
her family never intended to stay in Greece.
The smugglers put them on a boat from Tur-
key, which was supposed to take them to Italy.
After 16 hours oating aimlessly in the Aegean
Sea, the boat began to sink and they were res-cued by Greek coasts guards and taken to one
of the Aegean Islands. Four people drowned.
Farida’s voice cracks, and she begins to cry
and words tumble from her mouth. She is the
picture of despair. She gestures towards her
The
toughest part of
Esmarael’s journey
was the seven hourwalk through
mountains in Iran9-year-old son, a silent sweet-faced boy with
dark circles under wide eyes. He is ill, but eve-
ry day he must go out and sell cigarette light-
ers. “That is the best he can do now.”
“We don’t have any more hope forour lives. The best hope is for our
children, even though they don’t have
any hope because they are so depressed
living here.”
Farida, Iranian refugee living in Athens
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Farida’s story is one of nearly 70,000who are waiting for the Greek government
to make a decision on their case. Some get
so desperate that try to leave the coun-
try with whatever papers they have or with
fake ID. Most fail and are sent back.
O
NE breezy evening, in one of
Greece’s open squares, a crowd
of Afghani men and boys gath-
er talking animatedly.
News has just come in that 22 – that’sthe ofcial number but sources here say it is
closer to 60 – Afghans went missing after their
boat (carrying more than 200 people) hit dif-
cult conditions sailing from Corfu to Italy.
Hamid, an Afghani who has a family friend
on the boat, is depressed and angry. “I don’t
know what to do. We came together here [from
Afghanistan]. His family said take care of my son.
He was a young boy aged 18 years,” he says.
“There are many problems, security, war… lots
of problems [in Afghanistan]. Because of that Icame here to this horrible country. I wanted to
stay in Iran. [But they] never accept us.
“Then I came to this stupid country.
There is many problems here especially for
families.” Hamid has been living in Greece for
three months with his wife and two-year-old child.
THE Greek government adopted a “stu-pid mentality” where they didn’t want
to be seen as a country sympathetic
to refugees, argues Spyros Rizakos,
who runs an NGO in Athens. At the same time
they did not want be seen to be breaking inter-
national and European covenants protecting the
rights of refugees. So they only processed cases
from countries they could easily reject.
The situation may seem dire, but there is
hope. Earlier this year the European Court of
Human Rights’ ordered Belgium to pay a ne forreturning an Afghan asylum seeker to Greece.
This follows moves by several European countries
including the UK, Sweden and Ireland to stop
returning asylum seekers to the country.
Meanwhile, Greece’s socialist government
has drawn up a new asylum law, taking asylum
and immigration out of police control and setting
up a new asylum ofce. There will be a commit-
tee specially trained to screen asylum applicants
and the UNHCR and other NGOs will be per-
mitted to sit in on asylum interviews. The lawabolishing right of appeal on asylum claims has
been scrapped. And there will be a 3-6 month
time limit on rst instance decisions.
Having worked in asylum and refu-
gee issues for a decade and struggled to
keep his organisation aoat, Spyros is cynical.
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Working with a small team from his small,
sparse ofce downtown Athens, he regular-
ly receives calls from the airport to help mi-
grants returned to Greece under the Dublin
II regulations. Their most recent case was a
torture victim returned from Hungary.
Spyros thinks the new law is ambitious and
expensive, which means it could take years to put
in place. “Under the present situation and from
our experience we doubt if these plans will be re-
alised. We are very worried and skeptical.“We need practical solutions that can be
immediately applied and then we can see other
more ambitious plans. But what we have is ac-
cess blocked, the system not working, reception
conditions very bad. [The government] should
nd ways to address this situation immedi-
ately, to address this humanitarian crisis.”
But the asylum crisis in Greece is not a
national issue, it is European. If the EU wanted
to force Greece to change things, they could,
but they are more interested in keeping peo-ple out, thinks Spyros. He points out that the
EU very quickly managed to force the govern-
ment to implement a tough, unpopular aus-
terity budget at a time of high unemployment,
if they can do that, “How come they can-
not do the same for the asylum system?”
“The EU managed to force the government
to implement a tough, unpopular austerity
budget at a time of high unemployment, if they can do that, how come they cannot do the same
for the asylum system?”
Spyros Rizakos, lawyer in Athens working with asylum seekers
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Greece is better than Senegal
Cheikh Gadiaga, 26, nds life tough in Greece. “There are some people [migrants]
here who have never worked. It is very hard here; I think there other countries better thanhere. But we can’t leave, because we don’t have papers.”
Cheikh ew to Turkey from Senegal and then crossed the border into Greece, telling patrol
police that he was from Somalia. “They ask where are you’re from. You say another country
so they will not deport you.” Cheikh, a trendy-looking man wearing jeans, a snug t-shirt and
a sparkly scarf loosely draped round his neck, says he is in Greece to earn money to help his
family back home. “Senegal is a poor country. There is no work.” He barely makes a living
selling fake designer bags, which he buys wholesale from “Chinese people”. Some days he’ll
make money, others a loss. He hates it. “Anything is better than my work,” he says.
Every day he is stopped by police. He proudly shows off his ID, a shabby pink piece of paper
allowing him to work but giving him no permanent status or visa. Cheikh wants to leave
Greece and join friends who are working in countries like Italy and Spain. “I want to leave
to go to another country because it is not easy to work here. I have asked for a visa. Every
day I try. It is very hard. I will keep trying.”
W E THOUGHT WE WERE GOJNG TO SWITZERLAND
Yasmin left Iran for Europe with her Afghan husband and their two young
children. They walked for days through the mountains in Iran, always fearing
capture and deportation. From Turkey they crossed the River Evros to Greece,
where they were arrested and spent a month in a reception centre. They paid
a Greek man €4,000 to “organise” their trip from Iran. Yasmin hopes to nd
him in Greece because they don’t know how to get to Switzerland, which is
where he promised to send them.
Yasmin says she has no problems with her country and doesn’t want to
claim asylum. But as she is married to an Afghan, life is difcult in Iran. She
hopes her husband, a teacher, will be able to study and teach in Switzerland.
Her family have been given a deportation order to leave Greece within onemonth.
PROFILE
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OUTSIDE the Greek ministry for
citizen protection around 20
armed police ofcers formed two
semi-circles around 15 Afghani
men, women and children preventing them
from leaving a small area of pavement.
Ten of them were blue-uniformed ordinary
ofcers with at caps, riot shields, sneers and
cigarettes – they formed the inner circle aroundthe Afghans, stopping them from leaving the tight
space. The outer ring was made of 10 riot ofcers
in green khaki and wearing helmets with shields
and carrying guns and canisters of tear gas.
The Afghans are asylum seekers caught up
in Greece’s notoriously slow asylum system. They
were on their way to a meeting with the minis-
ter to present their demands: that their applica-
tions for asylum are looked at. The 15 represent
a group of about 100 men, women and children,
some who have waited years for a response.Since November the Afghans have set up a
small protest camp outside Athens University in
Leoforos Panepistimiou, a busy street forming part
of a popular shopping district in Athens. On 29 De-
cember 2010 six of them sewed their lips together
and went on hunger strike. They are desperate.
There are very few jobs and most live hand to
PROFILE
mouth. Without papers, they cannot leave
Greece legally to look for work elsewhere.
A ministry ofcial arrives and says the minister
will speak to ve representatives. Three Afghans,
Petros Konstantinou, an Athens politician, and a
representative from a doctors union go inside.
The Afghans left look tired, but hope-
ful. Reza is there with his wife and children in-
cluding a 6-month-old baby daughter. “We
want to show that we are human and we
are here in Greece,” he says wearily.
But Sam, a condent 25-year-old Af -
ghan in a Nike hoody with a sticker say-
ing ‘asylum is my right’, says, “We are not
afraid [of the riot police] because we were
in a bad situation in Afghanistan.”
After three hours, the ve return with
nothing. The minister did not show up. In-
stead two senior ofcials told them to
come back at the end of the month.
The hunger strikers look crestfallen and tired.
Two of the strikers are whisked to hospital.
Afghan protest against Greece’s asylum chaos
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TROUBLE
INPARADISE
All that stands
between Africanmigrants and
Europe is the
Mediterranean Sea.
What happens
when they turn up
on Italy’s shores?
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BY EARLY January 2011 everyone
had left Lampedusa. Life for the
sleepy Italian island’s 6,000 inhabit-
ants would return to normal. Once
again the only visitors were moneyed tour-
ists, rather than destitute Africans.
One of the charities to leave was MédecinsSans Frontières, who decided to close its of-
ce after the island went from receiving nearly
40,000 migrants in 2008 to barely any in 2009
and 2010. The 850-place migrant holding cen-
tre, once bursting with 1,800 people, stood
closed. Islanders said it closed after inmates set
re to it during riots during the summer. If any
migrants make it to the island they are shipped
immediately to holding centres in Sicily.
Before the silence, people from all over Af-
rica entered Europe through Italian and Spanishislands in the Mediterranean, despite the thou-
sands who drowned at sea before them.
A laudable aim of the European Union’s
asylum and immigration system is to build bet-
ter partnerships with the countries whose na-
tionals try to enter Europe irregularly.
The dramatic drop in migrant numbers in
2009 and 2010 were a direct result of the Ital-
ian government’s decision to create a special
partnership with Libya. The Friendship Treaty
between Libya and Italy was signed in 2008.As part of the agreement Libya promised to
stop all asylum seekers and migrants getting
to Italy. The Libyans, one of the few coun-
tries in the world not signed up to the refu-
gee convention, were chillingly efcient.
“When we came to Libya I thought that we
were free, but we were not free,” says Abdarrazaq,
a 26-year-old Somali refugee living in Sicily.
The softly spoken economics gradu-
ate left his home in Somalia and travelled
to Italy via Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya.It took 10 days to cross the Sahara desert
into Libya in a 4x4 car with 29 other frightened
migrants all fearful of being caught without pa-
pers. On arrival in Libya things got worse.
“We were put under house arrest.
There was a man who captured us and said
if you don’t pay $600 you die.”
While unprepared for the violence, Ab-
darrazaq knew he would need a lot of cash for
bribes. One of Somalia’s middle class, Abdarrazaq
was not rich enough to escape Kenya like many
wealthy Somalis do, but as a teacher he earned
enough to save for his journey to Europe.Abdarrazaq insists his prisoners were not
ofcials or policemen. “All Libya [is] like that. They
capture the people and they say to you if you don’t
pay the money, you stay here, in his house. In this
house there is a family. This is normal how they do
it because they get money from the people.”
The Libyans who caught his group beat
them until they agreed to pay up. “One per-
son, one man got his leg broken. He refused to
do what they say. Then nally he paid $400.”
Before nally escaping Libya in a boat to Italy,this episode was repeated once more. Abdar-
razaq was also captured and beaten by po-
lice ofcers, imprisoned for three days until he
handed over $1,000. More than a month later
he was nally able to leave Tripoli on a boat
bound for Italy carrying around 300 migrants.
“When
wecame to
Libya I
thought that
we were
free, but we
were not
free.”
Abdarrazaq, a 26-year-old
Somali refugee living in Sicily.
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Like manyItalians,
Tunisians
have been
fed a false
image of
Italy
Abdarrazaq’s story tallies with UNHCR
reports on Libya’s brutal treatment of migrants
and with stories recounted by other migrants
who travelled through Libya. One young Eri-
trean refugee working for Caritas in Calais re-
fused to discuss the “horric stories” that from
his time in Libya. Those with- out cash to briberogue ofcers and smugglers, are left to languish
in Libyan jails or abandoned in the desert.
Though Muammar al-Gadaf has been de-
posed, it is unlikely his policy of pushing back
migrants and asylum seekers crossing Libya on
their way to Europe will end. The Libyan Na-
tional Transit Council has promised the Italian
government that once stability has returned,
the ‘push-back’ of migrants will resume.
But while Gadaf’s vengeful prom-
ise to ood Europe with Africans has notcome to pass, the Arab Spring has impact-
ed migration to Europe in other ways.
One week after Tunisia’s former presi-
dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ed
the country, a trickle of Tunisians
began arriving on Lampedusa island.
forcing the centre back to its former over-crowd-
ed state. Many migrants sleep on the streets be-
cause there is nowhere else for them to go.
