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The Lights in the Distance
"If you have the right passport, the right amount of money or the right colour skin, Europe can seem like a land without borders. That states who once fought wars with one another now give their citizens the right to travel, trade and work where they like is part of the story modern Europe likes to tell about itself: the EU's founding myth is that it was created to ensure the horrors of the twentieth century were never repeated; freedom, tolerance, and a respect for human rights are now proclaimed as 'European values'.
But the movement of people is still tightly controlled. While internal borders have come down, in recent years we have seen the growth of a militarised frontier at Europe's edges to keep out the uninvited. In theory, 'Fortress Europe' exists to protect EU citizens from external threats. In reality, the system itself is a threat to the lives of some of the world's most desperate migrants. As the number of people displaced by conflict worldwide rises to its highest level since the Second World War, an unprecedented number of refugees suffer unnecessary hardship, abuse and even death as they try to reach a continent that presents itself as a beacon of human rights.
The political narrative is familiar, but what of the lives of those caught up in the crisis? Building on several years of reporting work for leading publications, Daniel Trilling tells the stories of the people he encountered, drawing on the relationships he has built up over the course of his work. The result is a profound and important book."
But the movement of people is still tightly controlled. While internal borders have come down, in recent years we have seen the growth of a militarised frontier at Europe's edges to keep out the uninvited. In theory, 'Fortress Europe' exists to protect EU citizens from external threats. In reality, the system itself is a threat to the lives of some of the world's most desperate migrants. As the number of people displaced by conflict worldwide rises to its highest level since the Second World War, an unprecedented number of refugees suffer unnecessary hardship, abuse and even death as they try to reach a continent that presents itself as a beacon of human rights.
The political narrative is familiar, but what of the lives of those caught up in the crisis? Building on several years of reporting work for leading publications, Daniel Trilling tells the stories of the people he encountered, drawing on the relationships he has built up over the course of his work. The result is a profound and important book."
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 25, 2018
17 people are currently reading
594 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Trilling
8 books4 followersDaniel Trilling is the Editor of New Humanist magazine and has reported extensively on refugees in Europe. His work has been published in the London Review of Books, Guardian, New York Times and others, and won a 2017 Migration Media Award. His first book, Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britian’s Far Right, was longlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 29, 2019
To be a modern European means that you have the opportunity to travel amongst the member countries with little or no identification. Quite amazing to think that this is possible when less than a century ago, we were all at War. That was the last in a series of wars that had taken place on the continent over the past millennia too. Should someone from the Netherlands wish to move to Spain to work they are perfectly entitled to do so. This has gone a long way in ensuring that the horrendous things that happen back then are never repeated and that human rights have become one of the key values of the European project.
Whilst freedom of movement is allowed within the borders, if you live outside those lines, don’t have the right passport or sadly don’t have the correct colour skin, it is much much harder to get across and move within. With various conflicts going on around the world, there are a lot of people who want to come here to make some attempt to rebuild their lives.
This displacement affects real people and in 2015 this river of people wanting to come to Europe became a flood. It is these people that Trilling wants to meet with and talk with and try to understand their predicament. To do this he sneaks into detention centres, goes to the camps and hostels with the intention of understanding why the felt the need to move from their homeland. He also hopes to understand what drove his ancestors to do a similar thing when they were displaced from Russia to Germany and then again from there to the UK.
In talking to these people he hopes to find what the differences are between, economic migrant, asylum seeker and refugee and to see if these broad definitions stand up to the reality of life. He helps people like, Jamal, Caesar and Farhan tell the stories from their perspective as well as asking the bigger questions about the way our societies treat these people, why we should we regulate their movement and if there are better ways of dealing with the whole immigration issue. Whilst this is not the most cheerful of books to read, it is an important book in lots of ways and deserves to be read by more people so they can understand the issues we all face.
Whilst freedom of movement is allowed within the borders, if you live outside those lines, don’t have the right passport or sadly don’t have the correct colour skin, it is much much harder to get across and move within. With various conflicts going on around the world, there are a lot of people who want to come here to make some attempt to rebuild their lives.
This displacement affects real people and in 2015 this river of people wanting to come to Europe became a flood. It is these people that Trilling wants to meet with and talk with and try to understand their predicament. To do this he sneaks into detention centres, goes to the camps and hostels with the intention of understanding why the felt the need to move from their homeland. He also hopes to understand what drove his ancestors to do a similar thing when they were displaced from Russia to Germany and then again from there to the UK.
