In 2009 the German government signed the repatriation agreement thus agreeing – despite continual and vehement warnings from human rights organisations – to deport up to 14,000 refugees, including around 10,000 Roma, to the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Half of them are children and two-thirds of them were born in Germany and grew up there. I

n his working series Duldung Deluxe (Toleration Deluxe), which has been exhibited on numerous occasions, the Bosnian photographer Nihad Nino Pušija depicts in a long-term study Roma youth and young adults from Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia, who are either threatened with deportation or have already been deported from Germany.

Pušija’s powerful photographs express with clarity that a unified, open, and free Europe needs to turn attention to its fringes and face up to the consequences of its brutal and inhumane ‘firewall’ policies on border control.

At some 12 million people, Roma may have found a place on the EU agenda as Europe’s largest minority – their rights are widely established in the individual state constitutions and on paper no official discrimination takes place – yet their current living situation throughout Europe remains unaffected by this fact.