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Thinking Outside the Camp: Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

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Thinking Outside the Camp: Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

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TURKEY

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While the notion of refugees typically brings to mind forced migrants living in camps or certain neighborhoods designated by the receiving government, the situation in Turkey is quite different in that urban refugees predominate. Turkey had granted temporary protection status to more than 3.1 million Syrians as of July 2017-all arriving since April 2011. Fewer than 8 percent (about 235,000) live in camps, while the rest are scattered across the country, mostly in urban centers, living side-by-side with the local population. Istanbul, home to more than 522,000 registered Syrian refugees, is the Turkish province with the largest number of refugees.

The emergence of these urban refugees has important implications for local governments, especially municipalities, which have taken on the direct work of caring for this vulnerable population. These newcomers arrive with a number of humanitarian and economic needs, ranging from housing and education to language support, and their sheer numbers in some cities have caused tensions with the local populace. Even as municipal governments must meet many refugee service needs, they occupy an ill-defined position with respect to their legal mandate and political authority vis-à-vis the refugees, and are also severely underfunded and understaffed.

This article is adapted from a study led by the Marmara Municipalities Union Migration Policies Workshop (Marmara Belediyeler Birliği Göç Politikaları Atölyesi, or MAGA) and conducted by a team under the direction of the author from March to November 2016. The research aimed at understanding how local governments managed the process of vast numbers of refugees settling in their districts regarding the additional burden on the resources and services as well as the humanitarian needs and demands of the mostly poverty-stricken refugees.

Based on the study findings, this article offers an overview of how 39 local governments in Istanbul province managed the vast numbers of refugees settling in their districts in terms of the additional burden on resources and services. It also examines the humanitarian needs and demands of the largely poverty-stricken arrivals. Thus far, cities have managed the process very successfully despite lack of clear authority and resources. Still, they run the risk of legal consequences and social tension in providing services to refugees and foreigners because municipalities under Turkish law and regulations can normally only serve Turkish citizens.
An Unprecedented Crisis
While Turkey has long been a country of emigration and to some extent of immigration, the scale of the recent Syrian refugee inflows is unprecedented in Turkish history. The uprising that began against the Syrian regime in March 2011 spiraled into a still-raging civil war. As of June 2017, at least 5.1 million Syrians had fled to neighboring countries and another 1 million or so had gone to Europe, the United States, or Canada. Within Syria, 6.5 million are internally displaced.

The movement of Syrians across the 566-mile border into Turkey began with a group of 252 people on April 29, 2011, and has continued uninterrupted in the subsequent six years. Turkey's "open-door policy," which is fully compatible with international protection principles, has been maintained since the Syrian flows first began, even as some difficulties have occasionally arisen due to safety concerns.

Turkey alone hosted 52 percent of all Syrian refugees as of July 2017 (see Figure 1). Still, with Turkey's overall population at around 80 million, its 4 percent refugee share pales in comparison to that for other top hosts of Syrian refugees. In Lebanon and Jordan, refugees are around 17 percent and 8 percent of overall residents, respectively.
Figure 1. Distribution of Syrian Refugees by Host Country, July 2017
Note: European Union numbers include asylum seekers in EU Member States, as well as in European Free Trade Association Member States Norway and Switzerland.
Sources: Turkish Ministry of Interior, Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), "International Protection Statistics," updated July 27, 2017, available online (in Turkish); and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), "Syria Regional Refugee Response," accessed August 8, 2017, available online.

Because Turkey reserves formal refugee designation only for those fleeing as a consequence of events in Europe, the overwhelming majority of the more than 3.1 million Syrians in Turkey hold temporary protection (TP) status. Currently about 82,000 Syrians in Turkey are "preregistered" and are awaiting approval for TP status, a process that involves security checks. Beyond Syrians, Turkey since 2011 has accepted 850,000 to 900,000 refugees from other countries, primarily Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Approximately 500,000 of these have since moved onward to Europe.
Turkey's Urban Refugees
The first Syrians who came to Turkey were placed in 26 accommodation centers, built according to the highest standards and in very little time. However, as the influx continued ceaselessly, many new arrivals started to live outside of the camps, spreading to every region of the country. Eventually the numbers in urban or other settings exceeded those living in the camps. As of July 2017, around 235,000 Syrians, just 7.4 percent of the total, lived in 23 refugee camps (three camps were closed) in ten provinces. The remaining 92.6 percent lived as urban refugees, and can be found in all 81 provinces. This urban share is far higher than seen globally, with about 60 percent of all refugees worldwide living in urban locations, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Turkey has not arranged any formal placement for the Syrian arrivals, as they are considered to be temporary. As a result, most are scattered according to their own will.
Figure 2. Syrians in Turkey by Residence, July 2017
Source: Turkish Ministry of Interior, DGMM, "International Protection Statistics," accessed August 8, 2017, available online.

More than 75 percent of the Syrians in Turkey are children and women in need of special protection; 44 percent are children under the age of 18. Indeed, more than 12 percent of those with TP status in July 2017 were children ages 4 and under. Between May 2011 and May 2017, more than 224,000 babies were born in Turkey to displaced Syrians. For the time being, most of these children are stateless, as they are neither granted Turkish nor Syrian citizenship at birth.

Education of children will be one of the major items on the integration agenda, with the near-term prospects for return to Syria incredibly bleak. There are more than 967,000 school-aged Syrian children in Turkey, of whom 492,000 (50.8 percent) are receiving education, despite the language barrier and limited capacity of schools. This number is expected to reach 650,000 (65 percent) in the 2017-18 academic year. Projections show that at least 40,000 to 45,000 additional teachers and 30,000 classrooms are needed in order to integrate 80 percent of Syrian children into the Turkish education system. The annual cost of these new teachers alone would be more than 550 million euros (US $627 million) per year. Beyond financial constraints, other concerns include maintaining the quality of the Turkish education system and avoiding social tension.

Undoubtedly, getting nearly half a million children into schools at all is itself a major achievement. But 60 percent of these students are being taught in Arabic, under a Syrian curriculum, in "temporary education centers." The quality of this education is questionable, and is not optimal for the integration of students into Turkish society. Further, more than 450,000 children have not been in a classroom since 2011, potentially representing a lost generation. Fully integrating both groups into the Turkish education system could reduce some of this loss, though not without financial and social strain on the system.
Syrian Refugees in Istanbul
Istanbul, home to around 18 percent of Turkey's population, is the biggest province. Unsurprisingly, the greatest number of international migrants and refugees, Syrian and otherwise, also live in this metropolis. Around 1 million registered foreigners live in Istanbul (others who are registered elsewhere or remain unregistered also live there). Included in the registered foreigner numbers are at least 520,000 Syrians under temporary protection-between 17 and 20 percent of all Syrians with this status in the country.
Figure 3. Density of Syrian Refugees in Istanbul Province by District, December 2016
Source: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Directorate of Urban Planning, unpublished document provided to the author.

Although there are some exceptions, the locations where Syrian refugees settle generally have a number of things in common: Widespread poverty, high levels of cultural conservatism and religiosity, a strong sense of community solidarity, and low costs of living. According to the results of a quality of life study carried out by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) in 39 districts, refugees cluster in districts that are generally seen as disadvantaged. Turks in these districts perceive refugees more positively. This can be interpreted both as a sign of emotional solidarity and of the ability of refugees to adapt to these regions more easily, due to lower cost of living and conservative community structure.
Ambiguity Regarding the Status of Refugees
There is much uncertainty regarding the legal basis for local governments in general, and municipalities in particular, to act on refugee issues. The main legal sources at the national level in Turkey in this regard are Municipal Law No. 5393 and the Law on Foreigners and International Protection No. 6458, the latter implemented in 2014. Municipal Law No. 5393 states that services are to be given to "citizens." However, the law's exact definition of who constitutes a citizen and whether those without Turkish citizenship may be eligible for municipal services is unclear. In addition to these, city councils and voluntary service agencies also address foreigner issues from time to time.

Further, Article 96 of the Law on Foreigners and International Protection, which establishes a national framework to ensure similar treatment for refugees, gives local governments a very limited role in this area. Municipalities are expected to work through the national government's Directorate General of Migration Management and benefit from the suggestions and contributions of other organizations including the local governments. In other words, the law states no role for the municipalities, without a clearly defined mandate or authority regarding refugees and other foreigners.
Findings: Municipal Management of Refugee Issues in Istanbul
Urban refugees pose many significant challenges for the municipalities where they live. Due to the lack of a national strategy concerning the role of local governments and the aforementioned ambiguities in the law, municipalities face these challenges in various ways.

The main focus of this study was to understand the dynamics and determinants of successful initiatives created by Istanbul municipalities. A comprehensive work on local governments and refugees, the research took place in Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) and 39 district municipalities in the province. Primary data were collected through in-depth interviews with 52 relevant officials, mainly mayors, deputies, and department heads responsible for migration issues, from IMM and 27 district municipalities on both the European and Anatolian sides of Istanbul. Representatives of municipalities with fewer than 1,000 refugees provided their views via written response.

Unsurprisingly, the size of the refugee population living in the district represents the main driving force behind municipal initiatives. Because municipalities lack easy access to reliable data on refugees in their territories, they have been working to create their own databases. The study team found a need to create a coordinated Istanbul-wide database, possibly under IMM, to provide more effective management and prevent abuse. Almost every municipal authority official interviewed suggested that a refugee needs analysis should be mapped by the Social Assistance Information System (SOYBIS), a monitoring tool used by Ministry of Family and Social Policies.

