When we think of borders, we tend to think of increasingly fortified physical spaces with fences, razor wire, and the presence of police and military forces on both sides. While internal borders within the Schengen Area have been disappearing, external borders have become increasingly impenetrable and harmful. Between 2014 and 2022, the total length of fences on the EU's external borders increased from 315 km to 2,048 km. To give you an idea, the infamous "Trump wall" is 900 km long.

At a time when armed conflicts dominate the news, it's important to remember that children are also aware of them and interested in what's happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and all that stems from it: the violence and death, the hunger and poverty, the power and vulnerability, the disrupted daily lives, and the fear. We can avoid these topics altogether, or we can find sensitive ways to address them, and literature can be one of those paths. This was the starting point of the 10th Publishing-Education Symposium, held on October 28th at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the University of Girona, with the participation of Pablo Larraguibel, editor at Ekaré, and Blanca Andelic, a technician from the Pla de l'Estany-Banyoles Social Welfare Consortium.

At the beginning of the century, the Casal dels InfantsCasal, a well-established institution in the metropolitan area, recognized the need to have eyes and hands in Morocco to work in collaboration with local organizations, children intending to emigrate, and their families. Claire Trichot, from France, heads the Casal delegation in the North African country, based in Tangier.

Dozens of people with nowhere else to go are sunbathing in the Sant Roc neighborhood of Badalona. They do so amidst hastily made makeshift bags, old suitcases, and rusty bicycles. It's all they have. They are some of the residents of the abandoned B9 high school, where Until recently there were more than 400 occupantsMost of them undocumented migrants who had already been in other settlements in the city. This Wednesday they were evicted again, as had already happened with the occupied warehouses where they lived before.

"After what happened in Scotland and the United Kingdom, the Catalan Process continues and moves forward. We feel strengthened by the good example of a European democracy that has allowed voting. This is the way forward." These were the words of Artur Mas in November 2014, a few days after the November 9th referendum, the prelude to the referendum that Carles Puigdemont would lead three years later. Since then, and throughout the peak years of the Process, Catalonia has repeatedly reflected the Scottish case. Eleven years after that moment, the reality of the country and the issues occupying the Catalan political agenda distance him from the man who was a role model.

This Wednesday, the Canary Islands experienced the umpteenth example of the migration drama. canoe A boat with dozens of people on board capsized this morning off the island of El Hierro as it approached the port of La Restinga to disembark. The vessel was carrying more than 100 people, including children, and Canarian authorities have confirmed seven fatalities: four women, a 16-year-old girl, and two five-year-old girls.

Hein de Haas is one of Europe's leading experts on migration. In his latest book The myths of immigration (Peninsula), a huge international success, compiles the conclusions of more than 30 years of research, challenging existing prejudices on the subject. He is co-director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford and professor of migration and development at Maastricht University. He participated in the latest meeting of the Círculo de Economía (Economics Circle).

I receive the email when I'm already in Colombia, at the Bogotá Book Fair. In a couple of days, I'm leaving for New York to attend the World Voices Festival, the city's international literary festival. PEN International, the event's organizer, is the sender. Attached is a document titled "Traveling to the United States." I open it in the hotel lobby. The header, in bold, says: "Please be aware that this information should not be construed as legal advice."

There are times when life accelerates and goes crazy. This happened last year to Abou Sangaré, a Guinean migrant who arrived in France at the age of 16 after crossing Mali, Algeria, Libya, the Mediterranean, and Italy. Based in Amiens, in northern France, Sangaré was chosen to play an undocumented migrant, like himself, in the film. The story of Souleymane, which premiered at Cannes in May 2024, where his performance was awarded Best in the Un Certain Regard section. He still had no roles, but he was hailed like a star. "Canes was a very stressful experience for me," the actor explains via video call. "Presenting the film in front of 900 people isn't something I usually do, and I got very nervous. And when everyone started applauding afterwards, it was like landing in another world."

