This article examines the experiences of second-generation Albanian migrants in Greece, revealing how complex bureaucratic procedures, errors in documentation, and constantly expiring residency permits shape personal identity, belonging, and access to life opportunities. Through detailed personal stories, historical context, and connections to the contemporary Greek asylum system, it highlights how migration bureaucracy, administrative categories, and legal precarity profoundly affect individuals’ ability to live, work, and envision a stable future within Greek society.
Read MoreThe UK and the EU may have parted ways politically, but their migration regimes are becoming strikingly similar. Both are advancing systems built on deterrence, externalisation, and the steady erosion of the right to seek asylum. As the EU rolls out its new Migration Pact, hailed as a “success” merely because border crossings have dropped, the human cost is pushed out of view. At the same time, the UK is deepening the same logic through restrictive reforms and negotiations with Kosovo to establish return hubs, echoing the EU’s growing network of outsourced border control. Rather than diverging paths, the UK and EU are reinforcing one another, creating parallel systems that narrow protection, increase precarity, and treat people on the move as disposable.
Read MoreWe’re sharing the recording of our recent webinar on the Dead and Missing: Serbia Report, held with Klikaktiv and No Name Kitchen (NNK). The webinar explored systemic neglect, institutional silence, and structural violence surrounding the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
Our knowledge-mapping report, Erased in Life and Death, documents border deaths, burial sites, procedural gaps, and the crucial work of grassroots actors and communities in preserving memory and dignity. The report includes a first-of-its-kind map of named and unnamed burial sites, case studies across multiple municipalities, and reflections on the limited engagement of intergovernmental organisations.
Read MoreAt Collective Aid, our advocacy is grounded in the lived realities of displaced communities and focuses on three interrelated issues that reveal the functioning of Europe’s border system: deaths and disappearances, detention, and so-called voluntary returns. These are not abstract concerns- they are urgent, observable outcomes of policies that sort people into categories of value and disposability. In this issue, we explain why we choose to focus on these issues now.
Read MoreThe New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum reshapes Europe’s borders, institutionalizing detention, deportation, and restricted access to protection. While framed as a reform, it prioritizes control over human rights, leaving asylum seekers vulnerable and frontline states overwhelmed. This blo post highlights the Pact’s real-life impact and calls for solidarity, advocacy, and action to defend the rights and safety of people on the move.
Read MoreExamining the EU’s migration policies, this blog exposes the hypocrisy and exclusion embedded within Europe’s purported values of human rights and solidarity. It highlights how systemic biases shape the treatment of refugees, with access to protection often determined by race, nationality, or perceived “Europeanness,” revealing a deeply uneven and discriminatory approach to migration management across the continent.
Read MoreIn the late summer of 2025, in an informal living site - incredible story captures both the resilience and heartbreak of people on the move in Europe today.
This piece offers a window into Hassan’s life: from his days as an ambitious university student, to the violence and humiliation faced across borders, to the quiet humanity that persists even in the harshest conditions. His story reminds us that behind every policy, there is a person with dreams, loss, and unyielding hope.
Read MoreOn August 14th, a fire broke out in Obrenovac asylum center. A woman we knew - a mother, wife, and friend - was trapped inside. Her husband and children escaped, but she suffered severe burns and passed away on September 22nd, 2025.
Her death was not an accident. It was the result of systemic neglect in Serbia’s camps: unsafe facilities, non-functional fire alarms, inadequate medical care, and authorities’ silence - the same neglect that has already cost lives in Sjenica and displaced families from Krnjača.
We will not forget. We will not forgive. Her memory will inspire our continued fight for justice.
Read MoreFive years after the Moria fire, the scars remain. What happened on Lesvos in September 2020 was not an accident but the outcome of years of deliberate policies of containment, neglect, and deterrence. Instead of accountability for unsafe and degrading conditions, six Afghan youths - the “Moria 6” - were scapegoated in flawed trials, only cleared this May.
Today, the promise of “No more Morias” remains impossible. Closed, remote camps like Kara Tepe and the planned Vastria facility continue the same model of exclusion and control. Remembering Moria means rejecting these policies and calling for accountability.
Read MoreTwo years after the capsizing of a small boat on the Drina River, which claimed the lives of a young Syrian family and nine others, we remember the victims, recount the deadly conditions that force people onto perilous crossings, and call for collective mourning as well as recognition of the humanity that European borders continue to deny.
Read MoreToday the Migration Minister arrives on Lesvos, the latest in a series of visits to camps, detention facilities, and so-called ‘hotspot’ locations in recent weeks. During each of these visits, he has taken every opportunity to further entrench the deliberately provocative and dehumanising language, such as referring to people arriving in Greece as an “invasion”, which has already defined his tenure.
Ten years after the so-called Long Summer of Migration in 2015, Greece stands in a moment of further punitive regression, far away from a humanitarian approach to the issue. Rather than learning from the lessons of the past, the Greek government is seen once more to be escalating a strategy that is rooted in deterrence, exclusion and securitization.
Read MoreIf the EU knowingly finances facilities that isolate, endanger, and violate the rights of vulnerable people, can it claim to uphold human rights at all? It is clear that the CCAC system is not just a Greek issue, it is a European one. The funding, political support, and regulatory framing of these centres makes the European Union complicit in the conditions they produce. While leaders speak the language of humanitarianism and protection, their policies produce the opposite: trauma, neglect, and danger.
Read MoreWritten for the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) and co-published with Collective Aid.
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Following Tuesday’s release, this sixth and final summary section released before the final report publication on Thursday 10 July focuses on a number of locations case studies undertaken during this research and mapping project.
Read MoreReflections on Gaza, and what we tolerate
Read MoreFollowing Friday’s release, the fourth of six sections we’re sharing ahead of publication of the full report in July, this fifth summary section focuses on the role of the border regime itself; not merely a backdrop but an active and structuring force. The border regime is simultaneously a causal factor, a web within which all of our context and discussion is enmeshed and from which it cannot be separated, and a central facilitator of EU policy and practice.
Read MoreIn the family camp of Krnjača, on the outskirts of Belgrade, a young Moroccan man explains that he has received a Serbian expulsion order. Having arrived in the country several months ago, he recounts his arrest.
His story is not unique.
Read MoreFollowing Tuesday’s release, the third of six sections we’re sharing ahead of publication of the full report in July, this fourth summary section focuses on the role of activists in documenting, reporting, and challenging official failures in the handling of deaths of people on the move across Serbia As they support families in the pursuit of justice and preserve the memory of those lost.
Read MoreFollowing Monday’s overview of our initial findings and the realities of death on the move in Serbia, we present the second of six sections to be released ahead of publication of the full report in July. This summary section focuses on our work to map the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
Read MoreOur full report ‘Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia’ explores the systemic neglect, institutional silence, and structural violence surrounding the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
Following Monday’s overview of our initial findings and the realities of death on the move in Serbia, we present the second of six sections to be released ahead of publication of the full report in July. This summary section focuses on our work to map the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
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