EU leaders are meeting today, on the eve of International Women’s Day, to plan how to deal with migrants in the EU, those hammering on doors and those yet to arrive. The result of their deliberations is likely to increase the risk of destitution and death for women and their families, possibly for years to come.
As the civil war in Syria saw the country disintegrate, vast swathes of the population were displaced – some within Syria, but increasingly outside the country. EU member countries pitched in to help – funding the camps and offering to take in small numbers of “refugees”. However, as the war continued and the numbers fleeing the fighting escalated into the tens of thousands, the EU’s sympathy diminished.
Most EU countries had been running dubious policies on economic migrants for years. They rely on economic migrants such as nurses to fill low paid public service jobs and, therefore, keep those public sector wages low. They gloss over the large numbers of economic migrants working illegally and off the books because it’s a small boost to private industry – and, again, helps keep wages low. At the same time, racist nationalist parties pump out the anti-immigrant message to their domestic audiences. Left and right wing governments tolerate a certain amount of this without arguing back: if the malcontents in the population are busy scapegoating the blacks, the Muslims, the migrants, they will not spend time examining the anti-austerity policies of the same national governments.
Now, EU governments find themselves in a situation which is almost out of control. The civil war in Syria has all but emptied the country. Upheavals in a number of north African countries have spawned large numbers of refugees too. People are managing to get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. In all these cases, the policies of the West have provoked and sustained rather than soothed conflict. People flee the bombing, the fighting, the persecution – heading towards countries they have heard of, have heard offer safety and a change to make a living but which they may well not be able to find on a map.
With the change in the refugee situation, the EU is muddying the waters. They are picking up the anti-migrant agenda – and turning it on the refugees. The talk now is of closing Europe, closing the borders – even of building more walls.
Europe has form in this area. In the 1930s, Jews were persecuted – most memorably in Germany but in other countries too. What did Jews who tried to flee find? Safe countries around Europe would not offer them a refuge: there were economic arguments that the safe countries might not be able to cope with a population influx, and there was an underlying anti-semitism guiding how safe countries treated the crisis.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels today have not yet agreed what their next step will be. They are going to talk further over dinner tonight. As the chimes of midnight ring in International Women’s Day, will women around the world look at their children and rejoice that they will now grow up in safety? Or will history repeat itself, with women paying the terrible cost?
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