RT @HorvatSrecko: “I see things that are already disappearing and changing. The local population feels it even better than me. We need to b… 3 years ago
On 3 – 4 August, within the frame of the 2016 FACK MSUV NEW mUSEeum event, we call for a FACK BORDERS MEETING against closed borders policy and in support to migrants.
OPENING of FACK BORDERS MEETING on Wensday 3.08 at 6pm in the hall of MSUV – with interventions by No Border Serbia, report from No Border Camp Thessaloniki and Defencing festival, projections and documentation.
All interested individuals, activists and volunteers, independent groups, artists and other realities active in and around no border movement, working in direct solidarity and in support to migrants’ struggle or interested in doing it are invited to take part in FACK BORDERS meeting. FACK BORDERS proposes to use the museum in any way that might be useful for their struggle and activities, for networking, work meetings, discussions, workshops, performances, projections, presentations, assemblies. This is the occasion for an experiment in NEW USE of a cultural institution, by opening it to the migrants’and revolted EU citizens’ struggle for the freedom of movement and against closed borders policy and for sharing reflections and practices among activists, artists and cultural workers to implement the struggle.
Individuals and collectives that are willing to collaborate in the preparation and/or to propose interventions & activities in the FACK BORDER meeting are invited to join the general FACK assembly on Saturday 30 July in Kino sala in MSUV – Dunavska 37. For any questions contact 063 7434197.
“You know, its a global issue, the issue of refugees, there are now 3800 refugees here in Serbia, most of them are in the parks and in the streets, most of them covering somewhere, and many of them they live in camps, they have applied for asylum and they are waiting. In a legal process that is initiated by the Hungarian government on daily bases they receive 15 people from Horgoš camp and 15 people from Kelebija. To the issue of entering is very much slow when looking at the huge number of refugees although there is tough security system in Bulgaria and over here at the Hungarian border as well.
Personally I think that there are certain powerful nations that have turned a blind eye towards them (the refugees), I think they are fleeing their responsibility because whenever there is a crisis there is the responsibility to come forward and address the challenge. The world is sliding towards intolerance, insecurity is on the rise, people are being divided even if the the issue is the same: there is the few ones who want to create chaos, and they are winning the war. They are just few ones, and we are billions. Humans. And if they succeed in creating ruptures, intolerance , hatred, it means that this planet will no more remain a beautiful place and a secure place and in that case we will not be in the position to give a beautiful and peaceful tomorrow for our children.
When I came to Belgrade and saw that the refugees are stuck here, waiting under the sun to pick up some , I asked myself , for how long it will remain like this? There have been many people there, sitting and discussing the situation. It was my first day and I got interested and gave my ideas for what we should do. I thought doing something together is the only way from which we could successfully deliver the message: by creating fences we will not achieve anything in Europe. Its a kind of escape. Why not to stop wars?why not to stop violence? By stopping wars and violence , you can successfully address this issue instead of creating new fences or buying someones loyalty in the sense of “Ok, dont let them enter to your territory” and taking money for that. Turkey and Bulgaria are also having a business with this.The refugee crisis has become an operative sector these days.
So our second objective was: to show to the world, what the real troubles of the refugees are, when they leave their countries of origin and come through the “jungles” walking for days and nights, what we actually go through. They are beaten, jailed, dogs are unleashed on them, their money is snatched, and they are ordered to go back by foot. So this is something , we feel, its totally out of the sight of the world. Because journalists can not go to the jungles , or they have no access, or they are not allowed, I don’t know what is the reason. So because of inaccessibility something was hidden from the eyes of the world.Personally I did not eat anything for 2 days and 2 nights when I was in Bulgaria, only a bottle of water was offered to me. I was not even allowed to go out for urination, I had to urinate inside the prison. Inside my home country I was considered by the security forces a criminal because I had spoken out against the policies of the state. But why a person should be treated like a criminal when he was fleeing violence and war? The third object is: they have to rewrite, rethink, refugee policies. Because by creating just fences you are dividing the beautiful world and this is not a solution.”
Did someone come from the official side to talk to you for negotiations?
“We were told that somebody would come tomorrow, but nobody knows who that man is and what kind of capacities he or she has. Until now we were only in contact with the serbian commissariat and they kept asking us , what is your plan, what is your next step? They just appeared for a few minutes and then left. Millions of dollars are creating fences and tightening security. So we can not just come and say “open the door”. This is not my uncles house. You know, I can not force anybody. I dont want any anger from a third country. When I am in a secure position, lets say I am settled somewhere, working as a journalist, then I am in the position that I can again take the hammer and start to criticize the policies . But given our position, we can just ask to have a second look at your policies. If the people could chose, they would not come this route. They would come by planes. What we need today is unity, solidarity , love and peace.”
As a sign of solidarity, resistance and common struggle- the banner was set up in Info Park tonight arround 11pm.
Today, workers of the City greenery set up fences around almost the entire Info park park,so “migrants would no longer be able to stay there and sleep in the park on the grass” ( statement from a City Greenery worker).
Apparently they received such an order from the city authorities.
The same they did last year at the end of the summer
On the same day the tents were removed from the park and the inscriptions “No camping” were set up in several places.
Repression, criminalization and illegalization continue!
But you know what ?
We will resist stronger and stronger!!!
Also, today we witnessed police violence in Afghani park-
a cop rudely dragged the young Afghan for unknown reasons, he put him behind the door of police van, hit him three times with his fist on back of the head, yelling at him and cursing ( for such a bad ,bad words there is no translation from serbian to english-than the literal translation):
“I will fuck your mother, you fucking runt, we will kick you out from here” and ” All of you came to Serbia and and you didn’t learn serbian language, you mother fuckers”.
Also, at one point we saw one of the cops returned baton to his casing but we didn’t see the punch!
We reacted immediately and demanded to stop the violence and racist insulting!!!
We asked for a cop identification number but they immediately moved away, so we had to follow them and in the end we managed to write identification number.
They asked two times for ID card from one of our comrades.
Three of us were present whole time during the police violence, while members of some NGO’s were sitting in nearby cafes, drinking coffee, pretending that they have seen nothing.
Also, a few days before we were witnessing a xenophobic statements of one worker from Doctors Without Borders who shouted very loud-
“Among these (migrants) are the Talibans and terrorists”.
We have verbally informed the coordinator of their team.
Never anything like this has happened for three years since Doctors Without Borders have teams in Serbia.
Because of all this that is happening, as well as the announced complete militarization of the border with Macedonia and new implemented repressive measures against our brothers and sisters- WE URGE FOR MORE SOLIDARITY, RESISTANCE AND COMMON STRUGGLE!!!
U znak solidarnosti, otpora i zajedničke borbe- postavljen je baner u Info Parku večeras oko 23h!
Danas su radnici Gradskog zelenila postavili ograde oko gotovo čitavog Info parka, prekopali su zemlju kako “migranti više ne bi mogli da borave tu i da spavaju u parku na travi” ( izjava radnika Gradskog zelenila).
Isto to su uradili prošle godine krajem leta.
Istog dana su i šatori uklonjeni iz parka i postavljeni su natpisi “ZABRANJENO KAMPOVANJE”.
Represija, kriminalizacija i ilegalizacija se nastavljaju!
Ali znate šta?
Prućažemo otpor sve jače i jače!
Takodje, danas smo prisustvovali policijskom nasilju u Afgani parku-
policajac je grubo vukao mladog afganistanca iz nepoznatih razloga, iza vrata marice ga je udario šakom tri puta po temenu glave, vikali su na njega i psovali:
“Jebem li vam mamu, stoko jedna, proteraćemo vas sve” i “Došli ste u Srbiju a nisi naučio srpski da pričaš mamu li ti jebem”.
Takodje, jednog momenta smo videli da jedan od policajaca vraća palicu u fotrolu ali udarac nismo videli.
Reagovali smo momentalno i zahtevali da odmah prestanu sa nasiljem i vredjanjem, rasističkim psovkama!!!
Tražili smo broj značke policajca ali su se oni odmah udaljili, tako da smo morali da idemo za njima i na kraju smo uspeli da zapišemo broj značke policajca.
Jednog našeg drugara su legitimisali dva puta.
Nas troje smo bili prisutni sve vreme tokom policijskog nasilja, dok su članovi nekih NGO-a sedeli u okolnim kafićima i ispijali kafe, praveći se da ništa ne vide.
