"This is MY Country"

Wednesdays at DIS are days for "field studies". Instead of sitting in the classroom, we get the opportunity to engage ourselves in hands on activities at local institutions in order to contextualize the 8:30 AM lectures that may or may not be fully absorbed during normal class days.

Today was a field study for my Cross Cultural Encounters class, the core course in the Migration & Identity program. As a project for the semester, we are collaborating with local asylum seekers in order to publish the next edition of the only publication run by asylum seekers in Denmark, New Times. There is currently much debate on the asylum system in Denmark, as the rules are much stricter than those of other EU countries. It is considered extremely hard to be granted asylum in Denmark, and it is necessary to produce quite a bit of documentation, including documentation of persecution. In other words, you must be able to prove, on a piece of paper, that returning to your home country poses a legitimate threat to your life or your health.

The Dublin Convention makes matters even more complicated. Passed in Denmark in 1997, the convention is a piece of EU legislation that seeks to streamline the application process by requiring the first EU country in which the asylum seeker is apprehended to take responsibility for this person and process their application domestically. Once you have been fingerprinted in Denmark, you may not leave Denmark to apply for asylum in another EU country. This poses a serious obstacle to many seeking asylum, because the laws on granting residence permits are so stringent, and the citizenship test and expectations of self-support are so high. As a result, there are a very high number of people waiting in the limbo of "asylum centers" who have been rejected by Denmark but who are unable to return to their home country for fear of persecution. There are people who have been sitting in these centers for 10 years without any hope of being granted a normal life in Denmark.

This morning, we were seperated into groups and introduced to the asylum seeker and the article topics that we will be working with for the next months. Farnam, our asylum seeker, is in the unique position of being an "unaccompanied minor". His parents were mathematics teachers in Iran and were too public about the fact that they were practicing Christians, not Muslims. In Iran, this is grounds for execution. He left Iran for Belgium, with the end goal of settling in England. However, Farnam was seperated from his parents, who moved on to England and were fingerprinted there. A family friend bought Farnam a ticket to Denmark and told him that he would have to purchase a ticket to England in the airport, but he was detained in Copenhagen where he was fingerprinted.

He is 16 years old and he has been living in a foreign country for 7 months by himself, unable to directly contact his family in England. He told us that when he was apprehended, he was promised by the authorities to be reunited with his family, but that promise has yet to be upheld. And because of the Dublin Convention, he cannot legally join them, nor has he the means. His English is extremely advanced for only 7 months in classes, and he received his diploma in Iran when he was 14. He hopes to attend university to become an architect. He hopes to return to Iran one day.

The most striking comment he made today was about the manner in which the Danish authorities speak of Denmark. "You are in MY country now..." He says the Danes speak of Denmark as if it is the best country in the world, all other places inferior. He says that they expect him to be more than happy to be here, living in an asylum center, without his family.

In two weeks, my group has arranged to visit Farnam at his asylum center in order to see what a day in the life of an under-aged asylum seeker in Denmark is like.

This boy is remarkably composed and well spoken, given his situation. And by the end of the meeting, I was feeling quite petty for complaining about the rainy weather and the crowed train on my way into the city.