SOLIDARITY AND THE ‘REFUGEE CRISIS’ IN EUROPE from Oscar Garcia Agustin and Martin Bak Jorgensen

Abstract

In the book, Agustin and Jorgensen focus on the concept of solidarity within a specific period to assess the international community response to the refugee crisis and determine the common features of emerging solidarities. The authors claim that states and the EU could not find appropriate solutions for the crisis. First, they argue about which concept defines the situation in Europe and they note some of them such as ‘migrant crisis’, ‘refugee crisis’, ‘humanitarian crisis’, ‘crisis of the asylum system’, ‘crisis of the European border’. They define crisis as a time of “rethinking and reinventing what solidarities can do” (p. 14). They support this perspective with examples from the cases throughout the book.