In talking to these people he hopes to find what the differences are between, economic migrant, asylum seeker and refugee and to see if these broad definitions stand up to the reality of life. He helps people like, Jamal, Caesar and Farhan tell the stories from their perspective as well as asking the bigger questions about the way our societies treat these people, why we should we regulate their movement and if there are better ways of dealing with the whole immigration issue. Whilst this is not the most cheerful of books to read, it is an important book in lots of ways and deserves to be read by more people so they can understand the issues we all face.
May 6, 2020
Extremely harrowing and depressing book but mandatory reading as the gratitude I experienced reading this book was unparalleled and made me really appreciate the benefits Allah has bestowed me with and also to make the most of the opportunity and life I have been given. The details in the stories about how the ones who come out the other side have an adventure story to tell but so many just fall by the way side and die along the journey without anyone knowing and get buried in unmarked graves or wash out to sea. The description of the graves near the Evros river in Greece was heart-breaking and the unpicking of the European mask of humanity was superb and the hypocrisy displayed by Europe and liberal commentators who don't acknowledge the true underlying structural reasons as to why migrants are taking these journeys and the role of the west in the migrants home countries in keeping conditions to suit their interests and not the interests of the local populace.
The personal journeys of each refugee and family chronicled in the book, sometime in excruciating detail, offers a perspective hitherto unmatched and lays stark the challenges facing refugees, their courage and the weight behind the decisions which for obvious reasons can be deduced that they are not taken lightly. It also shows the ineptitude and cruelty of governments not only across the EU but also across the middle east where refugees are not granted any rights to work which doesn’t allow refugees to make a living and become self sustainable but also contribute to the economy and could be a rich source of growth for the countries. Arbitrary detention centres with arbitrary lengths, navigating a murky world of smuggling networks and arbitrary borders and leaving behind your whole life is what awaits refugees on their long journeys to security
This book gets you to think on the concept of the nation state and borders that divide the world today and also the parallels in history particularly for Jewish refugees when escaping the Nazis and the Russian revolution pogroms. Overall a thought provoking book that inspires one to go about and make change in the world.
The personal journeys of each refugee and family chronicled in the book, sometime in excruciating detail, offers a perspective hitherto unmatched and lays stark the challenges facing refugees, their courage and the weight behind the decisions which for obvious reasons can be deduced that they are not taken lightly. It also shows the ineptitude and cruelty of governments not only across the EU but also across the middle east where refugees are not granted any rights to work which doesn’t allow refugees to make a living and become self sustainable but also contribute to the economy and could be a rich source of growth for the countries. Arbitrary detention centres with arbitrary lengths, navigating a murky world of smuggling networks and arbitrary borders and leaving behind your whole life is what awaits refugees on their long journeys to security
This book gets you to think on the concept of the nation state and borders that divide the world today and also the parallels in history particularly for Jewish refugees when escaping the Nazis and the Russian revolution pogroms. Overall a thought provoking book that inspires one to go about and make change in the world.
April 8, 2019
Reece Jones's book 'Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move' (Verso) would be an apt companion for Daniel Trilling's 'Lights in the Distance'. Where Jones looks at the hostile nature of borders themselves and the historical frameworks that spawned them, Trilling travels and breaks bread with a shrinking fraction of the millions of victims of the border system (a relatively recent phenomenon, as Jones shows). In fact, the last breathtaking statistic I read from Human Rights Watch this year (2019) was that there are 65 million displaced people in the world today, the highest it's ever been in recorded history.
Through the stories of Jamal, Zainab, Ousmane, Ceasar (who inadvertently gave the book it's title), Fatima, Hakima, Farhan and The Ahmeds, Daniel Trilling traces the common threads of racist rejection, bureaucratic entanglement and outright violence -- not just at borders, but within their home countries, and in the countries they seek to gain passage through to places of greater safety.
Not every story is a story of hope. No one's narrative is resolved and there is no ending when the pages run out. Some of these people just want to forget the awful journeys they've been through. Others are even suspicious of journalists like Trilling, and wonder how exactly he is supposed to be helping them. Before relating Hakima's story, he acknowledges her guardedness and skepticism of a story-seeker's worth in her world:
"If there's anything useful in [a journalist's] work, it's more like fitting the piece of a shattered mirror back together, to explain how a person, or a community, has come to find itself at an impasse. As writers, we have the luxury of distance. We can step back from a situation, try to untangle a web of cause and effect that surrounds it, and retell it in a way that makes sense."
