Europe is experiencing the mass movements of displaced people in a way that it has largely been immune from for decades. Europe is experiencing the mass movements of displaced people in a way that it has largely been immune from for decades. The ramifications and manifestations of what is being called a ‘crisis’ are extensive, intersecting with national as well as pan-European politics, existing economic problems, xenophobia, fear of terror attacks, and much more. This crisis, in effect, seems to dwarf in scale and complexity any other crisis that Europe has faced since the end of the Second World War.

The manifestations are as disparate as the building of fences to stop people crossing normally peaceful borders, the deaths of people transported by smugglers in unseaworthy boats, EU political leaders bickering over a Common European Asylum System and the numbers they will or will not allow into their respective countries, and contentious responses to the disaster that continues to unfold in Syria. Alongside this we also see an upsurge of grass-roots compassion, solidarity and assistance to the displaced and others whose human suffering on a grand scale in and around Europe constitutes the reality behind the ‘crisis’.

In this issue of FMR, authors throw legal, practical, moral and experiential light on a variety of the multifarious issues and manifestations that make up this ‘migration crisis’.

We would like to thank Liz Collett of the Migration Policy Institute Europe, Madeline Garlick of UNHCR, Cathryn Costello of the Refugee Studies Centre, and Richard Williams for their assistance as advisors on the feature theme of this issue. We are also grateful to the International Organization for Migration, the Open Society Foundations and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for their financial support of the issue.

We are also including with copies of this magazine a short readers survey. We are asking you to help us understand how you access FMR – in print and/or online – so that we can continue to adapt the ways in which we provide it for your use and interest. We would be very grateful if you would complete and return it, or complete it online at www.fmreview.org/readers-survey2016

Marion Couldrey, Maurice Herson

Europe need not renounce its freedom of movement: it should instead develop a better controlled mobility regime. It would then, in effect, much better control its borders.

There is much about earlier migration crises that today’s European policymakers might profitably recall.

A number of myths surrounding refugee protection may obscure our understanding and complicate the search for solutions, but there are also clear and realistic possibilities for change in the EU’s body of law to enable better outcomes for states & refugees

There is a persuasive case to be made for simplifying refugee status determination in the European Union.

Lesbos, population 85,000, received more than 85,000 refugees and migrants in 2015 up to the end of August.

Creating space for smugglers and failing to provide humanitarian assistance are European failures. Opening legal routes to Europe could deal with both.

While the high number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 has increased pressures and tensions, this is not a crisis beyond the capability of Europe to manage together as a Union. While the high number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 has increased pressures and tensions, this is not a crisis beyond the capability of Europe to manage together as a Union. We need bold, collective thinking and action to develop a truly comprehensive approach.

While makeshift camps, such as those that have proliferated around Europe, may form spaces of resourcefulness and agency which cannot be accommodated in state-run detention camps, none of these temporary spaces is a definitive solution.

Border practices at the Italy-Austria border are part of a wider trend of questionable practices used by EU Member States which render irrelevant both the Schengen Agreement and the Dublin Regulation.