The Compass

The migration experience across Europe has demanded resilience, spirit and endless patience from the millions on the move from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Those tasked with finding solutions whether government or volunteer would probably say the same has been demanded of them.

Chris Bowlby hosts a discussion about some of the issues and ideas arising from the series Destination Europe - why the asylum process is taking so long, how geography and law can dictate a migrant’s ultimate fate and whether individual governments are being selective over their share of responsibility. And, what of the future – as incidents of violence raise security and anxiety levels across the continent, what hope there is for successful integration and a happy ending?

Joining Chris Bowlby are - Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Study Centre and professor of Forced Migration at Oxford University; Autumn Brennan, former aid worker for Nurture Project International on Chios, Greece; Hashi Mohamed, barrister and broadcaster; Saloua Mohammed, social worker for Caritas in Bonn, Germany.

(Photo: A Syrian girl looks on during sunrise after arriving on an inflatable boat with other refugees. Credit: Shutterstock)

Germany was where hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived last year. But the atmosphere is now very different from the ‘welcome culture’ that greeted them. The German government has been accused of losing control. And huge numbers are still waiting to hear whether they will be allowed to stay permanently. So how will Germany deal with this? Chris Bowlby is given a unique insight at a new fast-track government processing centre in Bonn - where individuals and families discover their future in a matter of hours.

(Photo: Migrants and refugees seeking asylum in Germany line up while their asylum applications are processed. Credit: GettyImages)

As part of the World Service ‘Destination Europe’ series, the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones is finding out how Syrian refugees are settling in the northern English city of Bradford in Yorkshire. They were flown directly to Britain as part of a scheme to help the vulnerable living in the Syrian border region. The former British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to help 20,000 of these people over a five year period, rather than taking those who had made the perilous journey to Europe through smuggler’s routes. So in Bradford, Owen meets people like Nadia, flown to the UK from Iraq – a single mother to a teenager who dreams of her former life in Damascus where she owned a shopping mall and was rich, but who now lives in a damp flat and whose possessions are sparse. Then there is Ayham and his family who became eligible to settle in Britain from Cairo after his younger brother was diagnosed with cancer. Their remarkable stories paint a vivid picture of war-torn Syria and the tragedies they have faced but also of their bravery and hope for a new beginning as they embark on finding their way in Britain.

(Photo: Owen in front of the Bradford factory)

It’s become much harder for migrants from Asia and Africa to reach Europe via the Greek route, but the numbers of those reaching Italy have not declined. Those rescued at sea are mostly taken to Sicily, and also to Calabria, the toe of Italy. Calabria is one of Italy’s poorest regions, more used to emigration than immigration, and the newcomers lives vary starkly.

Hashi Mohamed meets a priest, Don Roberto Meduri, who in the near-absence of official support in his area has taken it upon himself to help migrants living in desperate conditions in an abandoned factory and in a tent city. He has looked after “thousands”, he says, getting mattresses from a prison, fixing power cuts at the tent city and guiding the refugees through the processes to get their residence permits and health cards.

Less than an hour’s drive away, in the small town of Gioiosa Ionica, things are very different. Here the local mayor, Salvatore Fuda, has volunteered to take 75 asylum seekers as part of a government scheme that pays the town 35 euros per migrant per day to look after them. The money goes to the town, not the migrants. For Fuda this is a win-win situation: the local community gets a significant economic boost, and the migrants get to live in houses rented for them, get job placements and language classes.

(Photo: Notes given to migrants for use in Gioiosa Ionica)

In a radio first, the World Service programme which analyses ground-breaking global policies, is part of a sitting session of the UN’s Economic and Social Council and includes contributions from some of the 58 delegate countries.

The Balkan route is closed, the fragile EU-Turkey deal is in effect, the Pope has been and gone, the traffickers are turning their attention to Italy & so is much of the media. But Greece continues to be the epicentre of a slow emergency. In a country in advanced economic meltdown more than 50,000 refugees & migrants, 'people on the move', are stuck. On the islands, the asylum processing "hotspots" funded by the EU are often grim affairs, like the one on Chios made out of repurposed shipping containers. Outside Thessaloniki, in a place where the railroad tracks run into grass, stands an abandoned toilet paper factory: no windows, no light, and tents huddled under the low roof. But, for a desperately stretched Greek government, this is better than the dark anarchy of the recently cleared camp at Idomeni, or the petrol station where children play in the still-working forecourt & the car wash has tents inside.

The deportations back to Turkey of some 8,500 people who came since the deal was done have started (as have the suicide attempts). For the more than 40,000 refugees and migrants who arrived before March 20th and now have no place to go, another long, gruelling story is beginning. The left-wing Syriza government is having to contemplate just how long these refugees will be stuck there. Minister of Migration Yannis Mouzalas knows that the much criticised EU-Turkey deal is the only thing preventing another wave of refugees reaching the shores of Greek islands that are already struggling to cope: "This is not Greece's crisis, this is Europe's crisis." In the second episode of Destination Europe, Maria Margaronis explores the hopes & fears of refugees, islanders & Greek politicians & asks whether Greece is becoming Europe's "warehouse of souls."

Producer: Mark Burman

(Image: A Syrian woman in Greece)

There as many as half a million Syrian refugee children who are not attending school, leaving them open to exploitation in sweatshops and other forms of abuse. Aid workers call them the "lost generation" and warn that unless they return to the classroom, Syria will lack educated people to help rebuild the country when the war eventually ends.

Tim Whewell meets children as young as nine employed up to 14 hours a day in textile sweatshops - and also a Syrian teacher who has helped rescue some of them from sweatshops by opening a special school for refugee children in Istanbul. Increasing educational opportunities for Syrians in Turkey may persuade some of them to give up their ambition of migrating to Europe but huge investment will be needed.

(Photo: Shaza Barakat and pupils)

The European Union is at a critical moment in its history, with Britain preparing to vote on whether to leave. In the third of a three-part series, the BBC’s Europe correspondent Chris Morris examines the multiple crises facing the EU. The economic crisis in the Eurozone is still not solved and an influx of refugees and migrants is threatening the future of Europe’s open internal borders. On top of this now comes the possibility of ‘Brexit’. Chris speaks to politicians and people across Europe and asks whether the EU will survive.

(Photo: Families gather at the barbed wire fence at the Greek-Macedonia border 2016. Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The European Union is at critical moment in its history, with Britain preparing to vote on whether to leave. In the second of a three-part series, the BBC’s former Europe Correspondent Allan Little tells the story of how a club that started with just six members opened its doors until the six became 28. We hear how the European Union helped countries to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy – from Spain and Portugal in the South to Poland and Lithuania in the East. The sacred goal of the European Union’s founding fathers was “ever closer union”, but as it has expanded to welcome countries with very different values and histories, is that goal still desirable or even possible?

Some of the interviews for this series were recorded ten years ago.

(Photo: Flags of the European Union member states stand inside the Council of the EU's Lex building. Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The European Union emerged in the 1950s from a vision of a bright future for a war-ravaged continent – free from conflict, with nations living in harmony, their citizens free to trade and travel without restriction. In the first programme of a three-part series, former BBC Europe correspondent Allan Little hears first-hand from the negotiators who drew up the project’s founding document, the Treaty of Rome, with its key goal of an “ever-closer union”.

The interviews for this series were recorded ten years ago and many of the interviewees have since died.

(Photo: Foreign Ministers of France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy signing two treaties establishing the European Common Market and the atomic energy community at Campidoglio, Rome, 25 March1957. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)