I don't know if there's much more he could have said on this. Writer's write. Trilling assembles the mass of material for our easy consumption. That's a fact as cold as a commodity in the abstract. But without writer's like him, how do we access and digest this kind of subject matter? Jamal laying low for months in bivouacs and squats in Calais, waiting for the perfect moment to hop into the wheel well of an articulated lorry that may or may not be bound for Britain -- how far removed from ordinary experience that is, even for the thousands of young men and women like him attempting such an insanely dangerous and desperate act. Someone has to cover this kind of stuff from a humanist angle, to shine a light on the human stories behind the numerical statistics in the headlines.
It's fair to question whether or not a journalist like Trilling isn't just collecting stories to make a nice narrative to satiate a supposedly concerned public that merely feels good for having read a 'real' story. But his motives seem pure, and he clearly wants to help, in fact he does. As a traveller and writer he is a rich source of information, a guide and advisor to the people whose stories he documents.
Still, Hakima's frustration of people like him does leave a bit of a hole. I've no doubt that there are more than a few so-called journalists out to grab a scoop and signal their virtue by calculatedly choosing a sensitive subject matter. Nadine Gordimer captured this sort of 'white saviour' complex in a story called 'The Ultimate Safari'. (It's interesting that 'safari' is simply the Swahili word for journey). It's about a young girl and her little brother, who lose their parents and their house to a bunch of armed rebels who take control of their village. The two are forced to flee through the dark & perilous Kruger national park to safety. When they do eventually find a refuge camp, they are reunited with their grandmother. A white journalist comes to interview them about their struggle. The grandmother offers few words. She sees her situation as hopeless. 'There is nothing,' she says. She's unwilling to open up to the camera-wielding white reporter. It's as if she's accepted that the only people with the power to change her life for the better are ignoring her.
Through the stories of Jamal, Zainab, Ousmane, Ceasar (who inadvertently gave the book it's title), Fatima, Hakima, Farhan and The Ahmeds, Daniel Trilling traces the common threads of racist rejection, bureaucratic entanglement and outright violence -- not just at borders, but within their home countries, and in the countries they seek to gain passage through to places of greater safety.
Not every story is a story of hope. No one's narrative is resolved and there is no ending when the pages run out. Some of these people just want to forget the awful journeys they've been through. Others are even suspicious of journalists like Trilling, and wonder how exactly he is supposed to be helping them. Before relating Hakima's story, he acknowledges her guardedness and skepticism of a story-seeker's worth in her world:
"If there's anything useful in [a journalist's] work, it's more like fitting the piece of a shattered mirror back together, to explain how a person, or a community, has come to find itself at an impasse. As writers, we have the luxury of distance. We can step back from a situation, try to untangle a web of cause and effect that surrounds it, and retell it in a way that makes sense."
I don't know if there's much more he could have said on this. Writer's write. Trilling assembles the mass of material for our easy consumption. That's a fact as cold as a commodity in the abstract. But without writer's like him, how do we access and digest this kind of subject matter? Jamal laying low for months in bivouacs and squats in Calais, waiting for the perfect moment to hop into the wheel well of an articulated lorry that may or may not be bound for Britain -- how far removed from ordinary experience that is, even for the thousands of young men and women like him attempting such an insanely dangerous and desperate act. Someone has to cover this kind of stuff from a humanist angle, to shine a light on the human stories behind the numerical statistics in the headlines.
It's fair to question whether or not a journalist like Trilling isn't just collecting stories to make a nice narrative to satiate a supposedly concerned public that merely feels good for having read a 'real' story. But his motives seem pure, and he clearly wants to help, in fact he does. As a traveller and writer he is a rich source of information, a guide and advisor to the people whose stories he documents.
Still, Hakima's frustration of people like him does leave a bit of a hole. I've no doubt that there are more than a few so-called journalists out to grab a scoop and signal their virtue by calculatedly choosing a sensitive subject matter. Nadine Gordimer captured this sort of 'white saviour' complex in a story called 'The Ultimate Safari'. (It's interesting that 'safari' is simply the Swahili word for journey). It's about a young girl and her little brother, who lose their parents and their house to a bunch of armed rebels who take control of their village. The two are forced to flee through the dark & perilous Kruger national park to safety. When they do eventually find a refuge camp, they are reunited with their grandmother. A white journalist comes to interview them about their struggle. The grandmother offers few words. She sees her situation as hopeless. 'There is nothing,' she says. She's unwilling to open up to the camera-wielding white reporter. It's as if she's accepted that the only people with the power to change her life for the better are ignoring her.