Struggling to cope with numbers the Ital-
ian border police sent some of the earlier arriv-
als to the mainland by plane causing a stir among
commuters at Lampedusa’s tiny airport.The airport is small, almost claustropho-
bic, about the size of a corner shop. On one side
are two check-in desks, on the other is a security
barrier and a metre from that is the door leading
to the plane. So when an ofcer from the Guardia
di Financa, Italy’s coastguard, enters the airport,
claps his hands three times and ushers in 32 Tuni-
sians, all of Lampedusa’s commuters fall silent and
openly gape at the men in astonishment.
The Tunisians are quite young, in their
late teens or early twenties, and carryingsmall plastic carrier bags with their belong-
ings in. Two policemen herd them over to
check in. They look exhausted, red eyed and
hunched over; some appear relieved.
The pilot of the plane explains that the refu-
gees will be own to Palermo and then taken to a re-
ception centre in Porto Empedocle in Sicily.
The rst boatloads car-
ried around 30 or more young
men, all looking for work.
Like Gadaf, Ben Ali hadmade various pacts with Italy
over the years, one of which was
controlled immigration. Now he
was gone there was little to stop
the country’s ambitious and un-
deremployed young men seek-
ing their fortune in Italy.
Initially determined to keep
the holding centre closed, the
coast guard shipped the Tunisians
immediately to Sicily by ferry ormade them stay in local hotels,
which were empty of tourists be-
cause of the time of the year.
In the weeks following this
report, at least 5,000 Tunisian
refugees arrived in Lampedusa
It is the rst time in all his years y-
ing to and from the tiny island that
he has carried “boat people”.
Under the surly gaze of theguards, one of young men ex-
plains in faltering English why he
left home. The social turmoil fol-
lowing Ben Ali’s departure, he
says, and because there is simply
no work. And the “police are vi-
olent”. I am not happy, he adds,
my family are in Tunisia.
The general view among
the men is that they will work in
Italy. Under Ben Ali it was dif-cult for many Tunisians to leave
the country and most couldn’t af-
ford papers to do so legally.
According to Mauro, a
Lampedusan resident, many Tuni-
sians have a rose-tinted view of Italy.
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If a migrant’s claim is refused, he has ve days to
leave Italy. If after this time, he is caught again by the
police, he is arrested and given a prison sentence
for staying in the country illegally. On comple-
tion of the sentence, the migrant is deported.In July 2009, the government drew up a
new immigration law giving Italian doctors the
authority to report migrants without papers to
the police. Prior to this it was illegal for doctors
to refuse treatment to immigrants without pa-
pers. The new law meant doctors could refuse
When he last visited Tunisia, he was
surprised to discover the dominant pres-
ence of Italian culture, on television and in
shops. Like many Italians, he says, Tunisians
have been fed a false image of Italy.
ONCE in Italy asylum seek-ers and migrants are held in
an immigration holding cen-
tre while their case is looked
at. The main centre at Porto Empedocle is
where the Tunisians have been taken.
The immigration holding centre at Porto
Empedocle is an unassuming building with tiny
windows surrounded by barbed wire. Adjacent
is a large ferry port and rows of yachts set
against the brilliant turquoise of the Mediter-
ranean. Smartly dressed Italians and ship work-ers drink espressos and eat miniature eclairs at
luxurious coffee bar. It is a hot day, but there
are no inmates in the centre yard, only three
large ferocious dogs patrolling the gates.
to treat irregular migrants and instead, call the
police.
“This law is moving towards creating a sense of
fear of immigrants,” says Sandra Voutsinas, a social
worker, working with immigrants in Palermo.
“Health belongs to everyone – if we don’t
cure immigrants when they are sick they cancause problems also to us. The point is that health
is not just important for the single person but for
the community. So an immigrant without leave of
stay must have the right to be cured in Italy.”
The doctors were vocal in their op-
position to the new rules and that sec-
tion of the law was revoked.
However, Sandra argues that are many
other restrictive aspects of the latest immigra-
tion law making life even harder for immigrants in
Italy. Immigrants without leave to remain in Italycannot marry an Italian nor can they register any
children they have, though there is a special status
– not full Italian citizenship – for under 18s.
“My personal opinion is that it is a terrible
system,” says Sandra. “There are too many laws
concentrated in the last 10 years on immigration.
[It is] as is Immigration is the most terrible prob -
lem of Italy, like maa. They are concentrating
too much on immigration as the hugest problem
in our society. Whereas unemployment and ma-
a, and other things are more important.”But a charity ofcer managing support for
refugees in Agrigento reckons Italy’s asylum and
immigration have actually improved in recent
years. “Italy has a good system because it has
been going for 10 years. It used to be it took
longer [to process immigration applications]
but since the law of immigration in 2002, they
introduced 10 commissions to manage immigra-
tion. There are two in Sicily and asylum seekers
wait one or two months for a decision.”
Still, life for asylum seekers given leaveto remain in Italy is tough. Abdarrazaq spent
eight months at an immigration holding cen-
tre, after that he was given subsidiary protec-
tion. The protection means he can stay legal-
ly in Italy for three years. If after that time his
country is deemed safe, he will be deported.
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Abdarrazaq says other migrants tell him to
leave Italy for a country with more concern for
human rights and more opportunities. He refuses
to listen, preferring to settle in Italy, even though
he nds it difcult. “Some people enter a coun-
try, they say, ‘We will understand how it works
and we will not run to another European coun-try. They understand and they get a work.”
Not everyone is so sanguine. Irregular mi-
grants living in Sicily say Italians employers often
mistreat them, paying them very little or in ex-
treme cases not at all. A migrant might be paid
€35 for 10 hours of farm work or some earn
as little as €20 a day usually working for small
businesses or doing housekeeping work.
Samuel Quanson, a Ghanaian musician liv-
ing in Palermo had one employer, an Italian law-
yer, who did not pay him for three months work.Samuel worked on the lawyer’s estate, feeding
and caring for his dogs and other pets. Eventu-
ally Samuel’s old boss promised to pay his wages,
even offered to take him into to the bank.
Instead he dropped Samuel off at a train sta-
tion and never
came back.
S am u e l
had no idea
how to nd
the largecountry es-
tate some-
where in Sic-
ily’s rolling
valleys and
meadows, so
begged till he
had enough to
pay for a train
fare to Paler-
mo, Sicily’scapital and a
hub for irreg-
ular migrants
and asylum
seekers in
the south.
Samuel’s
employer, an
Italianlaywer, refused
to pay him
for the three
months he
spent working
at his country
estate in Sicily.Samuel left
with nothing
If not, his protection would be renewed for
another three years. “Always three years,
three years, three years”, he says gloom-
ily at the prospect of a transient future.
On his release, the centre’s guards told Ab-
darrazaq to go and nd his people in Rome. “I
was like a blind person, I have no family there. Itis not like in Africa, in Africa you can sleep on the
streets because of the weather. But the weather
doesn’t allow you to sleep these streets.”
Luckily Abdarrazaq does not have to sleep
on the streets just yet. He was taken in by Pro-
gretto Tarik, one of several government fund-
ed hostels for refugees across Italy. Progretto
Tarik, based in Agrigento a quiet city in Sicily,
takes in newly arrived refugees, teaches them
Italian and gives them somewhere to sleep for
six months. “When they nish six months theyhave to make integration into society and look
for work. If they can nd work, they can manage
their life,” says Emilio, head of the charity.
“Their life in Italy is not easy. Particularly in
Sicily, there is no work, but in the north it is bet-
ter. We can help immigrants by giving them more
chances. Right now … six months … is not enough
for someone to come from Africa or another con-
tinent, and he doesn’t know anything about this
society. In six months he cannot integrate.
“I would change it to one year at least.During that one year we have to give them
a chance to learn something important that
they could work if they get out today.”
Emilio let Abdarrazaq stay an extra six
months so he could complete a computer
course. Now he is on his own. Abdarrazaq’s
grand plan for survival is to stay legal.
Having witnessed compatriots move
from one European country to another, start-
ing and failing to overcome mountainous strug-
gles in each, he plans to nd work in Italy.“I have studied the language, I have stud-
ied some vocational to work. And I am hoping
to get another profession. If I get another pro-
fession or if you study something, you will learn
how to work, but if you not study anything and
say you look for a work, you cannot get it.”
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“I stood there crying.
What am I doing? I had a job,
I had a nice place in Africa.
From that to living like a refugee.”
Samuel, 30
A
T rst glance Palermo is dark and
unwelcoming. Italians rush about
awkwardly weaving in and around
the downtrodden migrants selling
tat on street corners. At night women traf-cked from sub-Saharan live out their night-
mare as the city looks the other way.
But beneath the surface Palermo is a mes-
merising mix of grim city life, with dark, dank,
narrow streets, and spectucular architectural
remnants of Italy’s history, set against a post-
card perfect picture of swooping valleys and a
glossy emerald sea. Slap in the middle of this is
a growing community of migrants without pa-
pers, trafcked women and asylum seekers.
There is that recognisable sense of im-
possible hope and ambition frequently found
in immigrant communities. Despite nursing a
burning desire to get to London, being home-
less and earning only the odd €20 here and
there xing laptop, Samuel is positive about life
in Palermo. “I like Palermo, tourists come here
every day, Chinese, Americans. I feel at home.
On Saturday I go to the club in the
streets. In the summer I go to the beach and
take my drums and everyone is happy.
“But I cannot take my band everywhere. Some
people like blacks and some people hate blacks. I
cannot go too far outside Palermo. If you go out-
side Palermo where there is no blacks, they can
be racist. But if you go to the market here, every-
one is from Africa. We speak our language.”Yet Samuel admits that he was shocked by
the poverty among immigrants living in Paler-
mo. When he rst arrived in the city, he had to
sleep outside a crowded refugee shelter.
“I stood there crying and thinking what
am I doing? I had a job, I had a nice place in
Africa, my house, my car. From that to liv-
ing like a refugee. It was sad. I cried a lot.
“I see my brown friends from Africa, Mo-
rocco … how they live – like refugees. Wow. The
place [shelter] is doing a good thing but there isno space for people to sleep. So I slept outside.
When it rained they gave me a plastic cover.”
ACCORDING to Centro Astralli Paler-
mo, a charity working with refugees
and irregular migrants, 40% of the mi-
grants living in Palermo do not have
papers. Centro Astralli is staffed by a team of
tireless volunteers who provide a range of servic-
es – from making breakfast to teaching Italian and
IT lessons – for irregular migrants, who do notexist as far as the government is concerned.
But giving these invisible people just
enough to survive seems only to prolong their
limbo.Many enter Europe seeking work, once
they arrive they are confronted with a bar-
rage of information on how to seek asylum.
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“A human
being
without
hope is dead.
Even if the
conditionsin Europe are
terrible
because we
don’t offer
immigrants
anything,
at least weoffer them
hope.
They can
dream
for something
better here.”
Sandra, social worker, Palermo
Seeking asylum can quickly be-
come the sole option for migrants enter-
ing the continent without papers.
As a result once they are refused asy-
lum, there are few legal options open if they
want to stay in Europe. This leaves them vul-
nerable and open to unscrupulous employ-ers, trafckers and criminal gangs. Could what
they left behind be worse than that?
Sandra thinks so. “In reality they don’t live
in good conditions in Europe. But there the pos-
sibility that at least something will happen here.
Hope in their country is less than here.
“Even if they live here in welcome cen-
tres, everything that we offer them, which is
nothing at all, but there is one hope at least
that something can change, or someone they
meet, something can happen here. Wherethere it is quite impossible that something
can happen. Nothing happens there.
“Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, they have problems.
There is too much corruption. If you are rich you
stay rich, if you are poor you stay poor. Nothing
will happen. So having one brother or one sister
living in Europe for a family in Africa means a lot be-
cause they have hope that something can happen.
Even if he gets a document, it is something.
“A human being without hope is dead. Even
if the conditions in Europe are terrible becausewe don’t offer immigrants anything, at least we
offer them hope. They can dream for some-
thing better here. It is something. If I were them
maybe I would have done the same thing – it is
human to try to look for something else.”
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EUROPE’S ASYLUM SYSTEM IS ABSURD...
