Last week, at least 72 people died while attempting to reach the Spanish exclave of Ceuta from Morocco. Around 60,000 people made it into Ceuta, many of them by sea, others by climbing over border fences. Within just a few days, however, most of them had already returned to Morocco.

Both Morocco and Ceuta are located in Africa. But politically, Ceuta, like Melilla, belongs to Spain and therefore to the European Union. Europe’s response to the unprecedented influx into the exclave has been almost unanimous. What happened has been described as a “threat to Europe’s security.” Some have even called it an “attack” or an “invasion.” Europe’s external borders, we are told, must be better protected.

Twenty-two of the European Union’s 27 member states have now signed an open letter initiated by Italy’s far-right government under Giorgia Meloni, criticizing Spain’s migration policy and calling for stricter security measures at Europe’s borders. Italy has further suspended its Schengen agreement with Spain. That this is little more than political posturing is evident from the fact that Ceuta is not part of the Schengen Area in the first place.

While Europe appears quick to agree on yet more repression, the 72 lives irreversibly lost have become an afterthought. Most of those who died had most of their lives still ahead of them and hoped for a better future. Instead, they found death on what they believed was the path toward that future. As right-leaning governments across Europe compete with one another in increasingly alarmist security rhetoric, the fundamental question is largely ignored: Why does a young person take such enormous risks in order to reach Europe?

People flee war, violence, persecution, poverty, and the hopelessness that arises when there is little prospect of a safe and dignified life. Border fences cannot deter those who see no viable future where they are, but merely make their journeys more dangerous and more deadly. One can debate at length the respective roles played by colonialism and other historical injustices on the one hand, and current political failures on the other, in creating global inequality. But this does not change the fact that a young person in Morocco, facing high youth unemployment and low wages, has every reason to perceive their situation as profoundly unjust when compared with life in much of Europe.

This inequality is not an abstract concept. In a world where everyone is connected to everyone else, and our planet, in many ways, has become a global village, it is experienced directly. People see how others live on their phone screens every day.

Nineteen-year-old Nok in Thailand can watch in real time as Moritz, her age and from Munich, spontaneously buys a flight ticket to Bangkok and spends six months travelling through Southeast Asia to “find........

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