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.

On September 2006 migrants associations and supporting groups created the Spanish Network for immigrants rights (REDI in Spanish), a national coordination with the objective of better comunication, of coorganizing protests and of campaigns and support for the fight for immigrants rights. In the last general meeting (Nov. 2007) more then 120 delegates from all over spain decided to call for a common action day on february 23th, just 2 weeks before the general elections. Demonstrations, actions and meetings will be celebrated in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Pamplona, Burgos, Sevilla, etc. In Andalucia there will be a centralized demonstration in Sevilla with the call: "Migration is not the problem, the problem is precarity", with the participation of buses from Malaga, Almeria, Cadiz and people from all andalusian cities.

there have been plans by the greek authorities to destroy a self organized camp of migrants erected by migrants waiting for a change to get to Italy in the greek port city of Patras. The destruction of the camp had been planned (and announced) for the 30th of January. On Tuesday 29th the vast majority of migrants living in Patras participated in a huge a huge demonstration According to greek activists who participated in the events, 'It was amazing that we were in the camp the previous day and in an assembly we organised there, a little before the demonstration, we told them who we are, what we think is going to happen and asked them to come and said that - up to a point - we can guarantee that they won't be arrested. The truth is we expected something like 50 people and we were really amazed when we left the camp with more than 400 people whom, till we reach the centre of the city, were at least 700. In the centre lots of greek people joined the demonstration and in total we were about 2000 people. It was the most amazing demonstration I have been to for a very long time. '

there have been plans by the greek authorities to destroy a self organized camp of migrants erected by migrants waiting for a change to get to Italy in the greek port city of Patras. The destruction of the camp had been planned (and announced) for the 30th of January. On Tuesday 29th the vast majority of migrants living in Patras participated in a huge a huge demonstration According to greek activists who participated in the events, 'It was amazing that we were in the camp the previous day and in an assembly we organised there, a little before the demonstration, we told them who we are, what we think is going to happen and asked them to come and said that - up to a point - we can guarantee that they won't be arrested. The truth is we expected something like 50 people and we were really amazed when we left the camp with more than 400 people whom, till we reach the centre of the city, were at least 700. In the centre lots of greek people joined the demonstration and in total we were about 2000 people. It was the most amazing demonstration I have been to for a very long time. '

Between February and October 2008 a series of events, protests and actions will take place in various cities and countries all over Europe and beyond : against the border regime, against detentions and deportations, against the exploitation of migrant labour and for legalization of all migrants. This transnational chain of struggles builds on the three action days for freedom of movement and the right to stay, which happened in previous years. But with this chain of events we are aiming for something more. We strongly believe that the transnational expression of migrants’ struggles against the “monster” of migration controls must be something more than a one day event once a year. We believe that the transnational space must be understood as an unified space of migrants’ struggles, happening everyday and right now.

Between February and October 2008 a series of events, protests and actions will take place in various cities and countries all over Europe and beyond : against the border regime, against detentions and deportations, against the exploitation of migrant labour and for legalization of all migrants. This transnational chain of struggles builds on the three action days for freedom of movement and the right to stay, which happened in previous years. But with this chain of events we are aiming for something more. We strongly believe that the transnational expression of migrants’ struggles against the “monster” of migration controls must be something more than a one day event once a year. We believe that the transnational space must be understood as an unified space of migrants’ struggles, happening everyday and right now.

Between February and October 2008 a series of events, protests and actions will take place in various cities and countries all over Europe and beyond : against the border regime, against detentions and deportations, against the exploitation of migrant labour and for legalization of all migrants. This transnational chain of struggles builds on the three action days for freedom of movement and the right to stay, which happened in previous years. But with this chain of events we are aiming for something more. We strongly believe that the transnational expression of migrants’ struggles against the “monster” of migration controls must be something more than a one day event once a year. We believe that the transnational space must be understood as an unified space of migrants’ struggles, happening everyday and right now.