Fleeing conflict, facing barriers: the role of European civil society in the fight for migrants’ rights
By Anne Van Lancker (President of SOLIDAR) and Julie Martinaud (SOLIDAR Policy Officer for migration and inclusion)
This article was originally written in English, but published in Spanish in the Autumn 2024 edition of Tiempo de Paz, an investigative and analytical quarterly publication funded in 1984 by SOLIDAR member Movimiento Por La Paz – MPDL. Click here to access the Spanish version for free and here to subscribe to Tiempo de Paz.
Fleeing conflict, facing barriers: the role of European civil society in the fight for migrants’ rights
Migration has been a common feature throughout the history of humankind. People migrate for different reasons related to finding better opportunities and improving the lives of their families. Today flows are increasing globally, but the share of migrants in the global population has increased only slightly, from 2.87 to 3.6 percent. Worldwide more than one in six people is affected by armed conflict. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s offensive on the Gaza strip, political instability in West-Africa, Eritrea and Sudan and other conflicts around the globe are forcing people to flee their countries. Climate change and climate disasters may cause large numbers of people to move, even if this is hard to quantify. Global protection needs are higher than ever. In 2023, applications for international protection in the EU and Norway surpassed one million for the first time since 2016. Still, most migration takes place within the same country or between countries from the Global South, where low- and middle-income countries are hosting 75 percent of the worlds’ refugees.
[1] https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/
Fortress Europe: polarisation, rising barriers and deterioration of migrants’ rights
Migration should always come with rights. Yet, in Europe, it is currently one of the main political battlefields, and one that is dominated by the narratives of the (far) right. Migration to Europe is restricted and often criminalised. This negative discourse is often considered to be grounded in the assumption that migrants are a threat to host countries’ culture and social systems. Several countries in Europe have developed containment policies that aim to stop refugees from fleeing and entering their territory. They started building or reinforcing their external border infrastructure, implemented temporary internal border controls. Many countries are seeking to shift asylum application outside of their territory and the EU is concluding controversial and untransparent deals with third countries, without guarantees of respect for human rights or guarantees of access to fair procedures and reception conditions. In 2023 more than 300.000 collective expulsions (‘pushbacks’, illegal under both international and EU law) were organised. Currently most European funds are spent on the securitization and militarization of its borders, rather than investing in the people who live in and come to Europe. When faced with the challenge of receiving millions of people fleeing Ukraine, however, we saw how much Europe can do when it wants to, and how strong we are when we focus on welcoming and integrating people. It should serve as an inspiration for migration policy and for reorient the ongoing discussions and negotiations for a shared European approach on migration and asylum.
This is where civil society action plays a crucial role. Defending the rights of people on the move and fleeing their countries is strongly embedded in the DNA of civil society organisations (CSOs). Their actions to empower citizens individually and collectively at local, national and international levels, are more than ever needed, now that these rights are strongly under pressure. They are key actors in promoting social inclusion and cohesion as vital part of our democratic fabric. SOLIDAR and its over 50 member organisations based in 26 countries, are working to advance social justice. One aspect of our vision for social justice is a governance of migration based on the respect of fundamental rights and solidarity. SOLIDAR’s Secretariat acts as a bridge between the national/local levels, where our members work to provide support to and advance the rights of migrant people, and the European level where policies about these people and their funding are decided.
We see three important role progressive civil society organisations are fulfilling with regard to migration and asylum: to advocate and build alliances for migration, asylum and integration policies that uphold fundamental rights and solidarity, to mobilise and raise the awareness of the general public on the realities experienced by migrants, including refugees, and finally also often to provide essential services to these groups.
Practice solidarity: building alliances for policies and practices that advance migrants’ rights
SOLIDAR strongly opposes policies that are aimed at building ever higher walls, which externalize the management of EU borders to authoritarian states, which refuse to offer humanitarian relief to the many people who risk their life at sea or on land. Equally we reject the partisan approach linked to xenophobic and racist rhetoric that falsely blames migrants and migration for societal ills that are a result of the dismantling of our welfare states and our dysfunctional economies. This is why we strongly focus on advocacy, to influence policy makers in defending human rights and human dignity for migrants and refugees. To be successful, we are building strong alliances with organisations that share our values and vision.
In its work to defend the fundamental rights of refugees and other migrants, European civil society has had to tackle the repeated attempts to enshrine an erosion of the right to asylum into EU law, first with a series of 2016 reforms blocked in 2018, and more recently with the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, proposed in 2020 and eventually adopted in April 2024.
With the EU Pact, the European Commission proposed no less than an institutionalisation of the most appalling practices that have been ongoing illegally for years in certain Member States, notably de facto detention, and second-rate asylum procedures at the borders. On the other hand, the rules for State allocation of responsibility for asylum-seekers, in dire need of reform, remain unchanged. Civil society provided first-hand analyses and testimonies, documented violations of fundamental rights taking place on the ground and gaps in the current implementation of the asylum acquis, in attempts to safeguard high standards in reception and procedural guarantees, for instance by demanding exemption for families and children from border procedures and the de facto detention they entail. This went along with trying to improve the solidarity mechanism foreseen, what could have been one of the few positive advances from the Pact but ended up a very watered-down version of what could have been, with relocation targets far below the actual needs and the problematic possibility for States to perform ‘solidarity’ by funding dubious projects.