ALFONSO CINQUEMANI works for
Centro Astralli a charity set up in Rome30 years ago to support the rst waves of
migrants and asylum seekers from East
Africa. He argues that variation of law across
Europe makes it difcult to properly protect
refugees and regulate migration.
“For each country the laws are different.
In Europe you can circulate freely. Also the
migrants with the permit may regulate freely
but the laws are different in each country.
That is absurd.”
But the EU has helped in other ways, with
funds to support refugees for example.
“There are some funds dedicated to the
immigration politic. Each country uses this
money in different ways. In Italy it depends
on the region. There are very advanced re-
gions, Lazio, Tarantino, [that offer] better helpto migrants.
“But in our region the situation is not so good.
The money coming from Europe to the Ital-
ian government in Sicily is dedicated not only
to help migrants, but to cover other prob-
lems.”
PROFILE
TWENTY-
YEAR-OLD
Soan Mauzien
has lived in Italy
for “two years,
three months
and 24 days”.His father mi-
grated to Italy
in 1990 and runs
a market stall
selling clothes.
When he rst arrived in Italy, So-
an worked in a factory earning a
decent wage, but the factory has
since collapsed and he is unem-
ployed. Soan speaks ve languages
including Russian, and hopes to usethem to nd work.
“I like Palermo very much. I would
like to stay here forever. I have
many friends from all over the
world. I have a lot of friends from
France, from Austria, from Senegal,
from Ghana, from Morocco, from
Palermo, from Greece. In Morocco I
know people just from Morocco.
“To nd work at this moment it
is difcult. I want to complete my
study. I want to go to the university
here. I want to study languages and
then maybe I can get a job.
“I think it is very hard [for immi-
grants in Italy]. If you want to eat,
just eat to stay alive, then you can
eat. But if you search for work, it is
difcult to get it.
“I hope to nish this crisis…every -
one can get a job and work and live.
Also Italians. Because there are
many Italians who don’t work, not
just immigrants.”
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PROFILE
It’s complicated...Many of the irregular migrants living on less than €30 a day in Sicily, leave
jobs and their family to come to nd work in Europe. Why?
Abdarrazaq’s family are getting impa-
tient. They do not understand why
he lives in a hostel and why he has no
work, after all, he is in Europe.
Back in Somali, with his job as a teacher
earning $500 a month, he supported his wife,
his three sisters and his mother. For two years
he put saved some money each month to cover
his trip to Europe. “They are waiting for me tosend them money. Anytime they call me they
say, what do you do there? They don’t under-
stand. They think you go to the streets of Eu-
rope, you can get immediately money.”
Despite his job, life in Somalia was tough.
“When I was born, the country was ght-
ing,” he says. “For 21 years ghting. But [now]
the ghting was different. For the last six
years, it is very risky. Before there was no tar-
get, now everybody is a target. The youth of
Somalia, they are now in other African coun-tries, South Africa, some in Europe.
“The country has a lot of problems. There are
little aid agencies, they left the country. The peo-
ple who are rich are in Nairobi, or Mobassa.”
When Abdarrazaq left for Eu-
rope, he expected regularly work
and less chance of him being killed and leaving hisfamily destitute. Now is concerned that because
is struggling in Europe this will happen anyway.
“I worry about the whole family. Because
when we contact they say life in Somalia is now
changing day after day. There is no work now in So-
malia. People were working for aid agencies.
“Some people were working for business, the
people who were working for the business were
working for the rich. The rich have the money and
they invest. But if the big man [rich man] take his in-
vestment to Mobassa then they do nothing.”
EuropE’s falsE paradisE
“When we were in Somalia, we thought the
people in Europe had a lot of money. But when
we travelled to Europe we see the reality.
“Everybody says I must go to Europe. It is a
problem. If they tell the facts, nobody will believe.
Even if I say it, the life I have here, is worse than
even in Somalia, they won’t trust me. They say you
lie to us. Because the rst person who entered
in Europe, they lie to people. But [Somalians]won’t believe the people who are here now.
“I think some people when they enter Europe,
they don’t smoke cigarettes, they don’t use alco-
hol. Now, they smoke cigarette, they use alcohol.
Because of frustration. They don’t work, their life
here is very difcult and they’re confused.”
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SWEET PRISON
Hundreds of migrants heading to Europe are
trapped in Spain’s tiny enclaves bordering
north Africa. Even those seeking asylum are
refused entry to mainland Europe. Why?
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THE SKELETAL BODIES of dead Africans
scattered across the Sahara desert is a
haunting image. Their empty eye sock-
ets and stiff, scorched bodies belong in
a horror lm. One of the dead men is frozen as
though in Islamic prayer, on his knees, body for-
ward, arms splayed in front of him, head touch-ing the sand. An asylum seeker who made it
across the Sahara and eventually to Spain lmed
the desperate scene on his mobile phone.
On his way to Europe from the Republic of
Guinea 19-year-old Abdoulaye Bah saw many of
his fellow travellers give in to the heat of Sahara.
The dead bodies kept him going; he did not want
to die that way. “I am passing very hard travel but
…I don’t have the words to explain to you.
“You meet many different people who
want to kill you. If you don’t have money togive them, they think you are lying. Some peo-
ple will leave you in the desert. If they leave
you there you have don’t have a chance. More
than 4,000km – all you see is only desert.”
Abdoulaye’s mother was killed in the politi-
cal violence that plagued the Republic of Guinea
between 2009 and 2010. The ghting has stopped,
he says, but he left anyway, partly because he be-
longs to the Fula tribe, a minority in the village
where he lives. The Mandika, the dominant tribe
in the village, are at loggerheads on a national scalecompeting for control of the government.
A popular route for migrants travelling
from West Africa, the Algerian Sahara has be-
come an increasingly lawless place where a per-
son’s fate depends on having enough cash to bribe
border guards and ruthless trafckers.
Most migrants have to pass through Magnaia,
a dangerous part of Algeria, to get to Morocco.
Migrants are particularly vulnerable; the Algerian
guards in the area are paid off by ‘maa’, women areraped, people beaten and money is extorted.
Jesus Castro Gontales explains the com-
plex lawless underworld: “Maa is a difcult
word. What is maa?Maa is the Algerian per-
son, the police, the maa is all the immigrant
people that live one, two, three years here.
“They work in the maa. It is a problem at
the frontier.”
Abdoulaye paid Mali militiamen who helped
him cross the desert in a four wheel drive. From
there, he was on foot till the border between
Mali and Algeria, where he paid soldiers to let him
pass. “Enter Morocco, then you pay to enter Ra-bat, then you pay to enter the bush [forest/wood-
lands] near a town near Ceuta,” he says.
It took two months before Abdoulaye
was able to get passage to Ceuta in a small in-
atable boat with three other people. “I was
scared. It is very dangerous because many
people lose their lives in the water.”
After his horric journey, Abdoulaye,
who speaks uent French, is happy to stay
in Spain and is waiting for an outcome on
his asylum application. He is studying Span-ish in the meantime in the hope that he
will be able to continue his education.
“My life is safe for the mo-
ment. I don’t feel anything is wrong
here. If I get paper here, I work, it is
not a problem.”
FROM the port at Algeciras in Spain, there is aclear view of the sloping hills of Ceuta, a small
Spanish enclave bordering Morocco.
The island, a duty free playground for
rich Moroccans and Spaniards, is dotted with
ports full of expensive yachts, bars and designer
shops.Amongst the glitz and glamour are hun-
dreds of bedraggled African and Asian asylum
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In amongst the glitz and glamour
of the Spanish island are hundreds
of bedraggled African and Asian
asylum seekers and migrants
desperate to get to Europe
seekers and migrants waiting for an opportunity to
leave the island for the European mainland.
As in Lampedusa, the Spanish islands of
Melilla and Ceuta are gateways to Europe for
many migrants, particularly those from west
Africa. The peak period for travelling was
2005, where at one point 2,000 people werecrowded into the immigration removal centre
in Ceuta, where Abdoulaye is being held.
“Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish cities in
Africa,” says Jesus Castro Gontales,who works
for the Association of Elin in Ceuta, an or-
ganization rst set up at the start of the mil-
lennium to deal with the large numbers of
destitute Moroccan street children living in
Ceuta. “The situation in Ceuta and Melilla has
changed very much over time. Ten or more
years ago, there was no frontier. It was possibleto pass through Ceuta easily [from Morocco].”
A number of factors, including pressure
from the European Union, led to the Spanish
government tightening its border with Moroc-
co, making it more difcult for people to use
Ceuta and Melilla as a passage to Spain.
The Spanish government also made various
agreements with the Moroccan government. Mo-
roccan politicians promised to deport the tens
of thousands of migrants living rough in citiesclose to the border with Ceuta and Melilla.
The violent tactis employed by bor-
der police to keep this promise came to a
head one day in September 2005. Reports dif-
fer but the concensus is that several hundred
(some say 200, others 500) migrants tried
crossing the six-mile long barbed wire fence from
Morocco into Melilla and were shot at by border
police. Five Africans were killed. Spain blamed the
Moroccan border police for the deaths, saying its
guards only red rubber bullets and used tear gas.
Many were seriously injured in the crush.
What followed was worse. Urged to resolvethe situation by Spanish and European governments,
the Moroccan police swept through the country
rounding up around 500 black men, women and
children waiting to cross the border into Europe,
and left them without food or water in the Alge-
rian desert. The Association of Elin followed the
buses loaded with migrants and spoke to many of
them aftwerwards. Some with mobile phones called
relatives in Europe. Many died in the desert.
CEUTA and Melilla are no longer citiesof passage. Prior to the new immigra-
tion bill published in November 2009,
people could apply for asylum or leave
to remain, get a yellow card which they could use
to travel to mainland Spain and work while they
waited for the outcome of their case. This in-
creased their chances of getting Spanish residen-
cy; in Spain if a migrant works for three years, he
is entitled to apply for a residency permit.
Now asylum seekers and migrants seek-
ing leave to remain in Spain must completethe entire process on the islands. The yellow
card is now a red card, which effectively bans
them from travelling to the peninsula.
This is illegal, argues Alejandro Rome-
ro Aliaga, a lawyer for the Comision Espa-
ñola de Ayuda al Refugiado (CEARS), an NGO
working with the Spanish government to
process asylum applications in Ceuta.
There are good aspects of the new law,
he says, better protection for homosexuals
seeking refugee protection and stronger sub-sidiary protection for those that fall outside
the remits of the refugee convention. But he
is furious at the government’s decision to dis-
regard Spanish law in Melilla and Ceuta.
How can they apply one law for the
peninsula and another for Melilla and Ceuta?
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“The law doesn’t distinguish between
Spain and Ceuta. Keeping people in Ceu-
ta is against the law. The high court says the
people have the freedom to move through-
out Spain, the UNHCR say they have right
to go to peninsula,” says Alejandro.
“The government’s
refusal to let people
go to the peninsula is not a legal
action. It is illegal. These are people
who the government has accepted in
the asylum process. It is absolutely
disgraceful. The government has
broken the law, it is forbidden in the
Spanish constitution.”
The only migrants from Ceuta that make it
to the peninsula are those granted refugee status
or those who have spent several years in Ceuta.
On average asylum cases take around six months
to process, weak cases can take as long as a year
with appeals factored in. In 2010 out of 311 ap-
plications just two people were granted refugee
status and one given subsidiary protection.
Like other irregular migrants and asy-
lum seekers trapped across Europe, the imi-
grants in Ceuta seek other ways to move
once the legal process closes to them. Some
try to stow themselves in trucks cross-
ing on the ferry to the peninsula, while oth-
ers try to buy a ticket posing as tourists.
But the reality for many is that un-
less they turn back the way they
came, they are stuck in Ceuta.
An historic wall encloses the parts of the is-
land, a stunning remnant of the city’s ancient bat-
tles when it switched between Portuguese, Berber
and Spanish hands. Modern Ceuta is still a for-
tress, a prison for migrants trapped in limbo.
“Ceuta was the door of Europe, now it is
the sweet prison,” says Jesus.”The Indian people
say it is the sweet prison because the govern-
ment has organized a very good centre in CETI.
“People can eat, can sleep, learn Span-
ish. But the people are [stuck] here. Psy-
chologically they suffer, it is not possible to
nish their project of immigration.”
