BOOK REVIEW: CAST AWAY

My latest read, Cast Away by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, is a passionately argued book about the European migration crisis. The cinematic quality of Cast Away pulls you away from the anonymous (and dehumanising) screen of numbers and statistics in the headlines and brings you face to face with real people and real stories, who live through the most unimaginable circumstances. 

Every day, hundreds of families leave their homes and embark on a perilous journey across the Mediterranean sea, in the hope of reaching the safety of European shores. The book's author, Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, has spent years reporting on Europe's refugee crisis, dedicating her life's work to uncover the personal dilemmas, challenges, choices and hopes of the people that lie beneath these headline stories. 

Cast Away is essential reading on the real stories of danger, deception and disillusionment in one of the greatest human tragedies of our time. These are the stories of Majid, forced to seek sanctuary when sectarian violence erupted in Libya under the bloody and brutal dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; Nart, prestigious lawyer and leading force in the wave of pro-democracy protests in Syria; Mohammed, coerced into serving under President Bashar al Asaad's brutal army and Sina, the Eritrean chemical engineer forced to flee the re-opening of the country's brutal genocide wounds.

The story of Hanan, a Palestinian refugee who sought refuge in Syria, stood out to me the most. Hanan and her husband Talal agreed that they had seen enough horror and political repression to ensure that they never spoke out against al-Asaad's brutal regime. The belief that ''when you stay quiet in Syria, nobody comes for you'' was adopted by her family for many years. She and her husband would even nod along or hold their tongues when their young children came home singing the President's praises, the result of their indoctrinating pro-regime Syrian education. But when the fighting broke out in nearby Homs, they realised that not even the death of Bashar al Asaad would free them and they decided to open up their own home to those fleeing the violence before leaving Syria  behind forever. 

Hanan's story illustrates that above-all, Cast Away is a story on the human condition in times of war and political instability. McDonald-Gibson weaves in and out of these narratives with stunning velocity to highlight that ultimately, in times of war, the educated and the illiterate; the wealthy and the marginally employed are all endangered, deceived and disillusioned in equal measure. These are the stories of global society's cast away's. 

Rather than provide the progressive moral leadership to counter the hate-filled narrative, Cast Away astutely reflects on the insular policies favoured by western European politicians that focus on sensationalism and statistics rather than human beings. As a political geographer, here I sit with the most devastating knowledge that large scale relocation projects have in fact been successful before. Take the Indochinese relocation of 1975-1995 for example; 1.3 million refugees were integrated across Western Europe, with no discernible impact on the economic functioning or cultural fabric of the affected host nations. The uncomfortable truth now of course is that Islamophobia overshadows much of the debate on the re-housing of victims, fleeing war and persecution from the Middle East; where members of no other group are as frequently blamed for the actions of so few. 

Cast Away is essential reading for anyone interested in the European migrant crisis. The European Union's core values are supposed to be rooted in the respect of human dignity, freedom, democracy and international laws. Yet the 'hospitality' which these courageous people are met with upon arriving on European shores is quite frankly, a disgraceful condemnation of all 'European' values.  Increasingly across Europe, populist politicians, such as Italy's Matteo Silvio, have used victims of the migration crisis to create targets of blame to deter from their own individual and moral failings. But perhaps what is most disturbing of all is how some leaders at the heart of the clashes themselves, such as brutal Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, found opportunity in their desperation by accepting bribes or actively facilitating the dangerous voyages desperate people are willing to take across the Mediterranean ocean. 

Antonia x