In order to skirt legal and administrative restrictions, teams aiming to serve refugees do so in a way that is considered "providing assistance to poor/those who are destitute," based on the fellow-citizenship law. While some municipal officials maintained their actions are completely in line with the law, others said they provide services at a risk and despite legislative barriers. Delivery of services through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is also a common strategy to overcome legal restrictions and make use of charitable donations.
A Patchwork of Local Services
Municipal services for refugees dramatically differ from district to district. Some consciously avoid providing services, fearing this would incentivize more Syrians to move there. Others offer housing and guidance services while providing basic necessities and supplies. Some refugees have also received psychosocial support, and services for disadvantaged groups such as unaccompanied children, elders, school-aged children, victims of violence, and the disabled or chronically ill are becoming more and more systematic.

Municipalities primarily seek to provide services to Syrian refugees where they live. In addition, refugee support is provided at municipal cultural centers, soup kitchens, municipal buildings, social markets, and neighborhood municipalities. Desks at the entrance of centers known as Beyaz Masa are tasked with addressing complaints and needs of refugees and local residents.

Local officials interviewed for the study said lack of financial resources to adequately address refugee needs was a major concern. There are two sources of income for municipalities: self-generated income and transfers from general budget tax revenues. The latter, distributed according to district population size, is the major source of income. Because refugees and foreigners are not counted in this population, the issue of spending these funds on refugees becomes problematic. District municipalities provide special services for refugee health and education needs, which further constrains their already restricted resources.

At the regional and local level, refugees tend to settle in poorer areas, partly as a result of the idea that "the poor help the poor." However, this trend can have adverse effects for the already disadvantaged populations who live there. In areas with many refugees, local residents frequently complain that they cannot use public services such as health, education, and parks because of the refugees, which could lead to future problems. Municipalities are sensitive to the concerns of the public and, as they are also political entities, strive to avoid negative reactions. In reality, disruptions in local services happen on a relatively small scale.

Turkish language instruction for refugee adults and public school enrollment for school-age Syrian children are two practices considered effective for integration, in light of significant language barriers between Syrians and the wider Turkish population. Almost all of the municipalities surveyed expressed the need for foreign language-speaking staff.

While accurate information is hard to obtain concerning employment patterns of Syrians, it was repeatedly mentioned that they are either working in low-skilled jobs-often informally and for little pay-or have opened their own small businesses. In a significant development, a new law in January 2016 introduced work permits for Syrians under temporary protection. Nevertheless, because of the high unemployment rate in Turkey, low qualifications and the language barrier, as well as the required minimum wage employers must pay, the number of Syrians officially employed did not increase after the law's passage and remained around 10,000. Meanwhile, it is estimated that at least 500,000 Syrians work informally in Turkey.

Syrian beggars are the subject of the vast majority of complaints made to refugee-related hotlines, representing a recurring issue in most municipalities. The sight of Syrian children begging on the streets of Istanbul, usually near traffic lights and in parks and other crowded areas, leads to the false perception that Syrians do not support themselves. While municipalities have been working to combat the stereotype, it is important to fight the actual problem as well as the perception, for instance by getting children off the streets and into schools.
Toward Longer-Term Integration?
Municipalities appear to be hesitant to embrace concepts of immigrant integration or assimilation, avoiding topics that seem to imply these recent arrivals will remain permanently. For that reason Turkish politicians prefer to use the term "harmonization" instead of integration, though they have the same meaning in practice.

However, an increasing number of programs are being devised and implemented by municipalities to integrate Syrians more fully into Turkish life. In regions with high concentration of refugees community centers established by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies, Red Crescent, other NGOs, or the municipalities themselves, work to inform refugees, provide them with training and education, assist with problems, and conduct harmonization-oriented programs. The plan is for these centers, currently numbering around 60 across Turkey, to come under Red Crescent supervision in the future.

When asked about the future of Syrians and whether they were here temporarily or permanently, almost all of the 52 interviewees stated they believe the Syrians are here to stay permanently. Regarding their impressions of social acceptance and tension, the respondents stated that despite some community-level concerns, these anxieties and worries have not led to conflicts, and that both local residents and Syrians have been very careful in this respect. Many expressed the opinion that harmonization programs for refugees should continue and municipalities should take serious initiative, while including refugees in the process.
Building a Model for Social Inclusion
The approaches and practices of municipalities, particularly in key refugee destinations, in handling Turkey's largest mass migration in history are critical in defining how the country as a whole copes with an influx that has strained public budgets and resources.

The author's research, the most comprehensive study on local governments and refugees in Turkey to date, has uncovered a number of challenges and areas for improvement. Budgetary limitations are among the most pressing, and more refugees might be adequately served if national funds were provided to municipalities based on the number of refugees hosted. Lack of coordination among local governments, and between local and national institutions, is another obstacle to delivering services effectively, as is the absence of a shared data system to map refugee populations and needs.

As the war in Syria drags on and the refugee population becomes more settled, municipal governments might consider implementing policies aimed at the short-, medium-, and long term. Maintaining the highly fragile social acceptance for these newcomers among the native population will be crucial, as concerns over refugees' use of public services, safety threats, and job competition could create public-relations rifts that undermine the delicate balance if not handled carefully. Despite their limited legal authority, financial support, and capacity, Turkish municipalities have made great effort in accommodating refugees. The fragile but high level of social acceptance in Turkey from the outset, as well as involvement of the refugees themselves in the decisionmaking and implementation process, underlies this success. The experience of Istanbul can serve as a positive example and offer motivation for forthcoming policies toward Syrians across Turkey and elsewhere.

This article is adapted from the report, Urban Refugees from "Detachment" to "Harmonization": Syrian Refugees and Process Management of Municipalities: The Case of Istanbul (2017), by M. Murat Erdoğan. The author thanks Dr. Onur Unutulmaz from Ankara Social Sciences University for his contribution.
Sources
Erdoğan, M. Murat. 2017. Urban Refugees from "Detachment" to "Harmonization": Syrian Refugees and Process Management of Municipalities: The Case of Istanbul. Istanbul: Marmara Municipalities Union. Available online.

Erdoğan, M. Murat and Ayhan Kaya, eds. 2015. Türkiye'nin Göç Tarihi: 14. Yüzyıldan 21. Yüzyıla Türkiye'ye Göçler (Migration History of Turkey: Migration to Turkey from 14th to 21st Century). Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press.

Erdoğan, M. Murat and Can Ünver. 2015. Perspectives, Expectations and Suggestions of the Turkish Business Sector on Syrians in Turkey. Ankara: Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations (TISK). Available online.

İçduygu, Ahmet and Kemal Kirişçi, eds. 2009. Land of Diverse Migrations: Challenges of Emigration and Migration in Turkey. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press.

Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Directorate of Urban Planning. 2014. Measurement of the Quality of Urban Life in Istanbul. Istanbul: IMM.

Marmara Municipalities Union. 2015. Report of the Workshop "The Role of Municipalities in Service to Urban Refugees." Istanbul: Marmara Municipalities Union.

Turkey Ministry of Interior Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM). 2017. International Protection Statistics. Updated June 6, 2017. Available online (in Turkish).

---. 2017. Temporary Protection Statistics. Updated August 8, 2017. Available online.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). N.d. Syria Regional Refugee Response. Accessed July 16, 2017. Available online.

---. N.d. Urban Refugees. Accessed July 18, 2017. Available online.

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Thinking Outside the Camp: Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

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Turkey has been on the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis from the beginning. The vast majority of Turkey's nearly 3.2 million Syrian asylum seekers live in cities, putting pressure on the limited resources and legal authority of local governments to serve them.

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Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist

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Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist

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For the children living in the dusty refugee camps near the Jordanian-Syrian border, the tiniest things spark joy. They fill their long days by playing with skipping ropes, buckets and stones, their imaginations working overtime to recapture some of the childhood they lost to war. Most fled the Syrian civil war with their families, seeking safety across the border in Mafraq, northeast Jordan. But with the conflict still raging after four years, many children have never known a life outside the camps. It is where they were born.

Every day, thousands of Syrians flee their homes. The once-stable country is experiencing an exodus on a scale that the world has not seen since the Rwandan genocide more than two decades ago. More than four million Syrians are now hosted by neighboring countries while an additional 7.6 million people have been displaced within Syria. The Syrian revolt, which began in March 2011 in the southern city of Dara'a - just north of the Jordanian border - propelled hundreds of families to cross the frontier on foot at night. Jordan now provides shelter for some 630,000 registered refugees.

More than 150,000 of them live in the north-eastern Mafraq region, where Associated Press Chief photographer Muhammed Muheisen spent several days in July documenting the lives of Syrian refugee children and their families. Although the area is best known for Za'atari, the huge refugee camp that opened in July 2012, most Syrian refugees live in unofficial tented settlements on the outskirts of the city. This is true of the country as a whole: the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 84% of Jordan's refugee population live outside the official camps.

Many people told Muheisen that while the official UNHCR-run camps have better facilities and support, they would feel trapped and crowded there. They seek a greater sense of community and independence, preferring to move around and find work outside to provide for their families.

A Syrian refugee girl fills water from a tanker to her tent on the outskirts of Mafraq, on July 25, 2015. Muhammed Muheisen-AP

Yet the conditions are undeniably harsh in these unofficial desert camps, with high temperatures during the day and extreme cold at night. Muheisen says he was especially aware of the lack of sanitation and medical care in the camps. Barefoot and malnourished, many of the children bore the additional mental scars of the war they had fled - Muheisen described young boys speaking and acting like men. Although some of the settlements have makeshift schools donated by UNICEF, classes are taught by other Syrian refugees and are not regular. Instead, many children work with their parents in nearby farms run by local Jordanians. With some 86% of refugees in Jordan living below the poverty line, refugee children are frequently the main breadwinners for their families and UNHCR worries that a generation of youth are forfeiting their future by missing out on an education.

"What hit me the most is that the children are the ones comforting their families," Muheisen tells TIME, saying that many spoke of a strong desire to work in order to help their families. The children's lives may have been turned upside down, but the photographer says he struck by their resilience and optimism.