Rocky Gurdaspurya is one of 20 Indi-
ans living in Ceuta. When the 22-year-old ar-
rived from New Delhi via Morocco four yearsago, his plan was to complete his studies in the
west – Canada, Australia, Europe, anywhere
he could get to. He hoped this would increase
his chances of earning a good living for himself
and his family in India. Yet four years later it is
evident that he was better off in India.
“I was studying at university doing my bach-
elor of commerce studies,” says Rocky. “I stud-
ied for two years. I wanted to nish my study
abroad so that I could have a good future. But
bad luck I am stuck here for four years.”
“I made a big mistake. I have dug
my own grave. I was studying
there, I was with my family. But now
I am away from family. I have lived fortwo and half years in the mountain
also. For me it is very bad experi-
ence. I don’t want to think about it.”
Rocky Gurdaspurya, 22
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Rocky is one of 56 Indians who lived the
wild hills and forests of Ceuta for two years. They
were protesting against the Spanish government’s
refusal to let them travel to the peninsula.
“It was very difcult ,” says Rocky. “We were
protesting there that we don’t want to go back to
India. We made huts like tents, with plastic. Wetalk with journalist and media. After two years
they tell us they would send us to the mainland.
They sent 34 Indians to mainland but we were 54.
They didn’t complete their promise and we are
here 20 still ghting. That was one year ago.”
Rocky epitomizes one of the biggest difcul-
ties with irregular migration. For genuine asylum
seekers the perils of returning home are clear. But
for those who start off as labour migrants, the
thought of return is incomprehensible, because of
all that follows once they leave home. Some refuseto return with nothing to show but memories of
a nightmarish journey and money lost to smug-
glers. That is why on their way to and through
Europe, when it becomes clear that the only
route to a work permit is asylum, they lie.
“You spend so much money to go through
such hell and to get here and be deported? No.
No way,” says one migrant in Ceuta angrily.
Maite Perez runs a day centre where irregular
immigrants and asylum seekers can learn Spanish
and use the internet. “A lot of people don’t knowanything,” she says, “but talking to their friends
they know what countries make good asylum cas-
es. They know if you come from this country it is
possible to get asylum, or from this country it is
not possible. In Morocco they are preparing for all
this – it is normal, this is how they survive.”
Current migration ows to Ceuta are
predominantly from West African countries
such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea, though
there are a few Pakistanis and Afghanis as well
as the Indians. Ninety-ve percent of the mi-grants staying at CETI ask for asylum.
“When there was a crisis in Liberia, a lot of
Nigerian people said they came from Liberia. In
the last few years there are a lot of Nigerian peo-
ple saying they come from Sudan, Somalia and Er-
itrea,” says Alfredo Campos, a cordinator at the
“You spend so much mon
go through such hell aget here and be depo
No. No w
MENTION CETI to a taxi driver and
he will know what you mean. Every-
one in Ceuta knows about the im-
migration removal centre perched
upon a steep hill overlooking the sea.
The conditions are more humanethan similar centres in Europe, hence im-
migrants calling it a ‘sweet prison’.
The open centre is home to around 500
people, most of whom are waiting to be de-
ported. Inhabitants come and go as they
please; though they cannot leave between
11pm and 7am without special permission.
It is a bit like a children’s summer camp, ex-
cept with adults and it can last for years.
The centre has been open since 2000
and is run by the Spanish ministry for labourand immigration at a cost of around €8m a
year. There is a hospital open 24 hours deal-
ing with everything from tuberculosis to head-
aches to depression. Breakfast is served at
8am, dinner is at 7pm and snacks are pro-
vided at 5pm. There is a gym, outdoor courts
for basketball, football and table tennis.
One of the biggest benets of the cen-
tre is that the government allows trained-staff
from NGOs to run the services. At CETI,
the Red Cross and CEAR, who help pre-pare asylum applications and appeals.
Sheila Mohammed Salah, 25, works at
CETI as a social worker. “I love my work. I
used to work in a high school teaching but I
like the humanitarian work.” Sheila is at ease
with the inmates chatting and joking with them.
CETI, the island’s immigration holding centre.
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Though there are always guards patrolling the
compound, unusually for an immigration holding
centre, the atmosphere is somewhat jovial.
Inmates are packed into tiny dorms with10 beds and personal lockers in each. In one
cramped room a Nigerian woman cradles her
new born baby, while discussing the possibil-
ity of being transferred to the peninsula.
Modern African francophone mu-
sic blares from another room and
a group men sitting talking.
“Ahora aqui muy bueno,” says one mi-
grant, who is part Liberian and part Ivo-
rian, who has managed to get a place
on a long distance Spanish course.“Here we don’t have any problems.”
But he adds, “Here in Ceuta we don’t
know how long we stay here – some peo-
ple stay for one, two years. We cannot call
our family because we cannot work.
“We go to school and after we can’t
do anything else. The problem is we can-
not leave here. It is a big problem. I want to
live in Spain to get the paper. To stay in Spain,
two years you can get the paper and then
you can anywhere to get the work.”Most of the inmates speak at least three
languages, mostly Arabic, French and Eng-
lish (as well as tribal tongues). All are keen to
learn Spanish, perhaps a sign of their desire to
settle rather than keep moving through Eu-
rope. CETI provides Spanish classes as well
Spanish cooking, IT, creative art and IT lessons.
There is a palpable sense of frus-
tration among the migrants; while CETI
is a pleasant place, many have made long
journeys to find work and being delayedfor months and years is difficult.
Even nding black market work is dif -
cult in Ceuta, mostly because Moroc-
cans migrants have the monopoly on poor-
ly, paid unregulated employment.
“Ceuta is a small town, it is very difcult
compared to the rest of Spain. In places like Ma-
drid it is easier for foreign people to get a job
with or without a work permit,” says Alejan-
dro Romero Aliaga. “For sub-Saharan people
it is very difcult to get a job because in Ceu-ta people work with Moroccan people.”
Moroccans from Tetouan, a city in northern
Morocco, have the right to enter Ceuta but they
cannot spend the night. It is also against the law for
them to work and they cannot pass to the penin-
sula. Most work on the black market, either selling
fruit and other wares, or cleaning homes.
For the people at CETI, this means
at best, they can earn €4 of €5 carry-
ing people’s shopping at the city’s major su-
permarkets or parking people’s cars.Rocky, though, is desperate for a nor-
mal life, in Europe where he still believes he
the best opportunities for himself. “I want to
leave [Ceuta] legally. The only way to go from
here is go on a truck, it is very dangerous and
you can lose your life.People do that. People
who have been here for a long period of time.
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arrive here in Ceuta is around a year and a
half, two years. Then they get into the sea in
very small dangerous boats and most of them
before coming here to the centre have been
saved from the sea in very difficult circumstanc-
es and they have seen death very, very near.
“When they come here their psycho-logical state and condition is very weak and
to recover their human dignity and their own
estimation takes our psychological team a
few months of work, it’s not easy, before enter-
ing the rest of the integration programme.”
“When they
come here
their psy-
chological state
and condition is
very weak and to
recover their hu-
man dignity andtheir own estima-
tion takes our psy-
chological team
a few months of
work ”
Carlos Bengoechea,
chief executive of CETI
“There is no other option. But I am not
going to do this because I want to live.
“We are hoping that the Spanish govern-
ment will understand our feelings and let us
go to the mainland and have a good future and
the life we want to live, nothing else.”
COMPARED to reception and removal
centres across Europe, CETI is a ve
star establishment. Turning up at CETI
is a relief for irregular migrants after
the traumas of their journey up to that point.
There are showers, food, beds, computer access,
a doctor and staff with a genuine interest in their
well being. What more could they want?
Across Europe the answers are the same.
Freedom from misgovernment, poverty and con-
ict. One Nigerian, since deported from Spain, ex-plained that though he was a graduate it was nearly
impossible for him to nd work at home without
connections and contacts. Afghans are always
speak passionately of their motherland; we have
food, we have beautiful mountains, they say, but
we also have ISAF, war lords and the Taliban.
What irregular migrants and asylum seek-
ers want is access to education and work. The
global village means they are well aware that these
things are accessible in Europe and other western
countries. But what happens to that drive andambition and placed in a place like CETI where all
they can do is wait? Does it infantilize them?
The man in charge of CETI is adamant
that it is a good place for immigrants. Car-
los Bengoechea, 52, is a Spanish civil servant
whose experience includes time spent working
on immigration for the European Union, took
over the running of CETI in May 2010. “We
have conceived this centre as an open centre
so that immigrants can interact with the rest
of the population of the city,” he says. “Thereare no problems, it works quite well.”
“When they arrive here, they have prob-
ably made long trip in which they have suf-
fered a lot. They have been probably vic-
tims of many violations of their rights.
“And probably the average period they use to
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“We
havepeople
who cry
all day
Refugee hostel,
Malaga
SPAIN struggles to deport everyone given an
expulsion order, so many migrants can live
without documents for long periods.
For those in the peninsula, there is
at least access to some work to earn a living,
but for those in Ceuta, this means more time
spent aimlessly at CETI. Around 60% of peo-ple staying at CETI have expulsion orders.
“If the govt cannot implement that
[deportation] decision they stay here,” says
Carlos. “Then … they are offered all these
possibilities of these programmes.”
The programmes Carlos refers to include
Spanish lessons and classes where they learn
how to cook Spanish food. What is the point if
they have no legal right to stay in Spain? Won’t
that give them a false sense of hope?
“No,” he replies with condence. “Theyknow they have to leave, they have a decision.”
He adds that the decision depends on the capac-
ity of the state to enact it, international agree-
ments with third countries, and the willingness
to cooperate by countries of origin.
“It is a very complex process, to be able
to execute that decision and to deport a person,
because of all those reasons,
most of the people who have
that decision to be expelled from
the country cannot really ex-pect it. So they stay here.”
The average stay at CETI
is just over a year. For many of
CETI’s inhabitants this is too long
and many express their frustra-
tion at time passing by, especial-
ly those who have already spent
months travelling to Europe.
Those deemed vulnerable or
in a precarious situation - though it
could be argued that they all are -are eventually released to the pen-
insula. Usually this means people
with serious medical conditions and
mothers with small children (there
are 31 families living at CETI).
Critics are skeptical about the
government’s motives; some argue that it is be-
cause CETI is close to capacity. By transferring
immigrants to peninsula, there is less chance of
overcrowding and the trouble that brings.
But Carlos appears genuinely concerned
about the welfare of people staying at CETI.
“From tomorrow until 20th March we are send-ing 39 people,” he says. “Our technical [staff], the
social workers, lawyers, medical workers… regu-
larly make studies of the residents and they deter-
mine if someone is in a vulnerable situation. We
make a list of people, we work it out and send it
to our ministry in Madrid with each report.
“When we get the permission, we send
them to different NGO houses, which are paid
by the ministry of labour and immigration to take
care of these vulnerable immigrants until the
course of vulnerability has disappeared.”Carlos admits that after two years at CETI,
most people are vulnerable and likely to struggle
psychologically if they are held any longer.
Once immigrants are sent to the main-
land they spend six months at special hos-
tel run by an NGO. The aim is to help in-
tegrate immigrants into Spanish society by
providing language lessons, employ-
ment advice and counselling.
After six months, social
worker Ivan Carlin explains thatthere is an option for the most
vulnerable people to apply for an
extra six months support. Many
turn it down. “Some didn’t want
to be in Spain. They had palnned
to go to France, because of the
language. They cross by boat and
their intention was to go there.
But they got caught by the po-
lice and they bought here.
“We know that people usedto apply for asylum because they
know that they can stay in a place
and then they don’t care if it is posi-
tive or negative. When they are told
to leave the centre because they
have received a negative answer,
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they don’t mind.” Ivan works at asylum and
refugee centre ran by the Spanish Commission
for Refugees in Malaga. The bright and tidy cen-
tre has 65 places and as well integration, offers
support for asylum seekers with difcult cases.
“We have people who have been crying
all day and we have to call psychology to attendthat person because they are getting down.”
A particularly tough case is that of Abdullah, a
stateless migrant from south east Asia.
