Last January I saw a man get wrestled on to the plane I was about to board. I was at Heathrow airport, waiting by my gate, on my journey back to Shanghai. It was cold and I was bored. I sat down on a plastic seat and witnessed five uniformed Police Officers drag a man through the glass-gated corridor and on to the plane. They attempted to be discrete, but I could see the man dragging his feet along the floor in an attempt to resist. It was an alarming scene, but no one was actually alarmed. A couple of children queried the scenario to their parents, but their questions were met with empty answers. After all, he was, most probably, being deported.It was a weird juxtaposition. There I was, travelling across borders to get to school, expanding my horizons, becoming a global citizen, all of my own free will, whilst a man, a human man, with the same fundamental rights, living on the same planet, was being forcefully removed from the country I had chosen to leave. We were getting on an identical plane, with an identical destination, but our lives couldn’t be more disparate. Like me, half of NYU Shanghai’s student body is international and that means picking up a passport and travelling to a country where we are not a citizen. That’s our lives. That’s what being an international student means. The (arguably arbitrary) boundaries surrounding (arguably arbitrary) spaces of land aren’t much of an issue for us. We just get our visas, hop on a plane and voila. Our university represents a good kind of travel, travel that we are privileged to undertake. But as we, as NYU Shanghai students, engage in a mass cultural exchange, the European Refugee Crisis* is becoming more and more critical. Tales and images of the horrific hardships have flooded global media. Sparked by a civil war in Syria, the crisis is only really beginning in Europe, but countries that have been hosting the majority of refugees, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, are and have been struggling for far longer. It’s almost impossible to comprehend being in such an utterly desperate situation, to reach the extremity of emotion where a person is willing to put the lives of their family in significant danger, is not something that many of us can sufficiently empathise with. It is unbelievably traumatic. So terrible that words cannot describe how each of the 160,000 people in need of resettling must feel. This is a crisis that doesn’t just affect the refugees, it doesn’t just affect Europe, it affects humanity. It affects us. Having such cosmopolitan classmates, NYU Shanghai has representatives from all around Europe, which means that some students come from countries that are at the forefront of the crisis. Being British, the response from my own government hasn’t been one of the most sympathetic. Pledging to home just 20,000 refugees, the UK has a complicated history in relation to migrants. Politically it is tricky, as more conservative, eurosceptic parties have gained momentum over the past few years. The public conception of migrants/refugees echoes a xenophobic attitude formed before the crisis, but has been strengthened by political propaganda surrounding the upcoming referendum on whether the UK should be part of the EU at all. However the UK is exempt from the from the asylum proposal issued by the President of the European Commission. Arguments have been made that Britain can simply not cope with an influx of refugees. The two main points being that the UK’s population is rising fast and the dependency ratio (the proportion of expensive older people in the population relative to able-bodied, tax generating workers) is rising quick. This compares to Germany who have a population in decline and a significantly lower dependency ratio. They are estimated to take in over 800,000 migrants and the German response has been documented as one of the most compassionate, showing airports lined with welcome signs, boxes and boxes of supplies and children being gifted toys from the arms of their exhausted parents. When presented in this fashion, the pledges seem to make sense. Except there is always another side to the story. Angela Merkel of Germany has been accused of inviting in just the most economically useful asylum seekers (people who have good educations and labour skills), whilst the UK has attracted negative commentaries, considering David Cameron’s seemingly low acceptance against the country’s seemingly high amount of resources. It seems that both countries have used the crisis for political leverage, which begs the question whether it is acceptable for world leaders to try and use the crisis to their advantage and should they have the power to make decisions as separate member states at all? The response from Europe seems confused and that is probably because, in reality, it is.The asylum proposal seeks a fairer distribution of the migrants and is based on economic strength, population and unemployment. Germany and Sweden have already accepted more asylum seekers than the proposal would require, but Finland and France would have to make some drastic changes. This proposal is in no way comprehensive, but it does provide an alternative. An alternative that should at least be considered. The problem is this would allow refugees to legally enter the European countries and once they have entered the country has legal responsibilities towards them. The highly dangerous crossings enacted by smugglers are one of the most difficult elements of the crisis to morally ignore, but to prevent them crossing would have to be legalised and that means opening your border to a lot more refugees.Arguably the UK and Germany have gained some of the most press in relation to the crisis, but France and Hungary have also been dissected by the global media. France, a leader in the EU and notorious champion of human rights, has found itself in a similar position to the UK: morally perhaps yes, they should accept more refugees, but economically it isn’t so easy. However, no European country has seemed to attract worse attention than Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has vowed to seal the border with Serbia as soon as possible and that can seem extreme. But it is important to remember that Hungary has received a huge increase in applications, much much greater than Germany, the UK, France and Denmark. So it might be drastic, but drastic measures feed on desperation.It is easy to enforce a disconnect between the happenings in Europe and our lives at NYU Shanghai. It isn’t like we are sat next to deportees every day, or really, any day. I saw one person, one time, perhaps get deported and life, well, it goes on. The crisis for many people is simply a succession of statistics. Professor Appiah, who we read last year as freshmen in Global Perspectives of Society, said that young people should be encourage to travel, encouraged to exchange cultures, so then we may learn acceptance and tolerance. This though, works both ways: no country can adopt the policy of letting people out, but letting no one in. Philosophy doesn’t exist exclusively within a perfect world. Europe is facing one of the biggest crises we have ever faced and the response should be collective, the response should be global. Can we being doing more?* I have used the term ‘refugee’ instead of ‘migrant’ to describe the crisis. The interchangeability of the terms within the media only further highlights the detachment they have expressed. “Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or prosecution. These are the people for whom the denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences.” A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions. They are not the same thing. Refugees have rights under international law because they do not have a choice. This article was written by Stephanie Bailey. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Arshaun Darabnia