Takodje, nekoliko dana ranije smo bili svedoci ksenofobične izjave jednog radnika Doktora bez granica koji je vikao glasno-
“Medju njima ( migrantima) ima talibana i terorista”.
O tome smo usmeno obavestili koordinatora njihovog tima.
Nikada se ništa slično nije desilo za tri godine od kada Doktori bez granica imaju timove u Srbiji.
Zbog svega ovoga što se dešava, kao i zbog najavljene potpune militarizacije granice sa Makedonijom i novih represivnih mera koje se sprovode protiv naše braće i sestara- APELUJEMO NA VIŠE SOLIDARNOSTI, OTPORA I ZAJEDNIČKE BORBE!!!
I would like to start this talk by warmly thanking Wolfgang Kaschuba and Manuela Bojadžijev for their introductions. More generally, being based at the BIM since last October, allow me to say that I have very much enjoyed this truly unique academic environment, where the multiple challenges posited by contemporary movements of migration are investigated in ways that combine quantitative and qualitative research, breadth and depth, civic engagement, critical commitment and scientific rigor. I am therefore particularly honored and pleased to have the chance to address you tonight within the challenging framework of the “Berlin Lecture”.
I will take this occasion to share with you some of the hypotheses that have been guiding my work on borders and migration for several years now. I undertake this in a situation characterized by an unprecedented politicization of the “borders and migration nexus” in Europe. Tens of thousands migrants and refugees stranded in camps in Greece, mass deportations, shipwrecks and deaths in the Mediterranean, fences and walls across the “Balkan route” as well as at the border between Turkey and Syria, proliferating controls within the Schengen space (from Brenner to Calais), EU and NATO naval operations: these are some of the images we immediately associate with the topic of my talk today. At the same time internal politics in many European countries tend to revolve more and more around the questions associated with the nexus between migration and borders. New social and political polarizations emerge, which end up raising anew and re-qualifying fundamental questions about the kind of society in which we want to live, the nature and subjects of social cooperation, the very meaning of democracy. In this lecture I will firstly aim at providing a general framework for an attempt to critically make sense of the political stakes surrounding borders. Secondly I will share with you some hypotheses regarding what is currently called the border and migration crisis in Europe, particularly emphasizing the ensuing challenges for migration scholars in this part of the world.
Borders, Étienne Balibar wrote at the turn of the century, no longer exist only “at the edge of territory, marking the point where it ends” but “have been transported into the middle of political space” (Balibar 2004, 109). This is particularly apparent today in Europe. In a book I recently co-authored with my Australian colleague and friend Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (2013) we try to demonstrate that the proliferation, mobility, and deep metamorphosis of borders are key features of “actually existing” processes of globalization. The very relationship between capitalism and “territorialism”, which underwent multiple transformations in modern history while continuing to take the territorial state as its main reference, seems nowadays challenged and continuously disrupted by processes of financialization, digitalization, and new logistical arrangements. Capitalism produces its own multiple spaces according to logics that are far from being grasped by the simple opposition between a “space of flows” and a “space of places”. These logics rather “hit the ground” in complex, often violent, and always crucially important ways. Nevertheless the expansion of contemporary capital’s “frontiers” negotiates and imposes its territorial assemblages in ways that challenge and often eschew “territoriality”, understood as “a legal construct that marks the state’s exclusive authority over its territory” (Sassen 2013, 23). This is not to say that territoriality – and the territorial state – withered away. It is rather to point to a set of gaps, disjunctions, and frictions between different forms of production of space that make up the global. The multiplication, mobility, and “heterogenization” of borders, as well as the more and more intense and vital character of the struggles surrounding them must also be understood against this backdrop.
It is easy to see that the modern notion of the border as a line dividing discrete territories in clear-cut ways, as a simple margin limiting their extension, is historically and conceptually connected with the legal construct of territoriality. A line – something mundane and ultimately banal, the job of land surveyors. And nevertheless we should be aware of the fact that in ancient times in Western and particularly in Roman history, the land surveyor was considered a sacred figure, whose task was close to a goddess’s task and whose field of action was circumfused by fog and dirt, violence and magic. This comes again to the fore if we think of Kafka’s K’s gesture, which raises the question of checking and tracing boundaries beneath a Castle where the voice of the Law keeps repeating that all is in order, since boundaries are well established and recorded. Repeating this gesture, which means considering the border from the point of view of its tracing, it appears clear that the border itself cannot be considered a merely “negative” limit. It rather takes on peculiarly productive, even “creative” characteristics, being the condition of existence of the two “things” it separates and distinguishes.
Just think of the notion of “territoriality” mentioned above. Could a “territory”, in the legal and political meaning of the term implied by that notion, exist without the tracing of a border surrounding and distinguishing it from other territories? And what about private property, especially once we pay attention to the role played by landed property as an influential model in the historical development of this crucial legal institution? “It was necessary to set up boundaries to the fields”, writes Giambattista Vico in his Scienza nova (1744), “in order to put a stop to the infamous promiscuity of things in the bestial state. On these boundaries were to be fixed the confines first of families, then of gentes or houses, later of peoples, and finally of nations” (Vico 1984, 363). Forget for a moment the lexicon and preferences of this 18th century Neapolitan philosopher, and you will grasp the essential core of his striking description of the continuity between the establishment of private property, the cultural practices and “order” of the family and the house, and the formation of the state from the angle of the productive nature of the border.
While this entanglement of private property, family, and the state is particularly important for any critical reading of modernity, there is a need to add that the productive nature of the border is an epistemic principle that allows us to make sense of a series of crucial developments in other, seemingly more elusive fields. Just to give a couple of examples, scholars of linguistics and comparative literatures have convincingly shown over the last years that modern languages and national literatures could only develop with the establishment of bordering devices to enable and manage their distinction as well as the communication between them. Or, to pick up a question that continues to trouble anthropologists as well as theorists and practitioners of “multiculturalism”, can we speak of an “ethnic community” or a “culture” without having previously traced a boundary that distinguishes them from other “ethnic communities” or “cultures”?
These are just scattered snapshots, but they allow me to make two important points for a critical understanding of borders in our contemporary global predicament. Firstly,borders appear to limit, constrain, and contain movement, in often arbitrary, violent, even “necropolitical” ways (Mbembe 2003). Nevertheless, in order to grasp their operations – and to effectively criticize their violence – we must also look at their “productive” functions, which means, simply put, at the specific forms of “order” they enable within the space they appear to merely circumscribe. I speak of a “productive” and even “creative” nature of borders in only analytical terms, of course, without implying any axiological “positive” evaluation of this nature (a simple overview of the global history of the modern notion of border as a line, in its inextricable connection not only with nationalism but also with the history of European and Western colonial and imperial expansion, would suffice to clarify this point!). Secondly, the semantic field of the border is densely heterogeneous, its symbolic meanings are multiple and span from ethics to culture, from languages to economy. The history of the modern “geopolitical” border as a line can also be understood as a process through which these disparate meanings of the border have been steadily attracted within a magnetic field crisscrossed by vectors of unification that ended up becoming processes of “nationalization” – with the “geopolitical” border at least in tendency circumscribing a discrete national society, culture, language, and economy. The gaps, disjunctions, and frictions between different forms of production of space that nowadays make up the global point to a situation in which these heterogeneous meanings of the border also diverge from each other and the principle of their unitary articulation is placed under increasing duress.
At least a third point has to be added in order to advance toward a critical theory of borders and also to foreshadow the relationship between borders and migration. The fences that close off migrants and refugees from a national space or a migratory route – say, in Idomeni, Greece – can certainly be seen as crystallizations of power, sealed by violence. Nevertheless the border can never be identified with a “thing”, be it a fence, a wall, or a bridge. Not least at the border, as we have learned both from Karl Marx and from Michel Foucault, power is indeed always a relationship. And the border itself must be analyzed in terms of the social relations that it encapsulates, enables, and articulates while being constituted by them. To adapt the words of Pablo Vila (2000), an Argentinian ethnographer who has worked for many years on the U.S./Mexican borderlands, borders are complex social institutions, marked by tensions between practices of border reinforcement and border crossing. These tensions lie at the root of specific forms of subjectivation that the border contributes to produce. And they provide an effective angle for the analysis of the conflicts and struggles that nowadays surround in particularly intense ways specific borderscapes in many parts of the world, including Europe.
