I found the article “Camp in the City” really articulate of many problems migrants/refugees face beyond the more obvious or immediate ones. The social stigma and societal image that is placed on them is one that often implicitly bleeds into policies, regulations, and status in a community along with daily treatment. Popular and public response to images like that of Aylan transform societal mentalities towards a population. Aylan’s portrayal of innocence, of a person seeking opportunity and freedom and a “better life” elsewhere often becomes that of violence, danger, and fear of  “the other” like that of the situation in Cologne. The article also echoed themes from last weeks reading in relation to desensitization when it mentioned the negligence of the Berlin government’s filing system that displacement of thousands of lives; the sheer number of migrants and asylum seekers in Berlin removed the humanity of each of those individual lives affected by remaining unregistered.

Out of this volatility, the current crisis has not been resolved but simply relocated to Europe’s borders—borders maintained with force and through the blatant disregard of European and international law.

I found this quote especially striking and comprehensive. Many of the problems that occurred in the camp stemmed from “projections, desires, repressed fears, and trauma future and past” as Muehlebach puts it and rather than learn from these mistakes and experiences, the problem has just been pushed onto other nations. The quote also reminds me of the video we watched from the Australian government telling migrants that they will not be accepted as refugees or resettled into the country despite international law saying otherwise. For those in power, international law seems to be taken as suggestions rather than obligations.