In hostile contexts like the migration policy space, working in coalitions and speaking with one voice in strategic moments is key. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), with its 126 members in 40 countries, constitutes one of the leading alliances promoting the rights of refugees in Europe and in Europe’s external policies. ECRE has been on the forefront of the advocacy efforts towards a more humane Pact. Other specialised networks have been active in EU Pact advocacy, such as the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) advancing the rights of undocumented migrants, EuroMed Rights promoting human rights and democracy across the two shores of the Mediterranean, or the SOLIDAR network bringing together CSOs and Trade Unions fighting for social justice. Other groups meet regularly to exchange information and plan joint advocacy, such as the European Platform for Asylum and Migration (EPAM) advocacy group.
At national level, the same CSOs coalitions exist to pool resources and make the most of the power of numbers for impactful advocacy. Such is the case with the Tavola Asilo e Immigrazione in Italy or the Granica Group in Poland. In a more ad hoc setting, a group of 26 German organisations, as well as German chapters of international organisations, contributed together with their priorities and recommendations for the implementation of the EU Pact on Migration in Germany. In Spain, the government put in place a dedicated forum for consultation, information and advice to promote the participation and integration of migrants in the Spanish society, Foro Inmigración.
Many of these organisations, and others, as well as members of academia, volunteers and concerned citizens participated in an organised gathering in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, on the day of the final parliamentary vote on the EU Pact to demand its rejection.
At SOLIDAR, we believe in looking at the glass half full. Some of the demands of civil society and Trade Unions for a meaningful right to change employer for migrant workers were taken onboard in the recast of the Single-Permit Directive. Under the revised text, a person’s work and residence permit will no longer be tied to a particular employer: they will be able to change employers without having to re-apply for a permit and risk losing their residency right. This will help reduce migrant workers’ dependency to a particular job, which enables situations of labour exploitation and impedes professional development, as is illustrated in a research supported by CSOs and Trade-Unions.
Most organisations working with refugees expanded their capacity to provide for the over 4 million people displaced from Ukraine living in the EU. This was matched at the level of policy influencing as well. PICUM, for instance, has mapped the difficulties for undocumented people and stateless people fleeing the war, to access protection in the EU. ECRE has analysed various options for transitioning out of the Temporary Protection Regime, temporary in nature. Despite cases of discrimination and gaps in implementation of temporary protection, the European policy response to displacement from Ukraine has been strikingly positive. CSOs have had at heart not only to highlight the obvious double-standards for people displaced from different countries at war, but also to use the Ukrainian example to showcase what is possible with political will, with numbers of refugees even higher than at the peak of the 2015-2016 “refugee crisis”.
Shifting the narrative: talking to the public and promoting diversity
To be able to influence policies, civil society organisations are strongly investing in winning public support and influencing the public debate. Changing the narrative on migration is one of the battlefields European civil society is active in, at the intersection of politics with other social sciences like communication or psychology. It is a well-established fact in the sphere of CSOs that myth-busting, addressing fear and waving figures alone do not work to build solidarity for migrant causes and in fine support for rights-based migration policies. Without completely dropping the fact-checking, communication experts and advocacy groups make the case for more values-based approaches to communicating on migration.
The European Parliament elections of June 2024 provided a plethora of examples of campaigns destined to convince European voters to go out and cast a vote, many of them jumping on the opportunity to inform and convey messages about migration, asylum and inclusion. With different target audiences and messaging, most of them focused on appealing to common values. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles built a social media campaign, ‘EU is U’ comprising short video clips and a song. The video clips show various people living in Europe, explaining why they think it is important to vote in the European elections. The displayed spontaneity of the speeches allows the viewers to connect with the messages, which indirectly address some of the common questions a European voter would wonder about on migration, asylum and inclusion.
The approach of Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen (Flemish Refugee Council) or the Dutch Council for Refugees is to talk to the ‘people in the middle’, also called silent or moveable middle. This middle group would be disinterested from the topic, falling somewhere in-between the groups already won over to the cause or likely to be and the die-hard unsalvageable opponents. Affective polarisation around migration is getting in the way of an open public debate. Academic research showed that for Flanders, 29% of the population explicitly shows support for migrants and refugees, and 20% is strongly opposed. 17% of people are worried, 18% are sceptical and 16% are moderately in favour of welcoming migrants and refugees. These 51% in this moveable middle could be swayed by appealing to their humanity (with stories of hardships) or by showcasing migrants’ contribution to their host societies. That is what the campaign called ‘Other Talk’ is trying to achieve through social media.
