We, the undersigned researchers, working on projects funded by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, ERC, MSC, etc.) to improve migration governance, border crossing, and the treatment of refugees in the European Union, want to express our paramount concern regarding the violent course of action that is taken by the EU and individual member states in these testing times.
In recent years, numerous EU-funded research projects have meticulously studied diverse aspects of human mobility into and inside the EU. Paying special attention to pressing issues like border crossing and asylum procedures, academics have been critically examining: bureaucracies, deportation and detention regimes, commercial interests from security and military sectors in the management of entry and border control, protection practices and the criminalization of solidarity, rescue missions at sea, implications of the EU-Turkey deal, externalization of borders, hotspots, so-called ‘hot returns’ and pushback operations, family reunification, mobility infrastructures, xenophobic tendencies and the rise of populist politics,and much more.
Read the whole letter in the pdf attached