The parents, meanwhile, merely dreamed of a better life for their kids than what they had experienced themselves. But with the Syrian crisis showing no signs of abating and refugees continuing to flee the war-torn country, it's unclear if that better life will be within reach any time soon.

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Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist

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For the children living in the dusty refugee camps near the Jordanian-Syrian border, the tiniest things spark joy. They fill their long days by playing with skipping ropes, buckets and stones, their imaginations working overtime to recapture some of the childhood they lost to war.

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Today, one in seven people is a migrant. This year, crossings of the Mediterranean Sea have already exceeded 300,000, and at least 2,500 lives have been lost in the process. What does it mean to be a migrant - or a refugee - in our time? What human rights can we rely on? And what hope is there for those who have fled their homes? Granta asks its authors to share their reactions to this profound human crisis. What follows is a collection of statements, poems, images and personal reflections from across Europe and beyond.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
'Our Government can only talk in numbers, so too most of the media, including the BBC. Until yesterday, when Yvette Cooper finally acknowledged the Syrian refugee crisis, leading Labour figures were cowardly too, staying silent. Social psychopathy is the result. Thousands perish as they try to get into Europe; asylum-seeking women miscarry on the streets; children are starving and traumatised; young men look trapped and emasculated. Those who have decided not to care will not be moved. (Millions do care and do what little they can, but this is a humanitarian disaster which requires a pan-European response.)

Maybe this is the moment, the image which breaks through the emotional and political fortresses. Remember that little naked, burning girl in the Vietnam war running away from bomb attacks? That single picture turned American public opinion against that terrible war. Or the first photographs of young Malala Yousafzai after she was shot on a school bus? Until then most Pakistanis were in denial about the Taliban in their country. After the shooting they had nowhere to hide.'
Read Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's Hugh Aldersey-Williams full article in the Independent
My mother was born in America, which of course does not mean she was a Native American. Her mother's parents were recent émigrés to the United States, the father of German stock, the mother from Ireland. I know their surnames but nothing else about them. I do not know if they were economic migrants or some other kind of migrant. I do not know if they left or fled.
Catherine Anyango
My mother's father could trace his family's presence in America back to the Mayflower, the ship of 'pilgrims' or religious sectarians who left, or fled, Europe in 1620. In the eighteenth century, one of his ancestors married a woman of French extraction, perhaps a Huguenot who left, or fled, France, or else one of the earlier wave of French settlers who were repeatedly dispersed around the North American continent as the British broke up colonial New France.
Julian Baggini
I am no genealogist. But even with so little investigation of the matter, it is obvious that I have ancestors from several generations who have left, or fled, one country and settled in another. Some of these journeys may have been undertaken for reasons of ambition, but some were clearly forced. My ancestry may be a little more mongrel than some (it is certainly a lot less mongrel than many), but I do not imagine this makes me any kind of exception. We are all the sum of yesterday's refugees.

This is a detail from a drawing recording all 2,600 plus deaths in the Mediterranean this year. Each person is marked by a hash mark, a system of measurement where four lines with a cross through them signifies five units, usually used to tally ongoing events. This image represents a fraction of the full painting - the 2,600 lines have been drawn by hand and then rubbed out to signify each person's passing, and the resulting erasure marks evoke the dangerous sea.

It is hard to read the character of the general public. At times it seems they are selfish xenophobes who don't care about poor migrants and see them as little more than parasites. At others, it looks like they are easily moved by images of desperate people and are willing to share their country with them. Will the real 'will of the people' please stand up?

But of course, there is no such thing. Character in the individual is rarely consistent. People can be brave around snakes and cowardly around the rich and powerful; honest with colleagues, caddish with spouses. Any psychologist will tell you that how we behave is extremely situation dependent. More than that: how the situation is framed will alter how we react.
Fatima Bhutto
In dealing with this crisis too many politicians have been trying too hard to read the public mood when it is their job to help shape it. Talk about refugees, families in dire need, people fleeing persecution, a noble tradition of welcome and hospitality, the ability and willingness for each area in the country to take just a dozen or so people in - talk like this and people become willing to help. But it is also easy to see what happens when you talk instead about swarms of illegal migrants, public services straining to cope, borders and security being breached.

This is not about patronising the public, saying that they can be led anywhere if you use the right rhetoric. It is rather about respecting people's ability to come to fair and humane conclusions when good arguments are presented in clear terms. The fate of many refugees might depend on more political leaders recognising this and acting accordingly.

Syria was my home.

I lived there in exile as a child. My parents called it 'exile' because we couldn't be in our own country, Pakistan. Because Pakistan was too dangerous, too violent, because there was no justice there.

Syria gave us refuge. My father had come from Pakistan. My mother from Lebanon. And me, from somewhere in between.
Tom Bullough
Syria protected and welcomed us into their country.
Lucille Clerc Lauren Elkin
I wonder why my parents never called us refugees?

A lorry arrived at the sawmill this morning, loaded with logs from Normandy: oaks, which you have to cut with caution since wartime shrapnel will sometimes break the blade of the bandsaw. The driver has a grab and unloads steadily, working his levers, speaking of queues and scenes on the ferry to anyone who happens to be passing. Halfway down he uncovers a scarf, in a space between trees weighing several tons. It is blue and yellow and embroidered in white with the word 'Fenerbahçe'. One of the boys who is checking the timber has a look on his phone, and finds that this is a Turkish football club. The scarf was loose, not trapped, not attached to anyone, but still the driver has to stop for a roll-up. He is a nervous man who once burst into tears when he was talking about coming through Calais.

My passport is thick with the extra pages I added a few years ago, when I ran out of room for the stamps I was accruing. An American living in France, with a partner from the UK, I frequently cross over the invisible borders between those countries that are inscribed, respectively, in the Eurostar terminals at the Gare du Nord and St Pancras. Every crossing has to be marked. I gain entrance to Britain with some difficulty, which is usually resolved upon the basis of my answers to questions like: what are you doing in our country? where do you live? where do you work? I envy my husband his sober maroon passport, which slides him across the border from one EU country to another.

On recent trips to London I've encountered another kind of resistance. As we hurtle unimpeded through the Pas-de-Calais region en route to London, something's creating drag on the tracks. It's the knowledge that somewhere out there, just to our left, or just to our right, there are three thousand people in a camp with thirty toilets, caught in administrative limbo, desperate to get to Britain. At night they try to jump onto the tops of trucks, or slip into the tunnel and try to run across, only to be caught at the British border and sent back. All of us on the train, we who have one way or another passed the test at the checkpoint in Gare du Nord, with our various passports, we speed through this place where so many others have stopped, caught.

Passports were invented at the onset of the First World War to keep track of people, slow down their movement. Sure there were safe conduct papers before that, issued by the king, or whoever, but passports as we know them came about as a result of the British Nationality and Status Aliens Act 1914, which redefined who could be considered a British subject. It took effect on 1 January 1915, and stated:

(1) The following persons shall be deemed to be natural-born British subjects, namely:

(a) Any person born within His Majesty's dominions and allegiance; and

(b) Any person born out of His Majesty's dominions whose father was, at the time of that person's birth, a British subject, and who fulfils any of the following conditions, that is to say, if either-

Et cetera. My husband goes back and forth, a subject of the kingdom. I occasionally drop in, natural and adopted child of revolution, a citizen of the republic. I treasure my ability to cross. I grow angry when it's under threat. The European Union was created to override passports, to facilitate the free circulation of people and goods between countries that decades before were eviscerating each other on the battlefield, and in the cities. In a zone without passports, it seems craven to distinguish between those who have a right to circulate freely (citizens, subjects) and those whose passports are the wrong color, or who have no papers at all. But Britain holds itself at a distance from this passport-free zone, and cracks open its doorway only to those who know the password.

On the train, seated comfortably in my second-class seat, I look out at the world streaming by, long grass, cement buildings, chain link fences, and think of the sign on the back façade of a church in Queens that I see when I'm at home, riding the Long Island Rail Road to the city: 'Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?' (Lamentations 1:12).
Jenni Fagan
It is not nothing to those of us who pass by, our passports growing heavy with administrative ink and paper. It is not nothing to those of us who travel with lighter passports, as I will soon, now that my French citizenship has been approved and I will be issued my own slim maroon passport, the kind the customs agents look at and slide back to you, without the official pounding of the stamp.

It is not nothing to those of us moving quickly through the French countryside that there are so many waiting out there, whose daily lives, we hope, will be improved thanks to the fundraising campaigns we're giving to, and the petitions we're signing, and the generosity of the people who pack up their trucks full of supplies and drive to the camps, instead of past them. We would like to help any way we can, but the ultimate decisions about who goes where don't lie with us. The people in the camps (I imagine, I read interviews, I try to understand) are waiting for more than a better quality of life in limbo. They're waiting to be let out, to move on, and then to put their bags down somewhere, for their answers to the border questions - what are you doing in our country? where do you live? where do you work? - to be no different from those of the passengers speeding by on the endless, endless Eurostars.

The health of a society can be judged by how well it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. The current refugees are children, women and men who desperately need the rest of the world to understand that this can happen to anyone - and it won't go away.
Tim Finch
The refugee and migrant crisis in Europe is an opportunity to reach out, engage politically, act humanely and do the only decent thing anyone can do - imagine how it would feel if you were unsafe and your children's lives and family's future depended upon the understanding of strangers?

All populations are historically transient. Humans are a migrant race full stop. These people could easily be us, it's time to get our priorities straight and offer our collective resolve to continue to challenge brutality and its effects on ordinary citizens in countries all across the world.

They gave themselves away with the words on their T-shirts.

Invaders. Mystery space riders.

Army life. XVI Soldier 4. Spec. Mil.
Matthew Green
Yes, they were an army of invading aliens
Janine di Giovanni
So we built a fortress to repel them.