Some of the most significant of these conflicts and struggles – from the border between U.S. and Mexico to the one between India and Bangladesh, from the Northern shores of Australia to the choppy waters of Southeast Asian Oceans – are associated with the movements of migrants and refugees. I think it is important to emphasize that this nexus between borders and migration, which seems so evident to us, has its own history and must be grasped in its distinct and conjunctural novelty. I am not simply referring to the point often made by historians, according to which migration control has only quite recently become a prominent function of political borders. Just to mention a symbolic date, the immigration station at Ellis Island was established in 1892, just two years after the Federal government assumed control of immigration in the U.S. In Europe the turmoil, nationalist agitation, and political conflicts surrounding Polish migration to the Eastern provinces of Prussia in the 1890s is often mentioned as a turning point with respect to the establishment of the nexus between migration and borders (with a series of selective measures of opening and closing of the Eastern border to balance the needs of the Junkers’ landed property for seasonal labor force and the “national” interests of the new German Reich). It is important to keep in mind this relatively recent historical origin of the “borders and migration nexus”. But it is even more important to be aware of the fact that the contemporary manifestations of this nexus are in turn particular and quite different from the ones that characterized such important moments in the history of migration, as for instance Transatlantic migration to the Americas at the turn of the Twentieth century, postcolonial migration and recruitment schemes of “guest workers” in Western Europe after World War 2, or even the “White Australia policy” and its adaptations until the early 1970s.
These moments in the history of migration have also been crucial both for the emergence of the definition of “international” migration in terms of border crossing and for the forging of the theoretical paradigm of migration studies. Just think of such influential contributions as the ones made in this respect by the founding works of the “Chicago School” of sociology or by critical analysis such as the one pursued by Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack in their Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (1973). I would like to call your attention to the fact that even a cursory review of this literature demonstrates that the topic of the border, although as I repeat it was crucial for the very definition of “international” migration, did not figure prominently in the table of topics and tools addressed and employed by migration scholars. The situation today is completely different, the nexus between migration and borders is widely acknowledged both as a crucial problematic in itself and as an effective epistemic perspective on migration (with such important questions as gender and race being for instance increasingly analyzed in terms of bordering devices cutting through and hierarchically articulating migratory experiences). What does this dramatic difference say to us in terms of the underlying transformations of migratory landscapes, patterns, and experiences in our age? My tentative and necessarily schematic answer to this question is that this difference points to the fact that the “encounter” with the border, its crossing, can no longer be simply considered as the inaugural moment and primary condition of the migratory experience, to be accomplished once for all in the biography of a would-be migrant. It rather tends to reproduce itself across large part of that experience and biography, with multiple manifestations of the border haunting migrants in their negotiations with citizenship and labor markets, in the urban as well as “national” spaces they inhabit and they contribute to transform and produce.
Behind this ubiquity of the border one can of course see many factors, including the multiplication and fragmentation of migration patterns and schemes and the disruption of their spatial and temporal coordinates, which have, for instance, been carefully mapped by Stephen Castles and Mark Miller in the several editions of their standard reference work, The Age of Migration (2013, fifth edition). More generally, as several scholars have demonstrated, global migration is increasingly characterized by “turbulence”, “unpredictability”, and “autonomy”, which challenge established legal arrangements (as in the case of asylum) and governmental regimes (see for instance Papastergiadis 2000; Bojadžijev and Karakayali 2010; Mezzadra 2011; De Genova 2013). What had been foreshadowed in particular and uncanny ways by movements of population in the wake of decolonization and anti-imperialist wars (just think for instance of the “partition” of the Indian subcontinent or of the so-called “Indochina refugee crisis”) seems to have turned into a distinctive feature of migration writ large in the global age. At the same time it is important to emphasize that this turbulence, unpredictability, and autonomy of migration intertwine with profound transformations of the economic and social systems within so-called countries of destination (not only in the “global North”).
The moments in the history of migration that I previously mentioned (be it in the U.S. in the early 20th century or in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s) were connected with specific processes of “mass industrialization” and with the generalization of “free” wage labor as a standard reference for the working of the labor market. Under these conditions the recruitment of migrants implied a subordinated inclusion within that standard, with a huge deal of discrimination and even “overexploitation”, which, however, did not challenge the stability of the standard itself. Migrant workers were managed as a “supplement” to the autochthonous labor force, in an attempt – to put it in the words of Michael Burawoy in his classic essay, “The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor” (1976) – to bridge the gap between the “two functions” of the reproduction of labor force in a given capitalist economy, which means its “maintenance” and its “renewal”. The situation could not be more different nowadays, when the flexibilization of production connected to processes of financialization and digitalization is prompting an explosion of the standard of “free” wage labor and complex dynamics of precarization, multiplication, and diversification of labor. The implications for migration management are momentous, as it can be easily grasped considering the fantasy of a “just-in-time” and “to-the-point” migration, which nurtures the evolution of migration policies in many parts of the world – including Europe. Ever more sophisticated “point-systems”, an obsession for filtering and selecting migrants according to their “skills” and “human capital”, the multiplication of temporary, seasonal, and circular recruitment schemes are among the most prominent manifestations of that fantasy (see for instance Xiang 2012; Latham, Preston, and Vosko 2014).
While old and new forces of the right increasingly politicize the difference between “us and them”, a process of fragmentation (and potentially of erasure) is silently at work both regarding the “us” (the figure of the citizen) and the “them” (the figure of the migrant, or the “foreigner”). It is in this situation that multiple internal borders are infiltrating formally unified political and social spaces, challenging established patterns and mechanisms of integration and blurring the boundary between “inclusion” and “exclusion”. Migrants experience both inclusion and exclusion in differential and selective ways, which are more generally symptomatic – to recall once again the lesson of the great Algerian migration scholar Abdelmalek Sayad (1999) – of wider social transformations. With their movements and with their (border) struggles they politicize the very boundary between inclusion and exclusion, demonstrating in very mundane and “vernacular” ways, that no “integration” is worth struggling for if it is not understood as a profound renewal of the very conditions of “living together” – as the invention of a new commonality. It may well be at this point that the concept of “post-migrant” society, developed by Naika Foroutan and other scholars in Germany, comes into play. As Manuela Bojadžijev has emphasized in several writings we are confronted here with a deep challenge to our own understanding of the political – as well as of its boundaries (see for instance Bojadžijev 2011). This is why such experiences as the occupation of the City Plaza Hotel in Athens, where 400 refugees are gathered under the motto “we live together – solidarity will win” are so important to us. They politicize a specific border that is becoming more and more important in migratory experiences – the temporal border, the temporality of waiting, of living suspendedin holding camps, “hotspots”, and other structures – and they transform it into a chance for a new democratic invention and imagination.
This concept of temporal borders has several implications. It allows us for instance to grasp the particular condition of “generations” held within the cultural category of “migrants”, for instance through the German administrative category of “Migrationshintergrund” (migration background). Moving toward a more detailed analysis of developments surrounding “geopolitical” borders, the concept has been key to the analysis of the interrelated dynamics of acceleration, deceleration, and block that shape migration and its “management” in many parts of the world. Migrants’ routes to Europe, in particular, are dotted by “waiting rooms” in transit countries and cities as well as in the desert, be they self-organized within migratory networks, arranged and managed in often carceral modes by smugglers and traffickers or by governments and even NGOs. These “waiting rooms” can be considered as part and parcel of the specific “border regime” that has been emerging since the early 1990s in and around the European Union.
The notion of “border regime”, which has been recently developed by several critical migration and border scholars (see for instance De Genova, Mezzadra, and Pickles 2015, 69-70), deserves careful consideration here. To put it shortly, this notion underscores the heterogeneity of actors (from governmental agencies to the multifarious instantiations of the booming “migration industry”), discourses (from an emphasis on security to economic consideration and humanitarianism), technologies of surveillance and control (from digitalization to militarization) that are at the same time confronted by diverse actors in their attempts to cross borders or to facilitate their transgression. Speaking of a European “border regime” does not obscure the unbearable amount of violence and the “necropolitical” effects connected with its operations. It rather aims at shedding light on the dynamic, contested, and even contradictory nature of the assemblages of power deployed at the border – once again: on the multifarious relations that constitute them.
