Review: 'The New Odyssey,' by Patrick Kingsley

In September 2015, when photographs of a drowned Syrian toddler lying facedown in the sand were published around the globe, there were outpourings of grief and urgent pleas to do more for refugees.

But the sympathy proved short-lived. Instead of safe havens, the economic powers of the West have erected more barriers. Once a major transit nation for migrants, Hungary has sealed off its border with a massive fence spooled with barbed wire. Turkey recently erected a 205-mile concrete wall along its southern border. And not to be outdone, President Donald Trump has ordered the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, while threatening to strip federal funding from cities that refuse to obey his plans for deporting undocumented migrants.

Amid a rise in right-wing populism, it is no longer an exaggeration to say that the West is at war with migrants. But how did a humanitarian crisis — the biggest wave of mass migration since World War II — come to be viewed as a security issue? And exactly who are the people braving these journeys, and what compels them to risk their lives to reach "fortress Europe"?

In "The New Odyssey," Patrick Kingsley, a correspondent for the Guardian, makes a persuasive case that to truly understand the complexity of the current migratory crisis, one must explore what happens to refugees long before they embark on boats. To accomplish this feat, Kingsley takes us on a journey to the farthest reaches of the clandestine migratory routes, interviewing refugees and human smugglers in 17 countries across three continents. Kingsley's account is planetary in scope, and cuts through the highly charged rhetoric that has fueled anti-migrant sentiment.

"It's the story of an everyman," Kingsley writes, "in whose footsteps any of us could tread."

Much of the media coverage of the migration crisis focuses on the "boat people" dying each year crossing the Mediterranean Sea. However, before millions of Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis can even reach the coast, many must brave an even more treacherous journey across the so-called "second sea" of the Sahara. Those crossing the desert face almost unimaginable risks — including dehydration, suffocation in unventilated trucks, heatstroke, sandstorms, militias and even armed gangs of organ harvesters.

In his depiction of human smuggling, a deeply reviled trade, Kingsley manages to find shades of gray. Abu Hamada, a kingpin of the Syrian refugee network in Egypt, is himself a refugee who only fell into the trade after Syrians realized in 2014 that Egypt would never offer them asylum. "If they weren't dispatching the boats," Kingsley writes of smugglers, "they'd be on the decks themselves."

People who subject themselves to the horrors of crossing the Mediterranean are not doing so lightly, and Kingsley takes issue with the "dangerously reductive" labels used to describe them.

International law has long enshrined the rights of refugees who are fleeing persecution, while not those fleeing poverty and misery. In public discourse, the latter are often referred to pejoratively as "economic migrants." However, these distinctions have ceased to be meaningful. How does one categorize a man who flees a life of poverty and servitude in Eritrea, only to be kidnapped and tortured in war-torn Libya? As survivors of trauma and persecution, they are all deserving of sanctuary, Kingsley suggests.

In researching his book, Kingsley asked hundreds of refugees why they risk death to reach Europe. The common answer is simple: Because there is no other option. People board wooden skiffs because the water has become safer than the land. Fences, walls and other efforts to seal off borders are doomed to fail, because migrants and their smugglers will find alternate routes, Kingsley argues. "Their desperation will ultimately prove stronger than our isolation."

Chris Serres is a Star Tribune reporter. On Twitter: @chrisserres

The New Odyssey
By: Patrick Kingsley.
Publisher: Liveright, 351 pages, $26.95.