The 20-foot-high effigy of a refugee perched on a rooftop here does not have a name. To his creators, the anonymity of the figure crouched in an orange life vest, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, reflects the universality of his plight. But it also reflects the way many Europeans view the refugees and migrants arriving in their towns and cities: a nameless mass threatening their way of life.

“They are always Muslim, and we are Catholic,” Emiel Van Den Bossche, a 58-year-old train driver, told me recently as he waited at Mechelen’s station for his next shift. “Maybe there are very few people who want to make war here, terrorist attacks, but you don’t know.…  Seguir leyendo »