The emergence, periodic crisis and transformations of the European border regime can be taken as particular instances of what I was calling before the “productive” nature of borders. Far from being a marginal aspect of the European integration process the border regime has played crucial roles in the establishment and constitution of the European space since the birth of European Union. The heterogeneity of this space, often emphasized by scholars, has been enabled and “mirrored” by the multiple scales of operation of the European border regime. Articulating “freedom of movement” within the Schengen space with a variable geometry of control of the “external frontiers” this regime has always also and simultaneously been a mobility regime. “Externalization” of border control, which means involvement of “neighboring” and “third countries” in the management of the European borders, has been a key feature of this regime at least since the agreements between Germany and Poland in the early 1990s. While it is important to critically emphasize the (often lethal) processes of exclusion of migrants and refugees the European border regime has prompted, it is even more important from an analytical point of view to focus on the processes of selective, differential, and hierarchical inclusion it has enabled. The European border regime has built over the last two decades the overarching framework within which multiple vectors and practices of mobility (internal as well as external, even in illegalized forms) have traversed, constituted, and materially transformed the European space.
It may appear counterfactual to consider the European border regime as a mobility regime while we are overwhelmed by the images I evoked at the beginning of my talk – images of fences and walls, with around 60.000 migrants and refugees stuck and stranded in holding camps in Greece, which seems to be doomed to become a huge “hotspot”. Nevertheless I am convinced that it is precisely these images that bear witness to the fact that what continues to be discussed in the media and in public discourse as a “migration” or “refugees crisis” is indeed a deep crisis of the European border regime (Bojadžijev and Mezzadra 2015). This crisis has its own genealogy, which includes such important moments as the economic crisis (with its implications particularly for Southern European countries like Italy or Spain, where illegalized migrants had found employment in several economic sectors in previous years) and the uprisings in the Maghreb and Mashreq (with the fall of such regimes as the ones of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Gaddafi in Libya, which had played key roles in the processes of externalization). On top of but certainly not independent of these developments, the “summer of migration” in 2015, with the unprecedented and uncontainable challenge posited by hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees to European borders across and beyond the “Balkan route”, has definitely accelerated and dramatized the disruption.
The crisis of the European border regime is far from being limited to what is happening at the “external frontiers” of Europe. Its backlash within the European space has been momentous – with effects ranging from the reintroduction of controls and checkpoints at several Schengen borders to the establishment of a set of limits to the freedom of movement and settlement of European citizens (particularly those coming from the South) in Northern European countries. More generally, the deep divisions within the European Union in front of the challenge posited by migrants and refugees – mainly but not exclusively around the East/West axis – have further prompted what today appears to many observers as an “existential crisis” of the integration process as a whole (see for instance Balibar 2016, 7). The border provides us in this respect with a particularly effective angle on a situation in which not only tens of thousands of migrants in Greece, but the European Union itself appears to be stuck and stranded in a profound impasse.
One could say that in the wake of the “summer of migration” a clear tendency towards the renationalization of border controls and policies has gone hand in hand with processes of further Europeanization. The latter can be instantiated by the direct role played by the European Union in the agreement with Turkey, by the strengthening of Frontex and its development into a “fully operational European Border and Coast Guard system”, by the EUNAVFOR operation in the Central Mediterranean as well as by the EU backing of NATO’s presence in the Aegean Sea. It may be possible to discern in the plans of logistical reorientation of the border regime through the establishment of “hotspots” and corridors the governmental rationality, or fantasy shaping these European interventions. But it is easy to see that this logistical reorientation is far from being “smooth”, on the one hand because it is predicated upon coercive policies of control, block, diversion, and manipulation of migratory routes, and on the other hand because the parallel processes of renationalization of border controls in several European countries obstruct “relocation” and mobility across “hotspots” and corridors. In such conditions emergency management stands out as real unifying thread running through European interventions and measures in face of the crisis of the border regime (Kasparek 2016).
Several scholarly analysis have demonstrated that no naval operation in the Mediterranean – in spite of the humanitarian rhetoric often employed or of the declared aim to target “smugglers and traffickers” – has made passage more secure for migrants (see for instance Heller and Pezzani 2016; Garelli and Tazzioli 2016). We are now confronted with the fact that even crossing the border between Syria and Turkey may be lethal for people fleeing from war, as a direct consequence of the agreement signed with the Turkish government by the European Union. Besides disrupting the foundations of the right to asylum, indeed, this agreement objectively implies a legitimization of the authoritarian nationalism of Erdogan’s regime within Turkey and its regional role and ambitions in the framework of the Syrian war. The management of the crisis of its border regime therefore also has paramount implications for the European Union with respect to its external politics (while we witness particularly in Germany its implications for internal politics in the wake of the “Armenia resolution” of Parliament).
The emergency management of the crisis of the European border regime has led to a situation in which tens of thousand of migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece and Turkey, in which crossing the Mediterranean has become more and more dangerous and expensive, in which the power of blackmailing of the Turkish government has been further entrenched, and in which the proliferation of fences and walls at the “external frontiers” of the European Union has been met by the dissemination of a set of limits to freedom of movement within the Schengen space as well. There is a need to denounce the huge amount of human suffering and violence connected to each of these moments of the crisis. But once again, consistent with the theoretical framework for the critical analysis of borders I sketched out in the first part of this talk, I do not think that what is at stake in the current crisis is simply an attempt to “seal” European borders and to keep migrants and refugees “out”. Sure, many of them are and will be kept out! But the crisis of the European border regime will not be over unless the border regime itself is reorganized in ways capable of restoring its function as a mobility regime. This is, very simply put, because Europe needs migration – as is again and again confirmed by demographic as well as economic reports produced at every institutional level across the continent. “Die Abschottung ist doch das, was uns kaputt machen würde” (sealing-off would kill us), declared Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble with his usual sharp clarity in a recent interview with Die Zeit. This need has to be addressed, at least in the medium term. This is in my opinion a first crucial challenge for migration studies against the backdrop of the current crisis of the European border regime: to read this crisis “against the grain”, attempting to discern the contours of emerging forms of mobility management and “inclusion” in a situation characterized by images and realities of immobility and “exclusion”.
What I was calling before a project of logistical reorganization of the border regime through the establishment of “hotspots” and corridors points in this direction, because it seems to correspond to the flexible, temporally and spatially calibrated pattern of migration management that is increasingly predominant in the present. I have already mentioned the obstacles and frictions for this project arising from processes of renationalization of border control. What is to be added now is that such a project of logistical reorganization has also to confront the challenge posited by migrants themselves, by the turbulence, stubbornness, and autonomy of their movements. And we must emphasize that it is no paradox that these movements compose a force that, through an elementary but no less radical claim and practice of freedom, points toward a different kind of Europeanization – different than the one I referred to speaking of the policies of the European Union. The meaning of Europe itself emerges therefore once again as a crucial stake in the tensions and conflicts played out in the crisis of the border regime.
Migration to Europe will continue over the next years – both because of the push of migrants and because European economies and societies need migration. “Stopping migration” is a reactionary and ultimately racist fantasy that produces concrete effects in the everyday life of thousands and thousands of men, women, and children on the move. While we denounce this fantasy we must insist upon the fact that it is not a realistic prospect. It rather contributes to increasing the severity of conditions under which migration will happen in the near future as well as of the lives of migrants already based in Europe. In both our scholarly work and our civic and political engagement, in the multiple domains of cultural life as well as in the media, we must cultivate an awareness of the fact that the clashes and conflicts surrounding the crisis of the European border regime reverberate within the cities we inhabit and even within the concepts and words we use to “speak” migration. These reverberations imply a dissemination of “fault lines, conflicts, differences, fear, and containment” (Mohanty 2003, 2). But they also challenge us to invent new forms of social exchange and cooperation, solidarity, commonality, and institutions – beyond the idea of an existing social, political, and legal order within which migrants simply would have to “integrate” or “be integrated”.
References
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Balibar, É. (2016), Europe, crise et fin?, Paris: Le Bord de l’Eau.
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* The second part of this talk is based upon two workshops held at the welcome2stay meeting (Leipzig, June 11, 2016) and at the occupied City Plaza Hotel (Athens, June 17, 2016). I thank all the participants for their contribution to the discussion and for the “good vibrations” that shaped both meetings.
