Bronze Award, European Design Award 2017
The initial idea behind this project was to tell the story, under different points of view and with different approaches, of the continuous flow of refugees and “asylum seekers” who would make stopovers at the Bolzano and Brenner stations, before continuing their journey towards Northern Europe. We realised, however, that the viewpoint needed to be changed, the scope broadened, in an attempt to also analyse what was taking place from a historical and geographical perspective, starting from the period when the Brenner became a state border, taking a look at the other borders, Ventimiglia and Lampedusa in particular, and eventually focusing on what the Schengen Agreements actually signified.
“Europa Dreaming” is a project in which researchers, anthropologists, journalists, photographers and designers offered their point of view, attempting to contextualise what is happening to the European dream, to those who live there and to those who arrive there.
It is the spring of 2016 and the Brenner is likely to go back to being a frontier, “an officially defined and recognised border line, equipped, in various cases, with appropriate defensive systems” (Treccani). Compared to the past, however, border barriers are no longer used to delimit our spaces in relation to our “neighbours”, nor to reduce and/or control trade between two neighbouring countries, but with the explicit goal of decreasing the inflow of people coming into the country, from other continents, from places located thousands of kilometres away. The decision to re-introduce border controls between Italy and Austria has been defined by many newspapers as “the end of the Schengen dream”, but this work shows a different reality.
Because the Schengen Agreement, which was intended to create an area of free movement within the European Union, has been essentially based – and from the very beginning – on a “policing” agreement. Because “the fall of internal borders was complemented by the strengthening of the borders external to the Schengen area” (Internazionale). The point is that the “strengthening of external borders” was not the corollary outcome, but the very essence of this Agreement. It is no coincidence that work on the first European “wall”, the Ceuta and Melilla border fences (funded by the European Union) began in the fall of 1995.
(A. Langer, 1995)
The words quoted above were spoken by Alexander Langer in an interview conducted by Radio Radicale on the French-Italian border in Ventimiglia. It was June 27, 1995, just six days before the MEP from Vipiteno took his own life. In the original audio, you can hear the protests of refugees from Bosnia who had been prevented from crossing the border into France. At that time, Italy was trying to adapt to the norms laid down by the Schengen Agreements, those whose intent was to abolish customs controls within European borders but which, as evidenced by the facts, led to the attempt to build the “European fortress”.
“For the umpteenth time the migration phenomenon was offloaded on the agents, taking advantage of their sense of duty and humanitarian spirit. This, however, does not exempt us from expressing certain opinions. Citizens are concerned about the lack of action on the part of politicians, reluctantly aware of politics being a sort of social “relief” and that the issue at hand is not a security problem, nor one that can be solved by police.”
(Mario Deriu, regional secretary of the Siulp police union in Bolzano - Corriere dell'Alto Adige 12/06/2015)
(A. Langer, 1995)
Alexander Langer was not prophetic, he was simply attentive to the most important issues, those that were putting Europe’s future at stake. Because the so-called “immigration emergency” has been underway for twenty years, while in Europe, the construction of useless and damaging walls had already began in 1995.
The Ceuta and Melilla fences, like the others that were built one by one, have not, of course, solved anything, while not facing the reality and size of the issue within an electoral and political consensus perspective, has led to today’s consequences. The signs, however, were already there, with the headlines and the videos that follows as prime examples.
(A. Langer, 1995)
Austria has decided to re-introduce border controls along the Brenner pass. Is it a decision that will have a positive outcome? No one has a crystal ball, but a glance towards the past can help us better understand the issue. The Brenner pass has served as a border point between Italy and Austria going back to the end of World War I. Ever since, it has not only been crossed by tourists, but, primarily, by individuals fleeing from war, dictatorships or more simply put from misery. It was crossed by refugees at the end of the “Great War”, by “optants” shortly before the Second World War, by Jews headed to extermination camps beginning in 1943, and then again by armies en route, by prisoners of war, and finally forty years later, once again by refugees.
First from the Balkans, then from the rest of the world. But between the end of World War II and the war in Bosnia, the Brenner was also a place of passage for hundreds of thousands of Italian workers who sought fortune in Germany and often found it. The facts and the numbers that follow attempt to demonstrate all this and, above all, to offer a different perspective with respect to what is happening today.