Abdullah turned up in Malaga after sev-
eral years of trying to get to Europe. He has
no family and left his country of birth to seek
work in Malaysia when he was a teenager. It
took him 10 years working in restaurants and
as a mechanic in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur to
save $6,000 to pay someone to help him get to
Europe. “No family in Malaysia. I eat, I sleep, Iwork,” he explains. In 2006 he ew to Moroc-
co, where he expected to be taken to Europe.
He was completely in the hands of his smug-
glers, who put him on a plane to Niger.
After four months in Niger, he trav-
elled to Mali and spent seven months there.
He nally arrived back in Morocco, where he
stayed for more than a year. Finally in 2008
he made it to Malaga, spent a month in pris-
on after being caught without papers and
slept on the streets the rest of the time.He was eventually taken in by refugee cen-
tre, but after staying for a year, he now has to
leave. He looks depressed and exhausted. “In
this situation, it is very difcult,” says his case
worker. “His case is not nished, so he can’t
take a paper [residency documents]. We don’t
know how long he will be in this situation. He
tells me, ‘I want to work, I want to have pa-
per.’ I say, ‘Abdullah, what can I do?’”
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A EUROPEANDREAMMany of the migrants and asylum seekers I met inFrance
were tired, bitter and more desperate than ever. They
had become wise to reality of the European dream, but
still harboured one small drop of hope: the UK
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“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.”
After leaving Darfur Sharaf bought a fake
passport in Khartoum, from there he ew toIstanbul, and from there he made his way into
Europe through Greece. “I didn’t know if I
was in Europe or a dream. It was very hor-
rible,” he says of Greece. He has since made
his way to Calais in France, and from there he
hopes to try his luck in England. The tall gen-
tle-voiced Sudanese man tries to sound casu-
al, but it is clear he is hopeful that Britain will
turn out to be the Europe of his dreams.
By this stage of their long journey to
Britain, many migrants are tired, bitter anddesperate. Having struggled in at least one
other European country, some began to cre-
ate hallucinatory fantasies about the UK
based on pure hope and speculation.
“England it is good,” insists an Eritrean
man wolng down his bread and soup at a Calais
soup kitchen. “Until they reject you they give you
basic necessities. Like food, water, house. Here
they treat you as animal. If you [are] going to
get the paper or not, you don’t know. Or if you
going to die or you going to go mad, you don’tknow. It is better for me to go to England, even
when they reject me, they treat me well.”
A 14-year-old Afghani boy cut his nger
so badly jumping over a fence that doctors were
forced to cut it off. The boy and his 12-year-old
brother had been trying to get over a fence to get
on a truck bound for the UK. They plan to join
their elder brother, a refugee living in Britain.
This makes Jacky Verhaegen, who runs
Caritas in Calais, incredibly frustrated because
their brother has no money or work to sup-port them. Yet they insist they must join him de-
spite the avenues open to them in France.
“It is a heartache for me to see them on
the streets all day doing nothing. They live in the
jungle. It is terrible for a 12-year-old. When I
was 12, I was at home, I was at school,” he says.
“I told them, you are 12, if you stay ve
years in a child centre in France, when you turn 18
you get a French passport. Not a residence per-
mit. Then you can go wherever you want.”
It is not just a childish fantasy, at any one
time around 200 grown men, and many hundreds
more along the coast of northern France, Belgiumand Holland, wait in Calais for an opportune mo-
ment to smuggle themselves into Britain.
Yet in reality those seeking asylum have
a better chance of getting a positive response
in France, where the recognition rate is 40%
compared to 27% in the UK. France also rare-
ly deports people to Afghanistan and Iraq, but
the UK regularly sends charter ights full of re-
jected asylum seekers to those countries.
But though France might well have a sys-
tem well-equipped to manage asylum fairly, thereality often falls short of expectations.
Matt Quinette, a eld worker for Mé-
dicins du Monde in Dunkirk, says: “When a Su-
danese and Afghani come to Paris and see un-
der the bridge his compatriot and say, ‘What do
you do here … homeless?’ And when he calls
his friend in UK and his friend says yes I arrived
one month ago, I get appointment directly, I get
money directly, and two months after I get my
answer. It doesn’t seem so much to say, ‘I will
spend sometime in the jungle and I will get agood place. England is better than here.’”
It is incredibly difcult for immigrants to
identify the facts and the reality. Many lie about
how well they are doing in Europe. Everyone
knows someone who started a business in Lon-
don, has a good job, drives a car and has a house.
Jacky remembers one man taking pictures in front
of the Caritas charity van pretending that it be-
longed to him, to send his family at home. Smug-
glers wanting to capitalise on their optimism, will
often embellish the opportunities in the UK.“They are always controlled by smugglers
and they don’t really know what the situation is
like in the UK,” says Jean-François Roger from
France terre d’asile, an NGO working with the
UNHCR in Calais. “It is really difcult for them
to know the reality and get the real information.
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‘Africa House’ in Calais, France
“The people who stay in the UK don’t tell the
truth to their family in their original country
about the reality, they say yes OK come we have
found you a good job, we have found you accom-
modation, we have the possibility to stay.
“They imagine Eldorado for the UK, they
will arrive there and ask asylum, the UK will givethem accommodation and a job to work. We
know the reality and we say that, but nobody
thinks we say the truth. When they travel all of
their family says you will be alright in the UK and
everything will be OK. Nobody believes us.”
The situation for migrants in Calais is dire, so
it is unsurprising people do not want to stay. Calais
is a small town with high unemployment of its own
to deal with, so there are few employment oppor-
tunities for migrants and those waiting on asylum
decisions. And it is not just Calais, there are manyrefugees living in poverty in Paris as well.
Irregular migrants in Calais rely on
a number of small charities for food, they
have access to a nurse’s surgery where
they can shower a few times a week and
the rest they figure out for themselves.
A
10-MINUTE walk from
Calais town centre is
a large decrepit fac-
tory with a brokenroof, smashed windows, with
bits of rusted metal and garbage
strewn over concrete oors.
There are no doors, only door-
ways, and very little shelter.
Everyone in Calais calls the
building Africa House because it
is where many sub-Saharan Af-
rican migrants and asylum seek-
ers live. About 100 people share
the ‘house’, the majority arefrom Sudan and Eritrea.
Every now and then Cal-
ais’ riot police raid Africa House,
arresting any migrants they
catch. In February, one migrant
was chased up on the roof of
Africa House, fell and broke
his wrist. In the scufe that followed, two
people from the Calais Migrant Solidar-
ity group were also arrested after try-
ing to alert the migrants to the police pres-
ence and taking pictures of the arrests.
Celine, a nurse working at the medi-
cal centre for immigrants in Calais, is furi-ous. “The man is very lucky he broke only his
wrist, he can die or become paralysed.” And
this is not the rst time an immigrant has fall-
en from a roof and broken bones running away
from the police, she says. “Sometimes they ar-
rest them here [at the medical centre]. Last
summer it happened. Everybody jumped.”
Haroon Abdurallam, a 25-year-old asy-
lum seeker from Sudan, lives in Africa House.
He lifts his hat to reveal a scar where he was
struck by a French policeman. “I don’t care.I am not scared, I am not a criminal. If you go
anywhere, everyone looks at you like you are
an animal. They don’t like black people. Police
harassment makes [us] feel like animals.
Police harassment is another reason im-
migrants hate Calais. The criminalisation of
migrants that begins when they
enter Europe and become ‘il-
legal immigrants’, ends in places
like Calais, where a special po-
lice force patrols the streets andsquats looking for immigrants
without papers to arrest.
“The police drive around
in vans looking for people who
have dark skin because that is the
only way they can really nd peo-
ple who don’t have papers. They
say it is not racist but … it is not
very convincing,” says Matthieu
Gues, an activist from the Calais
Migrant Solidarity group.“They go round town dur-
ing the day, they also go straight
to the squats and camps, that is
where they check people’s IDs.
And we try to be there to warn
people that the police are com-
ing.” When they are arrested
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they are held for anything between 24 hours
or a week or more. This might happen once
a week, once a day or in some cases, several
times in one day. Every time they are arrested
they must walk six miles back from the policestation to their squats or camps in Calais.
Mohammed Asif, a 27-year-old Hazare Af-
ghani who has been all over Europe trying to nd
a place to settle, is tired. “I had a small tent. The
police cut it and took blanket and put inside car.
Every time police control for [your] document.
‘Where you sleep? Who are you?’ When you come
to eat at Caritas, the police harass you. They take
you to police station, maybe put you in jail.
“In one week maybe three times. It
is too tiring. We got put inside the car, yougo to police station, police station put you
to jail for two, three days, one week. You
leave the station. It is too much.”
NGOs and charities working in Calais and
Dunkirk where police are equally aggressive are
nonplussed at the tactic, which does not seem to
have any point to it. No one is deported and no n-
ger prints are checked during these arrests. Matt
Quinette from Médicins du Monde says:
“People are living like animals
and for the police and the au-
thorities it is not enough.”
“They [the police] destroy their shelter reg-
ularly. They destroy food. They arrest the people
so many times. One time we had a young guy who
was 19 or 20 years old, he was kept three times
in the retention centre during 15 days, without
any results. He was still in the camps, still on the
coastline trying to reach England. But for him
it is really difcult, he is really suffering.”
“We [Medicins du Monde] have been red
from south Darfur yesterday. Can you imagine if in Darfur we have a healthcare centre and peo-
ple are arrested on the way? Can you imagine
that we give goods to the people to build a shel-
ter to improve their living conditions and the lo-
cal authority of Darfur destroyed it? What will
happen? You will have international community
shouting, you will have UN shouting, here it hap-
pens every day and nobody does anything.”
Those still intent on getting to Britain live
in camps close to the ferry ports. A groupof Eritreans has set up camp 50-odd kilo-
metres from Calais town centre in some
woodland close to a motorway service station.
From there they might try to smuggle themselves
into a truck, while the driver stops some tea.
At another camp, hidden by a small forest
just off a motorway in Teteghem, outside Dunkirk,
a group of Afghans share four large tents made
from wood and thick plastic sheets. The muddy
camp is covered in empty bottles, old clothes,
odd shoes and stale bread. A stack of dirty plastic
plates have been left in an old trolley. The Af-
ghans are asleep having spent all night trying to
stow away on trucks heading to England.
The France terre d’asile eld workers ar-
riving to provide medical care for immigrants,are
annoyed at the mess. If the place isn’t kept
clean, the authorities will destroy it, they say.
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Their shoes are worn from
walking and they are
covered in bruises
and scrapes,acquired either
by running from
the police or falling
from trucks
But the Afghans living in the camp do not expect
their stay to be long. Everyday they search for a
truck or lorry to stow away in, and everyday they
believe is the day they will get to Britain.However, their chances are slim; there
are around 6,000 trucks crossing to Dover eve-
ry day, 99% are searched for stowaways.
This does not bother Zia-ur-ahman, pic-
tured above. He emerges from his tent, shivering
wincing slightly. He has no socks on and wears a
thin coat over his jumper. His left eye is closed
and sunken into his swollen cheek. The 14-year-
old fell off a truck the night before. Zia-ur-ah-
man, who left his home in Kabul, is not deterred.
He plans to try the trucks again tonight.Many of the men and boys need medi-
cal attention, it is a chilly winter and many
wear thin torn clothes. Their shoes are
worn from walking and they are covered in
bruises and scrapes, acquired either running
from the police or falling from trucks.
At another camp, this one half provided by
Dunkirk’s local authority, immigrants from
a mix of nationalities, Kurds, Iranians, Ira-
qis, Afghans and Vietnamese, live in miser-
able conditions. They are much less chirpythan the young Afghans a few miles away.
The council has provided one large
marquee, big enough to t around 30
people in it, and a smaller tent.
The Afghans in the camp have built their
own shelter away from the council tents us-
ing bits of plastic nearby among some trees. It
would be much more comfortable in the large
tent, but they accuse the Kurds of not wanting
to “live with others”. The two Vietnamese peo-
ple avoid the conict, refusing to speak to an-yone and are left alone in the small tent.
It is cold and dirty, and everyone is
tired and ill. A harmless cold can quickly
turn nasty if a person sleeping outside dur-
ing wet weather, with no warm clothes and
hot food only two or three times a week.