This is a defining moment where we must decide what kind of country we want to become. Do we allow ourselves to contract, ruled by fear and old habits of thought that insist: 'there's not enough to go round?' Or do we show the world - and ourselves - that we stand for compassion, courage and generosity of spirit? There may be newspapers and politicians who delight in feeding the delusion that our islands can somehow be miraculously insulated from global problems, that the cataclysms engulfing other countries are somehow not our concern, and that responsibility for helping those affected lies elsewhere. The reality is that we could easily match other EU countries in admitting tens of thousands more asylum seekers. Not to do so would be to betray not only those in need of help, but ourselves. The latest arrivals in Europe are not the other. They are us.

My grandfather, an anti-fascist, fled Mussolini's Italy and was welcomed to America. So as a first-generation American who returned to live in Europe, I am horrified and embarrassed to be on the reverse side - part of a continent which is offering no humanity, no empathy for the refugees (I don't like the term migrants) who are fleeing either economic devastation or horrific war. How can we be so short-sighted? How can we forget the war that devastated Europe seventy years ago? How can a leader like Hungary's Viktor Orbán have so little compassion, empathy, humanity for his fellow human beings?

Over the twenty years I have worked in war zones and lived and talked and cried with refugees, I know one thing: you lose your status, your dignity, your identity. You don't want to be in someone else's country, but you have no choice if you want to stay alive. All you want to do is go home.
Mohsin Hamid
The least we can do for these people now is offer them some dignity - shelter, schools for their children, even a meal. I urge every single person who lives in a European country to just think small - prepare emergency kits for those people arriving - with little things that will make them feel more like a human being: a clean towel for instance. Metro tickets. A blanket.
Lindsey Hilsum
And pressure your governments to take more refugees from Syria, Iraq, Africa, and places where they must flee in order to survive. If we lose our sense of humanity in these desperate times, then we have lost everything.

Why do we believe that some people have the right to forbid others from moving from one country to another? 'Asylum seekers' is perhaps the wrong term. 'Staying alive' seekers might be better. One day the human beings of planet Earth will look back at our era and think of us, those who claim to love freedom but who live in societies that legalize migrant detention and deportation, with the same puzzlement that we think of those who lived in societies that legalized slavery.

The little girl was looking out of the train window. Her family were slumped across the seats in the carriage, exhausted after the arduous journey through Turkey and Greece. Hundreds of refugees and migrants had boarded a train in Gevgelija in southern Macedonia, heading for Serbia and beyond. I was travelling with them.

What was she thinking about? The life she had left behind or the one ahead? She would have been eight years old, maybe, kneeling on the table jutting from the side of the train, watching the red roofs and green fields of the Balkans flash by. I thought: she will always remember this journey.

On the border between Hungary and Austria, 1000 kilometres nearer their longed-for destination of Germany, families scrambled to get on buses. Most were Syrians, but there were also Afghans, Bangladeshis, Iraqis, Pakistanis and others. I met two young men from Senegal who spoke in broken French - their sole language was Wolof. How had they made it this far? A small Syrian boy smiled as he brandished a plastic brontosaurus. Any fear or exhaustion he might have felt had been extinguished by this wondrous new possession, the gift of an Austrian volunteer.

Jean Jullien Gazmend Kapllani A Short European Memory
What is it about the children I've seen as I report on the refugees and migrants taking perilous journeys through the Balkans to northern Europe? I'm not normally sentimental, but I have found myself in tears several times in the last few weeks.

I think it must be an instinctive response because in children we see humankind's determination to survive against any odds. If we didn't have empathy the human race would have died out long ago. The story of humanity from its origins is one of migration, birth and adaptation. This summer of mass movement is just a tiny chapter.

When I arrived at the harbour, I saw barbed wire and police all around. The faces of the policemen seemed frozen to me, without expression. The faces of those desperate refugees, around the harbour or in their dirty tents, radiated something like the hope in a better tomorrow.

Going back to my hotel, I thought that not very far away from here, some seventy years ago, there were also refugee camps of Displaced Persons, 'crammed' with desperate lives: native Europeans who were coming out from the cruelty of WWII. Back then Europe was not simply on the edge of the moral and existential abyss but rolling into it in a free fall. As refugees usually do, they were looking for some safer place to go, like the USA, Canada, Australia, or Latin America or Palestine.
Joanna Kavenna
Now, most Europeans have mostly forgotten about all of this. (Europe is the continent where Museums of Immigration constitute an exception - even though the idea of the Museum came from Europe.) Now, European governments are afraid of being simply human toward such human desperation reaching the European soil.

Europe, my love. You have such a long history; and oftentimes such a short memory. That's where your troubles come from, I guess . . .

A few months ago, Cameron referred to the humans at Calais as a 'swarm.' This epithet was rightly condemned; Cameron subsequently denied that it 'dehumanised' anyone. Though this story has receded, it is important to mention it again, and again, because consciousness and language are intertwined. Words can enshrine obsolete ideologies, preserve ossified metaphors, or can be deliberately manipulated, for the purposes of propaganda. We experience such semantic occlusions every day, even in societies that purport to be 'free': 'extreme rendition', the 'War on Terror', 'The patriot Act' and so on.
Caroline Lucas
Cameron knows, of course, that people do not swarm, but insects do - ants, spiders, locusts. The idea, presumably, is to insinuate, to create an atmosphere in language. Equally, Cameron's government has advanced the calculated euphemism 'austerity' and defined the newly-elected leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, as 'a threat to security' - while nominating itself as the party of 'stability.' Such terms enforce a carefully distorted version of reality. More recently, Theresa May has argued that those who have balked at her creepy surveillance protocols are 'putting politics before people's lives.' This seeks to merge and condemn the myriad opponents of her insidious definition of 'security'. Meanwhile, the greatest distortion of all is the way in which governments blame the victims of global conflicts and economic crises for the asperities they endure. Cameron's metaphorical language implies that the people at Calais are not, conceivably, in any way, victims, but insects. It sounds like dystopian sci-fi; but, alas, it is real life.

As writers, and readers, we are powerless to avert bloody conflagrations or global socio-economic iniquities - even as we protest (in 'swarms') against them. But we can, at least, decry these calculated manipulations of language. How many further such distortions must be exposed, before our governments tell the truth?
Katrine Marçal
On just the other side of the Channel people live in destitution, scraping together an existence as they wait and hope to come to Britain. In the Czech Republic people have been rounded up on trains, their arms branded with marker pens before they are held in detention. In Hungary the police have stopped people with tickets from boarding trains to Germany. In the Mediterranean people are floating through night and day on vessels that are barely seaworthy. Many of those vessels sink, and the people on them, like Aylan Kurdi, never make it to the other side alive.

These are people - treated differently from me only because of the country in which they were born. I have just one simple demand to the Government: treat these refugees as human beings, not statistics. The nation has woken up to the humaniatarian crisis occurring on our continent - it's time that ministers also open their eyes.

Heinrich Böll called the twenty-first century 'the century of prisoners and refugees'. Being a refugee has in many ways defined the European experience and what it means to be a European. Today Europe is facing a refugee crisis from the outside, how we handle it will define the European project for many years to come.

And yes, Europe means Britain as well.
Vesna Maric
Faced with an increasing stream of refugees from Austria in 1938, the British government set new restrictions on entry. The move, however, drew extensive criticism from the public. The government had to grudgingly respond. In 1939, as other countries imposed ever tighter immigration restrictions, the British sent four million pounds to Prague to assist refugees, admitted Social Democrats from the Sudetenland en bloc and welcomed ten thousand mostly Jewish children from Greater Germany.

Let's hope the British public can achieve a similar policy change today.
Benjamin Markovits
courage |ˈkʌrɪdʒ| noun [ mass noun ]: the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery; strength in the face of pain or grief.

It takes courage to leave your life behind and seek shelter elsewhere, not knowing what you may find ahead. It takes courage to take your small children and sleep with them in the street, hoping that help is coming. It takes courage to go out and help, to put yourself in another's shoes, to share your resources. We, in Europe, need to find the courage to do what it takes to help Syrian refugees. For we never know when we will need another's courage to help us.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson Empathy and the Refugee Crisis
If you look deep enough, we're all immigrants, sometimes by choice but often not. I'm an immigrant on all sides. My grandmother caught the last train out of Gotenhafen (now Gdynia) before the Russians came in 1945. Her daughter, my mother, has ended up living in Texas, which was partly settled a hundred and fifty years earlier by Germans escaping unrest in Europe. My father's family were Hungarian Jews until they arrived in New York; they're Americans now. Eight years ago I became a British citizen.

There may be complicated questions about nations and borders to be asked, but they will never be permanently resolved, and in the mean time there are much simpler questions, about our duty to people who need our help, now, which should be simpler to answer. In the long run history is kind to the countries that are kind to immigrants.

In the weeks after Nathaniel's birth, there was one image I could not shake from my mind. It was of the mothers who gave birth in the sinking smuggling boats, their stories told by survivors who had witnessed the deliveries and by rescue divers who found the bodies of babies still attached to their mothers by their umbilical cord. I had just experienced a pregnancy and birth, that blooming of hope, the excitement at the onset of labour, the hours of terrible pain then the euphoria of the delivery and wriggling new life in front of you.
Livi Michael Pinter for Dogs
Imagine doing all that, but in the darkness of the rotting hull of a fishing vessel, surrounded by so many bodies in the grip of fear and panic, inhaling hot air saturated with the smell of human waste and diesel fumes, lost in the middle of the sea and knowing that you were drowning.

Would that rush of pure, indescribable joy when your baby finally leaves your body still be there, even if you knew you and the child you brought into the world were about to die? Did they have a chance to hold their babies, to try and comfort them? Did anyone help comfort them at that moment when they were delivering that doomed life, or was the panic so complete that they were alone?

'I don't see why he bothers you so much.'

'He stinks. He chews everything. He costs a fortune to feed and another fortune in damages. He's probably riddled with disease. And this is MY PLACE!'

