Although incoming migrants are demonized in political discourse, many European countries are struggling with a loss of population. In this episode of Standard Time, Eurozine’s colleagues talk about the idea of ethnic purity, outmigration, and finding a sense of belonging.
Across Europe, the anti-migration sentiment is promising to kick all migrants out. The goal is to deport, or ‘remigrate’ people back to their ‘country of origin’ through payments or force. Several European governments are doing the most to keep migrants out. Asylum processes are even being outsourced to third countries. Denmark signed a bill in 2021, aiming to relocate asylum assessments to an African country, a part of their ‘zero asylum’ strategy. Austria, Germany, and the UK have all tried setting up the same arrangements.
The turn of European migration policy was reflected just this week, as the al-Assad regime fell in Syria. Migration authorities across Europe seemingly seized the moment to pause all asylum applications from Syrian refugees, leaving thousands refugees in limbo. The head of justice at the Swedish migration authority argued that ‘given the situation, it is simply not possible to assess the reasons for protection’.
Europe’s switch in migration policy, or what Hans Kundnani describes as a ‘civilizational turn’ derives from a concept of ethnic purity. But ethnic purity is an impossible idea. Humans are a migratory species and have always been. The entire 750,000-year history of human evolution is defined by populations spreading, moving, exploring new lands and groups intermixing.
There is no true essence of a certain ethnicity.
To make a long and exciting story very short: ethnic populations have never existed in isolation. Populations have always moved, mixed and adapted to new lands.
You can also listen to the show in a podcast format on the Cultural Broadcasting Archive, or wherever you get your podcasts.
But this is only one part of the discussion on migration. Parts of Europe, mainly countries in the east and south have been struggling with populations disappearing, due to outmigration. 4,5million Romanians have left their country since 2000, which is a loss of more than 16 percent of their population. They lead European statistics in terms of outmigration, closely followed by Croatia, Bulgaria and the Baltic states. It is estimated that a million citizens have left Bulgaria and two million moved away from Poland.
These people left their home countries because of the European wage vacuum: the same work and skills offer them vastly different opportunities in wealthier countries.But what happens in the countries we leave behind?
In this episode of Standard Time we discuss outmigration and integration with Eurozine’s colleagues.
Merve Akyel is the art director of Eurozine, a native of Istanbul who has lived in Vienna for over 12 years. She is currently conducting research on reflections of gender-based violence in artworks by women based in or from Turkey. In her own art practice, she deals with gender-based violence as well as shame and guilt.
Ioana Pelehatăi is the senior editor of the Bucharest-based online magazine Scena9, publishing both in Romanian and English. Most of her recent work has focused on the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while, previously, she covered human rights issues such as anti-Roma racism and LGBTQIA+ rights.
Daniela Univazo is the writer-editor of the Standard Time talk show. She’s a filmmaker born and raised in Vienna with South American roots
You can listen to the episode here:
https://cba.media/688994
Réka Kinga Papp anchor
Daniela Univazo writer-editor
Merve Akyel art director, Eurozine
Szilvia Pintér producer
Priyanka Hutschenreiter project manager
Julia Sobota captions and translations
Zsófia Gabriella Papp digital producer
Judit Csikós finance
Réka Kinga Papp editor-in-chief
Csilla Nagyné Kardos office administration
Reedy Media of Kraków
Gergely Áron Pápai DoP
Nóra Ruszkai video editor
István Nagy lead video editor
Milán Golovics dialogue editor
Victor Maria Lima animation
Crypt-of-Insomnia theme music
Published 12 December 2024
Original in English
First published by Eurozine
© Eurozine
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