Bulgarian anti-immigrant fence

Published on November 29, 2013

Society

Like cer­tain well-known mar­itime routes across the Mediter­ranean, the short land bor­der be­tween the EU and Turkey is a hotbed of il­le­gal mi­gra­tion. The fences are just one piece of the EU's ex­pen­sive at­temps to po­lice the bor­der, which are widely crit­i­cised as in­ef­fi­cient and con­ducive to human rights abuses. Over the past years, Eu­rope’s bor­der with Turkey has be­come one of the most im­por­tant points of entry for mi­grants from Asia, the Mid­dle East and Africa. A decade ago, Span­ish and Ital­ian bor­ders bore the full brunt of mi­grants flee­ing war and des­ti­tu­tion to come to Eu­rope. As mar­itime bor­der con­trols were beefed up and repa­tri­a­tion ex­pe­dited – both Spain and Italy signed repa­tri­a­tion agree­ments with North African gov­ern­ments. Traf­fick­ers evolved ac­cord­ingly.

The hun­dreds of thou­sands of mi­grants that cross Eu­rope’s bor­ders every year from as far away as Afghanistan can pay up to $10, 000 to traf­fick­ers for the jour­ney, mak­ing it a multi-mil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try au­thor­i­ties reckon. With so much money at stake, traf­fick­ers can adapt much faster than Eu­ro­pean bor­der au­thor­i­ties can ad­dress the chang­ing land­scape of il­le­gal mi­gra­tion.

100, 000 il­le­gal im­mi­grants a year

In 2011 alone, around 100, 000 il­le­gal mi­grants were ar­rested try­ing to enter the EU through Greece, up from just 36, 000 in 2010. As im­mi­grant flows in­ten­si­fied in south east Eu­rope, Greek au­thor­i­ties felt as if they had been hit by a bus. 'We just can’t han­dle it,' said Greece’s sec­re­tary of cit­i­zen pro­tec­tion, Chris­tos Pa­pout­sis, in 2011. With cash-strapped au­thor­i­ties un­able to bear the bur­den, asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions backed up and mi­grants found them­selves packed into over­pop­u­lated fa­cil­i­ties, suf­fer­ing in­hu­mane con­di­tions for months.

Greece com­pleted its €3 mil­lion fence in De­cem­ber of 2009. The four meter tall barbed wire fence spans 10.5 kilo­me­ters, pro­tect­ing a short stretch of dry land along the 125 mile bor­der with Greece, most of which runs along the Evros River. Au­thor­i­ties say the fence has been ef­fec­tive, but it seems to have done lit­tle but force mi­grants to at­tempt riskier mar­itime or river cross­ings.

Greek bor­der guards told local news­pa­per Kathimerini that the pro­ject had a huge im­pact on the flows of il­le­gal im­mi­grants across the land bor­der. They claimed that il­le­gal ar­rivals were down by 95%, how­ever, there has also been a sharp spike in mar­itime cross­ings of the Aegean Sea. In the first se­mes­ter of 2012, po­lice and coast guard of­fi­cers in the re­gion de­tained 102 un­doc­u­mented mi­grants, while 1, 536 were in­ter­cepted in the three months fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the fence.

Bul­garia fol­lows suit 

Bul­gar­ian au­thor­i­ties have found them­selves in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion since the be­gin­ning of the Syr­ian con­flict. In a seven-fold in­crease since 2012, about 10, 000 mi­grants, two-thirds from Syria, have ar­rived so far this year, leav­ing au­thor­i­ties help­less to curb the tide or offer basic ameni­ties to those ar­riv­ing. Speak­ing to The Econ­o­mist, one refugee called the sit­u­a­tion in Eu­rope’s poor­est mem­ber state a 'night­mare.' Food and med­ical at­ten­tion for the war-torn refugees are scarce and hold­ing fa­cil­i­ties squalid.

Like the Greeks, the Bul­gar­i­ans hope the fence will pro­vide some respite. The fence will span roughly 30 kilo­me­ters of the coun­try’s 274 kilo­me­ter bor­der with its neigh­bor Turkey, in  a forested, hilly area where vis­i­bil­ity for bor­der pa­trols is lim­ited. The fence, they say, is also part of a broader ef­fort to deal with the sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing new re­cep­tion fa­cil­i­ties cur­rently under con­struc­tion and a few thou­sand ad­di­tional po­lice of­fi­cers to pa­trol the bor­der.

Greece has also begun send­ing hun­dreds of mi­grants back to Syria, in a move strongly crit­i­cized by the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Bul­gar­ian of­fi­cials fret that the surge of mi­grants is spark­ing a wave of xeno­pho­bia. Skin­heads beat up a Bul­gar­ian Mus­lim on No­vem­ber 9th, mis­tak­ing him for a Syr­ian. Thou­sands re­cently protested in Sofia after a shop clerk was stabbed by an il­le­gal Al­ger­ian mi­grant.

25, 000 im­mi­grants drowned

In Greece and Bul­garia, the fences rep­re­sent a des­per­ate at­tempt by au­thor­i­ties to gain con­trol over events that are get­ting out of hand. While of­fi­cials are un­der­stand­ably wor­ried about pro­vid­ing for refugees with such scarce re­sources, crit­ics worry that fences are counter-pro­duc­tive. Adrian Ed­wards of the UNHCR, ar­gues that '[i]in­tro­duc­ing bar­ri­ers, like fences or other de­ter­rents, may lead peo­ple to un­der­take more dan­ger­ous cross­ings and fur­ther place the refugees at the mercy of smug­glers.'

To curb the ris­ing flows of il­le­gal mi­grants, the EU has built a set of far-reach­ing bor­der con­trol and en­force­ment poli­cies over the past decades, known pe­jo­ra­tively as ‘fortress Eu­rope’ by crit­ics. Many argue that the ex­pen­sive Eu­ro­pean bu­reau­cracy is in­ef­fi­cient at keep­ing mi­grants at bay, and that this leads to se­ri­ous human rights in­fringe­ments on Eu­rope’s bor­ders. More­over, these poli­cies force traf­fick­ers to take ever greater risks. In the last two decades, 25, 000 im­mi­grants have drowned in the Mediter­ranean Sea ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tional Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Im­mi­gra­tion.

Ac­tivists say that the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of ir­reg­u­lar im­mi­gra­tion is in­evitably coun­ter­pro­duc­tive in the end and leads to abuse, both by bor­der au­thor­i­ties and the bru­tal traf­fick­ers that mi­grants en­trust their lives to. Refugee rights groups have ar­gued for more chan­nels for legal im­mi­gra­tion. In the end, how­ever, it is only by ad­dress­ing the dis­rup­tive sit­u­a­tions and wealth in­equal­i­ties that fun­da­men­tally drive mi­gra­tion that Eu­rope can ad­dress the root of the prob­lem.