VOMENA June 15, 2018

In the summer of 2015, a wave of refugees taking perilous sea and land crossings to get into Europe exposed one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, the wars in Syria and Iraq and the worsening situation in Afghanistan having forced hundreds of thousands of people to live their homes and risk their lives to seek sanctuary elsewhere. According to the most recent reports, in 2014, 14 million people were displaced by war, the most in a single year since World War II. In the past decade, forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders. The dramatic increase in the influx of refugees to Europe has produced a rise in anti-refugee sentiments, the enactments of anti-refugee laws and the construction of walls and fences, exacerbating the plight of millions of people who were forced to flee war violence and poverty. Reece Jones is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and author of several books including his most recent Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to movement He spoke with Malihe about his new book and the structural violence of the global border regime.