Knocking louder on Europe’s door

In October 2013 I wrote a blog post, "Knocking on Europe’s Door", following the tragic loss of over 300 migrants’ lives off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Sadly, Lampedusa has proven not to be an isolated tragedy.

Only a few weeks ago the photograph of a dead Syrian boy on a Turkish beach captured the world media’s attention, dispelling any ‘compassion fatigue’ that the European public opinion might have experienced so far.

While the watershed moment in public opinion caused by the powerful photograph of a dead child is welcome, I don’t think that the European Union can function if it is run according to the shifting moods of the national electorates. This is exactly what has happened so far with regards to the immigration debate which not only has conflated crucial legal distinctions between a migrant, a refugee and an asylum seeker, but also has predominantly reflected the populist views of the mob over those of the democratic crowd.

Without delving into the root causes of what is only the latest migration/refugee crisis in humanity’s history, one might note that literature has often provided useful insights on such issues – see, for example, Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Soumission or Le Camp des Saints, a 1973 French apocalyptic novel by Jean Raspail depicting a not too distant future when mass migration leads to the destruction of Western civilisation and values. In 1994 The Atlantic Monthly dedicated its cover story “Must it be the Rest against the West?” to the novel and the piece is still so relevant that it might have been written yesterday.

The ‘clash of civilisations’ theory is often evoked in this context. More to the point, however, sociology professor Gurminder K Bhambra has suggested that: “If we want a different Europe in the present and the future, then we need to narrate the colonial past of its constituent countries and the implications of the colonial past in the very project of Europe itself.”

I believe that the challenge facing us can be summed up as follows: how best can we advance the migration/refugee debate from the disturbing xenophobic undertones which have characterised it so far?

The answer lies in “more Europe and more Union”, as the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently put it (not only a question of quantity but of quality, I would argue), and in the role that cultural institutions like universities, Europe’s traditional seats of knowledge, must play.

What can universities do?

It is very welcome that, perhaps belatedly, the new president of Universities UK, Dame Julia Goodfellow – the first female president since Universities UK was established in 1918 – launched the Universities for Europe campaign last July.

Also, the UK universities' commitment “to a future in the European Union” was strongly reaffirmed in her recent address to the Universities UK Annual Members' Conference, together with the repeated urge to remove international students from the UK government’s net migration target. In her conclusions, Dame Julia reminded the conference that “every day, universities are improving lives, helping the country grow, and changing the world”.

This is the time for universities to be true to such an ideal mission. They can contribute to changing the world and changing lives in many ways, one of which is by supporting projects like Article 26, whose aim is to promote access to higher education for people who have fled persecution and sought asylum in the United Kingdom.

Universities can make a difference by introducing a whole series of measures to support refugee students, as the University of Glasgow, Sussex and Aberdeen, to name only a few, have done. A non-comprehensive list of institutions in Europe and North America that have announced new initiatives aimed at supporting refugees can be found here.

In “The Syrian refugee crisis – What can universities do?” (University World News, 18 September 2015), Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach identify several ways in which universities can provide a positive response to the crisis, not least because “in the current competition for talent, these refugees are not only seen as victims and a cost factor for the local economy, but in the long run also as welcome new talent for the knowledge economy”.

And yet, according to Yannick Du Pont, the director of SPARK, a Dutch non-governmental organisation that offers higher education and entrepreneurship programmes for young people from conflict-affected societies, “many of the refugees coming into Europe are expressing frustration with the lack of higher education opportunities”.

The real game changer, according to Allan E Goodman, the president of the Institute of International Education which has managed a consortium of universities that have committed to providing scholarships to Syrian students, “would be if every college and university in America agreed to take a Syrian student”.

On a similar note, the Campaign for the Public University has posted a call to the vice-chancellors of UK universities to provide scholarships and bursaries for students and academics seeking refuge.

The call recognises that the time is right for a sector-wide response and asks that each university in the UK set up at least five scholarships and bursaries at undergraduate, postgraduate and post-doctoral levels. The problem is that there has been “little concerted joint action” on the part of the university sector about ways to respond, as Bath University Professor Rajani Naidoo recently put it.

Also, she expressed the need for universities to open up “more public engagement channels so that we can temper the demonising of refugees with calm, evidence-based argument”.

Understanding the dynamic of the crisis is exactly the scope of the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development's £1 million (US$1.5 million) ‘Urgency Grant’ which will fund eight projects across six universities: Coventry, Durham, Middlesex, Warwick, York and Queen Mary University of London.

It has been noted that the refugee crisis could deepen the student housing problem in Germany (University World News, 24 September 2015). However, help can be provided not only to refugees in Europe, but also to those still in the Middle East. In May the EU Trust Fund launched a first response programme for €40 million (US$45 million). The aim was to provide aid to 400,000 Syrian refugees and host communities in need in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, focusing on education, livelihoods and food security.

Personally, I would love to see universities, so acutely aware of the benefits of philanthropy at times of financial constraints, becoming themselves generous intellectual benefactors. Solidarity (fraternité) might have its costs, but the costs will be enormously higher in the long run for us all by the lack of it. In a globalised world our personal stories and those of our nations are interconnected, just like our destinies.

Dr Anna Notaro is senior lecturer in contemporary media theory at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, UK. Twitter: @notanna1 A shorter version of this article appeared on the University Diary blog.