Category: Uncategorized (Page 8 of 14)

Germany’s left-wing party Die Linke secured the most votes in Berlin’s state election on Sunday, September 20, with party leader Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, poised to become Berlin’s next mayor. As the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) prevailed in other parts of the country, some see Eralp’s victory in Germany’s most multicultural city as a rebuke to the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies dominating German politics. But voters are divided as to whether Eralp’s candidacy portends real change.

Eralp’s platform highlighted affordability and alleviating Berlin’s housing crisis, as well as social justice and standing up to the rising right. Die Linke won an unprecedented 25.7% of the vote in Berlin. The AfD finished a distant third, but put up a stronger showing than it has in past races, edging out the Social Democrats.

Eralp has drawn comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City who is lauded for his left-wing populism and charismatic style. But Melina, a young voter and pro-Palestinian activist in Berlin who asked to be referred to by her first name only, was skeptical about this analogy. 

“Erap was trying to recreate Mamdani’s aura, which I didn’t think was authentic. She’s not that radical, in my opinion,” Melina said. She explained that she has qualms about Eralp’s reluctance to take a stronger stand opposing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “I can’t say that things are going to change, especially when it comes to Palestinian life in Berlin.”

Others were more optimistic about how Eralp’s background as a child of refugees may influence her governance. Julia Hack, a student from Frankfurt who described being highly engaged in politics as a teenager, praised the historic nature of Eralp’s triumph. 

“She is the first elected mayor with a migrant background,” Hack said. “That fits what you want from a Berlin mayor, because Berlin is such a diverse city.”

However, Jan-Werner Müller, a German political philosopher and Professor of Politics at Princeton University, cautioned against exaggerating the novelty of Eralp’s victory. He called the “German Mamdani” narrative “facile,” pointing out that other prominent figures in German politics hail from a Turkish background, and Eralp is not the first leftist or female mayor of a major German city.

Still, Müller said, Eralp’s win “deservedly gets attention.” He added that she will now face pressure to deliver on the ambitious housing and expropriation promises that helped propel her to victory.

Hack expressed the view that Eralp’s identity enhances her receptivity to the needs of her constituency. “With her migration background, she is closer to the average Berliner,” she said.

Müller speculated that beyond Eralp’s identity, Die Linke’s welcoming approach to migration contributed to their ascendance in Berlin. He argued that center-right and center-left parties across Europe have begun “copying elements of far-right rhetoric” on migration. “I think it’s understandable that people might want an uncompromising message in this regard,” he said.

Juli Janitz, a German student studying in the U.S., also echoed the belief that Die Linke’s impressive performance may be partially attributable to the party’s status as a counterpoint to the anti-immigrant hostility espoused by its rivals. The AfD “creates this fear of Germany being overrun by immigrants,” Janitz said.

Noting the significance of the decline in support for the center-left Greens, Müller observed that the Greens’ willingness to work with the Christian Democrats, who are “increasingly soft on the far right….can look like they’re legitimating [far-right migration policies].” For many voters, Die Linke represented the only option prepared to unequivocally defend immigrants.

“I think living in a diverse city makes people more tolerant and open-minded,” Melina reflected, when asked about why Berlin’s voting patterns on migration might diverge from those of other parts of the country. “But Berlin is also not Germany. Berlin is an exception.”

For Veronika’s relatives in Ukraine, leaving the country has gone from something they had decided to do in the past to a plan with a deadline.

The change follows a shift in the pattern of Russian attacks on Kyiv from nighttime to round-the-clock bombardment of targets. In a September 4 report, the Associated Press described how Russian drone and missile attacks, which for much of the war had come mainly at night, were increasingly occurring during the day as well. As Samya Kullab of the Associated Press writes, “[the air raids have] interrupted commutes, shopping trips and children’s school, intruded on life’s biggest moments.”