'I can't just put him out. He won't survive. '

'Of course he will. The streets are full of them - lurking round shop doorways - begging -'

'And we could give one of them a home.'

'Why just one? Why not all of them? Just leave the door open - let them all in!'

'If everyone let someone in there wouldn't be a problem.'

'Course there'd be a problem. Country's overrun, because everyone knows we're a soft touch.'

'It won't hurt to let one of them stay.'
Sarah Moss
'You'll be offering to marry him next. I, Aston, take thee, Davies, as my lawful wedded dog.'
Ben Rawlence On Leadership
'All right, Mick.'

I think that Britain, with its colonial past and long tradition of sea-going, is shaped by migrations and migrants of every kind. I imagine that each of my migrant forebears needed a bit of help on each arrival, a bit of human decency from people who could imagine what it might be like to start your life over again in a new place, but once settled I don't think you could say we'd been a burden to any of the countries where we've lived. Some of us are academics but there are also tradespeople running businesses, doctors, teachers and accountants. We're British (or American or Australian). We pay our taxes. We give to charities. We are, in fact, not really exotic at all.

The cleanest election I ever witnessed was the election for the leadership of the youth umbrella of Hagadera Refugee Camp, one of the five that make up the world's largest refugee complex: Dadaab. Dadaab is located in northern Kenya, in a red desert that blends seamlessly into Somalia across a border that was drawn by white people somewhere far away and long ago. The nonsense of the word 'refugee' rather than 'nomad' or 'indigene' is nowhere more starkly obvious: this land is their land yet they are confined to a camp, unable to leave or to work. Indeed, they have lived like this for twenty-five years. The youth contending for office have known no other horizon.

Each candidate is given the same amount of time to make their pitch. There is a female and a male chairperson of the umbrella that collectively represents all the young people in the camp, and they are the majority. The refugees take their elections seriously. They are frighteningly aware that their people in war-torn Somalia do not have the luxury of democracy. They also know the value of leadership. They blame the war on bad leadership and they blame its endurance on the lack of it, as well as on the cynicism of Western leaders. They see that the only difference between the stance of Germany and Britain in accepting refugees - both countries struggling with right-wing xenophobia - is strong leadership. They are, largely, right.
Michael Rosen People Run
In a close-knit refugee camp, abuse of office is a hard crime to commit: people hold you accountable. If you do not represent the will of the people, you could be dragged through the streets. And the will of the people is hotly, fiercely, daily, expressed. It is unmediated by a gutter press. It is buttressed by the moral leadership of elders and imams. In a place where newly displaced vulnerable people arrive in waves whenever fighting erupts over the border, helping the newcomers is a simple duty, it is daily life. When someone needs food more than you do, you go hungry. Morality is not a discussion, it is a habit born of culture. And the young people know that a leader who goes against the culture is not worthy.
Göran Rosenberg Refugees and Europe: The Swedish Exception
The votes are cast, the ballots counted, witnessed by an independent commission, verified and announced. The concession speeches and the victory ones all sound the same: they are about unity, tolerance, compassion and duty. There is much reference to Barack Obama. They know that their country, and the world, needs better leaders, and they are determined to be the change.

People run away from war:
my father's uncle and his wife
ran away from war.
They ran from one side of France to another.
But the authorities divided people up:
some who ran away were good;
some, like my father's uncle and his wife,
were not so good:
they were not born in France.
So they were put on a list
and had everything taken away from them.
They heard that people like them were
being put on trains and sent away to the east.
So they escaped and ran across France
again.
This was a good move,
they were safe now,
all they had to do was wait.
While they were waiting
the authorities in this place got defeated,
they were seized, put on a train
put in a transit camp, then on another train
to another camp,
where they were killed.
People run away from war.
Sometimes we get away.
Sometimes we don't.
Sometimes we're helped.
Sometimes we aren't.

No other nation in Europe comes even close to Sweden in refugees per capita; more than twice as many as number two, Switzerland, four times more than Denmark and Germany, five times more than France, twenty-five (!) times more than the United States. If the EU as a whole, with a population fifty times that of Sweden, had received refugees in Swedish proportions it would certainly have made a difference.

This is not to say that a 'Swedish' proportion of refugees is possible or even desirable on an EU scale, only to say that in a situation when Europe is facing its worst refugee crisis 'in our era' (Amnesty), with millions of people fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East and Africa, it might be worth contemplating what has so far made the difference between, let's say, Sweden and Denmark.

Let me suggest that it might have something to do with how nations view themselves and what they take pride in being seen as. I will not venture into the national psyche of Denmark but I would argue that post-war Sweden during forty-four years of uninterrupted Social Democratic dominance, not having been at war since 1814, had come to pride itself of being a model society based on universal tenets of social justice and human rationality. A national narrative based on memories of a distant past was effectively replaced by a narrative based on memories of an ongoing success story. Similarly, the moral ambiguities of Sweden's neutral position during the war were happily subdued by a sense of moral clarity in neutral Sweden's positions after the war, offering a 'third way' between Soviet Communism and US Capitalism, supporting anti-colonial movements in the 'third world', happily touting the universal applicability of the Swedish model, generously opening its doors to the persecuted and oppressed.

Since then, the world has changed and with it the political and economic preconditions for Sweden's exceptionalism. Instead of the world becoming more Swedish, Sweden is rapidly becoming more like the world.

With one conspicuous exception, the refugees.

There is little reason to believe that this exception will last. Not when anti-refugee parties are having their day all over Europe. Not when such a party has become the third largest in Sweden. Not when even a modest redistribution of some 40,000 refugees among EU member-states cannot be agreed upon.
Hanan al-Shaykh Sea of Refuge
What would it take to turn the downward spiral of anti-refugee policies around?

Or more precisely, what would it take to make the Swedish exception a source of inspiration rather than a source of resentment and mockery?

I might have been that Syrian refugee, her children swallowed by the ocean. Her shrieks, her pointless pleas had found no foothold in the rocky walls of thieving militias or the shrunken hearts of murderous Isis.

Alone beneath a darkening sky, lashed to a feeble ladder clutching her babies: 'We can survive, I will be Sinbad the Sailor' - desperate to believe that benevolent winds will overcome a churning sea. 'We will not starve, be raped or murdered for a wrong answer. Better to drown in the purity of water than endure the savagery of my country now ravaged by cruel men.'

Forty years ago I had despaired. Beriut could not protect me from its snipers, bombs, explosions and militiamen at checkpoints hunting for men of other faiths. My apartment no longer the peaceful oasis, walls shaking, windows opening to the whistle of random bullets. An explosion killed my neighbour in a bread queue, another died from a stray bullet while attaching pegs to her laundry - blood spraying out across her limped sheets.

Leaving home is never easy. My mind froze - the reassuring familiarity of the wall's cracked paint, the Chinese plate that had never left our kitchen counter, even the squeaking wardrobe comforted me. Telephone calls from anxious friends, the flutter of palm doves perching on our balcony imploring me to stay.
Rebecca Solnit
But we had to leave and I fled with my babies to the safety of London. Even today I vividly recall my father's parting hugs, kisses and final words: 'Poor daughter, fleeing to seek safety in an alien land, and what of my poor grandchildren?'

To the mother of those small children and the thousands who in their desperation continue to die at sea: 'Many continue to betray your destiny through distorted notions of faith and tribe.'

Refugees from Europe begot me: four Irish Catholic maternal great-grandparents fleeing the brutalities of British colonialism and discrimination, two Eastern European Jewish paternal grandparents fleeing pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism; it equips me with a skeptical view of Europe as a place of tolerance, though there are moments and countries that have done well and even occasionally gloriously. Right now the Europeans welcoming immigrants - a Scottish minister, a crowd demonstrating in Paris, people reaching out in Hungary and Austria - are making the news, though these kind gestures are not overwhelming official policy. The USA took in millions of refugees like my progenitors, and still does take about a million legal immigrants a year; many millions more come in quietly through the back doors. My country also does a remarkable job of creating other refugees - from the North American Free Trade Agreement that broke the back of Mexican farmers to the drug wars my compatriots' endless appetite for numbness and unregulated guns feeds to the people whose places have been destroyed by war in Iraq and elsewhere - and those who have no refuge: the homeless.
Jethro Soutar
Here in San Francisco I move daily among undocumented immigrants from Latin America, many of them indigenous people whose roots on this continent reach all the way to the bottom and the beginning of time, and the homeless who are often also mentally ill, whether ill because homeless or homeless because ill is impossible to determine. There are now more Latino than white people in my home state, California, which seems like a good thing to me, a break-up of the old hegemony. Hearing Europeans insist that theirs is a Christian country or continent makes me wince as if they were endorsing genocide again, and perhaps they are, though it's not worse than the people who insist that the USA is or should be or ever was a white country.

