Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompts Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War Two. We travel back to the Polish border to witness a very different kind of approach to fleeing refugees, cross into Ukraine to speak to the recently displaced, before ending in Ireland to speak to those recently settled. A nation famous for migration is now battling dark forces rejecting it. Which side will win?

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To stop boats crossing the Mediterranean, the EU pays Libyan gangs to abduct migrants at sea and trap them in horrific detention centres. In response, activists are exposing these pushbacks by chartering surveillance aircraft and manning emergency helplines. Meanwhile in Rome some migrants receive help from divine intervention.

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Cyprus did not feature much in the 2015-16 refugee crisis, but subsequent years of closed borders across Europe has made the only EU member to border the Middle East a viable option for asylum seekers. But as war escalates across the region, Cyprus has started halting migration by pushing back boats and exploiting a legacy of the island's own painful unresolved conflict. 

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In the early nineties, hundreds of thousands of Bosnians fleeing war sought asylum in Europe. In 2024, tens of thousands of refugees from across the world are stranded in Bosnia. Every night they attempt a border crossing (known as ‘the game’) only to return with horrific injuries inflicted by Croatian authorities financed and supported by the EU.

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In 2015 Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban proudly unveiled a razor wire

fence along the country’s southern border with Serbia. But far from stop migration to

Europe, it disperses the flows through neighboring countries. Meanwhile in the frontier villages it has spawned a thriving smuggling market, with shootouts between gangs and police corruption. 

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The Belarusian dictator wages hybrid warfare on Europe’s eastern border, using migrants as his weapon. The EU responds forcefully by punishing the victims with barbed wire and pushbacks. But resistance to these hardline measures is building in Polish villages along the frontline, and activists race to rescue people stranded in Europe’s largest forest before it’s too late.

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Why are migrants disappearing from the Greek islands and ending up at sea? How has the country that once won international plaudits for their humanitarian welcome, become a place of fear and suspicion? On the island of Samos, we try to unravel a sinister mystery.

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This summer saw far-right mobs unleash devastating violence towards migrants and asylum seekers in Britain. It’s a far cry from the outpouring of sympathy shown during the European refugee crisis a decade ago.

The new seven-part documentary podcast Fortress Europe shows how years of increasingly brutal and dehumanizing anti-migrant policies have fanned the flames of extremism but still failed to prevent record high asylum applications.

We travel across the continent hearing from people making treacherous journeys, those trying to stop them, and those standing up for their rights

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