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The European refugee policy: Varying urgency and openness

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The European refugee policy: Varying urgency and openness

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In Europe there is an exceptional situation at the moment, the war that broke out between Russia and Ukraine leads to large refugee flows from Ukraine, as well as to large preparations in various European countries to be able to provide the refugees with safe transport and accommodation. The Ukrainian war has received its own section in Swiss online news and every day there are news on refugees, of their suffering, also of much violence against women and children.

While I was reading the text "Geography and ethics I: Waiting and urgency" (Olson 2015), I was reminded several times of the exceptional situation and how the degree of urgency is clearly set higher than for the reception of refugees from other origins with similar circumstances. While for Ukrainian refugees the borders are opened and within a very short time a large number of beds and accommodations are organized, many refugees are stuck in refugee camps at the Mediterranean Sea since years. They fled from their former home and are trapped in the temporality of their stay without arriving. There, too, violence against women and children is a major problem, but its presence in the news is small.

After a short research on this topic, I found an interview with the president of the International Rescue Committee, in which first the situation in Ukraine and the measures taken by the EU and other countries to welcome refugees is talked about and then the different degree of welcome given to Ukrainian refugees in contrast to, for example, Syrian or Afghan refugees.

Link to the interview:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-refugees-international-rescue-committee/

To explain the situation in Ukraine and his first impression of the situation, the President of the International Rescue Committee chooses the following words:

"I think the biggest impression is they could be me or you. These people are teachers, they're journalists, they're charity workers, they're businesspeople, they're housewives. Refugees who are fleeing inside Ukraine and then crossing the border are just people,"

He strongly emphasizes the humanity and suffering of those affected, and he supports the measures taken in Europe to welcome refugees:

"While in the past the 27 countries of the European Union have been divided of refugee questions, today they are united, 27 countries guaranteeing not just the right to entry, not just the right to work but for every kid to go to school, every adult to access any social services they need."

When asked how this treatment compares to refugees from Syria or Afghanistan, he answers as follows:

"We have got a Unity now where there was a disunity before, we have got a Welcome now where there was a very divided response before. In the case of the Syrian crises it took three months for a million people to flee Syria, in the case Ukraine it has taken a week and we are now up to a million."

These answers, as well as these dynamics, show very clearly for me that for certain people more empathy and compassion, accordingly more help and support is given by the population, by the media, as well as by politics, and thus the suffering of certain is clearly seen as more urgent than that of others. Accordingly, the refugee policy in Europe can show this division, of which Olsen speaks, in the most brutal way and also to what extent here media as well as politics play an important role in the reproduction and manifestation of this division.

„Geographers could be instrumental in reclaiming the ethical work of urgency in ways that leave it open for critique, clarifying common spatial misunderstandings and representations. There is good reason to be thoughtful in this process, since moral outrage toward inhumanity can itself obscure differentiated experiences of being human, dividing up 'those for whom we feel urgent unreasoned concern and those whose lives and deaths simply do not touch us, or do not appear as lives at all'

(Olson 2015, 523).“

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Anna Zweifel / the Urban Everyday / Journal Entry /07.03.2022

An individual story: Time pressure, standardized houses and the missing possibility for adaptation

All the texts we read this week deal with housing and the adaptation of housing, which is dynamically related to its governance, financial and social context. Also, the three texts are connected by the multi-scalar approach and the embedding of personal and individual stories in the analysis of housing. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this journal entry to an individual story as well. It is a personal story because it is about my own family.

My sister gave birth to a daughter in December, and I have become a proud aunt and my mother a proud grandmother. During pregnancy, my sister was regularly reminded of our childhood, which we often spent in the forest and nature. She currently lives in the city and began to long for more space and more nature. In Switzerland, real estate prices have been rising steadily in recent years. Especially family houses are getting more and more expensive every year and for young families, it is getting more and more difficult to own property without inheritance. For financial reasons, as well as organizational reasons for childcare support, my sister, her boyfriend, and my mother decided to look for a house together with a small integrated apartment for my mother. They searched and searched and the locations became more and more remote from the city, but they could not find an affordable offer. After a long search, they came across a vacant piece of building land in a small village. It is very remote and in winter there is little sun, but it promises to be close to nature and is on an affordable budget, and therefore they decided to buy the building site.

They wanted to take their time with the building project, so once I get back from South Africa, the idea was that I could help them with the first steps and as a young architect in the family I could take over certain building phases independently. This was to meet their individual wishes and to save the money of an expensive preliminary study up to the building application. But one or two months ago something unexpected happened. They received a letter from the municipality, which informed them that because of an amendment to the spatial planning law approved by the Swiss people in 2013, which was intended to stop urban sprawl in Switzerland, municipalities with low building density would have to reduce their building zones and therefore certain building zones would have to be rezoned. My mother had a shock and great fear, a rezoning of her parcel to agricultural land would mean an immense loss of value, and all her savings are currently in this building plot. At a municipal meeting, she described her situation and the reactions were vague and nobody could say concretely whether her plot would be deleted from the rezoning list because of the intention to build soon or not. The general advice to my mother was: Be quick and build soon!

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Figure 1: Zoning map of the municipality with plot of my family

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With the fear of losing the building plot, my family quickly started to contact building companies, which could have affordable and quick solutions. After obtaining the first offers, the resignation in my family is great. The companies do not address their wishes and they do not feel understood. The proposals do not meet their expectations, are very expensive and the floor plans constricting. To build cheaply in Switzerland, there are mainly offers from construction companies that have created prefabricated or standardized house types and hand over houses ready for use. Since my family are not the only ones threatened by the loss of building plots, the companies are also not too forthcoming, they have more than enough work at the moment and are not dependent on the project.

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Figure 2: Standardized and prefabricated houses from Hesshaus AG, Switzerland, https://hesshaus.ch/konzepthaeuser/

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My sister said to me on the phone a few days ago:
"I don't want to build something that I'm not happy with and I feel cramped. I would prefer to have a larger house with less finishing to expand and add on later. I'd rather stay in this apartment for a few years than live in a cramped house for the rest of my life."

Our father as well as my sister's boyfriend have no education in construction, but both have a lot of experience in building. They would have the skills to do some of the work themselves. However, they have not yet found a construction company that would allow them to design a project in steps.

Even if this example takes place in a Swiss context, under completely different circumstances than the case studies in South Africa and is therefore not directly comparable, I could not help but regularly think of my family's situation while reading the texts. Although a completely different context, this one example shows the interaction of economic aspects, political decisions, and the creation of insecurities and fear of loss of property. For me, the example also shows that in the Swiss building system the possibility of independent adaptation and transformation can hardly or not at all be integrated into building processes, while in all three of the case studies in South Africa it formed a large part of the relationship of the people to the living space and the state partly also produced unfinished houses and self-expansion was thus actively intended in some cases. Swiss construction is so highly standardized and regulated that individual transformation is difficult. I don't want to romanticize informal construction and I also see the uncertainties that can come with it. Nevertheless, I believe that the Swiss building industry could learn from processes in South African townships and that the embedding of self-development and building stages, which would better allow a gradual development, could bring new approaches to make property in Switzerland more accessible and affordable for young families.