天天用英语365天第127天

张海霞老师

The European migration crisis of 2015 quickly turned into a morality play. Liberals lined railway platforms to welcome refugees, while their nativist foes warned of chaos and terrorism. Lost in the row were the millions of refugees who stayed in the developing world, unwilling or unable to journey to richer countries. The boats disgorging Syrians and Afghans onto Greek islands delivered one of the most serious emergencies the European Union has ever known. But according to a new book, they were a sideshow.

Take Syria’s civil war, six years old with no end in sight. Most of the 4m Syrian refugees languishing in neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon cannot return home. But they struggle to find decent work or educate their children in the towns and cities to which most have flocked (the small numbers in camps have even fewer options). Any visitor to places like the Bekaa valley in Lebanon will quickly see the hopelessness that sets in when refugees are denied a stake in their own future.

˹”Refuge” suffers from poor editing; it is wearyingly repetitive and dotted with errors (Mrs Merkel has not, for example, imposed a cap on refugees). A few eyebrows will also be raised at the claim that Europe’s refugee flows were responsible for Britain’s vote to leave the EU. But this should not detract from the humanity of a book that places the long-term needs of the world’s refugees at its heart. ”Refuge” is the first comprehensive attempt in years to re-think from first principles a system hidebound by old thinking and hand wringing. Its ideas demand a hearing.