(Budapest) – Migrants at Hungary’s border are being summarily forced back to Serbia, in some cases with cruel and violent treatment, without consideration of their claims for protection, Human Rights Watch said today.
Asylum seekers in Roszke waiting for days and weeks to be admitted to the transit zone, Hungary, March 31, 2016.
New laws and procedures adopted in Hungary over the past year force all asylum seekers who wish to enter Hungary to do so through a transit zone on Hungarian territory, to which the government applies a legal fiction claiming that persons in the zone have not yet ‘entered’ Hungary. Human Rights Watch found that while some vulnerable groups are transferred to open reception facilities inside Hungary, since May 2016 the Hungarian government has been summarily dismissing the claims of most single men without considering their protection needs.
“Hungary is breaking all the rules for asylum seekers transiting through Serbia, summarily dismissing claims and sending them back across the border,” said Lydia Gall, Balkans and Eastern Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People who cross into Hungary without permission, including women and children, have been viciously beaten and forced back across the border.”
Restrictions on the numbers of people who can the enter the transit zones mean that hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers, including women and children, are stuck in no-man’s land in very poor conditions waiting to enter the transit zones. Human Rights Watch found that asylum seekers and other migrants who try to enter informally without going through the transit zone are forced back to Serbia, often violently, without any consideration of their protection needs.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 41 asylum seekers and migrants, as well as members of a nongovernmental group, staff of UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, human rights lawyers, activists, staff at the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality, and Hungarian police. Those interviewed included three men who had been returned to Serbia from the transit zones after their claims were ruled inadmissible without any substantive consideration of their asylum claims or adequate time to prepare an appeal.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed 12 people who were apprehended on Hungarian territory after trying to enter irregularly who said they had entered Hungary in groups including women and children. They said they were brutally beaten and abused by officials and then pushed back to Serbia. They said that officials often used spray that caused burning sensations to their eyes, set dogs on them, kicked and beat them with batons and fists, put plastic handcuffs on them and forced them through small openings in the razor wire fence, causing further injuries.
One man who had been stopped inside Hungary in a group of 30 to 40 people, including women and children, said they were beaten for two hours: “I haven’t even seen such beating in the movies. Five or six soldiers took us one by one to beat us. They tied our hands with plastic handcuffs on our backs. They beat us with everything, with fists, kicks and batons. They deliberately gave us bad injuries.”
Another member of the group, who still had visible injuries 16 days later, said the police set dogs on the group, causing him to fall, and that a police officer either kicked or hit him in the face as he lay on the ground.
On May 25, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, expressed public concern about reports of pushbacks of asylum seekers at the Hungarian border, in some cases involving violence, and called on Hungarian authorities to investigate.
The Hungarian Interior and Defense Ministries should investigate allegations of abuse implicating their officials and a civil militia that also patrols parts of the border and hold those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch said.
Hungary built a razor wire fence to keep migrants out in September 2015 and two transit zones on its border with Serbia to which it initially returned some people after the government in July declared Serbia a safe third country that asylum seekers and migrants could be returned to. However, under a bilateral readmission agreement with Hungary, Serbia does not accept any returns except for its own citizens and people from Kosovo.
From late September to May, there were few if any actual returns enforced, in part due to an opinion by Hungary’s Supreme Court that stated that individual asylum determinations should be made even in cases where the authorities invoked the safe third country principle. But the court withdrew its opinion in March, clearing the way for asylum seekers to be removed from transit zones to Serbia without consideration of the merits of their claims. To date, Hungarian authorities have returned 13 non-Serbian or Kosovar asylum seekers to Serbia from the transit zones without informing Serbian authorities.
Members of vulnerable groups who are moved into reception centers may still have their claims rejected without any substantive consideration. A cap on daily admissions to the two transit zones, currently at 15 per zone, means that hundreds of asylum seekers are stranded outside the transit zones on both Hungarian and Serbian territory.
On June 8, approximately 550 people were stuck outside the two transit zones in Tompa and Roszke, including 200 children and 160 women, without adequate humanitarian assistance such as shelter, showers, and proper food. A few portable toilets were finally installed by Serbian authorities at the Roszke transit zone in early June.
In June, parliament adopted a law that allows Hungarian border officials to summarily return asylum seekers and migrants apprehended up to eight kilometers inside Hungarian territory to Serbia. The law entered into effect on July 5 and according to a government press release issued the same day, authorities dispatched an additional 6,000 police to the border areas who caught and escorted 151 irregular border crossers back to Serbia during the 12 first hours of the law being in force. On July 5, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also expressed concern that the law may result in law enforcement agencies not respecting the human rights of migrants and the violation of international law by expelling them by force without any legal procedure.
Human Rights Watch wrote to Hungary’s Office of Immigration and Nationality (OIN), and to the Hungarian Interior and Defense Ministries, on June 13 informing them of these research findings and requesting comment but has yet to receive a response.
Available evidence suggests that Serbia should not be considered a safe third country, meaning it is not a country in which an individual asylum seeker has protected rights in line with the Refugee Convention. Human Rights Watch has documented serious abuse of asylum seekers and migrants and shortcomings in the asylum system, including lack of protection for unaccompanied children. Of 583 asylum applications in 2015, a majority from Syrians, only 16 people received refugee status, and 14 subsidiary protection, a low recognition rate in comparison with the 97 percent rate for Syrian asylum seekers in the EU. Due to the flaws in Serbia’s asylum system, the UNHCR’s current guidance is that Serbia should not be considered a safe third country and urges states not to return people to Serbia.
On December 10, 2015, the European Commission initiated infringement proceedings against Hungary with respect to its asylum legislation stating that it “in some instances, [is] incompatible with EU law.” At this writing, no further information about the proceedings has been made public.
EU member states should refrain from returning any asylum seekers to Hungary until it ensures meaningful access to asylum, including adequate time for a substantive in-country appeal and should halt violent and other summary returns of asylum seekers to Serbia, Human Rights Watch said.
“The abuse of asylum seekers and migrants runs counter to Hungary’s obligations under EU law, refugee law, and human rights law,” Gall said. “The European Commission should use its enforcement powers to press Budapest to comply with its obligation under EU law to provide meaningful access to asylum and fair procedures for those at its borders and on its territory.”
Summary Returns from Transit Zones
A July 2015 decree by the Hungarian government designated EU and candidate countries, including Serbia, safe third countries, which meant that they consider asylum seekers’ rights are protected in line with refugee law in those countries. As a consequence, all asylum claims submitted by people transiting into Hungary through Serbia or in Hungarian transit zones are considered prima facie inadmissible and subject to an accelerated procedure following which, according to Hungarian rules, they can be returned to Serbia.
The restrictive border regime began in September, when the government established the transit zones and made irregular border crossing a criminal offense. As of July 5, 2016, Hungary had prosecuted 2,879 asylum seekers and migrants for irregular crossing since September 2015, and continues to do so.
Those who do not apply for asylum are transferred to immigration detention centers pending deportation — in the majority of cases to Serbia. However, because of the limitation on accepting returns under the bilateral readmission agreement between Serbia and Hungary, migrants risk being kept in immigration detention indefinitely or until Serbia decides to accept them.
Those allowed into the transit zones from Serbia for processing, mostly single males, have their claims determined by the Office of Immigration and Nationality (OIN) under an eight-day fast-track procedure. However Human Rights Watch research suggests that in practice the OIN deems their cases inadmissible within a day, and often within an hour. If applicants appeal their rejections (which they must do within a seven-day time limit), a court has eight more days to determine their appeal. During the appeal, they are kept in the transit zones. Human Rights Watch was told by lawyers that the appeal period is insufficient to adequately gather information for an effective appeal.
Hungary maintains that although the transit zones are on Hungarian territory, people in them have not yet ‘entered’ Hungary, so they can be removed from them, and effectively returned to Serbia without informing the Serbian authorities. In the cases of people admitted to Hungary, however, any removal would necessitate coordination between Hungarian and Serbian authorities based on the bilateral readmission agreement.
