Religion in the European Refugee Crisis

Ulrich Schmiedel, Graeme Smith, Ulrich Schmiedel, Graeme Smith, Ulrich Schmiedel, Graeme Smith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319679617
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia delle religioni

This book explores the roles of religion in the current refugee crisis of Europe. Combining sociological, philosophical, and theological accounts of this crisis, renowned scholars from across Europe examine how religion has been employed to call either for eliminating or for enforcing the walls around "Fortress Europe." Religion, they argue, is radically ambiguous, simultaneously causing social conflict and social cohesion in times of turmoil. Charting the constellations, the conflicts, and the consequences of the current refugee crisis, this book thus answers the need for succinct but sustained accounts of the intersections of religion and migration.

© The Author(s) 2018

Ulrich Schmiedel and Graeme Smith (eds.)Religion in the European Refugee CrisisReligion and Global Migrationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67961-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Charting a Crisis

Ulrich Schmiedel¹ and Graeme Smith²

(1)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

(2)

University of Chichester, Chichester, UK

Ulrich Schmiedel (Corresponding author)

Graeme Smith

End Abstract

What came to be called the current refugee crisis of Europe in 2015 and 2016 is not so current anymore. At the culmination of the crisis, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterrez, could confidently assume that

refugees are now squarely in the center of international media attention. … The dramatic events on the beaches and borders of Europe , where hundreds of thousands arrived to seek safety over the last few months have ensured that no one can go on ignoring a displacement crisis that has long been in the making.¹

However, when the number of migrants who made it onto these beaches and over these borders decreased, it was not only the media that moved on. National and international agreements which prevented migrants from entering the European Union allowed Europe to ignore the crisis, although the numbers of displaced persons are anything but decreasing.² Currently, the European Union is configuring or reconfiguring its system for the allocation of asylum seekers across its states, sealing the cracks in the walls of “Fortress Europe.” Already with the Dublin Conventions, signed in 1990, the European Union eliminated internal borders and enforced external borders,³ thus constructing a fortress with the “world’s deadliest wall.”⁴ The Dublin Regulations , which followed from the 1990 Dublin Conventions, further solidified “Fortress Europe.” But the migrants who arrived or attempted to arrive into the European Union during 2015 and 2016 caused cracks in its walls.

The suspension of the Dublin Regulations , announced by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on September 5, 2015, marked a striking shift in the policies of migration throughout the European Union. Confronted with the death toll at the European borders—according to the “Missing Migrants Project,” in the Mediterranean 3784 migrants went missing in 2015 and 5143 migrants went missing in 2016⁵—Germany effectively stated that the Dublin system had collapsed.⁶ Throughout Europe , the suspension of this system provoked both defenders and despisers. “Fortress Europe” lowered its drawbridges for a short but significant amount of time—the time that came to be called a crisis.

What follows is our attempt to chart the context for the contributions to our compilation by scrutinizing the controversies stirred up by the conceptualization and characterization of the current situation of Europe as a crisis. Are the refugees in crisis? Are the receivers in crisis? Whose crisis was—or indeed is—it?

Concept(s) of Crisis

Etymologically, “crisis” comes from the Greek κρίσις, capturing a situation which calls for a strong and striking decision: either this or that.⁷ In his seminal survey of the history of the concept, Reinhart Kosellek stresses that urgency and ubiquity have marked the usage of the concept throughout modernity.⁸ Since crisis is in modernity, as much as modernity is in crisis, the concept has been elevated into a catch-all category.⁹

However, the conceptualization of the situation of Europe in 2015 and 2016 as a crisis is not neutral. “Whether a constellation is understood as a crisis depends on the interpretations and the interests of all the actors involved,” argues political theorist Stefan Luft with regard to the current refugee crisis.¹⁰ A crisis can be created consciously and calculatingly. States have ignored the signs of the incipient crisis in order to put political pressure onto others—a strategy which has been employed by the states “pushing” migrants and by the states “pulling” migrants worldwide.¹¹ Characteristically, the UNHCR has been underfinanced. The widening gap between financial requirements and financial resources—since 2014 less than half of the UNHCR budget has been covered¹²—indicates how migration has come to be seen as a crisis for the receivers rather than a crisis for the refugees. The crises which make refugees leave their countries have been muted, constructing the receivers’ migration crisis at the cost of the refugees’ crisis migration. Europe , then, occupies the center of attention, although it is states such as Syria , where the largest number of refugees currently come from, which are actually in crisis—a crisis to which European foreign politics contributed.¹³ And even if the European contribution to the crisis in Syria is acknowledged, Reece Jones stresses, such acknowledgment is ambiguous because “it demonstrated that EU leaders were taking the situation seriously … while simultaneously denying any obligations to migrants from any other place.”¹⁴

In Strangers at Our Door, Zygmunt Bauman conceives of “crisis” as “a sort of politically correct codename for the current phase of the perpetual battle waged by opinion makers for the conquest … of human minds.”¹⁵ According to Bauman, “migration is by no means a novel phenomenon,” because “our ‘modern way of life’ includes the production of ‘redundant people’.”¹⁶ Philosopher Thomas Nail pushes Bauman’s conception of the current refugee crisis even further. The modern way of life, he proposes, is not the only cause of migration . While the modes of migration may change, migration has characterized premodern, modern, and postmodern ways of life.¹⁷ Accordingly, Nail argues that the historical anomaly is not migration (as opposed to Europe ), but Europe (as opposed to migration) : “The subject of the crisis should thus be flipped right side up: Europe is a crisis for migrants . Therefore, the critical question … is not what is to be done with the migrants , but rather what is to be done with Europe?”¹⁸ The concept of crisis, then, has been used as a cipher which shifts attention from the situation of the refugees to the situation of the receivers, concealing that “our” way of life (whether premodern, modern, or postmodern) is crucial to the creation of migration in the first place.¹⁹

Nonetheless, the interpretation of the situation of Europe between 2015 and 2016 as a crisis makes sense in as much as migration has been used to call for strong and striking decisions across its public squares and its political spheres: either migrants are accommodated or migrants are not accommodated, either this or that. Since the connection to such a call is essential to the etymology of crisis, it is promising to explore the current situation of Europe as a crisis. The current refugee crisis in Europe, then, characterizes the context of our compilation. Although our compilation concentrates on the receivers inside Europe rather than the refugees outside Europe , we are not aiming at the continuation of the shift from the refugees’ crisis migration to the receivers’ migration crisis—a shift which needs to be countered rather than confirmed. Instead, our aim is to expose and to examine the roles of religion in both the perception and the production of what came to be called the current refugee crisis.

Religion in the Refugee Crisis

Religion, all of the contributors argue, runs through the current refugee crisis. While religion is a r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Charting a Crisis
• Part I. Constellations
• Part II. Conflicts
• Part III. Consequences
• Back Matter