I keep on wondering how people who have left their country under gruelling circumstances and then have to live in very crammed spaces that were not made to accommodate people for such a long time, how they manage to keep on living without losing their mind … How is it to live a small space with people you hardly know, or don´t know, without any real perspective, constantly worried about your future, your friends and family that you left behind, without the possibility to work, without privacy … in a place where the people who live there do not really care for you nor want to have you there and blame you for everything bad that is happening …

A friend of mine (Judith Affolter, who took the pictures features in the article) made me aware of this: http://www.woz.ch/-793d … Putting up refugees in the “middle of nowhere” does not strike me as the best of  ideas … Every “encampment” makes me think of a prison and having large numbers of refugees living in one place is always going to create tensions. Is there a solution to this? I don´t know, but I wonder if many problems could be avoided if people fleeing their home countries and arriving here, probably heavily traumatised, and without possessions, were housed in smaller buildings, all through the city, in every kind of neighbourhood. The tendency to house them “out of sight” or in poor neighbourhoods, were people who live there already feel disadvantaged , seems to be a recipe for disaster. These are short term solutions, but without any considerations for long term effects, and long term is a big word here, negative consequences of short sighted politics can, in this case, be seen after a couple of weeks  already ….

My grandparents met some helpful people during their time in Silesia, but there were quite some locals who resented those foreigners … even if they weren’t´t there by choice … Silesia was a poor place then, and I read some reports that say that many of the deported people from Luxembourg had taken their good clothes with them and wore them and consequently looked richer and better off then the local population … leading to jealousy and resentment…  Rather ironic considering that the Luxembourgish people there were forced to be there, forced to work, constantly monitored and punished for the most ridiculous reasons … often ill and always scared of what might come next …
One can see the same twisted reasoning and baseless jealousy here, people who call  refugees “Sozialschmarotzer” while they themselves are on their way to collect unemployment money  … (the bus I take to my studio passes a place where refugees live and the (no-)job center next door … ) .
And remarks like: “why do they need mobile phones?” As if being a refugee strips you from all your rights and needs and makes you something else / less then human …