How Refugees Can Save Europe

The liberal asks Europeans to make sacrifices that remain at the margins of political life, visible and symbolic though they are—volunteerism and opening one's home, for example. But such sacrifices do not think beyond the horizon of existing political priorities. They do not demand a reassessment of the European focus on surveillance and deterrence; they do not ask what it means for the EU to militarize its borders; they do not ask about the structural imbalances of the Dublin Convention that leave countries like Italy, Bulgaria, and Greece utterly overwhelmed at Europe's periphery; they do not seek a common effort to ensure that refugees have an adequate standard of living irrespective of where in the EU they settle; and they do not recognize the impact of contemporary austerity on the rise of nativist extremism.