Borders

Although Malta is my birth home, having been away for nine years and coming back felt like I was rather an informed tourist with enough local knowledge, than a local myself. Like in other Mediterranean countries, stray cats are a kind of permanent feature on window sills, resting under trees and slowly crossing busy roads. […]

From Jaurès Métro station, looking down from where the trains run high above street level, you can see the line of tents stretching along the Canal Saint-Martin. This is where the tenth arrondissement meets the nineteenth, well inside the Paris péripherique ringroad, and not far from the centre. Here, camped out in the cold, more than 400 migrants are living. […]

For people held in immigration detention, life can quickly turn into despair.

Two years after some European governments decided to shut their borders in the face of people fleeing war and persecution, over sixty thousand are still stuck in Greece. The country, which is dealing with a severe economic crisis, has little to offer, therefore grassroots initiatives and small organizations come with help.

A radical change is taking place. Cities around Europe – through platforms, movements and international networks – are creating paths for citizens to participate in and influence politics directly.

A number of cities and municipalities all over Europe have already declared their readiness to welcome refugees, including cities in Central Europe, be it for demographic or other reasons. This could mark a turning point and the deepening decentralisation of the EU, avoiding a tendency towards centralisation, as well as renationalisation.

What are the roles of the art institutions in contemporary societies? What are their abilities to react and intervene in the so-called „refugee crisis”? Watch the video from the Art Real debate held in Gothenburg.

*This is the final part of a series, available to read here. Eliniko has become a symbol of the many camps around the periphery of the Greek capital. It was built in the area of the former airport´s arrival hall and the several sports grounds that hosted the 2004 Olympic Games. The area has been […]

It is a sunny Saturday morning in October and the clock in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol shows almost half past eleven. I’m meeting Malik a bit further up, in the Lavapiés neighbourhood. These days, Lavapiés is buzzing with young people playing African music, dancing flamenco in the street and drinking cheap beer. Traditionally, though, it […]

As well as being a threat to our coexistence, the Catalan conflict also provides an opportunity to redraw our territorial and socio-political organisation to face the challenges of the 21st century. Thus I present nine proposals that we should be thinking beyond the state and independence, and instead get behind interdependence and diversity: 1. Any […]