On June 5-6, activists from many different countries came to Warsaw to protest against the deadly policies of Frontex, the EU agency which conducts migrant hunting operations, trains border guards and special units to hunt down people crossing so-called "national borders" and which helps to coordinate and implement EU immigration policy. Frontex has its headquarters in Warsaw. On June 5, the second of two transnational conferences took place (A more complete account of the conference should appear later). On June 6, a demonstration was held in front of Frontex headquarters. People from many countries were present, people from various social movements, some refugees living in Poland as well. The protestors demand that Frontex be shut down and that freedom of movement should be given to all, that there be an end to descrimination of all sorts against immigrants.

On the 18th of June 2008, a proposal for a directive concerning the detention and deportation of immigrants will be submitted to the European Parliament. Since 1990, the policies of European governments with respect to immigration and asylum have resulted in a continuous reduction of the guarantees and fundamental protections of the people they affect. Europe is becoming a locked-down fortress and uses disproportionate means to prevent access to its territory and to deport unauthorised migrants. The project before the European Parliament, if it were to be adopted, would represent yet another regression. In foreseeing detention that could be extended up to 18 months for people whose only offence is to want to live in Europe, it holds to an inhuman logic:

On 6 June we will show our opposition to the border regime with a demonstration in front of Frontex headquarters in Warsaw. Frontex is an EU agency with coordinates the activity, training and operations of the EU's border control. It also coordinates this activity with police, the military and secret services. The Frontex- run RABITs (rapid border intervention teams) carry out military- like exercises with weaponry in preparation for operations against groups of migrants. There is growing likelihood that somebody will be shot dead for trying to cross the border. We will go to the Frontex office with the slogans "No one is Illegal" and "No Borders, No Nations" to confront the migrant hunters with the consequences of their policies and show what it is that this institution is really protecting: misery, poverty, exploitation, racism, imperalism and global capitalism.

On 6 June we will show our opposition to the border regime with a demonstration in front of Frontex headquarters in Warsaw. Frontex is an EU agency with coordinates the activity, training and operations of the EU's border control. It also coordinates this activity with police, the military and secret services. The Frontex- run RABITs (rapid border intervention teams) carry out military- like exercises with weaponry in preparation for operations against groups of migrants. There is growing likelihood that somebody will be shot dead for trying to cross the border. We will go to the Frontex office with the slogans "No one is Illegal" and "No Borders, No Nations" to confront the migrant hunters with the consequences of their policies and show what it is that this institution is really protecting: misery, poverty, exploitation, racism, imperalism and global capitalism.

France has made the issue of migration one of the priorities of the French presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2008. On the 13th and 14th of October 2008 the European Union's council of ministers will be meeting in Paris in order to adopt a 'European pact on immigration and asylum'. On the 20th and 21st of October the second Euro-African inter-ministerial conference will be held in Paris on the question of migrations and development ('Rabat II'). On this occassion we call for participation in a very large-scale European mobilisation during the week of 13th to 19th October in Paris, to promote a different understanding of immigration and a different relationship between the European Union, Africa and the rest of the world. We will organise at that time a counter-summit on the questions of migration and development, a big European demonstration for a different European politics, and a giant concert.

Last week after some newspapers reported on slave albour conditions migrants working as strawberry pickers in greece, the migrants in the rural area of Manolada went on strike. The workers from South Asia and the Balkans demand that their daily wage be increased from €23 to €30 (based on 12 hour work day and having rent for living in makeshift tents deducted by their employers). It is the first time that migrants in rural Greece are going on strike. Their employers have denied to give in to these demands (they are claiming that this would ruin them). Subseqeuntly 400 of the striking migrants were attacked by attacked by farmers and hired thugs. 3 trade unionists have been hurt and received treatment in hospitals. So far the poice have arreted 1 framer and 60 of the striking migrants.

The non-existence of any legal entry to Europe for Asylum-seekers produces a market of illegal transport facilities, a prospering business at the EU-borders. The closed borders have produced this market and the criminalising the market's actors at the same time. Draconian penalties against - as the border regime calls it - “people trafficking” increases the prices for transportation on one hand, and makes the market more attractive on the other hand, as well as making a secure arrival at the aimed destination impossible. Migration from areas which have become impoverished, plundered and unliveable through war and/or through electronic/textile/raw material production and disposals are one way to defy the world order. Our protest's aim is to support the interests of the people who have decided to take this hard and dangerous path.

While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees, leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, the "European Border Agency", plays a crucial core role for this racist european border regime and has achieved rapidly growing importance and budget since its foundation in 2005.

On the 15th and 16th of march 2008 about 200 people attended a meeting on migration and deportation in the Malian capital Bamako organised by the AME, a grassroots organisation of deportees. This 'Association Malienne des Expulsés' wanted to pass on the experiences of the deportees from European and African countries to the 'candidats au départ' and discuss the repression of the sans-papiers in Europe and the almost complete sealing off of Africa by to the extended European border control. The AME meeting tied the struggle against deportation and for freedom of movement in Africa to this struggle in Europe. Bamako is one of the ten stations of the Transnational Chain of Migrationrelated Actions.

MayDay! MayDay! From Milano to Helsinki, from Malaga to Berlin, MayDay Parades have spread throughout Europe and beyond. They express the common will to fight precarization and the criminalization of migrants, to make the daily struggles of the precarious visible, to work together to subvert and disrupt the flows of money and power in Fortress Europe. Nowadays, precarity is structural and generalized. It's the paradigmatic condition of work. Structural, because it is the modern form of capitalistic dominance on labur, the outcome of individual bargaining at the expense of collective bargaining. Further, labor precarity is transformed into precarity for life. When the separation between working time and living time blurs, in a context where worktime can be expanded with no limits, precarized labor conditions become precarious conditions of existence. Migrant workers are the most precarious among the precarious.

While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees, leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, the "European Border Agency", plays a crucial core role for this racist european border regime and has achieved rapidly growing importance and budget since its foundation in 2005.

On February 13th, 2008, Franco Frattini, the Justice, Security and Freedom Commissioner and Vice-President of the European Commission, presented the European Commission's so-called Border Package, entitled 'A comprehensive vision for an integrated European border management system for the 21st century'. The package is comprised of three parts. The first is an evaluation of and outlook for Frontex, the European border security agency. The second part addresses the establishment of the European border surveillance system (EUROSUR). We present this text (which was written for the german language) frontex-watch website in the context of the ongoing transnational action chain that includes an action day against frontex on the 6th of june 2008 in Warsaw.

[updated 20.feb.08: the protests in the camps are still going on. a day to day overview of the events can be found on migreurop.org] In France, in 2 "centres de rétention" (one of the types of detention centers for migrants, where they are  before deportation) in Paris region, a strong protest movement has been going since Dec 20, 2007. Migrants went on hunnger strike to try to alert the opinion on detention, which they characterize as "shameful and arbitrary". Some of them  have written a "cahier de doléances" (after the jump; the term refer to lists of claims and complaints before the French Revolution) where they point lack of hygiene, their feeling to be "ttreated like cattle", "humiliating searches" etc... this document has been sent to, among others, the consulates of their home countries.