World War I began on July 28, 1914 with the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on the Kingdom of Serbia, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este, on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, and ended more than four years later, on November 11, 1918. After the war, the Brenner Pass became the border between Italy and Austria. Even before the war, the border had been crossed by hundreds of thousands of Italians, above all on the northeast side, looking for work in the German Empire.
The 1907 census had recorded 115,000 Italian workers present in Germany, while in 1913 the number had risen to 170,000. In the months leading up to the end of World War I, the Brenner had been crossed by troops, war refugees, armies en route* and unfortunately, very little changed in the years following the war.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed, establishing a new State border at the Brenner Pass. The parts of Tyrol including Cortina d'Ampezzo and today's autonomous provinces of Bolzano and Trento were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
In the Victoria Hotel dependance, located opposite Bolzano station, the “Bonomelli Hospice” is inaugurated in the presence of Queen Margaret, in order to provide assistance to the immigrants. A bust in honour of Mons. Bonomelli is affixed, with the following inscription: “The Charity he founded wanted to erect this hospice so that the migrant workers of two peaceful and prospering
races within the invisible boundary that nature sets for Italy, may find shelter, assistance, comfort and counsel in his name”. In the span of a single year, in 1927, “the Bonomelli Hospice distributed 5,000 food rations and housed 7,063 migrants, all for free”.
The German request to hire a small contingent of labourers, 2,500 in all, reaches the Italian Embassy in Berlin. Reich authorities would prefer that the labourers arrived from South Tyrol. On December 3, 1937 it is established that “in the year 1938, the number of workers can reach 10,000 and possibly up to 30,000”.
In 1938, 31,071 labourers depart, a number that would grow to 36,000 in 1939; from 1940 the annual total settled around 50,000 labourers. There are no departures in 1943. Together with labourers, the Third Reich also requests its Italian ally to provide construction workers and miners. From the autumn of 1938 and throughout 1939, 9,500 workers make their way into Germany.
Agreements on “options” are signed. German and Ladin people in South Tyrol were forced to choose whether to become German citizens and move to the territories of the Third Reich, or to remain Italian citizens, renouncing to being recognised as a linguistic minority. The “opting” term was set for December 31, 1939. In early 1940, the first special trains began to make the journey transferring “optants” to the other side of the Brenner Pass. Overall, approximately 75,000 people emigrated.
German troops invade Poland, marking the outbreak of the Second World War.
Just before the transfer from Brenner on the train to Auschwitz, writer Primo Levi drops a postcard addressed to his family.
The surrender of German armed forces. The end of World War II in Europe. In the months that follow, refugees and prisoners of war, countless “optants” and Jews who had survived the concentration camps make their return across the Brenner Pass. Surviving soldiers who cross the border are provided assistance at the “Returnees Assistance Centre” in Bolzano.
Primo Levi makes his return to Italy: “At night we made our way across the Brenner pass, which we had crossed into exile twenty months earlier: our less exhausted companions, in a joyful tumulto;
Leonardo and I, in a silence filled with memory. Of the 650 who had left, we return in three.” (From “La tregua” - “The Truce”).
In 1950, a total of 650,000 people cross the border along the Brenner road - eight years later, they become almost 2 million. By train, during the same time, the number increases from 450,000 to 955,000.
Numbers that show that tourist traffic across the Brenner had surpassed any other Italian border crossing.
Italy signs an agreement with Germany for the recruitment of labour forces. In 1957, with the birth of the EEC, this pact was followed by the recognition of the principle of free movement of workers within the Member States of the Community. Thus, more and more Italians are attracted by the possibilities offered by the economic boom of the German industry.
From 1954 to 1962, a total of 2,104,900 “guest workers” travel to Germany, 737,700 of whom are Italian. They represent the largest community, followed by Spaniards, Greeks and Turks (Source: Migration und Politik: Westdeutschland - Europa - Ubersee 1945-1961)
The German weekly “Der spiegel” celebrates the one millionth “Gastarbeiter” (guest worker).
“From 1990 until 1997 the Brenner border was in a difficult situation. During the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, my actions created a sort of mass media vortex. I became a humanitarian reference point for refugees, since my contacts with the border police allowed me a certain amount of freedom of movement. I remember a Corpus Domini procession which took place here and across the border; it was picked up by media because it had brought together people from across Europe to the Brenner pass, eleven European regions came together to bring to life an ecumenical prayer in different languages.