There were always many peoples here, I try to keep saying, as I live in a Latino neighborhood on Ohlone land, just across the Golden Gate from the Coast Miwok land I grew up on, in a part of the world that Spain claimed and then the US stole from Mexico. So far from Syria and Europe, I think also about the fact that the Arab Spring's uprisings and the Syrian civil war have as one major cause climate change, the climate change that made crops fail and bread prohibitively expensive in Egypt in 2011, that ravaged Syria with several years of scorching drought and destroyed the livelihoods of so many farmers and is doing much the same in other parts of the world now. Climate change is going to create refugee crises on a far larger scale than this one, and working to address climate change is one of the important things we should all be doing. And that I try to do. That and to not believe very hard in national borders, especially when human rights and survival come up against them.
Louise Stern
Earlier this year, my translation of By Night The Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. I first met Ávila Laurel in Barcelona, where he was living in exile. Yes, he said, Barcelona was a lovely city and he was grateful to be there, but he didn't want to be there, he wanted to be in Equatorial Guinea, where he's from. Equatorial Guinea is ruled by a murderous dictatorship and Ávila Laurel had become persona non grata for having spoken out against it.
Andrea Stuart
I have also lived in Barcelona, though I did so out of free choice. I have lived in London too, as an economic migrant. People in Sheffield, where I'm from, didn't envy London, but they did Barcelona: Ooh, thy lucky beggar, I wish I lived out there, they'd say. But I don't think they really meant it: their lives were in Sheffield, for better and for worse. They certainly didn't mean they wished for Threads-style apocalyptic destruction to force them to be uprooted to Catalonia. Alas, we live in a world where empathy seems to be in increasingly short supply.
Anjan Sundaram
The machinations of political leaders are a mystery to most of us. Why do things truly happen as they do? Most of us are only cogs in the system; bewildered and trying our best. As people whose places we could be in but for a fortunate accident of birth and circumstance swarm thickly into Europe, the immediate response should be to grasp the hands of those who reach for them. You are me and I am you.
Wojciech Tochman Budapest 2015
I am writing this on the day that the media has been overrun by the images of two small boys, the children of Syrian refugees, whose bodies washed up on a Turkish beach. They are so small that, cradled in the arms of the soldiers who scooped them off the sand, they look like a pair of broken dolls. Their tiny feet clad in matching miniature trainers are almost too poignant to look at. Did we really have to wait for this tragic picture to engage our empathy and sympathy? Did we really need to stare into the faces of dead children to understand that refugees are not an abstraction but people: people with families and fears, dreams and hopes? How did we allow our empathy to be stolen from us by self-interested politicians and cynical polemicists who label refugees as 'cockroaches' and use 'the migrant issue' to distracted us from the real problems that undermine our quality of life? How did we forget that famine and slavery are tortures that all of us would seek to escape? How did we not know what extraordinary courage it takes to leave behind everything that you have ever known to take a punt on something better? It is time to step up. After all, somewhere in all of our family stories is a migrant, a brave soul who struggled to surmount history's terrible backhanders in order to forge a better life.
Christine Toomey
The migrants are really refugees; their homes have become intolerable. They have lost hope in revolution and risk everything. The people storming Europe's gates are a testament to the failure of an international system - foreign aid, the United Nations - that advances the interests of great powers and has undermined accountable governments across the world.

We leaned against the border posts. They were standing a metre away - in Serbia. Twenty men appeared, some carrying children, among them a doctor, an engineer, and a mathematician. A month on the road, they said, or two. Apart from the war, their grimmest memories were of the boat, the longest three hours of their lives, but that was in the past. Now, their wives were waiting in the nearby bushes for the signal to continue the journey, but first the smugglers had to find them here - there's hope in the people-smugglers, not the Hungarian authorities. They would not go a step further without the smugglers, because on the Hungarian side there's compulsory registration, there wasn't any in Greece or Serbia. Anyone who gives their fingerprints in Hungary, said the itinerants with certainty, even if he gets to Germany, will have to go back to Hungary, and it's a poor country, the people here don't like refugees who come from a war zone. The whole time others kept passing us, more and more of them, about fifty in the course of an hour, whole families on the railway tracks, the registration evidently didn't scare them, and the policemen weren't detaining anyone. At the road, only a kilometre further on, the new arrivals were told to wait. Some portable toilets had been set up there, and tents, where the mothers were changing their babies and a pregnant woman was resting. The authorities knew where these worn-out people would enter the country, where they would start to stagger, but they hadn't sent any medical help. They had sent a self-important policeman. He drove towards us at over one hundred kilometres per hour, siren blaring, down the deserted highway leading to nowhere, and only just managed to stop his car in front of a group of men so indifferent by now that they hadn't moved out of the way. He leaped out in a fury, sure of his Hungarian status and his power over the weak, waving his rubber baton and shouting while people stood in horror. I took a few pictures of him: the first Hungarian face seen by those arriving from the war, the cold face of a monster.

A quarter of a century ago the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. I have framed fragments of it at home as a reminder of the breakthrough for humanity. Now, here we are, throwing up walls and fences globally at an almost unprecedented rate. Some are visible. Worse are the ones inside heads and hearts that divide "us" from "them", as if "they" are somehow less deserving of a peaceful life.
Dimitri Verhulst European Union
All the barriers now being put in the way of the refugees trying to reach safety in Europe deeply shame this continent, one of the most privileged places on earth to live. The sight of small children clutching the hands of parents as they trudge along railway tracks in search of a safe haven carries echoes of the horrors of all the wars fought in Europe within living memory. The image of Aylan Kurdi's small body slumped face down in the sand, washed up on a beach, heart-rending flotsam, shocked many into outpourings of sympathy and compassion. Compassion lies beyond empathy, in action, doing whatever possible to help end this suffering. It is the challenge facing every one of us in Europe now.
Joanna Walsh Bicske

Fragments of the Berlin Wall - Where is the promise of a new European dawn now?

We got a Nobel Prize
for Peace. How nice. Finally
we can close our eyes.

Because
it's difficult to feel the edges to the words
'refugee'
and
'crisis', because
these words stretch round the things' outsides, until
we can't see to the end of either's fences,
we feel discomfort.
Cover image by Judit Ferencz
For us, discomfort is a hard feeling.
Almost as hard as hate.
Almost as hard as fear.

It is a word we can't break out of.

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Today, one in seven people is a migrant. This year, crossings of the Mediterranean Sea have already exceeded 300,000, and at least 2,500 lives have been lost in the process. What does it mean to be a migrant - or a refugee - in our time? What human rights can we rely on?

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Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead

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Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead

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TURKEY

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Turkey now hosts the world's largest community of Syrians displaced by the ongoing conflict in their country. According to United Nations estimates, Turkey's Syrian refugee population was more than 1.7 million as of mid-March 2015, and the large unregistered refugee population may mean the true figure is even larger. Turkish reception policies at the outset were predicated on the assumption that the conflict would come to a swift conclusion, allowing the displaced Syrians to return home, but as conditions continue to deteriorate in Syria and the conflict stretches into its fifth year, it has become clear that a shift in policy to encompass longer-term solutions is needed.

The Syrian refugee crisis arose as the Turkish government was in the midst of overhauling its immigration system to meet international-and, particularly, European Union-standards. The implementation of these reforms has limited Turkish authorities' capacity to manage the Syrian inflows, and as a result, management of the crisis was left largely in the hands of national organizations working on the ground, in camps, without larger policy guidance. Meanwhile, formal immigration channels, including recognition of refugee status, remain restricted to Europeans, while non-Europeans receive temporary protection status and are expected at some point to resettle in a third country.

This report provides an overview of Turkey's migration landscape and the position of Syrian refugees in Turkey today. It also offers an assessment of current policy approaches toward displaced Syrians in Turkey, looking at changes in Turkey's asylum and protection regime before discussing ongoing challenges and future policy directions in this area. Finally, it discusses policy recommendations-both for Turkey and for other states-given the likelihood of long-term or permanent displacement for Syrians.

I. Introduction II. Turkey's Shifting Immigration Context
An Evolving Legal Framework
III. The Syrian Refugee Crisis
A. Meeting the Needs of a Growing Refugee Population

B. Policy Responses to the Changing Realities of the Syrian Refugee Crisis
IV. Looking Ahead: Turkey's Policy Priorities and Challenges
A. Challenges to the Settlement and Integration of Syrian Refugees

B. Ongoing Policy Challenges

C. Future Policy Directions
V. Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

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Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead

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More than 1.7 million Syrian refugees lived in Turkey as of mid-March 2015, making this the world's largest community of Syrians displaced by the conflict in their country. This report provides an overview of Turkey's changing migration landscape and the position of Syrian refugees in Turkey today, along with policy recommendations given the likelihood of long-term or permanent displacement for Syrians.

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As Displacement Becomes Long-Term, Refugee Hosts Grapple with New Normal

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As Displacement Becomes Long-Term, Refugee Hosts Grapple with New Normal

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TURKEY

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Millions of displaced people across the world were unable to return home in 2017, while new and heightened crises drove many more to flee. The number of displaced persons worldwide reached a record high of 65.6 million as of the most recent 2016 year-end data, including 22.5 million refugees receiving protection outside their countries of origin. Roughly half of these refugees had been displaced for at least five continuous years. And 55 percent of all refugees came from just three countries: Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

With just 190,000 resettlement places offered for refugees worldwide in 2016, demand has far outstripped supply, translating to a tremendous burden on first-asylum countries in the affected regions (for more on refugee resettlement worldwide, see Issue #6: In Wake of Cuts to U.S. Refugee Program, Global Resettlement Falls Short). Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iran, to name a few countries of first asylum, continue to host massive displaced populations unable or unlikely to move on or return. In addition, a number of ongoing conflicts in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa intensified during 2017, driving out hundreds of thousands and placing further pressures on neighboring host countries.
Ethnic and Political Tensions Fuel New Displacement
2017 saw the simultaneous flareup of several conflicts that have intermittently driven refugee flows since the beginning of the decade. The flight of Muslim-minority Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh was the most visible of these. From late August to mid-November, approximately 624,000 Rohingya fled a military campaign led by Buddhist nationalists, purportedly to stamp out insurgents, that spiraled into violence, destruction of villages, and widespread human-rights abuses. While the latest violent outbreak is notable for its scale and severity, clashes between the stateless Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar's Rakhine State are not new, having caused periodic bouts of mass displacement since 2012. The latest arrivals joined Rohingya refugees already in Bangladesh, bringing the total there to 835,500 as of November 25.