September 3, 2018
This is a deeply moving book where Daniel Trilling, editor of the New Humanist magazine reports on refugees in Europe. Trilling describes his many years of reporting on the refugee crisis with passion and respect.
The number of people displaced by conflict worldwide has risen to its highest level since the Second World War and trilling tells the story of these displaced people and their plight for sanctuary.
He does this through visiting camps and detention centres. He visits families and individuals to hear and tell their stories. Stories of hunger, abuse, hardship, suffering and death and also stories of hope.
He manages to maintain contact with many, as they move from country to country but some disappear and he is left not knowing their fate.
I think this is a very powerful book which everyone should read.
The number of people displaced by conflict worldwide has risen to its highest level since the Second World War and trilling tells the story of these displaced people and their plight for sanctuary.
He does this through visiting camps and detention centres. He visits families and individuals to hear and tell their stories. Stories of hunger, abuse, hardship, suffering and death and also stories of hope.
He manages to maintain contact with many, as they move from country to country but some disappear and he is left not knowing their fate.
I think this is a very powerful book which everyone should read.
December 27, 2020
The personal stories and long, arduous journeys of a number of individuals who have all struggled to make their way to Europe as refugees from different corners of the globe and via many different routes are at the heart of this book. Based on personal interviews as well as the author's journeys it gives detailed, moving, and (for those who still need their eyes opened) eye-opening insights into what lies behind the attention-grabbing headlines as well as into the dysfunctional European refugee and immigration policies doing more harm than good.
April 5, 2020
An evocative book documenting the experiences of refugees as they undertake the perilous journey to Europe. The book offers readers a glimpse into the lives of those fleeing war and persecution, while also revealing the flaws of the Dublin Regulation.
March 7, 2021
Nel suo libro Daniel Trilling racconta le storie di migranti ai margini dell’Europa. Dalla giungla di Calais all’Ucraina, passando per la Sicilia e la Grecia, l’autore fornisce uno spaccato chiaro e diretto delle esperienze di alcuni migranti - simbolo di molte altre migliaia - che hanno intrapreso un lungo percorso che li porterà alle loro mete. Tra loro, chi scappava dalle persecuzioni, chi voleva migliorare la propria situazione o quella dei propri figli, chi è stato costretto, chi ha scelto. Il percorso migratorio, contrariamente a quanto si può credere, dura anni, è spezzettato e irregolare. L’esorbitante costo, non solo economico ma anche sociale e relazionale, del viaggio è ben descritto durante tutte le pagine del libro. Sono storie toccanti, che lasciano il segno e portano a riflettere. Un libro consigliato, soprattutto da regalare a chi su queste cose non riflette mai e si fa prendere dalle solite fumisterie contro l’immigrazione o il soccorso in mare.
April 21, 2019
The stories of nine different refugees - from Sudan, Iraq, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan, plus the author’s Ukrainian grandmother - and of their efforts to make it to and in Europe, as told firsthand to Trilling.
A powerful reminder that behind the headlines, statistics and political manoeuvrings around migration and asylum-seeking lie myriad individual human beings, and a discomfiting injunction to consider what that means.
“Politicians may try to draw a distinction between ‘genuine’ refugees and other irregular migrants, and our economy may assign relative values to people’s lives based on their use as workers, but that doesn’t mean you accept that one of those people is any less a person, or that their experiences are any less real.”
A powerful reminder that behind the headlines, statistics and political manoeuvrings around migration and asylum-seeking lie myriad individual human beings, and a discomfiting injunction to consider what that means.
“Politicians may try to draw a distinction between ‘genuine’ refugees and other irregular migrants, and our economy may assign relative values to people’s lives based on their use as workers, but that doesn’t mean you accept that one of those people is any less a person, or that their experiences are any less real.”
July 15, 2019
Grande polifonia attraverso l'Europa e le sue frontiere, restituisce umanità, dignità e un senso di giustizia alle centinaia di migliaia di persone che cercano di raggiungere l'Europa e di viverci con dignità.
September 11, 2023
This is a book that is really good in listening and passing on the stories of one of the most unheard groups in our societies and at the same time giving context by filling in the political situation and history from the countries the came from and the countries they travel through.
The anecdotic stories of a handful of refugees who Trilling revisited over a couple of years do not just reveal the grim human suffering behind political decisions and slogans, they also become the stories of our border systems, of our decision to put nation states over people, and our laziness and helplessness to demand better. They are stories of the support networks people are building in the face of cruel injust life conditions. Stories about temporal settlements and routes in the shadow of the public eye. Daniel Trilling does not turn the people whose stories he tells into helpless victims, he shows them to be complex individuals with complex background stories and decision-making. It left me wondering what they are doing today.