Human Rights Watch visited the Roszke and Tompa transit zones on April 7 and interviewed asylum seekers who had been there for up to 28 days, the maximum time they may be held in the transit zones. Asylum seekers there are held in makeshift barracks without means of communicating with the outside world. While they are technically allowed to leave the transit zones voluntarily, leaving before the complete asylum process—including the appeal—terminates the asylum procedure.
Delays in processing and adjudicating asylum appeals mean that finalizing the asylum procedure in the transit zones within 28 days is not always possible. In those cases, the law requires that asylum seekers be transferred to another asylum facility. These are usually open reception centers on Hungarian territory. This raises questions about why they are required to remain in the transit zones in the first place.
Until late April, appeals courts quashed OIN inadmissibility decisions, instructing the agency to conduct in-depth assessments on the merits of the asylum claims based on the Supreme Court opinion. The court said that if the asylum system in a third country is overburdened, that country may not be able to guarantee the rights of asylum seekers, in which case such countries cannot be considered safe in the context of asylum.
But in March, the court withdrew its opinion, basing this decision on alleged new circumstances of asylum and migration in Hungary. Since early May, appeal courts have upheld inadmissibility decisions in at least 13 cases, opening the way for people to be summarily returned to Serbia from the transit zones without any substantive consideration of their asylum claims.
Accounts by Asylum Seekers Returned to Serbia
Human Rights Watch interviewed three asylum seekers, single males from Afghanistan and Iran, whom the Hungarian authorities in early May returned from the Roszke transit zone in Hungary to Serbia without informing the Serbian authorities. They said they were allowed into the transit zone after periods ranging from one night to 45 days outside the zone. Once there, they said, they were told to sign papers they did not understand and their asylum claims were rejected within a few hours. Human Rights Watch identified the papers they were told to sign as inadmissibility decisions made by an OIN official within an hour after the person was allowed into the zone.
The three said that authorities did not adequately inform them about the procedure nor about their right to appeal. They said the interpreter told them they could appeal by writing on a piece of paper that they did not agree with the OIN decision, which they did. After 13, 15 and 17 days, respectively, the appeals court upheld the inadmissibility decisions, and officials returned the three men to Serbia through a door in the fence inside the Roszke transit zone.
“Nasratullah,” 21, from Afghanistan, told Human Rights Watch that he had waited outside the Roszke transit zone for 20 days before finally being admitted:
When I came in [to the transit zone] the translator gave me 19 papers to sign…They didn’t tell me what those papers are that I had to sign and they just asked me my name and where I am from. They [official person] told me I have to wait 27-28 days and then I can go inside Hungary to somewhere. There was a man in uniform, but I’m not sure if he was police or immigration, but he was an official person.
Nasratullah spent 15 days in the transit zone:
They [a person in uniform and interpreter] told me I can’t stay in Hungary and that I have to go back to Serbia. I asked what the problem is, but they said they don’t know anything, just that I have to go back to Serbia. They gave me some papers but didn’t explain what the papers were about. They just said that I’m not accepted and that I have to go. They told me I have five minutes to take my things and go.
“Ali,” 20, also from Afghanistan, said that after waiting 33 days in front of the Roszke transit zone, and spending 13 days inside, he was returned to Serbia:
They [OIN] didn’t ask me questions. They only asked my name and said I have to sign 19 papers. I didn’t speak to anyone from Immigration [OIN] after that. After 13 days they [OIN] came back to me and said the judge said I have to leave. They told me I have five minutes to leave and gave me some papers I couldn’t read. We were 13 people who were returned that day.
Ali was subsequently allowed into the Tompa transit zone, where his second asylum application was deemed inadmissible just hours after he was allowed into the zone. He spent 28 days waiting for the court to hear his appeal. As the procedure was not finalized within the maximum time allowed, he was transferred to an open reception facility on July 3 and continues to wait for the court to decide his appeal.
“Ehsan,” 28, from Iran, said he spent 17 days in the Roszke transit zone in early May before being given a negative decision:
They didn’t explain to me why or what my options were. They just said my decision was negative and that I have to go. They also gave me some papers. They [soldiers] opened the gate and sent me back to Serbia.
Delays in Accessing Transit Zones
Human Rights Watch documented lengthy waiting times for asylum seekers stranded outside the transit zones, including families with small children and babies and pregnant women, who waited to enter for several days, and single males, who waited for several weeks.
The Hungarian government in September 2015 initially capped the number allowed to enter each transit zone at 100 people a day, but over time lowered the cap to 50, then 30. The number is currently capped at 15 per transit zone per day.
Human Rights Watch noted a lack of sanitary facilities and even basic shelter for those stuck outside the transit zones and on both sides of the border with Serbia. Hungarian authorities failed to provide basic humanitarian assistance for these people and Serbia similarly has failed to provide organized aid besides a few toilets set up close to the Roszke transit zone. Aid is provided by international and national aid organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and UNHCR.
There appeared to be no systematic procedure to identify particularly vulnerable groups or an orderly procedure for allowing people into the zones based on time of arrival or other rational criteria. Asylum seekers told Human Rights Watch that admission appeared to be based on the degree to which the migrants could articulate their needs most forcefully to OIN officials.
“Mohammad,” 34, from Afghanistan, travelling with his wife and three children, ages 13, 4, and 20 months, described the poor conditions they endured for 13 days outside the Roszke transit zone on Hungarian territory: “We didn’t even have a tent and couldn’t take showers. We got very little food and it was mainly crackers from UNHCR and no baby items either.”
“Mariam,” a pregnant 27-year-old Syrian woman, and her husband and two children ages 5 and 3, had spent three nights outside the Roszke transit zone when Human Rights Watch met her. She described the arbitrary procedure:
“They pick families at random and only 20 people per day. First, there was some sort of order by arrival but a group came yesterday and they let them in today. Yet, we have waited longer. There is no system for lining up.”
Violent Pushbacks to Serbia
Human Rights Watch interviewed twelve people who were apprehended inside Hungarian territory after trying to enter irregularly and who said they were beaten and abused by people in uniform and then pushed back through the three-layer razor-wire fence to Serbia. Ten of those interviewed said uniformed men sprayed them with something that caused a burning sensation to their eyes, eleven said they were kicked or hit with fists and batons, and five said they were tied with plastic handcuffs before being taken back to the border and forced to cross back to Serbia.
Eleven of the twelve described being apprehended by people wearing uniforms and insignia consistent with those worn by Hungarian police and Hungarian military personnel. Hungarian police wear dark blue uniforms and sometimes grey coats. Hungarian military personnel wear camouflage uniforms. Several people had been pushed back more than once and were not able to identify those responsible in every incident.
A Hungarian civil militia, so called field guards, established by local authorities in the town of Asotthalom also operates along sections of the Hungary-Serbian border. The militia wear camouflage uniforms, are equipped with weapons, batons, torches, and gas spray and use vehicles with similar color and markings as Hungarian police vehicles. Currently, only five civil militia personnel operate in the Asotthalom border area, on a stretch of 25 kilometers. The similarities between the uniforms worn by army and field guards make it difficult to distinguish between them, particularly in dark and poor weather conditions, which raises the possibility that some of the abuses could have been carried out by civil militia.
Three men interviewed separately gave a consistent account of a particularly brutal incident involving people wearing uniforms on the night of May 11. They described the men as soldiers or police, although the civil militia, or field guards, wear similar uniforms. They said they were wearing dark blue and grey uniforms while some wore uniforms the color of tree trunks (brown and dark green). One man stated that he saw what he described as markings on the shoulders of some of the uniformed men.
“Farhad,” 34, from Iran, said:
We were about 30-40 people in the group, including women and children. It was at night and we crossed the fence and walked about two kilometers into Hungary when we were caught by a group of approximately 30 police and military – they wore different uniforms, some dark blue, some grey but covered in rain gear. It was difficult to see because of it being night and they lit torches in our faces. They encircled us and told us to sit down with hands on our heads staring down. We asked for help and to go to a camp. They didn’t say anything. Four or five of them took out some white powder spray and sprayed all of us, they even lifted our heads one by one to spray our faces. All except women and children, but they still inhaled it.
Next, according to Farhad, a near two-hour beating followed:
I haven’t even seen such beating in the movies. Five or six soldiers took us one by one to beat us. They tied our hands with plastic handcuffs on our backs. They beat us with everything, with fists, kicks and batons. They deliberately gave us bad injures. We asked why they are beating us but they just said go back to Serbia. We kept saying we want to go to a camp.