Her relatives have considered leaving before, said Veronika, an alumni of Princeton University from Kyiv, Ukraine who asked to be identified only by her first name. But in recent weeks, as Russian daytime strikes began, many families around them have also left, according to Veronika.

“They have decided to leave before, but this is the time they sound the most earnest to leave,” Veronika said. When asked where they might go, Veronika said her extended family has not decided. They are considering joining her family in the United States or moving to Spain. They now plan to leave within the month, she said.

About 4.41 million people had returned to their places of residence after being displaced by the war as of December 2025, including about 1.1 million who returned from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration. The IOM also reported that nearly 4 million people remained internally displaced within Ukraine.

For Ukrainians who have remained in the country through more than four years of war, the attacks come as another winter approaches. “Combined with the cold winter around the corner, it no longer makes sense to stay. Finding basic needs like water will be an issue once more,” Veronika notes.

Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History and Director of the Program in Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies at Princeton University whose research focuses on the Russian Empire and its prior satellite states including Ukraine, said the winter is particularly difficult because Russia’s targeted attacks on infrastructure leave residents without electricity and heating.

Pravilova remarks that people she hears from in Kyiv describe repeatedly responding to air-raid alerts, “So it’s like constantly, all day, drones and missile attacks.”

Yet, many Ukrainians have adapted to the conditions, she said, including by buying generators and changing their routines around power outages and air raids. “The resilience of the population is just remarkable,” Pravilova said.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 5.9 million Ukrainians were refugees abroad at the end of 2025. UNHCR further emphasized that persistent airstrikes, damaged housing, and attacks on essential infrastructure continue to hinder sustainable returns to Ukraine by refugees.

For Veronika’s relatives, these challenges are weighed against fleeing. “My relatives plan to flee, but it is so hard for them to leave [their country] and their livelihoods, that is why they have stayed so long,” Veronika said.

I was impressed and appalled by Azmat Khan’s investigation into the U.S.’s devastating airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. I was particularly struck by how Khan was able to establish a pattern of “confirmation bias” in which civilians were consistently presumed to be combatants. Rather than a series of incidental errors, the killings of civilians were an inherent feature of a system in which all ethical considerations were subordinated to the goal of obliterating ISIS targets. While reading, I wondered whether the astonishing civilian death toll was a product of Pentagon incompetence, or merely a callous disregard for human life. The stagnation of the accountability process made me inclined to believe the latter; that no disciplinary action was taken in nine out of ten cases of failed strikes and only a quarter garnered further review suggests that the Pentagon views civilians as disposable. I was also curious as to how much of the misidentification of civilians as combatants can be attributed to racism, and whether myths and stereotypes about Arabs are being perpetuated at the highest levels of the military, leading to the devaluation of human life. 

I appreciated how Khan drew attention to the replacement of boots-on-the-ground warfare with airstrikes directed by controllers sitting at computers far away. I think the remoteness of airstrikes likely contributes to their inhumanity, as it is harder to conceptualize the impact of violence on real people when you are divorced from their physical presence. The cold, clinical language in the military chat logs that Khan reproduced revealed the dehumanization of civilians in strike zones, reflecting the gamification of violence. The rise of autonomous weapons seems like an even more dystopian extension of this trend. The Pentagon’s lack of transparency about the civilian toll of its strikes and failure to make condolence payments to victims was horrifying but unsurprising. Drawing any attention to this devastation would lay bare, as Khan’s reporting does, the contradiction between the soft power image the U.S. seeks to project of itself as a bastion of liberal democratic values and humanitarianism, and the destructive effect of U.S. intervention on the rest of the globe. ISIS’s exploitation of the strikes for propaganda purposes demonstrates how they undercut the U.S.’s diplomatic goals, calling into question whether the Pentagon was more motivated by the expansion of American empire than the defeat of ISIS alone.