I had this book for quite a time before I started reading it, I guess because I wasn't up for the oh so depressing topic. But this is not that kind of book. It is a book about people who dared make dangerous and difficult choices in hope of finding a good and safe life while we built systems to keep them out. And silencing their voices is part of that. As Daniel Trilling writes about one situation: "This was Europe's border system working as intended. Inconvenient people kept out of sight and out of mind, with their inconvenient stories unheard." I love that the book ends on a note of hope: a call to stay alert and to collective action instead of giving in to that feeling of helplessness.
The anecdotic stories of a handful of refugees who Trilling revisited over a couple of years do not just reveal the grim human suffering behind political decisions and slogans, they also become the stories of our border systems, of our decision to put nation states over people, and our laziness and helplessness to demand better. They are stories of the support networks people are building in the face of cruel injust life conditions. Stories about temporal settlements and routes in the shadow of the public eye. Daniel Trilling does not turn the people whose stories he tells into helpless victims, he shows them to be complex individuals with complex background stories and decision-making. It left me wondering what they are doing today.
I had this book for quite a time before I started reading it, I guess because I wasn't up for the oh so depressing topic. But this is not that kind of book. It is a book about people who dared make dangerous and difficult choices in hope of finding a good and safe life while we built systems to keep them out. And silencing their voices is part of that. As Daniel Trilling writes about one situation: "This was Europe's border system working as intended. Inconvenient people kept out of sight and out of mind, with their inconvenient stories unheard." I love that the book ends on a note of hope: a call to stay alert and to collective action instead of giving in to that feeling of helplessness.
February 18, 2019
Deeply moving.
Personal accounts of individuals making hazardous journeys across deserts, seas and mountains to the "utopia" of Europe.
For some of the masses of people escaping dystopia it is a road of hardship, illness and police brutality.
Heart piercing stories of women and children fleeing wars, abandoned in filthy conditions and left to fend for themselves.
For some people they eventually make it and claim asylum. For others it's a process of detention centres and rejection.
There are those that make a killing on these Wars. These unfortunate souls are the end result of the designers, planners and ultimately the Politicians of War who fail to make human reason. All these wars have consequences. This book is the face of the refugee.
I liked it. I'd say you will too.
Personal accounts of individuals making hazardous journeys across deserts, seas and mountains to the "utopia" of Europe.
For some of the masses of people escaping dystopia it is a road of hardship, illness and police brutality.
Heart piercing stories of women and children fleeing wars, abandoned in filthy conditions and left to fend for themselves.
For some people they eventually make it and claim asylum. For others it's a process of detention centres and rejection.
There are those that make a killing on these Wars. These unfortunate souls are the end result of the designers, planners and ultimately the Politicians of War who fail to make human reason. All these wars have consequences. This book is the face of the refugee.
I liked it. I'd say you will too.
October 5, 2019
This was depressing. I'm Australian & our asylum seeker policies are horrendous. I've read a lot about why people make the trip here & this book is just like what happens here, just on a much larger scale. The author has a lot of compassion for those he writes about & aims to make genuine connections with them, friending them on facebook & such. The book closes with his own families refugee story.
November 28, 2020
the book's main premise is to tell the personal stories of the people behind the news headlines and the numbers, reframing the narrative around asylum seekers, refugees and migrants themselves. their stories and opinions should be central to any debate about migration. an important, thoughtful and sensitive book.
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January 19, 2021It is narrated as a documentary film. The dream of middle eastern immigrants is so simple. Some details are so touching for me. A man lived in an apartment where he shared kitchens and bathrooms with the other five persons. I live in the same way as him. No, I must save some money and buy a house of my own!!!
January 14, 2022
Very worth reading for the historical overview and the personal stories, based on meticulous research and dogged following up of people who crossed his path - but alas a bit of out date as things have happened so quickly in the few years since it was written. I know the author is up to speed on the current situation so maybe another book will appear sometime.
January 16, 2022
The book of human stories behind migration statistics. Mirror to the current inhumane and dysfunctional migration system. Thank you, Daniel Trilling, for your great work. And thank you for the chapter about Ukraine!
February 4, 2021
Sadly pertinent, three years after publication...
