At a time of escalating conflict between states and NGOs engaged in migrant search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean, this book explores the emerging trend of citizen-led forms of helping others at the borders of Europe. In recent years, Europe’s borders have become new sites of intervention for traditional humanitarian actors and governmental agencies, but also, increasingly, for volunteer and activist initiatives led by "ordinary" citizens. This book sets out to interrogate the shifting relationship between humanitarianism, the securitization of border and migration regimes, and citizenship. Critically examining the "do it yourself" character of refugee aid practices performed by non-professionals coming together to help in informal and spontaneous manners, the volume considers the extent to which these new humanitarian practices challenge established conceptualisations of membership, belonging, and active citizenship. Drawing on case studies from countries around Europe including Greece, Turkey, Italy, France and Russia, this collection constitutes an innovative and theoretically engaged attempt to bring the field of humanitarian studies into dialogue with studies of grassroots refugee aid and, more explicitly, with political forms of solidarity with migrants and refugees which fall between aid and activism. This book is key reading for advanced students and researchers of humanitarian aid, European migration and refugees, and citizen-led activism.

In recent years the borders of Europe have been perceived as being besieged by a staggering refugee and migration crisis. The contributors to The Borders of "Europe" see this crisis less as an incursion into Europe by external conflicts than as the result of migrants exercising their freedom of movement. Addressing the new technologies and technical forms European states use to curb, control, and constrain what contributors to the volume call the autonomy of migration, this book shows how the continent's amorphous borders present a premier site for the enactment and disputation of the very idea of Europe. They also outline how from Istanbul to London, Sweden to Mali, and Tunisia to Latvia, migrants are finding ways to subvert visa policies and asylum procedures while negotiating increasingly militarized and surveilled borders. Situating the migration crisis within a global frame and attending to migrant and refugee supporters as well as those who stoke nativist fears, this timely volume demonstrates how the enforcement of Europe’s borders is an important element of the worldwide regulation of human mobility. Contributors. Ruben Andersson, Nicholas De Genova, Dace Dzenovska, Evelina Gambino, Glenda Garelli, Charles Heller, Clara Lecadet, Souad Osseiran, Lorenzo Pezzani, Fiorenza Picozza, Stephan Scheel, Maurice Stierl, Laia Soto Bermant, Martina Tazzioli

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This collection interrogates the representation of humanitarian crisis, catastrophe and care. Contributors explore the refraction of humanitarian intervention from the mid-twentieth century to the present across a diverse range of media forms, including screen media (film, television and online video), newspapers, memoirs, music festivals and social media platforms (notably Facebook, YouTube and Flickr). Examining the historical, cultural and political contexts that have shaped the mediation of humanitarian relationships since the middle of the twentieth century, the book reveals significant synergies between the humanitarian enterprise – the endeavour to alleviate the suffering of particular groups – and its media representations, particularly in their modes of addressing and appealing to specific publics.

This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.

This volume analyses civil society as an important factor in the European refugee regime. Based on empirical research, the chapters explore different aspects, structures and forms of civil society engagement during and after 2015. Various institutional, collective and individual activities are examined in order to better understand the related processes of refugees’ movements, reception and integration. Several chapters also explore the historical development of the relationship between a range of actors involved in solidarity movements and care relationships with refugees across different member states. Through the combined analysis of macro-level state and European policies, meso-level organization's activities and micro-level individual behaviour, Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe presents a comprehensive exploration of the refugee regime in motion, and will be of interest to scholars and students researching migration, social movements, European institutions and social work.

Following the 2015 ‘refugee crisis,’ many different actors emerged to contest or mitigate the EU’s border policies. This book explores the birth and trajectory of a Norwegian volunteer organisation “A Drop in the Ocean”, established by a mother of five with no prior experience in humanitarian work. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, Heidi Mogstad examines the organisation’s shifting and contested efforts to ‘fill humanitarian gaps’ in Greece while witnessing and shaming the Norwegian public and politicians into action. Moving beyond existing critiques of humanitarian sentiments like pity and compassion, the book focuses specifically on the work of shame and other ‘negative’ emotions.

Media have played an important role in framing the public debate on the “refugee crisis” that peaked in autumn of 2015. This report examines the narratives developed by print media in eight European countries and how they contributed to the public perception of the “crisis”, shifting from careful tolerance over the summer, to an outpouring of solidarity and humanitarianism in September 2015, and to a securitisation of the debate and a narrative of fear in November 2015. Overall, there has been limited opportunity in mainstream media coverage for refugees and migrants to give their views on events, and little attention paid to the individuals’ plight or the global and historical context of their displacement. Refugees and migrants are often portrayed as an undistinguishable group of anonymous and unskilled outsiders who are either vulnerable or dangerous. The dissemination of biased or ill-founded information contributes to perpetuating stereotypes and creating an unfavourable environment not only for the reception of refugees but also for the longer-term perspectives of societal integration.

This handbook builds a shared understanding of the troubling politics of philanthropy and the disturbing history and practices of humanitarianism. While historical work on philanthropy has long suggested a link between imperial rule and humanitarian aid, these insights have only recently been brought to bear on contemporary forms of giving. In this book, contributors link the long history of colonial philanthropy to current foundations and their programs in education, health, migrant care, and other social initiatives. They argue that both philanthropy and humanitarianism often function to consolidate market rule, consolidating and expanding liberal market rationalities of neoliberal entrepreneurialism to a widening population and set of institutions. Philanthropy and humanitarianism share a history, growing together out of modernist socio-economic relations and modes of imperial rule. However, the histories and contemporary politics of the two have not been brought together with such breadth or under such a critical lens before. Discussing philanthropy and humanitarianism together, combining both historical scope and contemporary iterations, highlights continuities and convergences—making the volume a unique introduction and critical overview of critical work in these sister-fields.

Building on research within the fields of exile studies and critical migration studies and drawing links between historical and contemporary ‘refugee scholarship’, this volume challenges the bias of methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism in discussing the multifaceted forms of knowledge emerging in the context of migration and mobility. With critical attention to the meaning, production and scope of ‘refugee scholarship’ generated at the institutions of higher education, it also focuses on ‘refugee knowledge’ produced outside academia, and scrutinizes the conditions according to which it is validated or silenced. Presenting studies of historical refuge and exile, together with the experiences of contemporary refugee scholars, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in forced migration, refugee studies, the sociology of knowledge and the phenomenon of ‘insider’ knowledge, and research methods and methodology. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

By foot, in buses, prison vans and trains, a steady stream of refugees traveled from the Greek island of Lesbos into Europe. In the autumn of 2015, award-winning writer Navid Kermani decided to accompany them on the "Balkan route." In this perceptive account from the front line of the "refugee crisis," Kermani shows how a seemingly distant world in which war and conflict rage has suddenly collided with our own. Kermani describes the situation on the Turkish west coast where thousands of refugees live in the most desperate conditions, waiting to take the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Then, on Lesbos, he observes the culture shock amongst those who have survived the ordeal by sea. He speaks to aid workers and politicians, but most importantly of all to the refugees themselves, asking those who have come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere what has driven them to risk everything and embark on the long and treacherous journey to Europe. With great sensitivity Kermani reveals, often through small details, the cultural and political upheaval that has caused people to uproot their lives, and at the same time shining a light on Europe's inadequate and at times openly hostile response to the refugees. Interspersed with powerful images by the acclaimed photographer Moises Saman, Upheaval is a much-needed human account of a crisis we cannot ignore.