Europe’s Refugee Hypocrisy
S1: When I think about Ukrainian refugees right now, I think about these pictures, I’ve seen of the roads leading out of the country. They’ve been jam packed. Some people have simply ditched their vehicles on the side of the road and walked into countries like Poland or Hungary, with their rolling bags bumping behind them. According to the U.N., 800 70000 people have fled
S2: in under a week.
S1: Yeah, and the U.N. saying that it’s going to surpass a million within days. I called up Serena Parekh because she studies refugees at Northeastern University. She said looking at pictures like this, it’s hard not to think back to Europe’s last refugee crisis.
S2: If you think back to 2015 and the Syrian refugees that were arriving in Italy and Greece that summer this week is 10 times higher rate of refugees leaving the country than at the highest point of that crisis. And that felt overwhelming. We had never seen such huge numbers. How could we possibly absorb this many people? That was the rhetoric at the time, at least. And this week we’ve seen tenfold level of displacement.
S1: You know, I saw one journalist point out something that struck me. They said that the people we’re seeing now, it’s not just that, it’s just the beginning, it’s that these are the people with the means to get out early. Like they’ve got cars. They can hit the road. It just made me wonder. The pictures we’re seeing of refugees now. Is that situation about to change and maybe look a lot worse?
S2: I think that’s right, because in all conflicts, the first people to get out are the people with means. So I think it absolutely will get worse.
S1: But there’s good news here. Serena says the European Union is crafting an emergency plan that would give these refugees the opportunity to live and work, and also access health care and housing in EU countries for up to three years.
S2: Most refugee situations, host countries host refugees. They sort of tolerate them, but they do not give them access to social benefits. And with with two exceptions, do not allow them to work legally. So most refugees that have to work in the black market without authorization and live in very, very precarious situation situations trying to make ends meet.
S1: I wonder if you look at that and you think, huh? It looks like. European countries have learned their lesson or whether you think something else.
S2: I do think something else. It strikes me that it’s not a lesson learned so much as seeing this as a fundamentally different kind of refugee crisis. They really do see themselves and Ukrainians. They see other people who are white, they see people who are Christian, they see people who are European. There are two ways you could interpret this in one sense, it’s very, very human to feel a connection to people who are similar to you. It’s it’s automatic. It’s easy. On the other hand, you might say there’s a kind of racialized motivation going on. It’s harder to see the humanity in people who don’t look like you.
S1: Today on the show, what makes this refugee crisis different? I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next? Stick around. I had a conversation with a Russia expert just the other day who had a suggestion for what European countries should do now in regards to Ukraine. And his suggestion was open. The borders completely just let anyone out of Ukraine or Russia or Belarus let them come in to the EU. Do you think that’s going to happen?
S2: It’s a really interesting proposal. I doubt that’s going to happen. Why? Well, I think that countries in Eastern Europe and more broadly Western countries in general believe that security at the border is paramount. So they need to know who is coming in. They need to register refugees, they need to be able to track people if needed. And I suspect the worry would be that people from other countries might use that as a way to get into the European Union. The economic migrants and people who are often accused of trying to enter with asylum seekers and refugees to enter Europe in order to work and make money and so forth.
S1: Yeah, I was struck that Poland just began construction on a half a billion dollar wall along the border with Belarus.
S2: Right?
S3: Yeah, the five and a half metre high wall will protect one hundred eighty six kilometers of the 480 kilometer long border. Actual ground, you suppose, could be currently hit smaller groups from a few individuals to about 30 people who try to cross the Polish Belarussian border illegally last October.
S2: That was very jarring as late as two weeks ago. This was the major project in Poland was to build a wall with Belarus so that asylum seekers wouldn’t be able to enter Poland. And I mean, another figure that I find a really helpful comparison is in 2021, Poland took in just over 5000 refugees, 5000 5000.
S1: It seems small,
S2: very, very small. They’ve traditionally been very antagonistic to refugees and to asylum seekers. And in under a week they’ve taken in, I think, close to 300000 thousand refugees and other foreign nationals coming through Ukraine. So it’s astonishing.
S1: Yeah, it’s a real turnabout. And refugees have become a political lightning rod over the last few years in Europe. I wonder if you could take me back a little bit to before the Ukraine crisis to just explain how the last migrant crisis went down because in the beginning there. Europe also had great sympathy for these refugees, mainly from Syria. But it didn’t last. So what happened in the 2010s?
S2: We saw Syrians needing to flee what is in many ways similar to what Putin is doing, you know, the bombardment of cities.