Farhad said that, as it was raining heavily and it was in the middle of the night, there was confusion during the beating. When he tried to protect a younger girl with his own body, despite being handcuffed, he said men in uniform threw him off the girl and asked why he protected her and then proceeded to beat him:
Instead of the girl, they started beating me. The soldiers were taking selfies and laughing at us. We were all angry about the beating but the selfies made us even angrier.
Ehsan, the 28-year-old from Iran, was also part of the group. He said:
They just kept beating us wherever they could reach. When they sat us down, we [single males] tried to protect the families by sitting around them…A police officer lifted my head up and sprayed white powder in my face at close range. I couldn’t breath and I couldn’t see. Those who tried to cover their eyes to protect themselves from the spray were beaten so as to force them not to cover their eyes and to inhale the powder. I could hear them protest and I could hear how they were beaten when doing so. We couldn’t see for another 30-40 minutes because our eyes were burning. They were still beating us while we suffered the spray. We sat like that on the ground enduring the beating for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Ehsan then described how men in uniform, keeping the men among the asylum seekers in plastic handcuffs, dragged and forced the group back to the fence:
Once we got to the fence, they started beating us again. All of a sudden, we saw vehicles and we thought that finally they will bring us to a camp. But instead, they just lifted the fence, beat and kicked us as they forced us to crawl through a small hole in the fence, which consists of three layers. There they took our cuffs off. There were some police on the other side of the fence but I don’t know what kind. They just told us to go back to Serbia…The ones who caught us used walkie talkies to communicate with the groups of police or soldiers on the other side of the fence. Once we got through the fence, the border officials on the other side also started beating us and kept telling us to go back to Serbia and kept pointing in that direction.
Human Rights Watch obtained a photograph taken shortly after the beating on May 11, showing Ehsan with a bleeding injury by his right eye. The photo markings showed that it was taken on May 11 at 04:23 a.m. Ehsan said:
I was the last in line to cross the fence back to Serbia. They let the dogs on me. There were three dogs. They had, but I didn’t see that so I tried to defend myself against them and I grabbed one dog which jumped on me by the collar. I fell to the ground trying to grab his collar and a police officer struck a blow to my face from the side. I was lying on the ground so I think he kicked my face or perhaps he hit me.
Human Rights Watch observed bruises on Ehsan’s right eye 16 days after the incident occurred.
Ali, the 20-year-old from Afghanistan, was in the same group. He said:
The police caught us in the jungle [forest]. There were 15 or 16 of them. They didn’t ask anything, didn’t say anything to us, they just started beating us with their batons. They beat all of us and they used pepper spray. While doing this they said “Welcome to Hungary” and they were laughing at us and taking selfies.
“Abdullah,” 26, from Afghanistan, said he was with eight other people when they were caught by uniformed men near a Hungarian village on May 23. The men forced them to run for about 20 minutes until they once again reached the border fence:
We were tired but if we lagged behind they would beat us with their batons to keep us going. They took us back to where we crossed the border and made us stop about 100 meters from the fence. About 30 police were gathered…They wore dark blue uniforms, there was also one in grey. They told us to sit and put our heads in our hands and not lift our heads to look around. But I managed to see that they brought two big spray canisters from the cars. They started beating us with batons while we sat and stared at the ground. Then they told us to stand up and run up to the fence and they kept beating us as we were running. We came about 10 meters from the fence and saw a small hole, full of razor-wire and sharp edges in three layers.
They brought plastic cuffs and tied our hands in front of our bodies. I was the first in line and all of a sudden a police officer came and sprayed my face. I couldn’t see as he made me crawl through the razor-wire, so I cut my leg and hands badly. After that, I was inside the layers of the fence when he started kicking the fence to make the razor injure me. He then kept kicking my butt to make me crawl faster through the fence. My eyes were full of tears and my hands cuffed in front of me. They swore and laughed at me during the whole time.
Human Rights Watch observed wounds on Abdullah’s right arm and injuries to his lower legs and thighs consistent with marks caused by batons and cuts from razor-wire.
Another Afghan man, “Zaid,” 19, described what happened when he crossed the border with a group in early May:
I entered the border…We were about 15 of us, including women and children…Ten minutes later about 20 army soldiers surrounded us and beat us. They put plastic handcuffs on me and threw me down on the ground and kicked me in the stomach, shoulder and head… They had four dogs without muzzles. One dog jumped on me but I managed to escape it. As I was lying on the ground, the soldiers used their batons to hit us on our legs and our heads. They didn’t say anything and we didn’t dare to say anything. After that, they brought us back to the fence, took our cuffs off and started pushing us through the fence and kicking us as we tried to crawl through the layers of razor-wire.
Unaccompanied children were among those abused at the border before being pushed back into Serbia by uniformed men. “Arsalan,” 15, from Afghanistan, said he had been twice violently sent back at the border. He described how his group of about 21 people were captured after crossing the fence:
The Hungarian police did not behave well…As we entered through a hole in the fence, the police started shouting in their own language. Seven of us managed to run ahead, including me, but fourteen were caught. I could hear them tell the police that they want to stay in Hungary, that they love Hungary but the police just told them, ‘We love Hungary, not you.’ The seven of us kept walking further into Hungary but were captured [by police] after about 9 or 10 hours. They [police] took us to the border. There was a door in the fence, a steel door. They [police] opened it and sprayed our faces. They pushed us through and said ‘No Hungary, just Serbia.’
“Faruz,” 17, from Afghanistan, said he crossed the border with a group on about May 24:
I was in a group of 15 people who crossed the fence. I ran fast for approximately 500 meters when the soldiers came. There were about four soldiers, and two dogs with muzzles. The dog jumped on me and knocked me over but it didn’t bite me. As I was lying there the soldiers beat me with a baton. When I tried to stand up they hit me on the arm and the shoulder and beat me back down. Then they told us to sit and take our heads in our hands. We sat like that for five minutes. Then they beat us again and told us to go back to Serbia. They dragged us back to the fence, lifted it and forced us to go through.
Methodology
Human Rights Watch researchers carried out research in Hungary including in the Roszke and Tompa transit zones and in Serbia between April and May. Researchers conducted private and individual interviews with 41 asylum seekers and migrants of our choice. Each interviewee was informed of the purpose of the interview, its voluntary nature and the goal and public nature of our reports. They were told that they could end the interview at any time or decline to answer any specific questions. All migrants and asylum seekers gave their oral consent to participate in the interview. No interviewee received compensation for providing information. Pseudonyms have been used for all interviewees to protect their identities. Human Rights Watch also interviewed members of one nongovernmental group, UNHCR staff, human rights lawyers, activists and officials at the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality as well as officers of the Aliens Police. Human Rights Watch wrote detailed letters on June 13 to the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality, and the Interior and Defense ministries setting out the research findings and requesting comment within three weeks. They have not responded.
The current struggle in France over labour law reforms is not just between the Government and trade unions – a European battle is waged. The attacks on social rights stem in no small part from the web of EU-rules dubbed ‘economic governance’, invented to impose austerity policies on member states.
Photo: FO
Strikes and actions across France against reforms of the country’s labour protections, known as the El Khomri Law, demonstrate the immense unpopularity of the measures proposed by the French Government. Chiefly among them, to give preference to local agreements on wages and working conditions, when the conditions in those agreements are less favourable than the national norm inscribed in national law. This is an open attempt to undermine collective bargaining and roll back the influence of trade unions.
Ultimately, the French Government has formal responsibility for the weakening of labour protection. But there is no denying that the European Union is playing an important and perhaps decisive role in the attacks on labour rights. What we see is the EU throwing its rulebook in the French workers’ faces. Practically all the new rules on so-called ‘economic governance’ adopted following the eurocrisis have been applied, and make France look like a EU test-case. The European Commission, with the backing of the Council, has used the rules on member states’ deficits to exert pressure, threatening with sanctions, should the French Government not give in and seriously reform its labour laws. Simply put, France has been required flat out to ensure higher profitability for businesses by driving down wages.
How does all of this work?
