A small country of just two million inhabitants, Slovenia has only one center for asylum seekers. The center in Ljubljana can accommodate up to 200 people, but it is rarely full. Most migrants stay only a few days to rest before vanishing 'into thin air'.
Greece is to close the migrant camps on the islands and replace them with closed detention centers, the government announced on Wednesday. The new centers, planned for next year, would make it easier to control the flow of asylum seekers.
If you are an asylum seeker or refugee in Ireland then you will most likely be accommodated in a Direct Provision center. Here’s what you need to know about the service.
As more and more refugees and migrants try to make it to Western Europe via the western Balkan route, and with winter approaching, the EU and NGOs have warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Vucjak migrant camp and similar facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina near the border with Croatia. On Friday, hundreds of locals protested against the migrants' presence.
After the dismantling of the camps in the north of Paris, the 1,600 migrants – ‘Dubliners’, newcomers, rejected asylum seekers, and even statutory refugees - were sent to some 20 locations in the Paris region, including gymnasiums, situation review centers and a refugee support center. One non-profit group denounced the placement of 16 migrants in retention centers in the wake of the dismantling.
A new study by the US based Pew Research Center has found that as many as 4.8 million migrants were living undocumented across the EU in 2017. More than half of those are estimated to be living in the UK and Germany. However, even though news of undocumented migrants tends to dominate headlines and election campaigns, the anaylsis found that even if estimates are correct, those migrants without papers account for less than 1% of Europe's total population.
Greece illegally deported 60,000 migrants to Turkey, documents released by Turkey reportedly show. The process involves returning asylum seekers without assessing their status.
Samir arrived in Germany five years ago as an unaccompanied minor at the age of 15. Since then he has learned German, completed school and started an apprenticeship; but his future in Germany is still unclear. The German TV channel ZDF has been following him for five years on his journey to adulthood.
As of next year, France will introduce quotas for migrant workers and impose stricter rules on asylum seekers’ access to French healthcare. While the government argues the measures will provide France with the type of workers it actually needs and curb the “misuse” of its generous welfare system, critics say it’s a move to appease right-wing voters by tightening its immigration rules even further.
The deportation of 36 Afghan asylum seekers from Germany has been met with criticism amid the deteriorating security situation in their home country. The Afghans arrived in Kabul Thursday morning.
Afghan migrant Samiullah is one of many who have arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos in recent months. Samiullah complains of abuse in Turkey, but his decision to migrate to Greece was also based on rumors that are circulating among migrant groups in Turkey. Here is Samiullah's story.
Small-scale protests continued in northern Greece over the weekend against the transfer of migrants from the islands to the mainland. The Greek government is intending to transfer 20,000 migrants from the islands by the end of the year.