S4: They dropped pork barrel bombs, which hit not only rebel positions, but civilians.
S1: The aim is to sow terror, and of course, Putin supported that war as well.
S2: He absolutely did. Yeah, and some of the worst aspects of the Syrian Civil War can be traced back to his support. So people are starting to flee, and what they initially do is to go to countries that are proximate to the conflict. So in the case of Syria, they go to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan,
S3: as fast as Turkey’s government could build the dozens of refugee camps along its borders with Syria. They were filled to capacity
S2: and there initially received, but often feel like they can’t continue to live. Their life is really precarious.
S3: The majority of refugees now live outside the camps because they couldn’t get in due to overcrowding or because when they live in the camps, they are not permitted to go out and look for work.
S2: So people thought, Well, I’m going to come to Europe and I’m going to seek asylum. I’m a legitimate asylum seeker. I’m fearing persecution and I will receive asylum because this is in fact with the asylum system is designed to do. And so initially, people start coming into the European Union and are absolutely received with great sympathy. And I think the highlight the height of that moment is when the boy, Alan Kurdi, washes up on a Turkish beach and this really galvanizes people and people start talking about the fact that Western countries have a moral obligation to help Syrians, and of course, we will support them. Keep in mind, at this point, Syrians can’t get visas to the European Union, so there’s no legal way for them to enter. So the only way they can get to the European Union to claim asylum is using smugglers because the routes have become so dangerous and so deadly over time. Angela Merkel eventually says, You know, we can do this on you
S5: and we have to solve this crisis in line with human rights and our humanitarian values.
S2: What was great about that speech was the solidarity with refugees. But it wasn’t coupled with any kind of humanitarian corridor or visa application or sense that, well, you can apply for asylum in an embassy abroad and then we will transport you safely to Germany.
S1: So the infrastructure wasn’t there.
S2: Right, exactly. The infrastructure wasn’t there. And the idea was, if you can make it to Germany, you’ve got a good shot at asylum and we’ll let you, you know, bring over your family once we give you asylum. This was a strong incentive for people who had lost everything, had no hope in Syria, had no hope in the countries near Syria could not stand the desperation in Italy and Greece. And so they thought, OK, Germany. So they began going pretty much on their own. And these large caravans on foot by train, there were volunteers who had help transport people
S1: and then they’d arrive in Germany. And what would happen?
S2: Well, if they arrived in Germany, they were processed as asylum seekers and if they had a legitimate claim to persecution, they were allowed to stay and they were given asylum. And Germany has done a kind of amazing job integrating refugees within Germany. It’s often touted as a success of how refugees can be integrated,
S1: but it sounds like it came at great cost for the families.
S2: Oh, so ordinary costs to the family’s extraordinary cost. And those are just the lucky ones, or those are the families that were able to make it to Germany and oftentimes wasn’t even families. It was the men who would say, OK, well, we’re going to go. We will risk our lives. We will put ourselves in harm’s way. And if we get to Germany and we’re asylum seekers, we can bring over our families. But they went through Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe, saw the Syrian refugees as a fundamental existential threat to their societies to their cultures. Why? I don’t know that there’s a definitive answer to that. I think there are a number of reasons. I think a lot of countries started to feel like there were too many refugees coming in. They couldn’t be screened. They started being seen as security threats. And at this moment, you had a lot of xenophobic racialized discussions of refugees that I think were taken advantage of politically by particularly right wing governments, which aim to portray Syrian refugees as terrorists, be as violent towards women. And therefore they couldn’t possibly be trusted in Europe because they were so inherently violent and see they were Muslim and they just did not fit in with Christian Europe, and they were going to impose Sharia law and they were going to transform Europe and and the, you know, the racist language, take it back to the dark ages and things like that.
S1: And there were some galvanizing events here. Right in Berlin, there was a man who drove a truck into a Christmas market and that was used by political parties there, as you know, a statement of, you know. We’re in danger because of these refugees.
S2: Yeah, absolutely. There were all kinds of incidents like that that were blamed on refugees and used to galvanize support against refugees in a very, very cruel, cynical way. You know, I can give you one example that I know fairly well. So Nigel Farage was the leader of the UK CDP, the right wing party that ultimately successfully pushed for Brexit. He said that Malmo, Sweden had become the rape capital of Europe because they had led in so many Syrian refugees, and he pointed to this data and says, Look, the refugees arrived at this time and the rates for sexual violence against women have skyrocketed since then. And therefore, you know, we can blame it on Syrian refugees. Was that true? Most of the the assaults were being done by non refugees. But the reason for the data change had to do with the fact that Sweden had recently changed its law so that they counted every act of sexual violence individually instead of altogether. So, for example, in the U.S., if you go to the police and you say, my husband raped me every day for a year, they would say, OK, well, that’s what act of sexual violence rape in Sweden, they would count that as three hundred and sixty five different acts, huh?
