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‘The world’s deadliest frontier’

The callousness of the EU border regime
by
April 2021, no. 430

Where the Water Ends: Seeking refuge in fortress Europe by Zoe Holman

Melbourne University Press, $29.99 pb, 319 pp

‘The world’s deadliest frontier’

The callousness of the EU border regime
by
April 2021, no. 430

Facing the ‘global refugee crisis’, politicians in Europe and Australia claim they are protecting their countries from the arrival of untold multitudes. Yet the ‘crisis’ is not global but highly specific. In 2019, seventy-six per cent of refugees came from just three countries (Congo, Myanmar, and Ukraine), while eighty-six per cent of refugees are hosted in a handful of countries in what is known as the Global South (especially Turkey, Jordan, Columbia, and Lebanon). Despite the significant contribution of Germany to hosting refugees, only ten per cent of the global refugee population live in Europe, comprising 0.6 per cent of the continent’s total population. There are 2,600,000 refugees in Europe today, compared with 11,000,000 at the end of World War II. The European Union’s challenges can scarcely be said to be at ‘crisis’ levels.

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