Meanwhile, in Central and East Africa, several ongoing conflicts intensified, rooted in decades-old feuds along political and ethnic divisions. The most significant case is South Sudan, home to the fastest-growing refugee crisis in 2017. Widespread violence broke out in 2013 after a political struggle between President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar-who belong to the two largest ethnic groups in the country-led to a split in the military along ethnic lines. By the end of 2016, the civil war had driven 1.4 million people into neighboring countries, and through the first ten months or so of 2017, another 668,000 people left. Food shortages resulting from the interaction between drought and violence drove much of the displacement. More than 1 million people faced starvation as of November, and 6 million people-half of the country's population-were in severe hunger.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), and Burundi, ongoing violent struggles produced roughly 220,000 combined cross-border refugees in 2017, and hundreds of thousands more were internally displaced.

Though political upheaval is a common trigger for displacement in Central and East Africa, these crises frequently have deeper roots. In South Sudan, military units were established along ethnic lines during the decades-long civil war that preceded independence in 2011. When political tensions boiled over in 2013, these units turned against one another. In eastern DRC, armed ethnic groups-the cross-border remnants of the 1994 Rwandan genocide-have fought over control of resources since the early 2010s. And in south-central and southeastern CAR, armed groups of Muslims on the one hand, and Christians and Animists on the other, have terrorized civilians along religious lines since 2013. This pattern escalated in May 2017 after Ugandan troops and U.S. military advisors pulled out of the region. The prominence of deep ethnic divisions in these regional conflicts suggests a high likelihood of cyclical violence, which re-emerged to cause significant refugee flows in 2017. At the same time, ethnic rivalries are often concentrated in localities or provinces rather than tearing apart entire countries, creating a situation where one country is simultaneously a source and recipient of refugees.
Funding Shortfalls, New Strategies in First-Asylum Countries
The large-scale flows of 2017 overwhelmed already strained protection systems across Africa. Many African first-asylum countries rely on aid from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and international donors, as they lack resources to provide for even the basic needs of refugees. Severe funding shortfalls threaten the humanitarian response: Among the refugee situations described above, UNHCR funding calls for South Sudan had reached just 40 percent as of October 2017; in the worst-case scenario, just 6 percent of the funding appeal for Burundi had been achieved. As it is nearly impossible to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities in refugee camps, protection seekers often struggle to survive, and in some cases must decide whether to return to dangerous situations in their countries of origin or seek opportunities farther afield to feed their families.

Uganda, the main host of South Sudanese refugees, runs one of the world's most progressive systems for refugee livelihood provision. Under this system, the government gives refugees plots of land, food rations, and materials to build shelters and grow food. Refugees also have access to public education and health care under the same terms as Ugandan nationals. But after receiving more than 1 million refugees since July 2016-the vast majority women and children-this system is under severe strain. Even as Uganda's Bidi Bidi camp became the largest in Africa, UNHCR received just 32 percent of its funding request to support refugees in the country. This funding gap forced Uganda to reduce food rations to levels that beneficiaries have described as insufficient, and some refugees have risked their lives by returning to South Sudan in search of food.

As the second-largest refugee host in Africa, Ethiopia provides refuge for more than 880,000 Eritreans, Somalis, Yemenis, and South Sudanese. Most live far outside large cities, in UNHCR-run camps that lack sufficient livelihood opportunities. As of late October 2017, just 27 percent of UNHCR's Ethiopia funding request had been met, increasing the strain on the Ethiopian government and local populations, and leaving refugees in highly vulnerable situations. Despite this challenge, in October 2017 the Ethiopian government began to record refugee life events, including births, deaths, and marriages, in its civil registry, in line with the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework signed at the Leaders' Summit on Refugees in September 2016. This step may foster greater integration of refugees into formal employment and Ethiopian society more broadly.

Outside Africa, top refugee hosts responded in divergent ways as displacement stretched into another year. Turkey, which hosts the world's largest refugee population, has moved to undertake a strategy to deepen the integration of its 3.2 million Syrian refugees, while simultaneously attempting to cut off future arrivals. In 2017, it entered the second year of its three-year program to move all Syrian refugee students into Turkish public schools, and launched the Conditional Cash Transfers for Education program to tackle the problem of child labor by providing bimonthly stipends for families whose children regularly attend school. Meanwhile, Turkey has been building walls along its borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria, to ensure its refugee population does not grow.

At the same time, other top hosts around the region put pressure on refugees to return home. In Lebanon, Syrians faced rising discrimination as most political parties pushed for their removal. Between June and October approximately 10,000 Syrians returned from Arsal, Lebanon under possible coercion. And in both Lebanon and Jordan, refugees were subject to frequent police raids, detention for alleged contact with terror groups, and deportation. Jordan began deporting entire families for the first time in mid-2017, after security crackdowns following terrorist attacks in June and December 2016. In each month of 2017, Jordan deported roughly 400 registered Syrian refugees, while 300 left voluntarily, and another 500 returned under unclear circumstances, according to Human Rights Watch. As political will to end refugee protection grows, coerced returns will likely continue, calling into question host countries' commitment to the principle of nonrefoulement (for more on returns, see Issue #7: Increased Focus on Forced Return of Migrants and Asylum Seekers Puts Many in Peril).
No End in Sight?
Heading into 2018, and with few signs that the conditions driving mass displacement are likely to abate any time soon, many regions are adjusting to a new normal. As the Syrian conflict entered its sixth year in 2017, some host countries in the immediate region are investing more in integration, while at the same time reinforcing borders; meanwhile, others are coercing growing numbers to return. And in Africa and Southeast Asia, tensions have continued to foster mass displacement, which may soon overwhelm even the most generous host countries and force refugees to return home or seek livelihood opportunities farther away. In the coming years, offering displaced persons in search of protection a way to make a living in first-asylum countries will likely become even more important, as displacement situations stretch on with little hope of resettlement or return.

Sources
BBC News. 2017. Uganda Receives One Million South Sudan Refugees. BBC News, August 17, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. How South Sudan Refugees are Boosting Uganda's Economy. BBC News, November 7, 2017. Available online.

Council on Foreign Relations. 2016. Understanding the Roots of Conflict in South Sudan. Council on Foreign Relations, September 14, 2016. Available online.

---. N.d. Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Accessed November 16, 2017. Available online.

Daily Sabah. 2017. Wall on Syrian Border to be Finished by October. Daily Sabah, September 23, 2017. Available online.

European Commission. 2017. EU Launches Education Programme for 230,000 Refugee Children to Attend School in Turkey. Press release, March 16, 2017. Available online.

Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2017. Jordan: Syrian Refugees Being Summarily Deported. HRW, October 2, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Central African Republic: Civilians Targeted as Violence Surges. HRW, October 27, 2017. Available online.

Inter Sector Coordination Group. 2017. Situation Report: Rohingya Refugee Crisis - Cox's Bazaar, November 26, 2017. Updated November 26, 2017. Available online.

Mednick, Sam. 2017. More Than a Million People in South Sudan Are on the Brink of Starvation. Associated Press, November 7, 2017. Available online.

Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). 2017. DR Congo Has World's Highest Number of People Fleeing Conflict Internally. NRC and IDMC, May 22, 2017. Available online.

Patinkin, Jason. 2017. Hungry South Sudanese Refugees Risk Death in Return Home for Food. Reuters, November 8, 2017. Available online.

Sewell, Abby. 2017. Syrian Refugees Return from Lebanon Only to Flee War Yet Again. News Deeply, October 11, 2017. Available online.

Sherlock, Ruth. 2017. In Lebanon, Syrian Refugees Met with Harassment and Hostility. National Public Radio, September 2, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda Now Exceed 1 Million. UNHCR, August 17, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Home Is Close, but So Far Away for Central African Republic Refugees. UNHCR, October 12, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Civilians in DRC Struggle for Survival Amid Growing Violence at Home. UNHCR, October 24, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. In a Historic First, Ethiopia Begins Civil Registration for Refugees. News release, October 27, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Rohingya Emergency. Last updated December 11, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Burundi Situation. Last updated December 11, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework: Ethiopia. Accessed November 16, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. Ethiopia: 2017 Funding Update as of 27 October 2017. Last updated October 27, 2017. Available online.

---. 2017. South Sudan Situation. Last updated November 30, 2017. Available online.

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Top 10 of 2017 - Issue #5: As Displacement Becomes Long-Term, Refugee Hosts Grapple with New Normal

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Millions of displaced people were unable to return home in 2017, and countless others found themselves newly displaced. Targeted violence in Myanmar caused more than 624,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, and conflict in South Sudan drove at least 668,000 abroad.

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I was a refugee – nobody wants to leave their home

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I was a refugee – nobody wants to leave their home

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'Just have fun," Arta Dobroshi's parents would say to her and her brothers as they were growing up. "Every day they said it: don't worry about things - just have fun." What made their attitude extraordinary was that they were living in a war zone. But alongside dodging bullets, and being forced out of their home into refugee camps, her parents never stopped being happy, positive and full of hope for the future.

"Whatever we were faced with, my parents knew that the most important things you have to give children are hope, laughter and joy."

But it wasn't easy - and it isn't easy now for the millions of refugees who, like Arta's family in Kosovo in the 1980s and 1990s, were either living with constant danger or fleeing from it. "Life would be normal for a while and then, suddenly, we'd be running down the road, chased by the police. Or there would be teargas coming into the classroom. Several times we had to leave our home to live elsewhere because it was too dangerous to stay. When we were really up against it, I remember thinking: if only the people who live in freedom knew what we were going through, they would certainly help us."

Today Arta is an acclaimed film actor but she has never forgotten how it felt to be caught up in a war, or how sure she was that if people only knew, they would act. Which is why she's made Home, a short film that premieres in London this weekend and is designed to do the thing Arta always believed would make all the difference: to put the lucky people into the unlucky people's shoes.

The film follows the fortunes of a family with two young children who are forced to leave their home. They have to pay people smugglers to take them in car boots - the kids in one, the parents in others. There's fear and violence. The couple are forced at times to carry their traumatised children across fields and through battle-ruined buildings and at one point have to run for cover when they find themselves in the middle of fighting, before eventually winding up, dirty and frightened and hungry, sitting around a fire in a refugee camp.

