This presentation can be used with students and young people to explain the context of the European refugee crisis. It chronicles the events and internal divisions that have led to Europe's inability/unwillingness to deal with the largest movement of people since World War II.

1. Europe’s Refugee Crisis
in Context
Sylvia Arthur
sylviaarthur.wordpress.com

5. The Power of Images

12. Facts and Statistics

13. 62%
Percentage of those who have reached Europe who qualify for refugee status,
according to the UN

14. 0.027%
The percentage of migrants to have reached Europe this year as a proportion of the
Europe’s total population of 740 million (200,000)

15. 1.2 million
The number of Syrian refugees housed in Lebanon, a country with a total population
of 4.5 million, 100 x smaller than the EU with 50 x as many refugees as the EU

16. 22,400
The number of migrants who’ve died trying to reach Europe between 1996 and 2014,
according to the International Organisation for Migration

18. The largest wave of
migrants since World War II

19. Public Opinion & Political Rhetoric

21. Populist politics
Switzerland

22. Populist politics
Switzerland

23. Populist politics
Austria

24. The hypocrisy of the press

26. The Daily Mail

28. The Role of [Recent] History

29. Chronology
Confluence of events that have
divided and paralysed Europe
● The fall of the Wall, 1989
● EU enlargement, 2004
● Mass internal migration, 2004-
2013
● The Great Recession, 2008
● Euro crisis and contagion, 2009
● Arab Spring, 2011
● Nato bombing of Libya, 2011
● Syria civil war, 2011-present
● Refugee crisis point, 2015

33. All Europeans are equal but some Europeans
are more equal than others...

35. “...It’s hard for us to regard Europe as a whole as something that belongs to us, as our
homeland, our inheritance. We are strangers in it; we come from outside, from lands
about which Europe itself has only the vaguest notion and which it treats more like a
threat than a part of itself.”
- Andrzej Stasiuk, Fado

37. Europe’s existential crisis
RaceCultureReligion Power History

38. Interventionism vs non-interventionism?
Libya, 2011 Syria, 2011

39. Internal migration vs external migration
UK, 2015 Hungary, 2015

40. “In the latest history, the history that is happening right now, our Third World Others
are gaining ever greater and ever more meaningful subjectivity. That is the first thing,
and secondly, there is an invasion happening…of representatives of the Third World
into developed countries. …How prepared are we, the citizens of Europe, for this
change? Not very, I’m afraid to say. We treat the Other above all as a stranger (yet the
Other does not have to mean a stranger), as the representative of a separate species,
but the most crucial point is that we treat him as a threat.”
- Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Other

41. Art and Activism

42. Amnesty
International
Volunteers lie in
200 body bags on
Brighton beach to
highlight the
migrant crisis in
the Mediterranean
(Getty) April 2015

43. The
House
of 28
Doors
by the
Berlin-
Dresden
artist
group
BEWEGUNG
NURR
( Florian
Göpfert/
Alekos
Hofstetter/
Christian
Steuer)

45. Activist
Burials
The Center for
Political
Beauty (Berlin)
organised a
series of
symbolic
burials of
migrants at
the German
chancellery in
June 2015.
Changing the
world with art.

47. Muhammed
Lamin Jadama
The work of photographer
and activists Muhammed
Lamin Jadama is tracing
the quiet and dramatic
moments of the refugees'
daily lives. This image
shows a man entering an
Italian refugee camp, so far
from everything that It's
almost impossible to get in
contact with society.

49. The Migrant’s
Compass
The work of South African
editorial cartoonist,
Brandan Reynolds

50. Opportunity in Crisis

55. Thanks for listening!