For a frontier-free world

"What we call a 'migrant crisis,' is actually a crisis of global injustice caused by war, poverty, and inequality," said Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden, introducing a new briefing that draws attention to the multiple crises that are actually forcing people to relocate and calls for "free movement for everyone." 

The document explains "Framing the increased flow of people fleeing war and poverty as a 'migrant crisis' misses the point. It assumes that it is the arrival of these people, rather than the situations they are trying to escape, that is the problem." Cracking down on the migrants themselves is "not the solution," Global Justice Now declares. "Rich countries, with the help of the highly profitable security industry, have tried their best to use cruel migration controls, fences, walls and even guns to force people to accept lives of violence and destitution," the briefing says. "This is not the solution. No matter how high the walls of Fortress Europe become, the only way to solve this problem is to deal with its root causes." 

Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden added: "To demonize those making a rational choice on the part of themselves, their family and their community, obscures the truth. Migration is bringing those of us in Europe face to face with the reality of the brutal and unjust world our leaders have constructed." e Instead of "pulling up the drawbridge” he called for "free movement for everyone."

Alex Scrivener, the author of the briefing and GJN policy officer, pointed out not to do so amounts to "apartheid on a global scale." He continued, "It's unacceptable that people from rich countries are free to go almost anywhere in the world while people from the global south are denied freedom of movement, even when they are fleeing war and extreme poverty. A right that only exists for the rich it not a right at all. There's one rule for 'expat' Europeans and North Americans and another for the rest of the world."