It's a familiar tale, but here's the twist: the family isn't Syrian or Afghan - it's British. This is a family just like yours or mine, putting their kids into the boot of a car, carry them past soldiers firing guns, making them walk miles across the open countryside and scavenging for food and clothes to keep them warm. Like the Save the Children film that went viral a couple of years ago, which portrayed everything happening in Syria against the backdrop of London, it's amazing how disturbing it is to see all this happening to people whose mother tongue is English.

It couldn't happen to you? Oh yes it could, says Arta, who is the film's executive producer: we would all do everything we could to keep our children safe. The difference between a refugee family and my family or yours can be summed up in one word: luck.

"No one wants to leave their home - we never wanted to leave our home," Arta says. "We stayed in Pristina as long as we possibly could. We stayed through all the unrest and the fighting, but in 1997 things became really hard - people were being massacred and my parents thought it was really dangerous; more dangerous than ever before. We didn't want to leave - it was so hard. In the end, I went with my two brothers and my mum, and my father stayed with my uncle and grandmother, who was 80. We went to Macedonia and lived in a camp for a while and couldn't wait to get home.

"After a few months we got back and I remember it was still really dangerous. For a while we couldn't move around and my father was in a different place. When we eventually got to meet up again, it was one of the most emotional experiences of my lifetime. We didn't know what had become of him.

"This is the kind of thing that happens in war. It's not something anyone would choose. It becomes normal for refugees, but not because they are somehow different as human beings - they are not! They're just like you and me ... in fact, that was me."

Arta, who is 36, says that it was her experience of life on both sides of the fence that led her to make the film. "I lived half my life as a refugee, half as a person like you, living in freedom. So that's why I had this idea of putting both sides together."

Her heartfelt belief, she says, is that human beings want to help one another. "If you saw someone on your street who needed help, you'd do what you could to help - it's natural. It's our instinct as human beings. If you look at children, you see they do it very easily. And I think we grow up to learn fear, and fear takes over and stops us from following that basic instinct of wanting to help."

What refugees need more than anything, says Arta, is empathy and compassion. "They need to know that people care about them, and that there are good things coming to them - they need to have hope. It's hard to explain what a difference it makes when you're in a camp to know that people are thinking about you and want to help you. Once, in our camp, Richard Gere came to visit. I remember running towards where he was. I missed him because it was so crowded, but do you know what? Just knowing he had been there gave me the energy to survive for another week.

"People who live in freedom don't realise how much impact their thoughts and their care have for refugees - it literally saves lives because it makes you go on with hope in your heart."

Arta remembers how, as a child in Kosovo, she and her family watched movies all the time. She thought this was normal, but when she grew up she realised her family were film junkies. "I asked my mum why and she said, 'It was to distract you. We didn't want you worrying about the fighting all the time."

But from all those films grew a love of acting that was to propel Arta into her acting career, and one of her brothers is a director. "My parents never said you can't do it," she says. "In the midst of the toughest of times they always said yes, of course you can be a Hollywood actress - of course that's what you will be one day."

The biggest privilege of the career she now enjoys, she says, is the opportunity it gives her to tell the refugees' story and make it meaningful and relevant. "My greatest hope now," she says, "is that in maybe 10 or 20 years, or even 40, our children or grandchildren will say, can you imagine? There were actually times in the past when the people who lived in freedom wouldn't help the refugees. There really were those times."
* Home is released in cinemas on World Refugee Day, 20 June. Will you stand #WithRefugees? Visit withrefugees.org Topics

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I was a refugee - nobody wants to leave their home

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'Just have fun," Arta Dobroshi's parents would say to her and her brothers as they were growing up. "Every day they said it: don't worry about things - just have fun." What made their attitude extraordinary was that they were living in a war zone.

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Melissa Fleming of the UN's Refugee Agency shares some ways to help refugees right now.

When a million refugees showed up in Europe this past year, the world began to take notice of a problem that has been steadily growing before our eyes. Ten years ago, 38 million people had been driven from their homes because of war or persecution; right now that number stands at over 65 million. That's equivalent to the population of France ... drifting, stranded, with little hope of returning home, and few chances to thrive in neighboring countries.

In Europe, the lack of a unified system to manage the influx of refugees and migrants is exacerbating the problem. People are either welcomed or shunned. They can face fences of barbed wire or cheering locals. Around 50,000 people are stranded in Greece, waiting to be relocated to other European countries or sent back home.

On the streets of European cities, I have seen both remarkable generosity and irrational fear. People carry signs with the slogan "Refugees Welcome"; others set asylum homes on fire. While many push for values of tolerance and openness, others are full of fear, afraid of the arrival of so many people from a different continent, with different religions and cultures. Opportunistic right-wing politicians exploit these fears to make gains in elections.

People often ask me what they can do to help. It's certainly possible to do small, practical but meaningful things to combat the feeling of helplessness that can all too easily become paralyzing. Already, I've been struck by the overwhelming outpouring of meaningful acts of kindness by individuals, local charities, religious groups and students who have made their way to borders and train stations to help arriving refugees and migrants (check out the inspiring work done by a team on Lesbos to coordinate efforts to greet the 5,000 refugees arriving on the Greek island every day). Their message is clear: they stand for a Europe that offers refuge to victims of war and compassion for those who are seeking a better life.

But of course you don't have to volunteer in person. Here are eight other equally meaningful ways you can help:

1. Host refugees and asylum seekers in your home.

Help refugees where you are. A friend of mine is offering a vacant room in his home to a family of Palestinian Syrian asylum seekers. Hekla Stefansdottir was part of the inspiring move within Iceland to offer homes to Syrian refugees. The Refugees Welcome initiative began in Germany as a way to match those with a spare room with refugees in need; it now has chapters working in 20 countries. Open Homes, an Airbnb project, allows volunteer hosts to open their homes to refugees and displaced people without charge. Local religious groups can offer a way to be connected with refugees who could use your spare room; if you want to be involved, ask for a recommendation. My organization, the UN Refugee Agency or UNHCR,recently published an inspiring series of stories profiling Europeans who have taken refugees into their homes.

2. Volunteer your specific skill.

One young university student l know teaches German to asylum seekers in Austria during their long wait for their refugee status to be determined. Angered by growing racism, a football coach in Italy started a team for refugees and migrants. A Swedish team developed the Sync Accelerator, an employment matchmaking program that helps newly arrived engineers and programmers to get a qualified job at a Swedish company. The What Design Can Do Refugee Challenge in Amsterdam invited designers to create new solutions for people on the move. In Germany, one professor built an online network to keep refugee scientists active in their field by linking them with German academics.

3. Help refugees to integrate into a new culture.

The movie The Good Lie did a great job of portraying the feelings of isolation that refugees can feel when they are relocated to a new country and then try to get over their trauma and restart their lives. Even small gestures of friendship can mean a great deal, so see if you can volunteer with an organization in your community that's working with refugees. (Religious groups and local nonprofits like Access California Services or US Together in Ohio often have refugee programs; a quick Google search can show you what's active in your area.) In Canada, private individuals or groups can apply to sponsor refugees to come to Canada and help them integrate. A European organization called United Invitations invites people to welcome refugees to dinner or to accept an invitation to dinner at the home of a refugee.

4. Encourage your university to offer refugee scholarships.

For refugee students, losing the chance to pursue their studies is devastating. Since 1992, the DAFI program from the UNHCR and the German government has offered scholarships to refugees worldwide. The University of Canberra in Australia offers scholarships to refugees; a program at the World University Service Canada gives student refugees a chance to enroll at a Canadian university or college as a permanent resident. In the US, Southern New Hampshire University has launched a major $10 million initiative to bring university degrees to refugees at home and abroad, allowing it to educate up to 50,000 refugees a year by 2022. Students at Oxford University in the UK recently raised more than $300,000 to fund scholarships for refugees. Encourage your local university or college to support refugees too.

5. Employ refugees.

In some overwhelmed countries, refugees are seen as guests and are not permitted to work. But in others, they can. Hamdi Ulukaya, the CEO of the American yogurt company Chobani, is not only giving away half of his wealth to aid refugees, he employs 300 refugee workers at his factories. In January 2017, Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees globally. The website Natakallam.com gives refugees the opportunity to teach Arabic. Refugees in Berlin are working as tour guides in museums showing tourists cultural riches from home. Could your company hire refugees? Where are you circulating job advertisements? Find a local resettlement center in your community and see if workers there can connect you with qualified talent.

6. Offer opportunities for refugees to volunteer.

In places where refugees can't work legally, volunteering can lend the days more purpose. In Kotka, Finland, some refugees have found a sense of community by volunteering at a local retirement home. In Denmark, 12 former journalists were given the opportunity to edit the daily newspaper for a day, producing a 48-page special issue showing the refugee crisis from the perspective of those experiencing it. A farm in the UK allows refugees and asylum seekers the opportunity to learn different skills such as painting, weaving, ceramics, cooking and agriculture.

7. Hold awareness and fundraising events.

Do this wherever you are, in your communities, schools or workplace. Run a half marathon, do a sponsored swim, put on a raffle or a yard sale. Online websites make it easy for your supporters to donate - just register your event, spread the word, and your friends, family and colleagues can all donate securely online. If you'd like to use UN Refugee Agency materials and resources such as banners, T-shirts or posters, contact your local UNHCR office.

8. Donate.

There's always money. UNHCR has launched a campaign called Nobody Left Outside to provide shelter to two million refugees. If you prefer to support refugees living in poverty in Jordan, this cash assistance program helps individual families make ends meet. Or, in the US, you can make a tax-free donation to USA for UNHCR. Seriously, every dollar helps.
This piece was originally published in November 2015; it was updated with new information in September 2017. Photo © UNHCR/Gordon Welters.

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Melissa Fleming of the UN's Refugee Agency shares some ways to help refugees right now.