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Refugees & Volunteering: Beyond the Culture of Giving

Having returned from my volunteering activities in the Balkans, I started reflecting on certain aspects of refugee aid in a number of schools, universities, and in my interviews. After my talk, some of my listeners would come and say: ok, you’ve kind of discouraged us from helping them. However, their reaction stemmed from a misunderstanding, […]

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Beyond Moral Interpretations of the EU ‘Migration Crisis’: Hungary and the Global Economic Division of Labor

  This article is a reflection in hindsight on the ‘summer of migration’ of 2015 in Europe, and the symbolic debates around the role of Hungary during those months. Historical events that have followed brought significant changes in the structural and political-ideological constellations we describe. However, as political-ideological treatments of the present crisis continue to […]

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O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article appeared originally on Antidote Zine and has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author. The images portray scenes in Serbia and Macedonia, December 2015, captured by unnamed photographers; please inquire before reprinting: antidote [at] riseup . net Q. 
Perhaps twenty years old, probably younger. Kabul, Afghanistan. At the […]

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Forgotten on the wrong side of the border

Note by the LeftEast editors: this text has been published in co-operation with the Serbo-Croat language web portal Bilten.Org. Early in the morning of December 9th, Greek police closed the make-shift camp by the border town of Eidomeni. The eviction from the camp marked a further deterioration in the lives of thousands seeking refuge at […]

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Call for international meeting, manifestation and solidarity action in Slovenia

For more than a week the so-called Balkan Route is passing through Slovenia. The Slovenian government intended to impose the entrance quota of 2500 refugees per day. Croatia answered by sending the refugees and migrants over the so-called “Green” border. This controversy between Slovenia and Croatia created dire humanitarian conditions for the refugees and migrants. […]

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More than a refuge, a welcome

Note from the LeftEast editors: This article by Manuela Zechner, Bue Rübner Hansen, and Francesco Salvini was published on the website of OpenDemocracy.Net on the 8 October 2015, This text was written in the context of Barcelona en Comú and the incipientRefuge Cities network and edited with David Llistar for publication in Eldiario.es Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people […]

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VIDEO: Precarity in the Periphery: A glance to East for making Europe

source and full article: DinamoPress Video reportage from eastern Europe, towards the transnational meeting in Poznan. An overview on precarity, austerity and movements from outside the eurozone. The peripheries of Europe are the centre of the austerity measures of current endless crisis and, at the same times, the centre of social turbulences of migrations. These […]

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#crossingnomore: “We have forgotten what it is like to feel safe”

by Caoimhe Butterly, source facebook A few kilometres away from the small Serbian border town of Sid, a dirt track through corn and turnip fields serves as passage to tens of thousands of women, men and children seeking refuge and lives of more possibility. The unofficial border crossing between Serbia and Croatia is surrounded by […]

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“It was an illusionary expectation that in Europe we would have some rights and would be treated fairly”

Note from the LeftEast editors: this account by Caoimhe Butterly, currently in Belgrade, has been reprinted from facebook with the permission of the author. We spent last night in Belgrade’s main train station with families from Damascus, Aleppo and Deir al Zoor and a larger group of fellow travellers that they had befriended along the way. […]

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Things NOT Happening With Respect to the Refugee Crisis in Europe

source: J.Borocz’s blog GlobalSocialChange Here are the conversations that are NOT happening: The European Union is not giving any clear signals just what it actually wants the Schengen states most exposed to the refugee inflows–not only Hungary, but also Greece, Bulgaria and Italy–to do. It is completely obvious that, if anybody actually cares about alleviating […]