‘The impossible journey’ Project
This webdoc is part of Quepo’s project, The Impossible Journey, which aims to highlight and denounce the systematic violation of the right to migrate and seek asylum in Spain and the European Union suffered by people on the move.
The project arises from the need to counteract the criminalisation of migrants and refugees for arriving irregularly. To do so, The Impossible Journey reveals how current migration policies, far from ensuring legal and safe pathways, construct a complex system of obstacles that violate fundamental rights and create situations of grave risk for individuals.
The project’s narrative
Through personal stories from witnesses and analyses by migration experts, the project showcases how European migration policies, both inside and outside our borders, establish an administrative and legal labyrinth that turns regular migration and the ability to seek asylum into an ‘impossible journey’ for most people. The project’s various components demonstrate that this impossibility is not accidental but rather the result of a discriminatory system based on national origin, class, and race.
The webdoc: a tool to understand and transform
The immersive narrative of the interactive website maps out all the ‘legal’ or ‘safe’ options available to migrants through stories of migrants and refugees, expert analyses, and data visualisation. Throughout the possible paths, the administrative and legal mechanisms that constitute systematic obstacles forming this ‘impossible journey’ are exposed.
Academic research at the core of the narrative
To ensure rigor and credibility in its advocacy and denunciation efforts, the project has developed comprehensive research documenting and analysing all the obstruction mechanisms in the current migration system. The research demonstrates that the current legal and administrative framework effectively makes legal migration impossible for most people. This research was conducted by a team of legal experts from the Public Law Observatory of the University of Barcelona (IDP). The report ‘Obstacles to International Mobility to Spain and the European Union’ is a key tool for professionals, activists, and organisations working to guarantee migrants’ rights.
Download full research
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Network of organisations and collective action
The project collaborates with specialised entities, such as IDP, Red Acoge, and Alianza por la Solidaridad, alongside strategic alliances, such as the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes, and partnerships with collectives like Stop Mare Mortum and Coordinadora de Barrios. Together, they form a network advocating for the rights of people on the move and pushing for the transformation of the current migration system into one based on respect for human rights and the establishment of legal and safe pathways.
The Impossible Journey is more than a denunciation project: it is a tool for understanding the complexity of the current migration system and a call for collective action to transform it.
Social media information
Project overview
The project is structured around four axes of social transformation with various products and communication actions:
- Academic research: conducting an analysis of migration obstruction mechanisms and their impacts from a legal perspective. The research shows that the current legal and administrative framework effectively makes legal migration impossible for most people.
- Awareness: designing a communication strategy and producing a series of materials to highlight the contradictions of the current European migration system and its violent impact on migrants’ lives. Key components include a digital campaign, a webdoc, and a documentary film.
- Political advocacy: in collaboration with social organisations and collectives defending the right to migrate and seek asylum, political advocacy actions are carried out with key stakeholders to influence public migration policies.
- Training: presenting the project’s main outcomes, such as the research and webdoc, in various training spaces, workshops, and specialised master’s programmes on migration and human rights to deepen understanding and empower professionals with a rights-based approach.