Europe is complicated right now. Thousands walk through its borders seeking asylum. Governments scramble for cohesion.
But something simple has emerged — the compassionate impulse of European people.
Borders are being built and defended all around the globe. These demarcations have one law inside the line, and another outside.
When borders are pierced, like has happened this summer in Europe, communities on either side have a chance to view each other without the intermediaries of authorities, media, states, concrete and barbed wire. A veil drops. People suddenly see what asylum seekers look like.
This summer, many Europeans realised that asylum seekers look just like them. A spontaneous outpouring of compassion followed.
Asylum seekers set up camps outside railway stations, arrived on tourist islands, sailed into lethal seas and walked across borders in their thousands. Equally, thousands marched in support of good refugee policy, turned up to welcome asylum seekers, opened their homes. A tsunami of goods were donated.
The police in Hungary tweeted a request for donations. The response overwhelmed them. They begged people to stop donating. Facebook groups popped up: someone offered a truck, someone else took time off work to drive it to the jungle, Lesbos island or Serbia.
Interpreters and lawyers are being dispatched to the Hungarian border. New coalitions of volunteer doctors, teachers, carpenters and transport workers emerged, ready to pull up their sleeves. Following the Pope's call, churches across the continent had emergency meetings on how to house families.
When refugees walked into Europe, away from distant distress sites, their presence made the global issue visceral for Europeans. Asylum seekers became proximate and real by appearing within familiar territory and cohabiting space.
Hannah Arendt, reflecting on Jewish refugees during World War II, said, 'We cannot choose who we cohabit the earth with.' Europe's relatively recent memory of refugee movement within its borders, when people fled Nazis, makes a difference. The fear of repeating Nazi practises has been very present in media coverage here, and stopped many practises that might otherwise have occurred.
Australia doesn't have asylum seekers walking en masse through ordinary streets. Our border is one of established hatred. Asylum seekers are corralled into concentration camps offshore where suicide, riots, abuse, and human rights and international law violations occur under government mandated secrecy.
'Stop the boats' policy denies ordinary Australians their compassionate impulse. It pushes asylum seekers out of sight and makes it impossible to pierce the veil. It creates a history that our children will face judgement upon. It denies humanity's collective memory after World War II.
Government oppression comes in many forms. Many asylum seekers have experienced explicit forms of oppression. But there's also the oppression of compassion within a nation's borders. How can ordinary Australians respond when violently enforced borders prohibit asylum seekers from cohabiting with us?
Back in Europe it remains complicated. Frontlines are overwhelmed with donated material goods. Calais came to resemble a wasteland where piles of inappropriate clothes were dumped; donators didn't have the foresight to check the needs of those living in limbo. Rain and wind scattered stuff to the mud.
There's footage of refugees rejecting donations. This occurs when people are corralled, stopped from taking trains, or pushed behind barbed wire by border police and soaked in teargas. What does material aid mean when you're frozen without freedom at a border?
Now across Europe borders are haphazardly being reinforced. There's violence, anti terrorist forces and batons. Some governments aggressively close borders. Europe splits.
This retardation of compassion results in camps, violence and further persecution for people running from exactly that. Ordinary people can be as compassionate as they like, but the border, and all it represents, follows asylum seekers into Europe until governments recognise their rights.
Cornel West says, 'Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public'. Refugees exist because compassionate politics has been trumped by security and economic imperatives. Obligations to refugees can be met without sacrificing security, economic wellbeing or imposing violent borders.
This requires policies of pre-emptive compassion, rather than screeching tabloid fear-mongering, tear gas and arrests. Over summer ordinary Europeans illustrated there's justice within the continent. This begs for reflection in policy. Governments exist to provide security, but also to respond to their people's compassionate impulse, and enable it to be nurtured and channelled into healthy communities and law.
Governments meeting their international obligations is pre-emptive compassionate politics and might have averted the currently explosive fault-lines and border enforcements.
Oppressing compassion is a powerful control mechanism, which feeds fear politics. As Rashi, medieval commentator, says in Numbers 13:18, 'If they live in open cities, they are strong, since they are confident of their strength. But if they live in fortified cities, they are weak.'
Dr Bronwyn Lay worked as a lawyer in Melbourne before moving to France where she now works as an legal consultant for international NGOs. She is also the creative director of the Dirt Foundation and her book Juris Materiarum: Empires of Earth, Soil, and Dirt will be released in early 2016.