I also thought Khan did a fantastic job explaining the methodology of her investigation and why it matters. She spelled this out particularly well in the nut graf, writing that “the Times did what military officials admit they have not done”: the piece epitomizes how journalists should serve as democratic watchdogs. Khan also preemptively shuts down potential skepticism of her damning findings by clearly delineating her methodology – she went to the strike sites, looked for eyewitnesses, did not give advance notice of her visits, and more to prevent bias from tainting the information she received. Journalism shouldn’t have to justify itself, but in an era of the erosion of trust in mainstream media, reporters can enhance their own credibility by reaffirming why their function is vital.

Azmat Khan’s two-part article reveals the need for independent investigative mechanisms in wartime. The military has little to no incentive to conduct thorough investigations of their own misconduct, nor publicize their wrongdoing, as this could invite public scrutiny, fuel foreign propaganda, and slow the progress to reaching military aims. And it’s clear that the U.S. military has no interest in drawing attention to its own faulty methods; they only recommended full investigations in twelve percent of credible cases. Especially concerning are the anecdotes about the blatant refusal of some officials to accept or document civilian harm (“tell the cameras to look somewhere else”). Khan’s reporting reveals that the military cannot be trusted to hold itself to account. Journalists, NGOs, and UN bodies must do the evidence collection and analysis, so that war crimes can eventually be prosecuted, victims’ families can receive explanations and restitution, and failures can become lessons learned.

Then there is the harder truth which comes to light in these articles: just because there were civilian casualties does not necessarily mean a violation of the law of armed conflict occurred. As Khan writes, the law requires two principles in an attack: 1) the military must take precautions to avoid the loss of civilian life and infrastructure and 2) the military must ensure that innocent deaths are proportional to the military advantage gained. But these requirements are all too vague. In practice, as Khan explains, what this means is that “The expected civilian toll was proportional if the officer making that determination reasonably believed it to be so, and if it did not exceed a ‘noncombatant cutoff value.’” It’s not that the military is always acting with impunity; it may be that the law is actually too permissive of civilian death, so long as it is not ambiguously “disproportionate.” This emphasis on subjectivity resonates with simulations I participated in for my humanitarian law class, taught by Danish veterans. We would do “exercises” wherein we roleplayed military commanders and had to decide whether or not to greenlight certain strikes. Especially in urban warfare, there was always the threat that civilians would be “collateral,” so we would weigh how important the military objective was against the possibility of the destruction of innocent life. It was morally miserable, even as a classroom exercise with no real consequences. I was left with the question of whether the law should be stricter/more prescriptive about what type of destruction is legal, or if subjective judgment will always be the basis of military decision-making for reasons of pragmatism. 

As several writers pointed out, the pause on the admission program for Afghan refugees is no doubt a result of the rise of the AfD party and an uptick in xenophobia. It is interesting, then, that Germany pays for some refugees’ room, food, and medical care in Pakistan. How do they garner support for this spending? And how does it compare to the cost of granting more refugees asylum, which is, as some sources voiced, a “matter of life and death”?

by Devon Williams

Azmat Khan’s New York Times series shocked me with how flippantly America seemed to measure foreign lives. The number of civilians killed by avoidable airstrikes, the way the ‘best’ technology could be so extremely wrong, and how little officials seemed to care about the cost of their mistakes showed another side of American militarism than what is broadcast to the general population. After reviewing thousands of casualty assessments and seeing a “pattern of impunity” rather than isolated mistakes, Khan emphasized that these losses are more than a simple discrepancy or even negligence. This military is capable of taking responsibility for this harm yet intentionally avoids it, instead using the excuse of video limits or technological errors that cannot be disputed yet are still indirectly the fault of operatives. The same branches that committed these grave mistakes are the same ones who investigate it, and it is no surprise that they don’t want to be the ones held accountable.

The ideas of “transient” civilians and heat maps of the traffic of public areas struck me because surveillance itself usually still identifies innocents like women and children, yet the people operating the machines still accept the strikes. The fact that people are moving and ‘could’ get out of the way or there ‘may not’ be as many people as their could be within a space is enough plausible deniability for the US to dismiss the lives likely to be extinguished, and even when these decisions are challenged, the military stands by their flawed techniques.

