June 2024 & October 2024
The migration trail that leads through Turkey and Greece is one that naturally raises various cross-border social and legal issues that may have determinative effects on a person’s ability to live in dignity, coexist, and realise their rights. Since the so-called EU-Turkey “Deal”, increasingly restrictive migration policies have been implemented in both Greece and Turkey, in effect blocking people’s access to Europe and subjecting people on the move to border violence; including discrimination, criminalisation, detention, torture, and exclusion.
As migrants and solidarity groups face these government policies; how can civil society resist? How can groups in both countries look to and learn from each other? In what areas do the civil society in Greece and Turkey share commonalities? In what areas can we cooperate to overcome challenges in years to come or promote an intercontinental and international form of sustainable resistance and solidarity? What do we expect for years to come? What actions could we take together? How do the geopolitical relationships between the EU, Greece and Turkey impact migration policy? What can such antagonisms or cooperations between states and intrastate entities tell us or what can we learn from them to influence policy change? To seek more concrete answers to these questions, as well as establishing legal mechanisms and collective responses, we would like to invite you to a series of events named “Defence of Migrant Rights Across Borders”.
This series of international events seek to bring together civil society actors, grassroots organisations, and political subjects to collectively discuss and develop a political response to EU, Greek, and Turkish migration policies, through presentation, workshops, discussions, and other activities. Additionally, we are hoping to through these events to build our networks in order to continue working together in the future.
Selected themes are;
- Border Violence, Right to Migration, and Criminalisation of Migration
- Detention, Camps, and Incarceration
- Access to Public Spaces and Services
- Social Cohesion and Mutual Coexistence
- Arts and Culture
- Labour
