Abstract
What happens to the European dream when it meets the dream of migrants? Does this Europe, raising external barriers and restoring internal borders, respond to the ideals and values with which it was founded? Is it possible to protect our achievements - freedom, respect of human rights and welfare - without negating them to those others who come to Europe with the dream of them?
With these question in mind, in 2015, an interdisciplinary working group was set up at the Free University of Bolzano to observe from a specific vantage point - the border between Italy and Austria at Brenner - what was happening in Europe. Its aim was to point at the lack of shared migration policies and to reposition the so-called migrant-crisis on a wider timescale. The impression was that the crisis concerned more the institution of Europe itself, its values, principles, and policies than the fortuitous circumstances of protection and relocation of refugees. The results of this observatory are collected in the web-project Europa Dreaming, published online in 2016. This book widens and develops the contents of this visual journalism project and works as a retrospective reflection on the design process behind it.