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April 7, 2025Read for school
August 10, 2020
'The history of migrants is a history of controls on the movement of all but a wealthy elite.' That's how Daniel Trilling begins Lights in the Distance. He goes on to lay out how European borders filter out people who left their home country to come to Europe. By zooming in on different borders (Calais , Sicily, Evros River) that control access to different scopes of geographies (City, Country, Continent) as well as the stories of people trying to get across them we get an idea of how this filtering system functions. Trilling interweaves thick ethnographic descriptions of humans trying to migrate with clear explanations of the policy structures and political climates that restrict their movement. Trilling never tries to make the stories sound like heroic tales of survival and endurance but describes empathetically what the physical and emotional realities of migration look like. At the end we are not rewarded with some happy ending of settling and starting a new life in Europe. Because more often than not the border system does not allow for that. I couldn't help but imagine my own experience, if I suddenly saw no other way then pack up my things and take on a long dangerous journey to another country. In fact the realities of the people from Sudan, Iraq, Mali and Syria featured in this book were the realities of people from the Ukraine and Germany only a few decades ago, as Trilling makes us realize in the final chapter of the book. If anything the book leaves you with the realization that the crisis of migration is actually a crisis of borders and global inequality, and it creates much human suffering. The book ends with a set of questions: 'This person has arrived in Europe and they want to go to Britain, where their uncle lives. Wouldn't you? This person needs to get to Europe to earn a living. Why can't they earn a living at home? Why is Europe a place where you can earn a living? ...Why should anyone have to put up with these conditions?' This book won't give you the answers, but it will make you not want to accept things how they are. Not out of pity for refugees, but because the way this system works is simply unjust.
November 17, 2023
Such a powerful and accessible documentation of the first hand stories of some truly horrific yet inspiring journeys into Europe at the height of the refugee 'crisis'. The book is split into three main sections with the first focusing on the situation in Calais on the UK/France border, this is a place I personally have spent a lot of time and I think the author does an excellent job of capturing the atmosphere and reality of this truly bizzare situation in the middle of Western Europe. He also follows people on their journeys through the Mediterranean route to Italy and the Balkan route through Eastern Europe. Despite hearing so much about this in the news it became clear how little I knew about the realities people face in Libya, Turkey and then within Europe's borders.
The book concludes with a moving tie-in to the author's personal family history and ends with some inspiring words of what can be done.
I would recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about this global issue that so often is attempted to be swept under the rug.
The book concludes with a moving tie-in to the author's personal family history and ends with some inspiring words of what can be done.
I would recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about this global issue that so often is attempted to be swept under the rug.
December 28, 2023
What I appreciated about this work was it's insistence on seeing the European migration crisis through the eyes of the migrants themselves, and Trilling's efforts in meeting these migrants on their terms is admirable. Exploring their routes through Turkiye, the Mediterranean, and continental Europe, we see the what and the how, but also the why, in learning about these individuals. And that's what is most important: seeing them as *people.* These are not statistics, not round numbers to describe a border crossing or a boat sinking. Each one is a person with a life and family and dreams, and far too many are snuffed out by violence, indifference, or ignorance. And the concluding chapter, Trilling's throwback to his own family history as a migrant fleeing war, was a master stroke. Truly, it's the submission to law that is the death sentence. We are humans and we should be bound by something higher, whether we be migrant or host.
January 30, 2021
Golly, quite a hard read. It does humanise refugees and I did have empathy for the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. There are so many, and more and more. What to do?? The only thing to do is to create an environment where people want to stay in their own countries. So it means working harder to improve economics and environment. Like that will ever happen. It will only get worse, sadly with the current twats in power.
I think we know which countries I'm looking at..... and there is more than 1 or 2!!
I think we know which countries I'm looking at..... and there is more than 1 or 2!!
July 20, 2019
Interesting accounts of several refugees with lots of information around the causes and reasons for theirs and similar migration. Nothing specific on solutions or even what we as individuals should do to help but it really wasn't the purpose of the book.
My overwhelming take from having read this is that trying to split economic migrants from refugees, as they all risk their lives is both stupid and useless. People don't leave their homes and risk lives unless there are major problems.
My overwhelming take from having read this is that trying to split economic migrants from refugees, as they all risk their lives is both stupid and useless. People don't leave their homes and risk lives unless there are major problems.
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August 12, 2019Excellent book...about the heartbreaking struggles of immigrants attempting to find shelter in Europe. Read this on holidays last week after buying the book following a talk by the author at the Galway International Arts Festival last month. An essential read...gives a read insight into the border systems adopted by states in Europe...
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews