‘We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time. Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers; it is also a crisis of solidarity. […] We must respond to a monumental crisis with monumental solidarity’ (UN 2016). These words were spoken by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in April 2016 at a conference in Washington, DC addressing the forced displacement of millions of people taking place at the time. The notion ‘refugee crisis’ has become the dominating term within Europe for describing the current situation of a large inflow of refugees, migrants, and displaced persons entering Europe through regular and irregular channels. Although it makes little sense denying the fact that a large number of people do seek to enter the Europe one way or another due to political instability, lack of protection and security in their home countries, and on a more general level due to global inequality, the term ‘crisis’ itself does not explain the situation in itself. How can we then explain the so-called refugee crisis? Is it really a new thing? When did it start? Is there only one crisis? What will come out of the alleged crisis?
By now we have seen a growing academic literature engaging with the idea of the crisis (Bauder 2016; Bendixsen 2016; Casas-Cortes et al. 2015; Castelli Gattinara 2017; Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2016; De Genova 2016; De Genova et al. 2016; Duarte et al. 2016; Rajaram 2015; Triandafyllidou 2017). Part of this literature is critical toward the notion of the ‘refugee crisis’ (like most of the authors listed here). Other studies reproduce or find themselves close to the political framings of the crisis and the background for this. Many scholars, commentators, and activists now deliberately use the notion of refugee crisis in scare quotes (‘…’), like we have done ourselves. Although it emphasizes that there is more to the story, this trick does not get us far in understanding the political aspects of the crisis and the kind of transformations that may follow in its paths. In this book, Solidarity and the ‘ Refugee Crisis’ in Europe, we focus particularly on the aspect of solidarity. As we will explain and unfold in this and the next chapters, we regard solidarity as generative and inventive (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a; Featherstone 2012). As David Featherstone writes: ‘They [solidarities] produce new ways of configuring political relations and space’ (2012: 6). Moreover, solidarities challenge the methodological nationalism which underpins both the framing of the refugee crisis and especially the handling of the crisis. Solidarities, in their different forms and practices, afford a lens for understanding how the crisis also presents a moment for rupture and for creating new imaginaries and for testing new alternatives for more inclusive societies. This book offers a conceptual framework on solidarity which we apply to a number of cases on different scales to exemplify how these forms of solidarity are being shaped as a response to the refugee crisis and to how governments have tried to manage this crisis. The solidarity movement, such as the Refugees Welcome movement, has been very visible and active in especially European countries, but besides some articles there is so far not many attempts to capture the overall role of this type of activism or to analyze the potential such engagement may hold for alternative ways of managing the refugee crisis. In this book, we argue that the state—in the form of national governments and the European Union —has not been able to present any viable or sustainable solutions to the crisis. We therefore have to look elsewhere for alternatives.
This introductory chapter describes the background of the refugee crisis and the responses by the international community in terms of refugee management. It looks at the national attempts to manage refugee flows and the inclusion of refugees into the European nation-states. It outlines the general discursive presentation of the refugee issue and uses this as a departure point to initially describe the responses from civil society actors to deal with the crisis and provide alternative models for engaging with the refugee issue. Our argument is that although these responses are diverse and have different aims, they also share some common features as they may be regarded as emerging solidarities based on diverse alliances. We reflect on the role and potential of such alliances and solidarities for developing alternatives to the current management of the refugee crisis on local, national, and transnational levels.
What Kind of Crisis?
Few scholars would dispute that Europe is in crisis. However, there is less consensus on what kind of crisis Europe is in and how it could and should be framed (Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2016). We now see a proliferation of interchangeable discourses, framings, and narratives. Each of these carries with them particular connotations and prognostic and diagnostic framings. While the notion ‘refugee crisis’ perhaps has been the dominant framing, we also find the use of ‘migrant crisis’ (aptly expanding the crisis to not only deal with the refugee situation but migration to Europe in general). We sometimes find the notion of ‘humanitarian crisis’ which contrary to focusing on the human consequences also emphasizes victimization and creates distinctions between wanted and unwanted migrants and ultimately is linked to a ‘crisis of the asylum system’ and/or a ‘crisis of the European border’ and border control (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015: 7–14). Pointing to the collapse of the border regime turns the crisis into a ‘crisis of the EU’, of ‘the Schengen zone’ and in the end a ‘crisis of the political idea of Europe’. These alternating framings of the crisis are also linked to other grander crisis narratives. Hence, the refugee crisis is connected to notions of ‘the economic crisis’, ‘the financial crisis’, ‘the debt crisis’, the ‘banking crisis’, ‘the housing crisis’, etc. This links the refugee crisis to the neoliberal articulations of necessary austerity interventions. Greece, for instance, is singled out as being unable to cope with the inflow of refugees due to a historical lack of financial responsibleness and is threatened with further economic sanctions if it does not handle the refugee issue (Castelli Gattinara 2017). The conflation of austerity policies with those of refugee protection strengthens distinctions of ‘genuine’ refugees and economic migrants only in it for the money; wanted and unwanted migrants; and basically who is deserving and who is not. The latest development is perhaps the development toward a ‘security crisis’ following the tragic events in Paris and Brussels where refugees on a general level were turned into potential terrorists overnight, despite the fact that the perpetrators and organizers of these attacks had all been residing in Europe for years. This culturalization of the crisis has foregrounded ‘Muslim extremism’ and the idea of terrorists ‘hiding’ among the refugees seeking protection in Europe. The narrative of ‘strangeness’, ontological difference, and ‘un-Europeanness’ of the refugees was further strengthened after the incident in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015/2016 when a group of primarily North-African (Moroccan and Tunisian) migrants were accused of sexually molesting partygoers celebrating the night in public places. This evoked the idea of a ‘moral crisis’. Writing in early 2018, it is probably safe to say that we may still come to see new framings of the crisis.
On a European level, the inability to solve the crisis/crises and come up with viable and sustainable solutions has turned it into a crisis of legitimacy, rendering the EU project of peace, prosperity, and integration one that is far from reality. The crisis as a representation underpins Prem Kumar Rajaram’s understanding of the refugee crisis. ‘The refugee crisis in Europe is fabricated’ (2015), he writes. As we do here, he describes the crisis as a particular framing. One which designates inward working; establishing a dominant regulating norm—an idea of the refugee—to be compared and contrasted, and one which has outward aims, a framing which reduces the complexities of the situation to an ‘abstracted understanding’ allowing policy-makers and commentators to treat it as an exceptional condition.
Whose Crisis?
As Nicholas de Genova suggests, it may be necessary to stop and ask ‘whose crisis?’ we are talking about and what the purpose is of a particular framing (2016: 4). Using the term ‘crisis’ itself has deliberate implications. Describing something as a crisis underlines the alleged exceptionality of the event/situation/condition. It is described both as something not ‘normal’, something out of the ‘ordinary’, and as something which signals emergency . Emergency legitimizes governmental and EU measures aimed at enhancing and expanding border control, enforcement and policing and new measures such as externalization, outsourcing, and marketization of border control (Collyer and King 2016; De Genova 2016; Gammeltoft-Hansen and Nyberg Sørensen 2013; Jørgensen 2012). In the case of the financial crisis, it legitimizes the TINA rationale (‘there is no alternative’) and call for austerity policies. Crises thus open up for the deployment of authoritarian measures and interventions not limited by democratic concerns. Giorgio Agamben writes about this ‘state of exception’ already in 2013:
The concept ‘crisis’ has indeed become a motto of mode...