I cannot tell you how many people I helped. Of course, I also had to endure insults and slander. At a certain point I realised that my support for refugees was blamed and disliked by institutional authorities and this convinced me to abandon the border”.
(Testimony provided by Don Hugo Senoner, at the time Pastor of Brennero)
Of the more than 600,000 Italians in Germany in 1993, more than 166,000 have been living in the country for more than 30 years and 87,000 for 15 to 30 years.
The Schengen Agreement was signed, in order to create an area of free movement within the European Union, in fact, a “policing” agreement.
Barriers at the Brenner border are abolished The official ceremony is attended by Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano who warns against “any return to perverse and destructive nationalisms”, while announcing “a new and strong commitment to security, in collaboration with Austria, to counter not only criminal organisations but also illegal immigration”.
It is the spring of 2016 and the Brenner is likely to go back to being a frontier, “an officially defined and recognised border line, equipped, in various cases, with appropriate defensive systems” (Treccani). Compared to the past, however, border barriers are no longer used to delimit our spaces in relation to our “neighbours”, nor to reduce and/or control trade between two neighbouring countries, but with the explicit goal of decreasing the inflow of people coming into the country, from other continents, from places located thousands of kilometres away. The decision to re-introduce border controls between Italy and Austria has been defined by many newspapers as “the end of the Schengen dream”, but this work shows a different reality.
The original objective of the “Schengen zone” was the establishment of an area of free movement for European citizens within the Union. This led to the gradual abolition systematic controls along the internal borders, but also the strengthening of controls at external borders, to the development of a common policy regarding visas and asylum requests, the creation of the SIS database and a general strengthening of judicial systems and police cooperation. Article 20 of the “Schengen Code” establishes the abolition of internal controls and stipulates that: “internal borders may be crossed anywhere without border checks being carried out on persons, regardless of their nationality. However, while systematic border controls have been abolished, for reasons relating to internal security, Member States may carry out non-continuous and targeted spot-checks within their own territory and in border areas”. On the other hand, the aim of the “Dublin Convention” is to identify the country responsible for examining the application for international protection within the EU, establishing first entry as the prime criterion, in other words the first European country reached by the applicant.
The official reason is to ensure that at least one of the Member States takes charge of an applicant, and that applications are not submitted in multiple States. Those moving independently and irregularly, can therefore be relocated to the first country of arrival (identified through fingerprints recorded in the EURODAC database). But after 15 years of attempts and 25 years of “Dublin”, a common European Union asylum system or even a simple framework characterised by minimum common harmonised standards is still far from reach. Today, many organisations are pursuing moving away from this system, in order to take into account the interests of individual States, but also those of applicants for international protection.
(A. Langer, 1995)
In 2015, approximately 30 to 70 individuals per day, mostly between 20 and 30 years old, crossed the Brenner Pass, who one way or another managed to pass the trilateral controls (Italian, Austrian and German police) set up to tackle the problem.
We are talking about 2,500 to 3,000 crossings each month (source: Social Policies Division of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol) for a total of 26,000 people in 2015 and approximately 30% of the 153,842 refugees who landed in Italy last year (source: Unhcr).
The numbers and the geography demonstrate precisely how the Schengen Treaty is the child of a rather partial conception of what Europe was supposed to become. Because the agreement concerning the control of external borders and the subsequent Dublin Convention appear to lose interest in a key geographic factor: Europe’s natural border is largely made up of the sea, in particular the Mediterranean Sea. Northern European countries most likely believed that they would be able to offload the issue on Mediterranean countries, but the numbers show just how wrong they were. It is suffice to take a look at data relating to landings in Italy, Greece and Spain, and to compare it with subsequent figures on requests for asylum and the response times associated with the various EU countries.
0
Refugees/migrants landed in Europe in 2015
6 months
Sweden
France
Germany
Hungary
6 months is the average time expected to process an asylum request in Europe.
up to 7 months
up to 7 months
up to 11 months
up to 12 months
Belgium
Greece
Italy
UK
Cyprus
up to 12 months
up to 18 months
up to 24 months
up to 36 months
up to 36 months
6 months
6 months is the average time needed to process an asylum request in Europe.