“The humanitarian situation is very bad”, says
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Matt Quinette. “We are in France but you can-
not imagine we are in France. People have real
difculties getting access to water, they don’t
have hygiene, they don’t have good shelter,
they are open to the wind, humidity, they are
vulnerable with the cold. There is no waste
management in the camps … so sanitary con-ditions on these camps are really, really bad.
They affect the health of the people.”
A visit from UNHCR ofcials based in Calais
elicits only a sarcasm from one Iraqi. “ Thanks,” he
says, voice full of disgust as the familiar ack jack -
ets wave goodbye after half an hour or so.
“We are pissed off here in this jungle,”
says Abdil bitterly. “Everyone is itchy because
we are dirty. Everyone catches eas. Every day
my legs hurt, my shoes..” His annoyance also
stems from being pulled out of a truck around7am that morning. He is tired at having to lie
to family at home in Afghanistan too.
“Everyone comes here to benet his family,
if I make money, I can send it back to Afghani-
stan. Everyone wants to escape war and the
threat of death from IEDs. Right now day by day
the situation is bad, what should we do?”
An Iraqi named Saman Gaala says he
was invited to Britain by a soldier ghting in
his country. The soldier gave Saman his mo-
bile and told him to call once he got to the UK.Despite the gloom, talk of the UK raises spir-
its. Saman’s friend wonders how much money
is needed to set up a business in England.
But eventually the hope vanishes. Some ir-
regular migrants in France are so mentally and
physically beaten, that they opt to be deported
voluntarily. “It is not the Europe they pictured
when they left their own country,” says Jacky
Verhaegen from Caritas. “Two to three hun-
dred have asked for voluntary returns to their
home country. Mostly for the same reasonthat they apply for asylum, desperation.
For those eeing countries like Eritrea, Su-
dan or Afghanistan, this is not an option, so they
plough their efforts into navigating the French asy-
lum system. If they have no ngerprint in another
European Union country, then they will receive a
permit to stay in France for one month, while their
asylum application is being processed. During this
period the government allocates them €300 a
month to live on while they wait for a decision,
twice as much as they would receive in the UK.
The entire process takes around one
year. The situation is slightly different if a mi-grant has a ngerprint in another EU country.
In such circumstances, their application is fast
tracked with no social assistance while they wait
for a decision. Fast track applications are most
likely to be rejected and deported to the coun-
try where their ngerprint was taken.
C
eline, who has been working
with immigrants in Calais for four
years at the medical centre for ir-
regular migrants and asylum seek-ers, thinks the French system needs to offer
more cultural integration for migrants.
“When they wait to get asylum, it can
be six months, it can be one year, it can be
two years, but there is not school. In England,
they have to learn English, here they don’t do
that. They have to help them to speak French.
How can they stay if they don’t speak the lan-
guage? That should be the minimum, they can’t
nd a job if they don’t speak French.”
There needs to be more facilities cen-tres in Calais providing language tuition and
support for children travelling alone, as more
and more migrants give up on the UK and
decide to settle in France, she adds.
The government has made steps in this di-
rection by setting up an asylum ofce in Calais. But
as yet, the ofce has not employed any translators
and its staff speak only French, making it impos-
sible for some newly-arrived asylum seekers to
make an application without help from an NGO.
“Some have asked for
voluntary returns to their
home country. Mostly for
the same reason that they apply
for asylum, desperation.”
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Mohammed Asif, above, like many
asylum seekers and migrants at
this stage of their journey, is re-signed to his fate. He eyes are
also open to the European dream.
“Europe is small country. Working is very
difcult in Europe. I only like Europe because there
is no ghting and no crazy Taliban. I leave Afghan-
istan because of ghting for 100 years. They say
they bring democracy and the ghting will nish,
the ghting didn’t nish. The ghting doubled.
“This [is the] problem. Maybe one time you
want to go to the supermarket, you want to buy
small newspapers for familia. Then a car is parkednear the supermarket. Pshh. People dead.
“Every time bombs are put inside cars
On market Friday, when many people in the
market. There was a bomb, many people
don’t have hands, don’t have arms, dead.
“If in Afghanistan there is no ght-
ing, why would I leave, am I crazy?”
PROFILE
Sher Wali, below, is tired of mov-
ing and wants to settle.
“I used to live in the jungle for
three months, it was very difcult. Every
time people ght, drink alcohol, because they
are stressed and depressed,” he says. He now
lives with a French family, is studying Frenchand works as a mechanic. His gentle demean-
our belies the trauma of his journey.
Sher Wali was born on the frontier be-
tween Pakistan and Afghanistan, and lived in
the Kunar province in north-eastern Afghani-
stan. He left the country with his younger
brother for Europe several years ago, while
his mother went to Pakistan after the family
sold their property to nance the trips.
It took 15 months to get to Europe.
Sher Wali was deported twice from bothIran and Turkey, but determined, he and his
brother began again. Tragedy struck in Tur-
key when Sher and his 18-year-old brother
were separated. He has not seen or heard
from him since. “He will be 22 soon,” he says.
Sher continued alone to Romania, Hungary,
Germany, Belgium and now plans to stay in France.
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The Caritas small centre, a short bus
ride from the town centre is a place
where immigrants can drop their
guard. For a few moments they ban-
ish all thoughts of their transient lives.
Gone are the national divisions and ten-sions of the camps; instead the African jokes
with the Afghan, different tribal groups, who
usually refuse to even to live next to each
other, show concern for each other.
Jacky who runs the centre with sever-
al volunteers says the change in some of the
Afghan boys, barely into their teens, is most
remarkable once
they are taken out
of their usual envi-
ronment.
“When yousee them outside
they are like small
men, playing rough
and when they come
here, they start
drawing, they start
playing games and
being a child again. I am no shrink, but it is
going to be difcult for them to build them-
selves as normal balanced adult with no teen-
age years. They are going from childhood tomanhood with nothing in between.”
The centre offers practical support but
most importantly it is a much-needed haven
away from asylum applications, the Channel
Tunnel, their camps and the French police.
Immigrants losing faith in the dream of
Europe they once harboured, are not
completely disillusioned. Thanks to many
committed and kind-hearted Europeans
working to help them, even if their govern-
ments refuse to do so. This is less aboutcharity and more about individuals, like the
young social workers in Spain and Italy, the
photographer in Greece, and Celine, the
nurse in Calais. They manage to see past
their status as ‘illegal’ and see the human.
There is nowhere immigrants need this
more than in Calais. At Celine’s surgery
for a few moments,
they are able to relax.
“It is important
for them to be nor-mal people,” says Ce-
line. “When they are
in the street people
are afraid [of them],
they don’t look at
them with respect.
“When they
speak English, they
talk with me, just to
explain when they are
tired, when they havea lot of stress and they
need to talk about that.
“But they are
very strong, they smile,
they are proud. They
need to talk about oth-
er things…they need to
know how we live. We talk about the dif-
ference. Some of them say they are tired of
being in that situation, to think only about
their situation and to talk only about theirsituation. So they need to talk about an-
other thing, to compare our lives. They like
to explain to me the story of their country
and they like to talk about their religion. I
like it, it is very interesting because we talk
about our differences but with respect.”
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CONCLUSIONA summary of my ndings and conclusions
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there were also large numbers of Eritrean, Suda-
nese and Iraqi migrants. According to the chari-
ties and NGOs working in France there are less
Afghans than a year ago as many have decided
to settle in Scandinavian countries instead.
In Spain, most of the migrants I inter-
viewed were from West Africa hailing from Ni-geria, Cameroon, the Republic of Guinea, Ivory
Coast, Niger, Algeria and Mali. There was also
a large group of Indians, many of whom had
travelled across the Middle East and Africa be-
fore entering Spain. In Italy there were a num-
ber of Somalis and migrants from North Afri-
can countries including Morocco and Tunisia.
I also met most of these groups in Greece, as
well as migrants from Palestine and Iran.
In my reporting I refer to irregular mi-
grants, immigrants, undocumented migrants andasylum seekers. I use these terms to loosely de-
scribe those who enter Europe without papers.
The migrants I met fall into two loose categories;
those seeking asylum and those looking for work.
Very often the two categories overlapped.
Most of the people I met seeking asylum
were from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan,
Eritrea and Iran. Some had specic reasons for
seeking protection. Many of the Afghans and
Iraqis I spoke to had worked with international
forces in their countries and had been threat-ened by militia groups. Abozar, one of the Af-
ghans protesting against the asylum system in
Greece, left his country with his young family af-
ter receiving death threats from the Taliban for
his work with ISAF. I met several members of
the Hazare tribe, a minority group in Afghani-
stan hated by parts of the Taliban. Other Af-
ghans simply did not want to live in a war zone
with the ever present threat of suicide bomb
attacks by the Taliban or misre by ISAF.
Others were seeking asylum after trying tosettle in another country and eeing that country
because of persecution or discrimination. This
scenario predominantly affected sub-Saharan Af-
ricans and Afghans who had spent time in Iran,
where their civil liberties were denied and they
were discriminated against in the job market.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this report was to docu-
ment the experiences of irregular mi-
grants travelling through Europe to
Britain to pave the way for a more in-
formed discussion about immigration. Currently
in Britain, the issue is too often glossed over
with political rhetoric and myth, rather thaninformed facts and gures used in their proper
context. This has created a gap in public knowl-
edge about an issue important enough to inu-
ence the way people vote in elections.
My report sought to answer several ques-
tions to help better inform policy and debate on
immigration. I chose to focus on asylum seekers
and migrants who travel without documents, those
referred to as ‘illegal’ immigrants in public debate.
These groups are most potent in popular imagina-
tion and regularly feature in tabloid reporting andspeeches made by senior politicians. It is this group
that resonates most with the British public.
For a better-informed discussion, I de-
cided it was important to understand more
about irregular migrants travelling to Brit-
ain and their motives for doing so. The
questions I sought to answer were:
• Who are the migrants travelling irregu-
larly to Britain?
• Why do they want to come to Britain?
• How do they get here?
• What are the difculties they face in
Europe?
I chose to focus on the role of the
European Union as many irregular mi-
grants in Britain travel through sever-
al European countries to get here.
Who are the migrants travelling
irregularly to Britain?
The migrants I met in Greece, Spain, Italy and
France were mostly from Africa and the Middle
East. The biggest group were Afghans, who I
met in every country except in Italy. In France
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Many of those who I met travelling to
Britain were eeing enormous poverty and a
dire lack of employment opportunities in their
country of origin. One Nigerian migrant I met in
Ceuta explained with huge frustration, that de-
spite having graduated from university, he had
no chance of ever nding work without the rightconnections to navigate the corrupt job market.
What this illustrates is that objectively the fact
that a person is an economic migrant does not
mean that their reasons for migrating are invalid
or that they are undeserving of protection.
Why do they come?
I found that the reasons that migrants travel to
Britain are varied. In addition to the economic
and political reasons discussed above, many irreg-
ular migrants travelling to Britain have a skewedidea of life here. Many have grand dreams about
what they will be able to achieve in Britain. A
destitute Iraqi in Dunkirk asked me, for example,
how much he would need to set up a business
in the UK. That was his plan and he wanted to
know how long it would take to get started. In
nearly every country, I met migrants who knew
someone who claimed to have set up a business
in Britain, bought a car and a house. An Afghan
in Calais said he would be happy with running
a small shop. There was a general consensusthat Britain was a place where there were plen-
ty of jobs and hard work would be enough to
run a successful business. This begged the ques-
tion, where do these ideas come from?
During my reporting I discovered three main
factors inuencing this perception.
The rst is migrants themselves glossing
over their situation to family back home and to
other people they meet. Many are too ashamedto reveal the extent of their poverty and so em-
bellish how well they are doing. In France, charity
worker Jacky Verhaegen told me that one migrant
took a picture next to his charity’s van, pretend-
ing that it was his own, in order to send it home
to his family to show that he was doing well.
CONCLUSION
Yasmin, an Iranian woman who migrated to
Greece with her family, explained that she was
persecuted in Iran for marrying an Afghan.
Many of the asylum seekers could also be
described as economic migrants in that they
wanted to work so they could send funds to fam-
ily back home or to raise money to study in or-der to gain work. Abdarrazaq, who I met in Italy,
was one example of this. He ed his country be-
cause of conict. The violence in Somalia meant
if he stayed he might be killed. This would leave
his wife, mother and sisters without an income.
