Donald Trump, would-be wall-builder-in-chief, may currently be the
world’s most vocal defender of border walls as the best answer to
unwanted asylum-seekers, but he is, in fact, late to the modern
wall-building game.
Once home to one of the world’s most loathed walls, Europe has in recent years become a leader in building them: There are now border fences and walls in 10 European countries that together measure more than six times the length of the Berlin Wall, according to a recent report by the Transnational Institute (TNI), a research and advocacy outfit that supports international social movements. This within a continental alliance built on the idea of a borderless union.
The year 2015 was pivotal. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Africa arrived in what became Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Citing inaction by European Union leadership, some member countries turned to the building of barriers as a favoured way to keep migrants out.
The building spree that year more than doubled the number of walls, from 5 to 12. In all, around 1,000 kilometres of walls and fences have been built in Europe since the 1990s, said the TNI report, titled "Building Walls."
European populist leaders have argued that barriers are necessary to protect their countries from irregular migration and, more crucially, from criminals and would-be terrorists among them.
“Every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk,” Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, said at a 2016 news conference in Budapest.
Orban, who has been called “the original Trump,” labelled the migrants passing through his country at the time as “Muslim invaders” who threatened Hungary and Europe’s Christian identity. He built barriers on Hungary’s borders with Serbia and Croatia.
“They look great on television, they look strong and impenetrable, and it suggests to the viewer ‘We, the government, is protecting you from something,’” Marcello Di Cintio, author of Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, said in an interview from Calgary.
But, he added, they are blunt instruments symbolizing an admission that builders are not interested in dealing with root causes.
“A wall is not a solution, it’s a surrender to the problem,” said Di Cintio. “A wall is a white flag. A wall says ‘We don’t know what to do so we’re just going to do this.’”
Read more: Walled world: Lessons from Europe's border barriers | CBC News
Once home to one of the world’s most loathed walls, Europe has in recent years become a leader in building them: There are now border fences and walls in 10 European countries that together measure more than six times the length of the Berlin Wall, according to a recent report by the Transnational Institute (TNI), a research and advocacy outfit that supports international social movements. This within a continental alliance built on the idea of a borderless union.
The year 2015 was pivotal. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Africa arrived in what became Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Citing inaction by European Union leadership, some member countries turned to the building of barriers as a favoured way to keep migrants out.
The building spree that year more than doubled the number of walls, from 5 to 12. In all, around 1,000 kilometres of walls and fences have been built in Europe since the 1990s, said the TNI report, titled "Building Walls."
European populist leaders have argued that barriers are necessary to protect their countries from irregular migration and, more crucially, from criminals and would-be terrorists among them.
“Every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk,” Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, said at a 2016 news conference in Budapest.
Orban, who has been called “the original Trump,” labelled the migrants passing through his country at the time as “Muslim invaders” who threatened Hungary and Europe’s Christian identity. He built barriers on Hungary’s borders with Serbia and Croatia.
“They look great on television, they look strong and impenetrable, and it suggests to the viewer ‘We, the government, is protecting you from something,’” Marcello Di Cintio, author of Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, said in an interview from Calgary.
But, he added, they are blunt instruments symbolizing an admission that builders are not interested in dealing with root causes.
“A wall is not a solution, it’s a surrender to the problem,” said Di Cintio. “A wall is a white flag. A wall says ‘We don’t know what to do so we’re just going to do this.’”
Read more: Walled world: Lessons from Europe's border barriers | CBC News
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