Sweden
up to 7 months/p>
France
up to 7 months/p>
Germany
up to 11 months
Hungary
up to 12 months
Belgium
up to 12 months
Greece
up to 18 months
Italy
up to 24 months
UK
up to 36 months
Cyprus
up to 36 months
Despite the fact that the EU directive states 6 months as the time required to process an application for asylum by the country in charge, the reality is quite different, with extreme cases such as those occurring in Cyprus, where applications can take up to 30 additional months to be processed compared to the timeframes established by law, a clear demonstration of a lack of “harmonisation” within the member countries.
This premise certainly does not helps the process of inclusion of the asylum seeker within the new environment, nor that of expulsion if the request is rejected, without taking into account the unequal treatment offered by individual countries.
What’s more, a directive or clause regarding minimum standards associated with measures and integration/inclusion services of a social, linguistic and employment nature for asylum seekers is also missing, which should accompany the reception measures. Without shared conditions and schedules, or at the very least homogeneous among the various constituent EU countries, it will be very difficult to curb the daily phenomenon migrants who cross non-European borders to be reunited with their families or simply to try to take advantage of a treatment perceived as more advantageous, during the necessary application verification time.
To better understand what happens on a daily basis around a mobile border, we interviewed a number of refugees who, on a daily basis, have made their way across from Bolzano and from the Brenner. For the most part, they were from Eritrea and were looking to reach Northern Europe. They had left their homeland because of the harsh military dictatorship and were trying to reach relatives, primarily in Germany and Sweden.
The long journey involves crossing the border with Sudan and the arrival in Khartoum, where the refugees typically remain for a few months working to raise the money necessary to continue their journey. Relying on Libyan and Eritrean smugglers, they then cross the Sahara and reach Libya, where, in Tripoli, they embark to reach Lampedusa and continue to Sicily, Rome and the Brenner pass, which is only a door that stands between them and Northern Europe. Those we interviewed all made it across.
He left his country, Senegal, and wants to thank Italians and Europeans for still being alive, instead of lying dead at the bottom of the sea.
His journey told through mobile shots: the Coast Guard rescue, the Lampedusa immigration camp, travel companions.
From Ethiopia to Europe to the United States, how? I don't know exactly, but I know that nothing is impossible, like crossing the desert and the Mediterranean sea and still being alive.
In 500 on a boat, a woman gives birth, rescue efforts and his fate hanging on the asylum process: if Germany will grant his request it is good news, otherwise he will continue his pilgrimage.
In Eritrea at 17 years of age, young boys join the army and serve for their entire life, without the option to choose, for €10 per month.
This is the question posed to migrants in transit from the Brenner, during various stages of research. The long journey and robberies suffered mean that very little remains of the migrants’ original baggage: bibles, tattoos, smartphones and, rarely, necklaces and rings. Many have crosses around their neck, often as a symbol of protection from the risks and dangers of the journey. With their smartphones, on the other hand, refugees write home and ask for information from friends and family who have already arrived at their destination along the intended route. Their mobile also contains albums of family photographs, perhaps the most intimate and precious thing that refugees bring with, which they only rarely shared.
Tattoos, often designed by friends or, in some cases, by their parents, are frequently characterised by sacred themes and assume a two-fold value: that of a religious “protector” and that of a “bond” with family and friends far away. It is as if in the face of adversity, a sort of emergency mode was turned on, composed of objects and feelings of an intimate, family or religious nature, capable of consoling and instilling strength and endurance.
(in order to protect those involved, we have concealed the faces of relatives or friends of refugees who agreed to have their photo taken)
(A. Langer, 1995)
Everything written so far inevitably ends up pointing the finger on an issue that continues to remain unsolved. What is Europe today? What does it want to become? How does it see or imagine itself? We have not found the answer, because, apparently, nobody has the answer. For years, hand in hand with the question of the single currency, Europe saw itself as an exclusive club, admitting only those who had the right credentials in place. And we are referring to entire States, not individuals, because in the meantime, as has always been the case, people have continued to overcome the boundaries, despite walls and fences, despite the dangers.
It is natural, therefore, that in 2016, despite the Schengen Agreement and the Euro, very little appears to have changed. Financial and economic parameters are still being discussed, external borders continue to be strengthened and, now, internal ones are also being reinstated. Twenty years have passed in vain, because we have stubbornly turned our heads away from the real problem, focusing on political consensus rather than actually solving the issues at hand. And only now are we finally coming to terms with the fact that all this has resulted in the sediment of a deep resentment towards Europe and its treaties, a fact that threatens to reopen scenarios we had believed to be closed. Scenarios that above all, are killing the European dream.
