The other Europe

What hap­pens to African immi­grants in Europe when they are grant­ed polit­i­cal refugee status? In Turin, Italy, an aban­doned clinic has been squat­ted by more than 200 Somali and Sudanese refugees since Decem­ber 2008. Khaled, Shukri and Ali are three of them. Their hopes for a normal life in Europe are “sus­pend­ed” for years by a legal sit­u­a­tion in which they can’t leave the coun­try or find work and have no right of abode. ALTRA EUROPA fol­lows their lives in the clinic over the space of one year, from the inevitable inter­nal prob­lems caused by scarci­ty of food and water to the com­mit­ment of vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tions to pro­vide min­i­mum sup­port and the protests of cit­i­zens. Thanks to the ini­tia­tive of city author­i­ties, half of the refugees were final­ly trans­ferred to bar­racks that have been poorly refit­ted for this purpose.

They have been living in Switzer­land for many years. They have start­ed fam­i­lies. Their kids are in school. Then one day, they are taken into cus­tody, with­out a trial, with­out … read more

THE WORLD IS LIKE THAT explores the des­tiny of five of the pro­tag­o­nists in the film SPECIAL FLIGHT after being deport­ed from Switzer­land. Being paper­less migrants, they were uproot­ed from … read more