Will walls really help reduce Europe's migration crisis?

Hungary is one of several countries trying to use physical blockades to prevent migrants crossing into the EU.

|
Bernadett Szabo/Reuters
A Syrian migrant runs after crossing under a fence as she enters Hungary, at the border with Serbia, near Roszke, Thursday. Hungary made plans on Wednesday to reinforce its southern border with helicopters, mounted police and dogs, and was also considering using the army as record numbers of migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, passed through coils of razor-wire into Europe.

With Hungary just days away from completing a nearly 109-mile wall along its border with Serbia, tens of thousands of refugees have been rushing north through the Balkans before the way is closed off.

Hungary's aim is clear: to block the flow of refugees taking the increasingly popular Western Balkan Route – even if their ultimate goal is to reach the Netherlands, Germany, or Britain.

But as walls, fences, and other barriers go up to stem migration not just into Hungary, but into Europe generally, critics question their effectiveness in keeping people out.

For one thing, borders are expensive to build and maintain. But critics also argue that as one area becomes blocked off, other unprotected border areas and ports open become more vulnerable. The walls also risk pushing illegal traffickers to take advantage of refugees desperate to cross the Continent.

Hungary is just one of many European countries considering physical impediments to migration. Bulgaria has completed a 50-mile stretch of fencing on its border with Turkey to keep migrants out – just two decades after removing a wall designed to keep its citizens in. And in Calais in northern France, two razor-wire fences now encircle the Eurotunnel terminal – the result of a 7 million pound ($10.8 million) pledge by the British government to secure its border with France.

But “building a wall doesn’t deal with the demand issue, so you’re just replacing flows rather than reducing them,” says Elizabeth Collet, director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe in Brussels.

“Once the Hungarian fence is completed, people will be shifting to a different, possibly more dangerous, route in order to circumvent that, rather than deciding not to make that journey,” she says.

Already, Britain is in talks with Belgium and the Netherlands in anticipation of knock-on effects from the overwhelming number of border crossings at Calais. More illegal crossings have been reported in nearby Dunkirk on the French-Belgian border, and Zeebrugge in Belgium and the Hook of Holland also risk more illegal entries as Calais security is amped up.

Rich Clabaugh/Staff
Europe's migration crisis: The eastern Mediterranean and western Baltic routes

Britain may have reason to worry. In 2012, Greece spent 3 million euros to build a 6.5-mile, 13-ft.-high barbed wire fence on its border with Turkey. Now, much of the migration flow has shifted to the sea border. The latest figures by the UNHCR show that more than 158,000 people arrived in Greece by sea from Jan. 1 to Aug. 14 of this year, compared with under 2,000 by land.

According to Frontex, the European border management agency, migration patterns tend to change very little, but the popularity of certain routes increases when one border becomes more secure and another less so. That can put migrants in greater danger, not only from the alternative routes but from illegal trafficking rings that they may turn to for help.

“If you’re pushing people to take more convoluted and dangerous journeys to reach a certain destination, effectively traffickers can charge higher prices to facilitate that journey,” says Ms. Collet. “So it actually plays into their business model. They can say, ‘now you need our help but it’s going to cost you.’ ”

And the smugglers themselves could be dangerous, as indicated by today's discovery of at least 20 people – and possibly as many as 50 – apparently suffocated in an abandoned truck in Austria. Authorities say they believe the victims were migrants being smuggled into the EU by a trafficker who abandoned the truck.

For many refugees, one more wall is not going to stop them given a journey that has already been long and treacherous.

“These people have crossed the Mediterranean on a boat, or walked across the desert. These walls have little effect on them,” says Christian Salomé, president of the Calais-based nonprofit L’Auberge des Migrants, which works with the some 3,000 people living temporarily at “The Jungle” immigration camp. “Most are completely determined to cross, and they’ll just find a way to get around it.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Will walls really help reduce Europe's migration crisis?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0827/Will-walls-really-help-reduce-Europe-s-migration-crisis
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe