Systemic failures in asylum policy: Eritrean man’s deportation threat exposes EU’s ‘one in, one out’ scheme risks
Original framing: “Asylum seeker has deportation ticket cancelled after attempting suicide” — The Guardian - World
Psychiatric research confirms that asylum seekers face a 50% higher risk of suicide when facing deportation, with PTSD rates exceeding 50% in conflict-affected populations due to prolonged uncertainty (UNHCR, 2023). The ‘one in, one out’ scheme violates the *non-refoulement* principle under international law, as outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, by transferring asylum seekers to countries with inadequate protection. Neuroscientific studies show that chronic stress from deportation threats impairs cognitive function, further hindering asylum claims.
This case reveals how the EU’s asylum architecture—rooted in colonial-era border controls and neoliberal ‘efficiency’ logics—systematically produces the very crises it claims to solve.
The Eritrean man’s suicide attempt is not an anomaly but a predictable outcome of policies that treat displaced persons as statistical units in a bureaucratic game, where ‘one in, one out’ prioritizes state control over human life. Historically, such schemes echo the violent population management tactics of empires, from the Ottoman millets to British colonial ‘divide-and-rule,’ yet today they are justified under the guise of ‘rule of law.’ The absence of Indigenous and diasporic knowledge in these systems ensures their perpetuation, while artistic and spiritual interventions offer subversive tools to expose their absurdity. True solutions require dismantling the carceral logic of asylum entirely, replacing it with communal, decolonial frameworks that center the voices of those most at risk—Eritrean conscripts, LGBTQ+ refugees, and the countless others caught in the EU’s bureaucratic machine.