Sanctions more likely today
First and foremost, the reforms in France are related to the country’s deficit. Like most other EU member states, the state’s finances looked pretty bad in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2009, a case was opened against France for breaching EU rules which stipulate that its deficit must be no higher than 3 per cent of GDP. If taken to the extreme, this ‘excessive deficit procedure’ can result in a fine of billions of euro, and – not least in the case of France – a severe loss of face to its EU partners.
The ‘excessive deficit procedure’ was given more teeth with the so-called ‘Six-Pack’ set of EU rules in 2011 – a key part of the austerity-focused economic governance package – which introduced a reverse majority vote in the Council: if the Commission does decide to fine a member state, like it has threatened to do to France, there will have to be a qualified majority against the measure from other member states to block it. Good reasons for the French Government to be slightly scared – and a weapon to be used in its attempt to convince parliamentarians. The likelihood of sanctions for not meeting the budget deficit targets is much bigger than in the past, when both Germany and France escaped humiliation. But how to meet the Commission’s strict targets, and how to behave to the satisfaction of the Commission, is what clearly links the El Khomri law in France to the austerity regime being rolled out from Brussels.
Enabling demands of ‘structural reforms’
Being ‘in the procedure’, means you’re under close surveillance by the Commission, and with regular intervals, the case of the French deficit has been brought up at meetings with member states ministers, who have assessed if France (in this case) has made sufficient efforts to remedy the problem. Specific recommendations have been made, though until 2013 the labour law was hardly mentioned. The recommendations stuck to the development of the deficit, whether it went down at the required pace. But in 2013, there was a new tone in the Commission’s recommendations. France was asked to meet its deficit targets “by comprehensive structural reforms” in line with recommendations from the Council “in the context of the European Semester”. Structural reforms are no small matter. They are defined as changes that affect “the fundamental drivers of growth by liberalising labour, product and service markets”. Such ambitions were starting to be pushed on France at the European Semester.
But what is the European Semester? It is a procedure involving the Commission and the Council that ends with a set of recommendations for reforms to each and every member state, based on a proposal from the Commission. At the beginning in 2011, the recommendations were non-binding, but in 2013, a new set of rules went into force under the so-called Two-Pack, another part of the economic governance package intended to enforce austerity. One of the regulations of the two in the package was about measures to ensure deficits were corrected, and among other things, it made a link between the deficit procedure and the European Semester. If a member state is under the deficit procedure – like France – it would have to draw up an ‘Economic Partnership Programme’ that includes the recommendations from the Council –typically the kind of structural reforms that would have a clear impact. If the programme is not followed, then it will have a bearing on the Commission’s decision to initiate the final phase of the deficit procedure: sanctions in the form of a fine worth billions.
So, when the Two-Pack entered into force in early 2013, the tone of the messages to France on its deficit changed. France was now asked to implement “comprehensive structural reforms” of its labour law and the pension system. This had a bearing on how France would be treated under the deficit procedure and whether it would come in for sanctions, and for that reason, recommendations started looking more like demands.
In other words: whereas earlier country specific recommendations adopted under the European Semester were just that, with the Two-Pack from 2013, non-compliance could lead the Commission to take the next step towards sanctions.
“Slash wages now!”
There’s more.
In the early stages of the eurocrisis another procedure was introduced that was to work in parallel to the deficit procedure: the ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’. This procedure allows the Commission to monitor the development of member states’ economies based on a predefined set of indicators. One of them – perhaps the most important one – measures how high the labour costs are developing (unit labour costs). If wages are not kept at bay, competitiveness suffers, and measures have to be taken, so the logic goes.
The ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’ is also a potent weapon, as it can lead to a fine if a Eurozone member state crosses the line repeatedly and for a long time. And France has been in the crosshairs of the Commission for quite a while. Commission staff has investigated French labour law and identified what factors contribute “to limiting the ability of firms to negotiate downward wage adjustment”, and the French Government has been warned – as has many other member states – about developments in wages. In 2014, the Commission said “unit labour cost growth is relatively contained but shows no improvement in cost competitiveness. The profitability of private companies remains low, limiting deleveraging prospects and investment capacity.”
The calls for action to improve the profitability of private companies have been sent to France from Brussels on numerous occasions over the past couple of years, and have gained in strength. Thus far, the climax was in February 2015, when the Commission stepped up the procedure and singled out Bulgaria and France as the most pressing cases. The decision put France only a small step from the last stage of the imbalance procedure, the dreaded ‘excessive imbalance procedure’ which entails – exactly like the deficit procedure – a massive fine. If all fines are put together – from the deficit procedure and the imbalances procedure – they could amount to 0.5 per cent of GDP, or in the case of France, approximately €11 billion.
The final countdown
Such a prospect must be terrifying for the French Government, and in 2015, then, it would have to come up with something of substance to appease the European Commission and its partners in the Council. In March France was given two more years to bring its house in order, and if there was any doubt over the way to get there, the message to France in July was clear. Country Specific Recommendation number 6 to France under the European Semester, includes a call to “reform the labour law to provide more incentives for employers to hire on open-ended contracts. Facilitate take up of derogations at company and branch level from general legal provisions, in particular as regards working time arrangements.” In other words, the very reforms now at the centre of dispute with the El Khomri law.
The recommendation was copy-pasted from a Commission proposal; one that struck a chord among business lobby groups. In the annual ‘Reform Barometer’ of BusinessEurope, a procedure set up to influence the European Semester, the French employers association MEDEF was enthusiastic about the move, and dubbed it “extremely important” in its contribution to the Reform Barometer 2016.
End game
Who exactly has done what since the summer of 2015 is the subject of intense debate. French media outlet Mediapart suggests the German Government might have played a big role in designing the French reforms, while others believe the specifics were entirely homemade. In any case, there is no denying that the reforms were pushed heavily by the European Union, more specifically by the Commission and the Council. And the push was based on the web of rules on member states’ economic policies, sometimes called ‘economic governance’, that has been spun thread by thread since 2010. The strengthening of the deficit procedure, the European Semester, the Two-Pack, and the macroeconomic imbalance procedure have all been used for the purpose they were invented: to exert maximum pressure on member states to adopt austerity policies.
There are other similar examples in Europe at the moment. In Italy and Belgium too, you see the effect of the new tools handed over to the European Union since 2010. But France is special for its size and its power in the EU. The ongoing struggle in France can be seen as a major test case for European economic governance. If a big, powerful EU member state can be pushed to attack fundamental traits of its labour protection law, then the risk of new and stronger measures are much more likely in the future. Even if French workers are unaware of it, they’re fighting a European battle.
Premještanja prvih izbjeglica iz Europske unije u Hrvatsku dogodila su se danas, kada su četiri izbjeglice iz Eritreje došle iz Italije i smještene u Prihvatilištu za tražitelje azila u Zagrebu, zbog čega su nadležne institucije priredile doček. Inicijativa Dobrodošli! pozdravlja dobrodošlicu koja je iskazana novopridošlim izbjeglicama, ali i upozorava kako izbjeglice dolaze u Hrvatsku gotovo svakodnevno, većinom zbog vraćanja dogovorenih Dublinskom uredbom te kako bi hrvatsko društvo trebalo pokazati otvorenost i dobodošlicu i prema njima i prema ljudima koji se već mjesecima i godinama nalaze među nama. Važno je i naglasiti da tek nakon dobrih želja i pozdrava, nakon što se izgase kamere koje su popratile dolazak novih izbjeglica, pred osobama koje su stigle u Hrvatsku stoji težak put integracije, za koji na žalost hrvatske institucije nisu adekvatno pripremljene.
Upravo stoga Inicijativa Dobrodošli! je u današnjem priopćenju pozvala na donošenje Privremenog plana koji će odgovoriti na trenutnu situaciju, dok se ne stvore uvjeti za kvalitetan proces i donošenje dokumenata strateški važnih za proces integracije, kao što su Akcijski plani za integraciju, Operativni plan za preseljenje i premještanje i Protokola o postupanju u integraciji.
Također, povodom obilježavanja treće godine članstva Republike Hrvatske u Europskoj uniji Inicijativa Dobrodošli! još je jednom osudila dogovor između Europske unije i Turske te postupanja EU prema osobama u potrazi za zaštitom i sigurnošću i naglasila kako se samim proračunom Hrvatske, ali i EU jači se naglasak stavlja na nadzor i obranu, umjesto na integraciju.
Presence Counts · 15o · OccupyLjubljana 