Situated Voices 32

On 14 May 2024, the European Council adopted the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, a set of legislative actions that creates a new legal framework for the entire European Union in the sphere of migration and international protection. This new reform has been widely criticised by civil society and different groups that work to defend human rights.

In conjunction with World Refugee Day, this new edition of Situated Voices seeks to open a critical dialogue to thrust these major changes into the spotlight, changes which facilitate and accelerate processes of return or advocate the funding of third countries to exercise control over the movement of migrating peoples.

In light of the key transformations of this new legal framework for the lives of thousands of people who migrate, the Museo Situado assembly feels there is an urgent need to bring together different voices to gain a detailed understanding of the migration policies that exist to date, in addition to the main changes involved in the Pact. The aim is to condemn basic human rights violations, particularly regarding children, and to present the experiences of citizen organisers that are putting into practice dignified strategies of welcoming and providing refuge as alternatives to policies of expulsion and the refusal to help.

As a result, this encounter shares different citizen initiatives, such as the welcome for and solidarity with recently arrived migrants at the Centre of Emergency Assistance and Referral (CAED) in Carabanchel and Alcalá de Henares in Madrid, and the gathering of signatures in recent years, with 700,000 recorded, to support the People’s Legislative Initiative (ILP) for the regularisation of migrant people in Spain, which is currently being processed in Spanish Parliament.