But another reason for leaving was the insecu-
rity of his job as a teacher; he did not know how
long his institution would survive the conict and
be able to pay him. Therefore he left for a safer
country with better job opportunities. The vola-
tile situation in Somalia means many aid agencies,a major source of alternative jobs, have left the
country. At the same time businesses will not in-
vest in a region with no government to regulate
and build infrastructure. So in many ways, people
eeing Somalia are leaving to seek better eco-
nomic opportunities and are also eeing conict.
Like many others, Abdarrazaq is therefore both
an asylum seeker and an economic migrant.
One of the difculties with the debate
about immigration is the idea that migrants
can be divided into “good” and “bad” migrants.Economic migrants are frequently considered
to be bad migrants; it is thought that they are
here to steal jobs and milk the benet system.
Those seeking asylum on the other hand are
generally considered to be the “good” migrants
and it is believed that it is only to these peo-
ple that Britain has a duty to welcome.
This narrative of “good” and “bad” migrants,
as shown through the cases referenced above,
fails to recognise nuances of migration, for exam-
ple that a person may be both an asylum seekerand economic migrant at the same time.
Equally the idea that an econom-
ic migrant is a “bad” migrant per se fails to
take into account the economic difcul-
ties or the level of destitution which a per-
son may experience in their home country.
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aspire to for people in developing countries. It
is mostly aimed at the growing middle classes
and a rich elite who can afford to attend foreign
universities or shop in London. Yet the same ad-
vertising impacts disproportionately on those
on the poorest in those countries who have a
greater need and desire to escape. For examplein Greece, Hadim from Senegal told me: “I know
London, I see it in the computer. London is very
nice place. The people have jobs. In London –
you don’t make problems for the people and they
don’t make problems for you. I like this.” Simi-
larly in Lampedusa, an Italian who had recently
returned from Tunisia remarked on the high level
of Italian cultural inuence in the country.
How do they get here?
During my reporting I identied two major routesto Europe. The rst was across the Middle East
to Turkey and then over the border to Greece.
This route was predominantly taken by the Af-
ghans, Iraqis and Iranians I interviewed.
The second route was across Africa to
the Maghreb, and then on to Spain or Italy.
Within this, the Somalis, Eritreans and Suda-
nese who I interviewed had travelled north
through Libya, then across the Mediterranean to
Italy. Others from West African countries said
they travelled through Algeria, then Moroccoor the Canary Islands and on to Spain.
There were however others who made jour-
neys that diverged from this route, generally as a
result of steps taken from Spain and Italy to pass
the burden of border control to the Maghreb. For
instance, a number of West Africans and Moroc-
cans I interviewed said they had own to Turkey
as this journey did not require a passport. From
there they crossed the border into Greece.
Each of these journeys is fraught with in-
surmountable difculties. From the migrants Ispoke to it became clear that there are a num-
ber of major, recurrent, humanitarian trag-
edies that occur during these journeys.
One is the peril involved in crossing the
Mediterranean Sea. I watched two small boats
carrying around 30 people arrive in Lampedusa;
CONCLUSION
Others, who have made it to Europe, say
that no one at home will believe them were they
to tell the truth about the difculties to be faced
in Europe. Samuel, a Ghanaian migrant living in
Italy told me that his friends back home did not
believe him when he said life was tough in Eu-
rope – a consequence of the fact that so manyembellish their successes in Europe and under-
play the difculties. Britain’s recent history of
welcoming migrants from its former colonies
also plays a role. It is of course true that many
migrants have come to Britain and set up busi-
nesses, some very successfully and this resonates
still with would-be migrants. However the cur-
rent economic climate means this sort of entre-
preneurship is far more difcult today. Coupled
with this, the government’s policy to reduce im-
migration and the lack of legal migration routesfor the low skilled and the poor means they sim-
ply will not be welcomed in the same way.
The second factor inuencing their idea of
Britain as El Dorado is the sheer desperation of
migrants after their grim experiences, particular-
ly in other European countries. I found this par-
ticularly prevalent among those I interviewed in
France who had made their way across Europe.
By the time they arrived in France, many migrants
were bitterly disappointed by their experiencesof Europe so far leaving them ever more deter-
mined to get to the Britain. Many were still in
shock about conditions in Greece, often their en-
try point into Europe. For example Sharaf from
Sudan was astonished by the state of Greece’s
reception centres. He could not believe that he
was in Europe and yet had to rummage through
dustbins for food. Such experiences concen-
trate their minds on the UK. It comes to sym-
bolise their last hope. In the words of Sandra,
a social worker working with migrants in Italy,“without hope a human being is dead”.
The third factor inuencing the decision of
migrants to travel to Britain is the impact of glo-
balisation. The lifestyle of the West has been pack-
aged, marketed and served up as something to
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Crossing the Aegean Sea is another dan-
gerous route for migrants crossing into Europe
through Greece. An Afghan woman in Greece
explained that when smugglers put them in a
boat from Turkey it was supposed to take them
to Italy. Instead they spent 16 terrifying hours
oating aimlessly in the Aegean Sea. The boat be-gan to sink and eventually they were rescued by
Greek coasts guards. Four people drowned.
The third of these humanitarian disasters,
perhaps most controversial, is the treatment of
migrants passing through Libya on their way to
Europe. Libya is one of the few countries not
signed up to the Refugee Convention and so is
not obliged to provide special protection for asy-
lum seekers. But not only does it not provide pro-
tection, the country actively violates the human
rights of migrants and asylum seekers. Despitethis well documented fact, Italy has a treaty with
Libya, under which Libya is paid to stop any mi-
grants crossing from the country to Europe.
The migrants I interviewed that had crossed
through Libya spoke of violent trafcking rings
within the country, sometimes involving ofcials.
Migrants might be passed from smuggler to smug-
gler, each extorting money and torturing those
who refuse to pay. If the migrants are caught by the
police, they are thrown in prison, held there till they
pay a bribe or are released into the desert.One Eritrean asylum seeker I inter-
viewed in France was traumatised by his treat-
ment in Libya; he said the Libyans he encoun-
tered acted like “animals”. Abdarrazaq, who
I met in Italy, told me that on more than one
occasion he was “captured” and taken to or-
dinary people’s homes, tortured and forced to
pay hundreds of dollars to his captors.
Though such events happened under
the former Libyan regime, there is still danger
for migrants in Libya. Many have been caughtup in the revolution, often mistaken for mer-
cenaries ghting in Muammar al-Gadda’s
army, and imprisoned by rebel groups.
The fourth of these humanitarian tragedies
is found in the Sahara Desert. Crossing this vast
expanse migrants are entirely at the mercy of rut-
CONCLUSION
the men, all from Tunisian, were safe, but lucky.
Since that time there have been numerous re-
ports of boats carrying migrants from Libya and
Tunisia sinking after coming up against bad weath-
er, resulting in the death by drowning of the pas-
sengers. The boats that carry migrants are usual-
ly overcrowded and ill-equipped to survive poorconditions. The head of the immigration holding
centre in Ceuta told me that Spain had conducted
numerous missions to rescue migrant boats stuck
at sea and that overall, hundreds of migrants have
died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Another danger stems from the hazards in-
herent in migrants crossing the border between
Greece and Turkey. The Greek police chief Geor-
gios Salamagkas showed me images and a short
lm made of some of the rescue missions he had
made on the River Evros, which runs along theborder between Greece and Turkey. During a
particularly bad month in June last year, his of-
cers pulled 20 dead bodies from the river.
There are several reasons for these
deaths. One is that the people smugglers help-
ing migrants to cross the river show little re-
gard for their safety and think only of prot.
The more people they help across the river, the
more money they get. Some migrants I inter-
viewed said they paid $150 for this part of their
journey while others paid up to $500.Most migrants I interviewed just arriv-
ing in Greece from Turkey said they had been
packed into tiny inatable boats. These rubber
dinghies are not suitable for carrying several
people and in the poor weather simply burst.
If a migrant cannot swim, he will drown.
During the winter people also die of hypo-
thermia making this journey. The migrants I in-
terviewed all walked for miles when they rst ar-
rived in Greece. They usually arrive at night when
it is easier to dodge border patrol, but this makesit difcult to nd their bearings as they make their
way through acres of farmland and woodlands. A
Greek villager told me that many seek shelter in
water wells where they freeze to death. During
December 2010 and the rst few weeks of Janu-
ary 2011, eight people died of hypothermia.
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On arrival in Greece Yasmin desper-
ately tried to contact the man, believing that
he would help them complete their jour-
ney. She and her husband had paid everything
they had to him. Unsurprisingly they were
unsuccessful in their attempts to nd him.
The difculties they face in Europe
For nearly all of the migrants I interviewed the
trauma of their journey to Europe continued once
they arrived. Though the specic difculties, and
the extent to which the difculties resulted from
the actions of the state, varied from country to
country, there was a common thread of inhuman-
ity, degradation and indignity which ran though the
experiences of the migrants that I spoke to.
Greece:
In Greece, as has been discussed, migrants
rst contend with the life-threatening dan-
gers inherent in the border crossing. In ad-
dition to this there is the presence of Fron-
tex, the EU’s ofcial border police.
The Frontex ofcers I interviewed stated
that they did not use violence against migrants
wanting to cross into Greece, and that they pro-
vided care (blankets, water, etc) when necessary.
However, ultimately their role is to stop migrantsgetting into the EU, which they try to do by “scar-
ing” them away from the border. This creates two
problems. First, it makes it difcult for migrants
to enter without enlisting the help of smugglers,
who endanger their lives. Second, it also impacts
on those entitled to refugee protection in Europe.
Frontex’s approach does not distinguish between
true asylum seekers and economic migrants.
Once migrants have passed into Greece,
they then have to contend with terrible condi-
tions in the country’s reception centres. Many aremakeshift cells in border town police stations. An
ofcial I interviewed from Médecins Sans Fron-
tières described the centres as inhumane plac-
es with poor sanitation, serious over-crowding
and freezing temperatures leading to many peo-
ple becoming seriously ill. However, the over
CONCLUSION
hless trafckers and corrupt border police.
People trafckers and bandits are a particu-
lar menace to those crossing the Sahara through
Algeria to get to Morocco. Jesus Castro Gontales,
a charity worker in Ceuta who has worked with
many migrants that have made the journey, said
gangs of trafckers patrolled large swathes of the desert, many with border police in their pay.
They use violence to intimidate migrants into pay-
ing for help to cross the desert. Any that do not
cooperate or do not have sufcient funds to pay
trafckers are left to fend for themselves.
Those who I interviewed reported that
hundreds did not make it and were left to die. Ab-
doulaye, a young man from the Republic of Guin-
ea, showed me stomach churning mobile phone
footage of the rotting bodies of migrants who had
died of thirst and the heat in the Sahara Desert.Those that make it across the Sahara into Moroc-
co, then come up against the Moroccan border
police who, according to Jesus, have been known
to round migrants up, drive them out of Mo-
rocco and leave them to die in the desert.
Involved in all of the journeys that I have
described, and exacerbating the scale of the trag-
edies which take place, are the people trafckers
who transport migrants, extorting large amounts
of money, failing to alert them to the dangersof their journeys and refusing to provide suf-
cient protection. In Greece Salamagkas lamented
the fact that trafckers, who might extort sev-
eral thousand Euros per migrant per journey,
would not even provide €3 life jackets for the
people they sent across the River Evros.
Along all the migration routes the trafck -
ers charge exorbitant fees for doing as little as
providing a imsy boat to cross the Mediterra-
nean or showing migrants in Calais which lorry
depot to stow away in. Often they take a mi-grant’s life savings and do not even deliver on
their promise of help. Yasmin, the Iranian woman
I met in Greece, said the person who helped her
family migrate from Iran had promised to help
them to Switzerland. Instead he put them on a
boat from Turkey and they ended up in Greece.
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sharing three rooms between 24 of them. With
little chance of nding work, one family were
forced to rely on the income made by their
9-year-old son selling cigarette lighters.
All of the problems described above which
migrants experience in Greece are exacerbated
by the Dublin II system. Under Dublin II, migrantscan only make an asylum application in the rst
European Union country they enter. They can-
not lodge an asylum in any other country and if
they do so they will be deported back to that
rst country. This creates a paradoxical situation
for migrants in Greece. As Greece is the most
popular entry point into Europe it is the country
in which migrants are most likely to claim asylum.