SOLIDAR members at national level also organise open events with a socio-cultural dimension to dialogue on migration issues, with the goal to attract a non-specialised audience and get out of the traditional echo chamber. Such is the case of the Sabir Festival, organised yearly in Italy by organisations Arci, CGIL, ACLI and Caritas Italiana. Art is a good entry point into many political topics and images are worth a thousand words. Movimiento Por la Paz – MPDL knows this: it organises yearly Cine por la Paz (Cinema for Peace), a series of free open screenings followed by a debate. In 2022, one of the films was Cartas Mojadas, a piece documenting NGO rescue ship Open Arms in their mission to save people in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe and following exiled people’s demise in the streets of Paris.
Working with refugees, asylum-seekers and other migrants towards inclusion
In many countries, CSOs play an important role in refugee and other migrants’ inclusion and access to rights in the host society. They carry out valuable work assisting or in some cases even substituting for governments by providing guidance and support in integration processes. In many countries, CSOs run a wide range of reception and inclusion activities. They provide accommodation, information about rights and obligations in the host country, interpretation, legal and social counselling, language courses, cultural guidance, job search assistance. CSOs help migrants gain access to education, training and employment, and they can challenge discrimination in the education sector, labour market and society as a whole.
In some countries, CSOs are formal partners of the state and official stakeholders in the introduction and integration programmes for newcomers. They step in at the request of governments who rely on their knowledge and capacities to provide quality services. In other countries, the relations between CSOs and state authorities are challenging and there are strong issues of mutual trust. Often civil society organisations step in the gaps that are left by hesitant or retreating public authorities. Some CSOs feel that their services are used by the state to fill urgent gaps, for instance providing language courses and interpreting services, but their work is not recognised, and they do not receive the necessary support. These were also the main findings in an EESC study on the role of civil society organisations in the integration of migrants and refugees.
A few examples including from SOLIDAR member organisations to illustrate this role. In Portugal, Diásporas, Espaço Migrante works with the city hall of Cascais that provides them with a space to provide guidance on bureaucratic matters such as documentation, residence permits, and access to public services like education, healthcare, housing, employment, and other social rights. Diásporas also refers individuals to social services and support networks for migrants. In contrast to this example of collaboration, Vluchtelingenwerk in Flanders offers comparable support through their “Starting Point” outreach services but without subsidies or official support, filling in a gap of essential services that are not provided by public authorities.
In Germany, AWO Bundesverband offers free counselling for adult immigrants, aimed at repatriates and foreigners during the first three years of their stay in Germany, with the goal of facilitating their integration. It involves exploratory discussion, and individual social and skills analysis on issues relating to language support, dealing with administration, financial issues, professional matters, etc. It is available in German, English, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Kurdish.
In Serbia, Initiative for Development and Cooperation offers reintegration support for returnees (Serbians citizens who received a negative decision on their asylum claim in Europe, mainly Germany and Austria). Thanks to funding from German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, IDC implements trainings for entrepreneurial skills and business-building, active inclusion measures, for instance.
Movimiento Por la Paz – MPDL has an international protection programme for protection seekers and beneficiaries of international protection in Spain. MPDL runs ten centres across the country, with a total capacity of almost 900, implementing a programme in two phases. First, the reception phase aims at covering the basic needs of beneficiaries. Then, for those who receive international protection, a second phase is launched, that of autonomisation to transition out of reception centres and into society. MPDL also manages emergency shelters for migrant women. In Belgium, Vluchtelingenwerk and CIRE (Centre d’Initiation pour RÉfugiés politiques, the sister organisation of Vluchtelingenwerk in Wallonia) for a long time have been in charge of the management of small local reception facilities in normal houses in neighbourhoods, a model of reception that was qualitatively better, provided more opportunities for inclusion in the community and was even cheaper than the large reception centres. But the official mandate was stopped by the government because of explicit political choices to host refugees in centres remote from the public.
Throughout Europe, CSOs are providing services to refugees and migrants because they have the necessary contacts to reach out to this and the knowledge and skills to provide quality services.
Advocating for a strong CSOs role in the future
Civil society plays a prominent role in addressing our multiple societal challenges. We protect and promote fundamental rights, provide essential services that enable people and societies to be more resilient and more inclusive, and connect people – especially marginalised or underrepresented groups – with policymakers. But we need an enabling space and dedicated tools and resources to do this, whereas the reality on the ground is that civil society actors are facing an ever-expanding list of challenges.
For this reason, together with Social Platform, Civil Society Europe has launched a campaign for strengthening civil dialogue and civic space across the EU through better recognition, involvement, and resourcing of civil society, including for organisations working with refugees and other migrants. We call on the EU institutions to take concrete steps to create an empowering environment for civil society during the next five years, starting from the development of a European Civil Society Strategy and of a Civil Dialogue Agreement. Similar guarantees should be taken in Member States to provide a civil space and ensure participation of CSOs in policymaking.