S1: So you can see how that would completely change the statistics,
S2: completely change the statistics. And the other factor was that there was much less stigma in Sweden abound of reporting sexual violence, whereas in other countries they may be experiencing the same rate, but people are much more hesitant to come forward. So it was a kind of a trophy thing, as Stephen Colbert might say, but that actually wasn’t borne out by the facts, but was super effective in painting Syrian men as sexual predators, all of them.
S1: And you talk about how this belief, you know, it spread, especially in eastern European countries, but it was interesting to me to to see how Western European countries as well who early on had been champions of these migrants completely. Changed. Like did an about face once it was clear that the public opinion had been turned.
S2: Sure, we can think of Germany, who, you know, as we talked about the Angela Merkel famous We Can Do It speech where she said, yes, we can take in refugees like we have the capacity. We this is consistent with our values and within a year to completely turn that on its head, and they had negotiated a deal with Turkey. So Turkey would agree to prevent asylum seekers from leaving Turkey in exchange for a very robust aid package that Germany had negotiated for Turkey. So they solve the refugee crisis, but they solved it by effectively cutting off the access that refugees had to asylum in Europe, and this was considered politically necessary. I think at the time that they believe they couldn’t be re-elected if asylum seekers kept coming at high numbers. And because, as you said, the popular support for refugees had been diminishing and they started to seem like an economic burden instead of as a humanitarian victory or a public relations victory or something like that.
S1: It’s interesting because Russia and its allies have seen this division over refugees in Europe and sought to exploit it like as recently as a couple of months ago, there was this crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland. Where Syrian refugees were being told if you fly to Belarus, you’re going to be able to walk across the border to Poland, you’ll be great, you’ll be in the EU. They showed up. Nothing like that happened at all. And to me, that’s that’s the kind of story that that makes the difference in how Ukrainian refugees are being received so stark. And I wonder if you think about that too.
S2: I noticed that. Yeah, right, right away. And I wondered when the invasion initially began last week if part of Putin’s strategy was the hope that this would cause so much displacement that it would overwhelm the European Union. And this would again reveal the Hypocrisy of liberal democracies, which I think is something that he’s tried to push in other contexts. And instead, the European Union has responded with solidarity and with compassion. For now, at least, as you mentioned.
S1: Yeah, I mean, the question is how long it lasts?
S2: Absolutely. Yeah.
S1: This conflict in Ukraine is new. And at the beginning, people always want to be generous.
S2: Absolutely. That’s that’s a very, very large concern. And a lot of it will hinge both on how the conflict unfolds and the numbers of refugees. And I think a lot of it will depend on how they’re portrayed in the media. If we continue to talk about refugees as being like us and it’s in our interest to support them, then I think solidarity can continue longer. But as soon as it starts being more newsworthy to portray them as criminals, as Dre economic drains, then I think we could see a turn.
S1: Yeah, it’s interesting to see how Ukrainian refugees are being described in the media right now.
S5: These are prosperous, middle class people. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to. This isn’t a place with all due respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European. I have to choose those words carefully to city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.
S1: Like I’ve heard some folks talk about. These refugees are college educated or they have family in the EU, and so they won’t require as much cultural assimilation. And I wonder when you read that stuff, whether you think it’s like straight xenophobia or whether there’s a point to it.
S2: I think both I I can see, I think there is a very deep human. Drive that sees connections between people in terms of features that we think of as being morally salient. So we think of somebodys culture as being like ours and we see that people share our same values or we perceive that they share our same values and therefore we connect with them in this very deep way. But I think it seems to me transparently clear that there is at least some racism at work in these stereotypes because to say that Ukrainians are well-educated and that Syrians weren’t is simply mistaken. Syria was a very educated society, a very cultured society. They were admired across the Middle East, though we don’t see that in the West. And so to us, they just look like poor immigrants who we have nothing in common with. So the way that people in the Middle East, Africa, Asia get described as being inherently uneducated, inherently more violent, inherently having a different culture than ours and therefore, you know, not fitting in with us in the West is very much based on negative racial stereotypes towards people who aren’t white. And that’s really come through in the media coverage of Ukrainian refugees.