Having done so, the poor conditions for asylum
seekers soon encourage those same migrants to
seek refuge elsewhere in Europe. However theDublin II system means that as soon as they claim
asylum elsewhere they will be sent straight back
to Greece where their troubles start over.
Italy:
For the migrants I met in Italy, the biggest dif-
culties faced there were racism, economic ex-
ploitation and policy restricting immigrants’ from
being granted Italian citizenship. I spoke to sev-
eral Italians who claimed that migrants were sub- ject to a number of populist policies introduced
by the government to distract people from the
other serious problems such as unemployment.
Last year, the government tried to enact a policy
that would deny any migrants without documents
access to health care. They wanted doctors to
refuse treatment and call the police instead. Ital-
ian doctors refused to go along with this and
the government eventually backed down.
The lack of jobs and miniscule wages for
migrants mean many live in severe poverty.Samuel, a Ghanaian migrant I interviewed in
Sicily told me he cried on seeing the poverty
of his fellow migrants when he rst arrived in
Palermo, which has a growing migrant commu-
nity. Stories abound of employers refusing to
pay irregular migrants proper wages and sack-
CONCLUSION
whelming difculty for migrants seeking refuge in
Greece is the asylum system itself. Making an ap-
plication is difcult and there is very little access
to legal advice or translators to help those who
do not speak Greek. Migrants I met leaving recep-
tion centres were given a one-month temporary
residence permit written in Greek (though oneofcial told me an English version is also available)
a language they did not understand. Those who
managed to lodge an asylum claim faced a wait
of sometimes years for it to be resolved. Greece
has a backlog of at least 40,000 incomplete asy-
lum cases. In Athens, in their despair over the
time taken to determine their asylum claims, 100
Afghanis set up a protest camp in the city cen-
tre. Eight of them sewed their lips together with
a needle and thread, symbolising the voiceless-
ness that they felt, and went on a hunger strike.One of the protestors had been waiting eight
years for a decision on his asylum claim.
Further, the number of asylum seekers rec-
ognised as refugees in Greece is less than 1%,
the lowest in the European Union. Yet the ma-
jority of migrants that cross into Greece have a
strong claim to asylum as they come from war
torn countries like Afghanistan and Somalia. The
logical inference is that a proportion of genuine
asylum seekers are being refused protection sim-
ply because Greece’s system is inadequate.Though migrants in Greece are entitled to
a six-month work permit it is practically very dif-
cult for them to obtain one. The permit pro-
cessing centre in Athens opens for applications
just once a week around midnight. The ofce
only takes 20 applications leaving hundreds with-
out a permit. The effects of this are that many
migrants are not able to work and are reduced
to poverty. Because they do not have a legal sta-
tus, they cannot leave Greece legally. In effect
they are trapped. The poverty among migrantsin Athens in particular, is shocking. Many are reli-
ant on soup kitchens, like the one I visited run
by Caritas, where migrants from around the
world queued for the only meal they would get
that day. They usually live in tiny overcrowded
ats. I visited a group of Afghans and Iranians
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The migrants in Ceuta are stuck in a cruel
limbo. Many have made often traumatic journeys
across the Sahara Desert, and many have genu-
ine political asylum claims. Many are young, ambi-
tious and with a strong desire to seek a better
opportunities. I interviewed an Indian migrant
who had spent four years on the island, protest-ing against a deportation order and waiting for
an opportunity to travel to the peninsula. Rocky
left India to complete his studies in business
abroad. Instead of furthering his education, his
life has been on hold for four years as he ghts
for the opportunity to stay in Europe.
France:
In France, the criminalization of migrants was par-
ticularly noticeable. In both Calais and Dunkirk many report facing constant harassment from the
special police force. These ofcers are normally
employed to keep public order during riots, but
unofcially they are regularly deployed to ar-
rest and re-arrest migrants. Mohamed Asif com-
plained of being arrested sometimes up to three
times in one week. Each time a migrant is arrest-
ed in these areas the police take them to a po-
lice station six miles away. Without money to pay
for public transport they must walk the six miles
back to their camps frequently with inadequatefootwear. In Calais, one migrant fell from the roof
of a derelict building and broke his wrist trying to
escape the police. NGOs were at a loss to explain
the police policy as the migrants involved are al-
ways released from custody without charge.
In Dunkirk, Matt Quinette of Mé¬dicins du
Monde expressed his fury to me that the police
would go so far as to destroy camps and con-
scate the migrant’s plastic sheets which are all
they have to shelter themselves. This approach,
while popular with the French public leavesmany migrants street-homeless without even the
most basic protection from the elements.
Another difculty is a lack of proper cul-
tural integration. There are not enough facili-
ties in and around Calais to help asylum seek-
ers properly integrate into France, such as
CONCLUSION
ing them once they became regularised in order
to avoid increasing their pay. Samuel said that if
he were to charged €50 for example, for a job,
there might be another migrant, more desper-
ate than him, willing to work for €5. Such des-
peration coupled with lack of regulation and
enforcement left the migrants in Italy highlyvulnerable to labour market exploitation.
Spain:
In Spain the picture I gleaned, based on the in-
terviews I conducted in Malaga and on the island
of Ceuta, was of a better functioning and more
humane immigration system. The opportunities
for work for example are higher than in Greece.
After three years of working in Spain migrants
can apply for a residency permit. The supportfor recognised refugees is also commendable. A
new immigration law currently working its way
through Spanish parliament includes plans to of-
fer protection for those who fall outside of the
Refugee Convention but still face persecution in
their country of origin. There will also be support
for other previously neglected groups including
victims of domestic abuse and homosexuals.
However, there are still huge difculties
for migrants who travel to Spain through Ceuta
or Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves borderingnorthern Africa. The Spanish government re-
fuses to let those migrants pass through to the
Spanish mainland, except in exceptional cases
where a person is seriously ill or has a small
child. Those applying for asylum must start and
nish the entire process on the islands.
In Ceuta, some of the migrants waited as
much as a year for their cases to be decided.
Meanwhile, they had no access to work while
they waited. Ceuta is a small island with few le-
gal jobs available to the migrants there. Shouldthey attempt to work illegally they must com-
pete with the established workforce of Moroc-
cans for black market work. Some migrants I
interviewed said that in the circumstances best
they could hope to earn was a few euros park-
ing cars or carrying people’s shopping.
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their hope in Britain becomes stronger. Mak-
ing sure that the common asylum system works
efciently and humanely is in Britain’s inter-
est and would also lessen the horric experi-
ence for irregular migrants in Europe.
To this end each country ought to have a
formal asylum process, where the basis for grant-ing refugee status tallies across Europe. There
needs to be trained staff and translators to con-
duct asylum interviews and counselling for those
who have made traumatic journeys. If the process
is going to take months and years, asylum seekers
must be given access to language lessons, and edu-
cation or skills training. They should be given tem-
porary status which allows them to work legally,
so they are not vulnerable to exploitation.
Critics argue that this means they put
down roots, making it harder to deport themif their applications are refused. If this is the
case, the application process needs to be a
matter of weeks rather than years. It is cru-
el to make someone waste precious years
of their life, unable to work or study, living in
poverty or held in a reception centre.
The prospect of a genuinely harmonious
European system is a long way off. Under the lat-
est plans set out in the Stockholm agreement,
the Union agreed to a 2014 deadline for the next
phase of integration. Yet current negotiations tocreate a mechanism to support countries strug-
gling to cope with exceptional inuxes of migra-
tion have come up against objections from 24 of
the 27 EU member states, including the UK.
What is clear is that European coopera-
tion is crucial to solving the problem of irregu-
lar migration to the UK. And in my view it is a
level of cooperation worth striving for.
It is now a little over 60 years since Brit-
ain signed up to the European Convention on
Human Rights; a landmark international trea-ty born out of the privations of the Second
World War and championed by Sir Winston
Churchill himself. The opening preamble reads:
“Reafrming their profound belief in those
fundamental freedoms which are the foundation
CONCLUSION
language lessons or information to help them ac-
cess the jobs market, while they wait for their
claim to be decided. Instead many wait for as
much as a year for a response to their asylum
claim, during which time they complete no inte-
gration programme and only learn French infor-
mally. As a result, even for those who I spoketo with genuine asylum claims, there was a lack
of impetus for them to stay in France and many
elected to continue their journey on to Britain.
If there were greater support, they might de-
cide to stay in France where there is a better
chance of refugee recognition and better social
assistance, rather than leave for Britain.
Conclusion: what does this mean for
Britain?
To reduce irregular migration to Britain, someargue that the solution is to tighten the border
control to prevent people from entering. How-
ever if the Greek model is anything to go by (i.e.
Frontex border control) this is unlikely to be an
effective solution. More to the point it does not
get to the root of the issue. During my report-
ing I identied three major drivers that play a
role in a migrant’s decision to leave home and
travel to Britain irregularly. These are:
1. The situation in their home country,
2. An idealised vision of Britain,
3. Trouble in other European countries
leading them to seek out Britain as an
alternative immigration option.
If the government wants to reduce irregular
migration then, in my view, policy must focus
on reducing the effects of these drivers.
More importantly, addressing these driv-ers would go some way toward reducing the
devastating human cost incurred by irregular
migrants travelling across Europe. As detailed
in my report, migrants face extreme difculties
and deprivation as they travel across Europe. As
their situation worsens from country to country,
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CONCLUSION
of justice and peace in the world and are best
maintained on the one hand by an effective po-
litical democracy and on the other by a com-
mon understanding and observance of the hu-
man rights upon which they depend.”
Addressing the root causes of irregu-lar migration and reducing the suffering, in-
dignity and deprivation experienced by the
migrants I met on my Churchill Travel Fel-
lowship and others like them, would go some
way toward fullling these aspirations.
Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
September 2011
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AcknowledgementsI would like to thank all the migrants and asylum seekers who told me their stories, trusted me and gave
me access to some of the most difculties times in their lives. I hope I have done them justice.
I would particularly like to thank Ezmerey Ahmadi for taking me to Victoria Square and helping with Farsi
translations. I would also like to thank Abozar Jalily for keeping me updated. Thanks to Mawat Ali for help -
ing with Italian translations. Thank you also to Abdoulaye Bah for sharing what he witnessed in the Sahara.
Thanks also to Haroon Abdurallam for showing me Africa House.
I would like to thank all the ordinary people, particularly villagers in Greece, who showed me great hospi-
tality and provided immense insight and put up with my constant questions.
A huge thank you to Greek photojournalist Maro Kouri for some great team work in Evros and for her
wonderful pictures taken while we were in northern Greece. I would also like to thank Dimitris Aspiotisfor sharing his moving pictures of the Afghans in Athens. Thanks also to Nikos Markogiannakis.
Thanks to all the ofcials, charities and NGOs who gave honest and frank testimonies about their work
and sometimes gave up hours of their time to assist me with my research. They include:
Spyros Rizakos from Aitima, Médecins Sans Frontières Greece, Caritas Athens, George Petropoulos from
the Hellenic Police and Frontex, Georgios Salamagkas, Centro Astralli in Palermo, Alfonso Cinquemani,
Mauro Seminara, Progetto Tarik, Alessandra Voutsinas, Comisión Española de Ayuda al Refugiado (CEAR)
in both Ceuta and Malaga, Ivan Carlin, Alejandro Romero Aliaga, CETI staff in Ceuta, Sheila Mohamed
Salah and her co-worker, Carlos Bengoechea, Maite Perez, Jesus Castro Gontales from the Association
of Elin, Asylum Aid, Nick Oakeshott, Jean Lambert, Matthieu Gues from Calais Migrant Solidarity Group, Jacky Verhaegen, Caritas Calais, the Médicins du Monde team in Dunkirk, Matt Quinette, Chloë Lorieux,
France terre d’asile, Celine, Salam Association.
My sincerest thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for awarding me such a generous fellowship
and giving me a fantastic opportunity. I gained an extrordinary amount from the fellowship both profes -
sionally and personally.
Most of all I would like to thank Connor Johnston whose encouragement, support and patience kept me
going from start to nish.