The Monthly Memo
November 2023

Rhetorical choices have material consequences. We see this every day in our work at Migrant of the Mediterranean. Politicians will use migration as a talking point, letting it then be amplified by news outlets to a point of distortion. That’s when people start suffering.

On October 10, for example, the Paris police prefect signed an order to ban nonprofits from distributing food, clothing, diapers and other essential items to people in the migrant community. It came in tandem with a rise in deportations and other hostilities from governments across the European bloc this fall, and while the ban may have been quickly overturned in court, it is part of a larger trend of aggressive actions taken across the continent.

The mechanisms for coordinated deportations between EU countries and Afghanistan, Guinea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, The Gambia and Ivory Coast, have been in the works informally for years. After complaints that the European Commission was refusing to share information regarding an agreement between The Gambia and the EU, European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, and her cabinet launched an inquiry.

“Good Practices on identification and return procedures” was signed in 2018 between Gambia and the European Union, an unpublicized agreement that according to the European Ombudsman, was one of six “informal, non-binding ‘arrangements’ for return and readmission with non-EU countries.” O’Reilly did not press the European Commission to publish the agreement, because it was at the Commission’s discretion to keep it private, in theory to protect the public’s interests.

But just whose interests does it serve?

As an organization that humanizes the political movements in migration, we can tell you the names of the people who are immediately affected by this––who are wondering each day if their lives will be totally turned over by this particular practice of deportation.

There is Lamin, who we met through our mutual friend Ousmane (Gambia), and who was returned to Gambia this fall. King (Gambia), who you also met this fall in his recently published Journey Story, is regularly tracking deportation flights using the "Deportation Alarm," an activist website to inform those in the migrant community of the government’s scheduled repatriation flights. King doesn't know when authorities might come for him, living under the radar in a new town after his housing camp in Martinszell, Bavaria was disbanded.

Others who have been affected by the breaking up of the camp are Mehrteab (Eritrea) and Ali (Gambia), among others, whose whereabouts at the moment are unknown. In the Netherlands, Mustapha and Mohammed (both Gambia) are struggling. Mohammed, having recently received a negative on his asylum application, waits in limbo for next steps––will he be able to appeal the decision? Or will he find himself undocumented and ejected from the camp? We wait to see. Already, Mustapha (pictured at top) has been removed from his COA housing, the centralized Dutch asylum seekers’ camp, and at last word is facing homelessness in Amsterdam.

Let’s take a step back and look at King’s case in Germany. The rule of law is, if an asylum application is rejected, a residence permit expires, or if you never obtained one to begin with, you will be forced to leave the country. Asylum seekers may be rejected with a “simple rejection” designation, which gives a person 30 days to leave. But if an application is deemed inadmissible or unfounded, you have even less time to prepare, just one week.

The Dublin Regulation is frequently the principal reason an application is rejected in the EU. Across the bloc, applications are again and again deemed inadmissible due to the regulation, established in 1990, which states asylum seekers must claim asylum only in their first country of entry.

Ali Agayev, immigration attorney at the Agavey Immigration Law office in Rotterdam, Netherlands spoke with us about what the Dublin Regulation really means for people on the ground. For about 90% of people in the migrant community who apply for asylum, he says, they will have to go through the process of leaving the Netherlands and reapplying at their first port of entry – but that doesn’t happen immediately.

When refugees first enter the country, they are either processed in the airport, or (in the majority of cases) refugees who pass by land will go to a main center in the northeast in a small city called Ter Apel, where MotM has regularly reported, to get fingerprinted. If, at that point, people are already in the European database called Eurodac, they remain in the Netherlands and go through the asylum process as usual.

Months later, people who have claimed this asylum may find out another country has accepted their claim instead, say in Italy, then setting off the Dublin procedures for return to Italian territory. Dutch authorities put out a “hit” to collect and transport them to the country that has accepted their claim, for which there is a one-year time frame to do so.

This pre-deportation detention and an oversaturated and confusing asylum system leave people suspended between countries and statuses.

“By this time, there's nowhere to go, nowhere to stay,” Mahamed (Gambia) wrote to MotM from Brussels, Belgium last month. Many people in our community who have been living in a country for six, seven or more years still cannot legally call it home. They are stuck in a loop, moving from country to country across Europe when they face asylum denials or hostilities from local governments.

Ousmane and Sarjo (both Gambia) entered through Italy, then went to Germany, and are now seeking safety and settlement in Spain, a circuitous migration that more and more people in the migrant community face.

“It’s sad,” said Ousmane, a long-time MotM community member from Gambia about the limbo of the European asylum system from Spain. And many more asylum seekers, particularly those who don’t have a strong chance at winning asylum, will continue to move across Europe to avoid deportation.

People with the same experience as Ousmane have by now lived out the trajectory of modern European immigration policy. He entered in 2016. That’s seven and a half years in Europe. Yet the politics between states that create this paralyzed life are viewed unfavorably also by European governments. “It is a European or global problem,” said Agayev, “You cannot be a union but let one of your members take on all the burden.” The current system seems to be working for no one's interests, in spite of political messaging that says it’s working for everyone’s.

Stay with us as we continue to examine this topic in the weeks and months ahead, with further updates on each of the people, and more, mentioned in this writing.

–Isa Rosario-Blake

"Why of all the nationalities living in Europe are
Gambians being deported right now?"

–Ousmane (Gambia), claiming asylum in Spain after leaving Germany

A Sea of Stories.
Poetic reflections from the Journey Story Archive.

“Prison isn't always a locked room. In Libya, Mahamed may have found himself imprisoned under horrific conditions. Day after day, enduring relentless beatings. A place where a big meal meant a bottle of water. A cup of juice. A sliver of cake split between six. Mahamed's release finally came when his family managed to send sufficient funds. But long after, now in Europe, Mahamed faces a new form of imprisonment, being undocumented. “By this time, there's nowhere to go, nowhere to stay,” he said from Brussels, Belgium, where he faces the struggle to settle––this, after years spent in waiting in Rome, Italy. His awareness of the colonial past in Gambia, the relentless pattern of migration obstacles, and the ongoing struggle of being Black in a predominantly white city adds to this unrelenting sentence, an undeserved punishment for wanting to find home.”

–Nora Alkhudhiri

What's coming up.
It’s almost here…

The holiday season is around the corner and that means it’s time for the 5th Annual Holiday Fundraiser – starting next week on Nov. 23rd and running through Dec. 31st. Whether it’s driving new migration scholarship or developing new stories on the ground, MotM has been hard at work this year to do more to correct the narrative in migration, and there’s even more slated for 2024. Follow along right here in your inbox and on Instagram to see the 2023 highlights, and – as always – get ready to give! We’re counting on your contributions to put us across the line. Let’s make the most of this season to honor every #AmazingHumanBeing in our community.

Love what we do?