Fresh eyes on the European refugee crisis

Over 1 million refugees and migrants have reached Europe via the Mediterranean in 2015. Almost a third of them were children (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2015a, 2015b). About 1.2 million people started an asylum procedure in European Union (EU) countries last year, more than twice as many as in 2014 (Eurostat, 2016).
It is unlikely that the increased influx will soon come to a halt because a peaceful solution to the conflict in Syria—the country of origin of most people who seek asylum—is not in sight (Carter, 2015). The influx involves dire circumstances for many refugees (Turner, 2015), with sad images from Calais in France to Idomeni in Greece, tensions between EU member states and neighboring countries, and social unrest among European communities.