S1: I’ll be back in just a minute with my guest, Serena Parekh. As open as Europe is being right now to Ukrainian refugees, there are already these reports about how some people are not getting that kind of warm reception.
S5: African and Indian students stuck in Ukraine are accusing officials of discriminating against them and pushing them back from getting to the border. Videos have been posted on social media said to show black people being prevented from boarding a train and left stranded at a railway station in the Vive. As Ukrainians were allowed on. Others said they were turning.
S2: Ukraine has 400000 students and also as many were African, many were Indian, and there were widespread reports of them being being told get to the back of the line. This is for us first and being physically beaten and always.
S5: There was some discrimination and racism. I think like I think not all Ukrainian are racist or something, but at the border guys border soldiers go to the police. There was like super racist lighting and all the black people are black people, especially they they saw they beat them, they told them.
S2: So I’ve heard the Polish guards, for example, simply had no experience with this. They had no training. They were not used to taking in refugees, certainly not at this rate.
S1: And the rules might be different if you’re from Ukraine, then from Nigeria because of the status of your visa, I guess.
S2: Right, exactly. And so I feel like, you know, these racial stereotypes that we have, I mean, I feel like stories like that. I hope they get more coverage.
S1: Well, I guess the value of them getting more coverage is that you can course correct faster.
S2: Right?
S1: Like, the U.N. is already out and saying, we’ve seen these reports, we’ve confirmed them, we denounce them.
S5: At this critical juncture. There can be no discrimination against any person or any group.
S1: And that’s important to have the people in charge say, No, we’re not doing this, and you hope that trickles down to everyone else.
S2: Right? Yeah, exactly. So to have every part of this conflict and response documented showed on Twitter shared, you know, maybe this would have come to light some months from now in other circumstances. But now, you know, it’s so present and can be corrected. And as far as I understand, has been correct it.
S1: It’s interesting to talk to you because I feel like you both understand. The value of the way the Ukraine crisis is being covered now in that journalists are making these awkward mistakes, but the awkward mistakes are things like Ukrainians are just like us. And you’re saying like, actually, that’s good for the refugees, even if it’s. A toxic idea.
S2: Right? And my my hope, my perhaps naively optimistic hope is that. Once we see Ukrainian refugees as human beings in need of help and compassion that somehow we will be able to link this with refugees around the world who also are in desperate need, who suffer no less when they have to leave their families behind and all their possessions and watch their city been bombarded. So I would love to see the Ukrainian crisis be linked to the, you know, 30 million other refugees around the world who also have lost everything and who also need compassion and a home and resources and kindness as well. And remember that there are other refugees and other refugee crises that need the same level of reception and support. And it also shows that European Union can take in a lot of refugees, that they have the capacity, that they have the ability to do this
S1: if they’re willing,
S2: if they’re willing. Yes, absolutely. But in the past, they’ve said, Oh, this is too many refugees. We can’t handle this. It’s too much. We’re overwhelmed. We don’t know what to do. And I think now it will ring out even more hollow if they say things like that, because they can.
S1: I wonder if you’ve talked to any people who work with Syrian refugees or Syrian refugees themselves in the last few days about how they’re seeing all of this play out and whether it feels. Whether they share your optimism that maybe this is a turning point or whether they just. Feel screwed.
S2: I think the latter is the sense that I’m getting, I’m thinking in particular of something I read on Twitter by a Syrian woman who said, Look, I want to get behind the support for Ukrainian refugees. I really do. Just my heart breaks every time I think about how you were not there for me and my people. And that, to me, really, really struck me like, how must it feel to see the warmth, compassion, the solidarity with Ukrainian refugees and to be a refugee yourself who has spat on and beaten pepper sprayed as you tried to seek safety and security?
S1: Serena Parekh, I’m really grateful for all of your analysis when it comes to refugees in Europe. Thank you.
S2: Thank you so much for having me.
S1: Serena Parekh is a professor at Northeastern University in Boston. She’s the director of its Politics, Philosophy and Economics program. And that’s our show. What next is produced by Carmel Delshad Danielle, Hewitt, Alan Schwartz and Mary Wilson were led by Alicia Montgomery tomorrow in this feed. Lizzie O’Leary will be here with what next? TBD that is our Friday and Sunday show. She is going to be talking all about information warfare, you know, the light, breezy stuff. All right. I’m Mary Harris talked to on Monday.