Should the government want to access your smartphone and social media, would you consent? Europe collects private data from refugees. Who has access to it and what they use it for is often unclear. 'I was afraid of being deported, so I handed over my phone. It was like handing over my whole life'.

For months already, heavy fighting wreak havoc in the Kurdish cities of Turkey, without any sign of appeasement, on the contrary. Yet, the Turkish government and the politicians of the governing AKP are already planning how to redraw the southeast thoroughly once the guns silenced. For the ravages of war offers the government an opportunity to rede ...

Nusaybin is likely to be the next battlefield in the struggle between the Turkish army and Kurdish militants. In the border town, plenty of digging to erect new barricades is going on in the neighbourhoods that have declared themselves autonomous. Because with the beginning of military operations in the neighbouring town of Idil, a confrontation&nb ...

Since August last year, the violence in the Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey flared up again. Kurdish youth affiliated with the PKK engaged in battle with the state police and army. The fights struck Sur, the historic centre of Diyarbakir, under siege since December.

It took the Surian refugee Omar not less than even months and almost 7000 euros to travel from Turkey to Austria. In a coffee shop in the Austrian city of Linz, MO* listened to his shocking testimony.

Finally, Europe. But forget about a warm welcome. Hungary is notorious for its harsh treatment of refugees and an inhospitable political climate. The problem is, once arrested at the border, a refugee is obliged to ask for asylum and give his fingerprint. This cripples their chances of being recognised as refugees elsewhere seriously.

Nazim is not heading to some promised land in Western Europe. He returns, broken by misfortune and disappointment. He will literally get back on his steps from Germany to Syria. His story reads like a list of all the things that can go wrong on the way to Europe.

Unlike neighbouring Macedonia, Serbia seems to opt for a more humane approach to the flow of refugees crossing the country. Serbia has something like a working asylum system, partly built on the legacy of the reception of Serb refugees from Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia. But the country remains only a stop-over on the way up north.

Only recently the Balkans became a transit route, but migration is certainly not new to the region. For the last two decades, the Balkans were important countries of origin. Still, last year tens of thousands of Kosovars left  their country in a time span of only few months. This migration wave stopped as suddenly as is has begun, and the reas ...

Bulgaria does not exactly correspond to the image of a new life in Europe that refugees carry with them. But the country shares a border with Turkey, and is therefore an excellent loophole to avoid Greece on the way to Europe. The last two years the influx of refugees has tenfolded, an increase Bulgaria was not prepared for..

Macedonia is the link in the Balkan route which frightens migrants the most. The two hundred kilometres from the Greek border to Serbia are regarded as the most difficult. The migration routes through the country are almost completely controlled by criminal groups, while the government looks the other way. The biggest victims are the refugees, left ...

The harsh stand on migration of the two previous governments in Greece and the festering economical crisis causes many migrants who have been living in the country for years to leave Greece behind. At the same time, Greece is a stop-over for mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees on their way to Western Europe. And so, the small village of Idomeni became ...