Tine Danckaers

ANKARA - One image that will undoubtedly mark 2021 is that of the tens of thousands of desperate Afghans drumming outside the closed gates of Kabul airport to get away. The borders were sealed tight, yet hundreds of thousands of Afghans managed to flee. A number of them reached Turkey in the hope of being able to ask for international protection there. An illusion, as it turns out. After the fall of Kabul, Turkey, with the help of Europe, also sealed its borders and stopped registering Afghan asylum seekers.

IMIDER, MOROCCO - Imider is a very small community, but a world record has set it on the map. Here, in the South Moroccan Atlas Mountains, under a colorful Berber flag, the longest sit-in in the world is ongoing.

BAGHDAD - In recent years, thousands of Iraqis have voluntarily returned from Belgium to Iraq. Whoever returns, often did not really choose that, even if it is called "voluntary". The voluntary returnees from our country have often undergone a failed asylum procedure. Others could not handle the long waiting periods, with a high probability of a negative decision - in the years 2015 and 2016 the Belgian asylum authorities could not cope with the flow - and they missed their family.

KABUL / BAGDAD - Tine Danckaers travelled to the Middle East and spoke in Afghanistan and Kurdish Iraq with people who applied for asylum in Belgium but returned to their country of origin 'voluntarily' or after a forced deportation. A dossier on return as part of the European migration policy, the flexible interpretation of security, perspectives or lack thereof, homesickness and paralysis.