Technological obscurity is continuously employed as a scapegoat, as children are called “unknown heavy objects” within rubble or in buildings, cars entire colors are mismatched, or men on motorcycles are seen as possible attach formations all because of an easy moral escape and intentional confirmation bias. Even when external analyses reveal extremely high death toles like the 120 civilians following the Tokhar strike, the existing policies and practices are seen as acceptable for continued operations. Where is the line where countless innocent deaths are acceptable for the possibility of striking one or two select targets? The obscurity and instability of technology and decision-making before a strike  can justify action due to the possibility of harm while also acting as a system to take the fall when that inference is wrong or miscalculated. It seems like there is no way that the operatives themselves are ever held accountable for their actions or actually accept that they are the ones to take the blame.

This led me to consider how institutional responsibility continues after conflict is over or when mistakes are retroactively recognized by internal or external bodies; even the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a ‘mistake’ to some, with Abdul Wahid Wafa calling it “hasty” and “irresponsible” when it jeopardized careers and institutions built alongside American presence and protection. Despite America being the institution to cause much of the unnecessary harm aforementioned, the shadow of retaliation and strength still deterred harm for many within the country. Germany’s suspension of the programs accepting Afghans into the country was parallel in its haste and self-interest, leaving people stranded in Pakistan seeking their deportation (Reuters) or at risk of being sent back to the country that was already violent enough to force them to escape, with EuroNews reporting that “Afghanistan is not safe” even when Europeans want it to be for deportation. The countries and institutions that cause this harm both directly and indirectly still never seem to feel like they have blood on their hands, and through technological errors, miscalculations, or straight-up refusal of wrongdoing it doesn’t seem like anything can force them to recognize their role as the aggressor in addition to the self-proclaimed ‘protector.’

The Crisis of Going on Record at the Prince

by Devon Williams

President Donald Trump announced on September 18 that he would bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from reporting within the White House, accusing them of reporting “fiction and lies,” according to Reuters. The outlets sued three days later, and their credentials were temporarily restored by court order on September 24 while the case continues.

The White House is not the only American entity rejecting the media as biased and villainous coverage. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 28% of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media. At Princeton, the Daily Princetonian says this hesitation forms less along partisan lines and more around fear of national visibility, accuracy, and source treatment. 

“A lot of people were trepidatious about talking to the Prince because historically, The Daily Princetonian has had issues with naming sources and … not properly attributing quotes,” said Luke Grippo, head News editor of the Daily Princetonian. 

In the past two years, Grippo remembers sources requesting anonymity or refusing interviews because of previous negative experiences with the quality of the Prince reporting under different leadership.

The Municipality of Princeton’s government shared these same concerns two years ago with misattributions, and the Princeton University Administration was similarly tentative with communication on hot-button issues.

“One of [former editor-in-chief Miriam Waldvogel]’s priorities was working to change that stigma around The Daily Princetonian … bringing a more rigorous editing process, making sure that we were accurate and checking everything,” he continued. He states that this helped increase trust in the paper for all members of the Princeton community.

International students are uniquely tentative to have contact with the Prince. The sense of national visibility and public identification could put their safety and stability at risk.

“International students were worried about visa concerns if they were named in an article,” said Grippo.

Grippo says the current board has become more willing to grant anonymity as identification increasingly puts students at risk.

Yet Oliver Wu, assistant News editor, doesn’t “believe that it’s actually created a substantive change, at least from what I can tell.” 

Wu has struggled to find students willing to comment on the country’s new restrictions on student and work visas, shortening the time students have to find a job post-grad to stay in the country or even complete degrees longer than four years.

Nationally, this distrust in media is divided by partisan bias. At Princeton, this is not as simply the case. 

Opposing voices, specifically those that are right-wing, may not be in conflict with the paper because they are not speaking at all.

