Refugee lives are surrounded by narratives: Storied accounts that help them make sense of former experiences and their current situation, and which provide a sense of directionality, purpose and project in life.
The standard, classical refugee narrative represents a project of hope: Somebody escapes suffering in a first country and eventually finds refuge in a third country, covering a dramatic trajectory towards a happy end. In this process, the welcoming disposition and support from the host is fundamental [1].
The standard narrative of hope that accompanied the refugee arriving into Europe around 2015 deteriorated after the 2016 Dublin Agreement. Refugee stories changed from narratives of hope to narratives of stagnation. The notion of ‘Limbo’ became prevalent. In this new narrative, ‘limbo’ is a non-place where you wait, not knowing whether you will be admitted or sent back to hell, nor when your judgement will come. A non-place wracked with uncertainty. Limbo narratives denounce the contradiction inherent to legalising the closure of borders and exposing the truncation of lives after a long odyssey.
The Dublin agreement marks the beginning of a process where the dream of Europe breaks down on the face of those who aim at it, empty-handed and barefoot, through months or years, only to find a deaf and blind wall. For asylum seekers held up at the borders, Europe was the last hope, and the fulminant disappearance of that hope brings a devastating void, the inescapable absence of hope in a disturbing now-and-again with no foreseeable end.
The limbo condition means a permanent extension of empty time, occasionally renewed, leaving life in suspension. It is assumed that you will get out at some point, but nobody will tell you when, how, or in what direction. For those trying to push their way across the borders of Europe, hell ensues behind limbo. Today, most asylum seekers entering into Central Europe from the periphery are being systematically detained, mistreated, humiliated and often pushed back; applying for asylum is hardly possible.
Grave violations of human rights have proliferated in the periphery of Europe as a consequence of the Dublin agreement, which enacts a policy designed to externalise the contention of asylum applicants away from the core of the EU. As the EU transitions toward a brutal and inhuman border regime, the refugee ‘limbo’ experience may turn into a realisation of ‘hell’. The ‘hell’ narrative features a characteristic location (‘the jungle’) and a new conventionalised practice (‘the game’), both of them on the verge of life and death. ‘The jungle’ is a remote and wild location near the border, where you hide away as you wait and prepare to cross or get smuggled. ‘The game’ is what you play each time you set out to cross a border, most likely to get intercepted, beaten up, humiliated, tortured, having your few goods robbed and being pushed back.
Refugees in the hell of the Balkan borders may play ‘the game’ up to ten or fifteen times. Like Sisyphus on his downhill walk, as they are sent back they already know they will soon start the next attempt. The attempt-pushback-reattempt cycle is normally completed and relaunched within the Balkan countries, but there are also stories of people getting sent back ‘home’ to Afghanistan, Pakistan or Central Africa and starting the whole journey over or trying out the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkan route ‘alternatives’ one after the other.
For a number of years, everything a person does is move absurdly forward across a series of borders and aggressive police corps [2]. The only thing left from life and to live for is walking toward a border that, almost with all certainty, will repel you. Nothing to turn to behind and hardly a weak beam of light on the horizon ahead.
Hell narratives feature a denunciation, graver for its consequences than the one involved in Limbo narratives. They expose the decomposition of European values and a return of the dehumanised monstrosities of ethnic violence and fascism. The Dublin agreement meant turning back against the foundational values which saw the birth and growth of Europe as a civic program for human progress. Remarkably, after the Dublin agreement, institutions and states can no longer describe or narrate whatever is happening on the ground around the external borders of Europe. There is a stark contradiction between old values and the policies of now. The practical result is a selective silence, which is managed discursively and narratively.
The transition from Hope to Limbo and to Hell experienced by people moving towards Europe reshapes their life expectations, experience and mood. It’s a gruelling process of demoralisation, but that’s why Europe must act, policies need to be changed and routes to relocation opened.
[1] Díaz, Félix (2024). Narratives of Forced Displacement at the Gates of Europe. In Griffith, James (ed.) Stories and Memories, Memories and Histories. Brill.
[2] The Border Violence Monitoring Network (https://borderviolence.eu/) regularly documents this repressive action.
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