As the EU prepares to fully implement its Pact on Migration and Asylum on June 12, the memory of Moria remains a point of reference in debates over migration policy. The new framework aims to make asylum procedures more efficient, but it also raises questions about what Europe has learned from its most notorious refugee camp.

The first image that returns to me from Davide Marchesi and Majid Bakhshi’s The Ashes of Moria is a child.

Mo Zaman, a former resident of Moria Reception and Identification Centre on Lesvos, recalls a fire breaking out inside the camp. As residents rushed to extinguish the flames, he discovered the burned body of a twelve-year-old girl beneath a blanket. He remembers watching her dad carry her body through the camp wrapped in a white sheet while people cried and shouted around them. Years later, he says, the memory remained so vivid that simply walking through that part of the site could trigger panic attacks, as a reminder of what happens when policy choices create conditions where humanity collapses. This is where any discussion of Europe’s migration policy should begin. In September 2020, a series of fires destroyed the RIC, leaving thousands of asylum seekers without shelter and bringing international attention to degrading conditions. Nonetheless, have the ashes ever truly disappeared?

The camp on Lesvos, designed for fewer than 3,000 people, eventually hosted more than 18,000. Families lived in overcrowded tents and makeshift shelters. Access to sanitation was severely inadequate while humanitarian organizations repeatedly documented overflowing sewage, insufficient access to clean water, long queues for food and healthcare, and growing concerns about sexual violence and crime. Women and children were frequently identified by aid organizations as particularly vulnerable while, before the fire, public authorities had warned that conditions had become incompatible with human dignity, because of deliberate policy design.

Zahra, another former resident, remembers arriving in Europe only to find fences, walls, police officers and guards. Looking around the facility, she recalls asking herself,........

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