Wu explained that while polling and getting comments from students on the University’s DEI policies last year, multiple conservative students “just declined to comment” because they believed their views would not be “welcome,” while all interviews he successfully conducted were from students in support of DEI policies.

“It may just be the case that … they feel their opinion is not socially accepted overall on campus,” Wu said.

Grippo noted that the Opinion section has received repeated critiques of perceived liberal bias rather than the news section itself. He says they are actively working to combat this bias.

Social media has also been a spark of partisan polarization in the media. Headlines spin truth to attract the attention of one political party or another, framing everything through the lens of key partisan issues to intentionally gain clicks from an audience they know will respond to such keywords.

“That headline might be pasted onto an Instagram post, and … maybe that’s all people will see,” said Wu. 

Wu says this atmosphere has made him more “cautious” about headlines that fairly represent all viewpoints, and Grippo says the paper now has to scrutinize if a headline is “clickbaity.” 

In a modern world primed for polarization and distrust, the Prince is working to edit more strictly, protect anonymity, and remain objective to ensure the paper is reliable for all students on campus.

For Wu, these changes will take time to solidify the community’s trust. 

“That must be done over multiple years of consistent quality coverage or fair coverage.”

The NYT investigation by Azmat Khan, is excellent, I am very unsurprised that it won a Pulitzer. Call me a dissociated international, but I hadn’t heard about the atrocities of U.S. military air strikes on civilians in Afghanistan and Syria prior to this reading. The notion that continuously reappeared throughout this thorough and intense investigation, was the lack of accountability: “mistakes do happen,” – Bill Urban, “policies, procedures, practices” are “sufficient for continued operation,” with no condolence payments to victims’ families. This lack of accountability is evident in the survivors’ testimonies, the people who want answers for why this happened and why their homes and loved ones were targeted by air forces. This kind of collateral damage certainly raises a moral dilemma. On one hand, there was a job to be done, and that was to stop ISIS, and the U.S. operations were able to do this, but at the cost of so many civilian lives. They had the facilities to make analyses and surveillance better and more equipped but they chose to spend that money on better weapons to create more damage. Why? It feels incredibly counterproductive. The reason the U.S. military were sending air strikes in the first place was to stop ISIS from committing terrorist acts and mass murders, but the U.S. military had a part to play in the killing of civilians themselves.

The “Play Time?” section of part one was both enjoyable to read, as it felt as though I was reading a fiction video game novel, but heartbreaking, because this is not fiction. I thought it was impressive how almost each air strike Khan mentioned had its own NYT article attributed to it. But Khan brings humanity and condolences to the casualties of these strikes in a way that the linked news articles don’t. Reading Part 2 in the magazine, demonstrated the immense amount of investigating, and the intricate methodology Khan used to gather her sources, her access to countries, sites, reducing misinformation from eye witnesses, it’s all so impressive. I wonder, with the amount of people she talked to, heart-wrenching stories she listened to, did she ever break down? Did she ever develop compassion fatigue? – as so many readers of migration and war time news do. How on earth did she manage to conduct so many hourly, personal interviews all on her own accord? Was it safe? Khan uses a lot of dysphemistic imagery, she says what she sees, or what the eye witnesses saw, but what impact does this have on the journalist?

In the Euro News and Politico, Reuters and Nieman stories, we learn of Germany’s abrupt decision to revoke a promise of resettlement for Afghans, and then a reversal of that decision. I am particularly struck by the quotes in these articles, “Germany must finally bring those seeking protection to safety from torture and death,” – Mareile Dedekind, and “For the moment, I don’t see any light in this darkness,” – Rubin, and “we’re safe now and can live like humans again,” – Baresh. The news and context is important, but quotes like this, I think, make the story worth reading, because we can see the actual impact a news development is having on those affected. I did my news piece on Ukrainians and their uncertainty in Germany as far-right movements rise, but it is clear that Afghans are directly impacted, with 2400, waiting to travel to Germany. It is certainly worrying for these groups as to what could happen to their protection and rights if the fair-right movement gains more traction.