Feed the ghosts (Reservoir Books) is one of the great publishing bets of the first months of the year. Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Non-Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal, this "graphic memoir" - according to the original subtitle, changed in a disconcerting way by "autobiography in vinyetes" in the Spanish edition - is very ambitious: the North American of Chinese origin Tessa Hulls (Califòrnia, 1984) does not He had only faced a work as long as this one. It is a graphic novel of nearly four hundred dense pages – and a painstaking translation by Juan Naranjo – the result of almost a decade of intense research by Hulls, which traces the family history of three generations of women: her grandmother, Sun Yi, who had to flee China when Mao Tse-Tung came to power; Rose, her mother, affected by her mixed-race status and marked by her parent's mental illness; and Tessa Hulls herself, on whom the accumulated trauma somehow falls, the ghosts that give the work its title and that have accompanied her throughout her life.

Keir Starmer's government has come to the conclusion that it must not only say what it is doing in terms of immigration, with specific data on how it combats irregular arrivals in the country, but it must also offer images to the public of the heavy-handed way it treats those who are in the country without papers.

By 2050, up to 1.2 billion people could be forced to flee their homes due to the climate crisis, according to a report by the think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) cited by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), although it points out that the "most widely cited" estimate is 200 million.The UN has long warned that climate migrations Migration is one of the great challenges of the 21st century, which has so far generated debate but few facts. Most are displacements within the borders of the same country, but more and more people are forced to migrate due to droughts, floods, hurricanes or simply because of the loss of their livelihood due to rising temperatures or rising sea levels. "Migrations could be managed if there were a rational migration policy, but the current one is based on racist and xenophobic prejudices," says Miguel Pajares, president of the Migration Policy Group. Honorary Member of the Catalan Commission for Aid to Refugees (CCAR).

Keir Starmer's government has come to the conclusion that it must not only say what it is doing in terms of immigration, with specific data on how it combats irregular arrivals in the country, but it must also offer images to the public of the heavy-handed way it treats those who are in the country without papers.

At least 4,404 people died at sea in 2021 along the different migratory routes that lead to the Spanish coasts from North Africa; that is, the sea has claimed 12 lives a day. And the trend is increasing, despite the restrictions imposed by covid and the EU's defensive policies at its borders. The figure represents more than double the number of deaths recorded in 2020, which was already the highest since NGO Caminando Fronteres started its records. "4,404 is the minimum. The truth is that there may be more victims and we have no proof," said the spokeswoman for the organisation, Helena Maleno. Of these 4,404 people killed, 205 were young children and 628 were women. Most were travelling with their children looking for an alternative to the harshness of their countries. They are citizens of 21 countries, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, but also from distant countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or the Comoros Islands, who previously had to travel thousands of kilometres to find their way to Europe.

The National Police has activated, this Friday early in the afternoon, an operation to return to Morocco about 800 minors from the country that entered Ceuta alone in mid-May. The operation has begun with the transfer, in groups of 15, of the 234 teenagers who were in the sports center of Santa Amelia, according to what police sources confirmed to Europa Press and the organization No Name Kitchen (Ceuta) to ARA. The repatriation operation will not include minors considered vulnerable, according to the same sources.

Ocean Viking, the rescue ship of the French NGO SOS Mediterranée, began to disembark 572 people, including 183 minors, survivors of the daily drama in the Mediterranean, now far from the media spotlight, at midday in Sicily. They were rescued in six boats in the waters separating Libya from Malta, most of them in the rescue zone under the responsibility of the European island, and after a week at sea they will be able to disembark in Italy. The largest was a fishing boat carrying 369 people. Last Saturday another dinghy boat sank off Tunisia, leaving at least 43 dead and 83 survivors. On Spain's southern border, more than 2,000 people have died this semester, as announced this week by the NGO Caminando Fronteras. They are only the first steps of a summer that will again fill the waters of the Mediterranean, the most unequal border on the planet, with deaths.

"Today is a sad day because the figures we will give are terrible and very sad", anticipated activist and researcher Helena Maleno, before releasing the latest monitoring data on the right to life on the southern border of the NGO Caminando Fronteras. The organisation's report details that up to 2,087 people have died during the first six months of the year trying to reach Spain through the migratory routes of the southern border.

Spain is returning to Morocco people who have arrived in Ceuta without the procedure established by law, the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR) denounced yesterday. There is not even official data on how many of the 5,600 people who have returned to Morocco have been forced by the police and how many have returned on their own.