The course began by introducing David Miliband’s concept of an “Age of Impunity.” At first, the concept evokes authoritarian states and military juntas exercising virtually unchecked power and committing human rights violations without meaningful consequences. Yet the NYT articles complicate that conception by showing that democracies, including the U.S., are not immune from the dynamics of impunity. This raises a broader question: how can the U.S. credibly condemn other governments for violations of international humanitarian law while engaging in conduct that can also result in civilian harm? What becomes challenging is when impunity can coexist with democratic institutions, international law, and the language of accountability itself.

The quotation that “the fog of war can lead to decisions that tragically result in civilian harm” is particularly striking (NYT). Uncertainty is inherent in warfare, but one of the central purposes of intelligence collection, targeting procedures, and precision weapons is precisely to reduce uncertainty and minimize the risk to civilians. This makes me wonder what is at the core of this rhetoric. Is “the fog of war” being used to describe an unavoidable limitation of military operations, or can it also function rhetorically to explain away miscalculations that should actually generate scrutiny and accountability? If powerful states expect other governments to exercise restraint despite uncertainty, what happens to that expectation when they invoke uncertainty to justify their own failures?

The situation involving Germany and Afghanistan problematizes political legitimacy and human rights. The German government has maintained that it does not recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, while simultaneously engaging in technical discussions with the Taliban’s de facto authorities in order to facilitate deportations. In Aug. 2026, the German government explicitly described these contacts as necessary to address removals while maintaining that recognizing the Afghan state is distinct from recognizing the Taliban as its legitimate government. However, the policy creates a difficult human rights question. UN reporting has documented ongoing human-rights violations under the Taliban and more recent UN reporting continues to monitor violations by the de facto authorities. This makes me wonder whether cooperation with the Taliban for the purpose of managing migration can remain narrowly transactional, or whether repeated cooperation gradually normalizes engagement with a regime that Germany officially does not recognize as legitimate. The EU Jun. 2026 meeting with Taliban officials over return procedures illustrates this tension at the broader European regional level.

This also raises a question about the consequences for Afghans who remain in Germany. If migration policy becomes increasingly centered on deterrence and deportation, what happens to Afghan refugees who are legally permitted to stay, but must continue building their lives amid growing political pressure over migration? Germany’s debate over migration has become increasingly contentious, with the AfD advocating significantly tougher migration policies. The push for regulating the continuing refugee flow has taken center stage in political candidacy and the future of Germany. A question that has stayed with me is how growing political pressure around migration interacts with Germany’s human-rights commitments and with the social integration of Afghans, alongside other migrants, who remain in the country.

Money sent home by migrants to low- and middle-income countries nearly doubled in dollar terms between 2016 and 2025, according to a new United Nations report, though the increase is smaller after accounting for inflation. 

The report, which was released on September 14 by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, found that the transfers, known as remittances, reached a value of $728.6 billion in 2025, an increase of about 94% from $375.6 billion in 2016. An inflation adjustment using the U.S. Consumer Price Index puts the increase at about 45%.

“This is a huge number, but it isn’t surprising,” wrote Samuel Huckstep, a research analyst at the Center for Global Development, in response to a request for comment. “The numbers have been gradually growing year on year: even during Covid-19 remittance flows were quite robust to the shock.”

Families receiving remittances spend that money on a variety of critical needs, from consumer goods to long-term investments, noted Gaurav Khanna, an economist at the University of California San Diego. The benefits can even spill over: A study he co-authored, published in April, found that increased earning power for migrant workers from the Philippines resulted in long-term gains in income and education for entire communities. 

“What we’re trying to argue is that if the migrants are sending the money back home, then the gains can actually be spread much more widely than just their families,” said Khanna.

These latest findings also come at a time when some leading destination countries for international migrants are tightening immigration rules and enforcement. Immigration judges in the United States, for instance, have ordered the removal of more than 440,000 people seeking asylum in President Donald Trump’s first 19 months back in office, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Germany, another popular destination for migrants, recently extended immigration controls at its land borders until March 2027. 

“In response, we have not seen a major reduction in remittance flows,” said the report’s lead author, Pedro de Vasconcelos, at a press conference, referring to restrictive migration policies. “There’s always a delay, also, that you need to take into account.” The report does not include data from 2026. 

Despite these headwinds against immigration, remittances are likely here to stay, said Patricia Fernández-Kelly, a sociologist at Princeton who studies global migration. 

“I’m pretty sure that remittances will continue to be a very important source of revenue in some of these countries,” she said.

Some researchers also say that governments can improve the economic impact of remittances through better migration policies.

“I would emphasise that countries of destination have the opportunity to foster huge positive externalities via their migration policy, and that they should proactively try to maximise those externalities,” wrote Huckstep. “Currently this isn’t even a factor, but the potential is massive.”

The landscape for Afghan asylees is changing drastically worldwide; in particular, the pieces by Reuters and Politico draw parallels between migration landscapes in the US and Germany.

Beginning in October 2022, Germany’s admission program for Afghans helped resettle those persecuted based on political activism, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Hoping to welcome more than 1,000 refugees monthly, with more than 17,000 still in the early stages of selection and stranded in bordering countries like Pakistan, it has fallen short of all expectations.

Non-Refoulement is a pillar of asylum and refugee protection in international law; it stops states from obliging a person to return to territories where they are exposed to persecution. As such, protection from forcible return applies both within a state’s territory and, most interestingly, to rejection at its borders. For the EU, a territory that functions “without internal frontiers”, this is particularly interesting: how can one restrict mobility both within the EU and on its shared external border?

Turns out there’s more than one catch.

Back in March, the European Parliament made a historic decision: any EU nation is now allowed to deport migrants to facilities settled outside the 27-nation bloc. Most recently, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece have negotiated an agreement for “return hubs”.  In June, European lawmakers voted to allow EU members to set up centres outside the EU to send rejected asylum seekers, instead of back to their home countries. While media centers on the Global North as refugee resettlers, this reminds us to look back at the Global South. Most notably, Iran and Pakistan hold the largest number of Afghan refugees, with 4.4 and 1.6 million, respectively. Reuters reports that Pakistan is intensifying efforts to forcibly return Afghans, which becomes even scarier in this context. A figure noteworthy: Pakistan and Iran pressured the return of or deported more than 280,000 Afghans only in April. For its part, the U.S. has also resorted to externalised border enforcement, suspended refugee admissions to the U.S., leaving thousands of Afghans stranded who awaited processing in Pakistan.

The Euronews piece reminds us that deportation to risk areas is prohibited under this principle, except if the person is convicted of criminal charges. This sounds reasonable, especially when followed by: “Officials said all deportees had criminal records and were required by law to leave.” But one must be careful to account for what it actually means to be convicted of “criminal charges”. In U.S. immigration law, for example, mandatory deportation, denial of reentry and ineligibility for other forms of relief are stipulated for those convicted of “aggravated felonies”. Aggravated felonies, however, are only a legal placeholder for offences Congress sees fit to label as such: they don’t have to be aggravated or classified as felonies in state and federal criminal law. Today, even failing to appear in court is an “aggravated felony.”

Increased use of surveillance technologies is also racialised and highly susceptible to bias, as Azmat Khan’s piece reminds us:

“Whoever analyzed the surveillance footage interpreted the normal activity of the household through an incriminating lens”.

In proposed plans for the EU’s shifting border control policy, biometrics and “European return orders”— a document in which member states cite reasons for the return decision of refugees— have been recently introduced, leaving those whose claims were denied perpetually singled out and marked: you are not worthy of resettlement here.