Already, at the end of August as some domestic opposition to Merkel’s policy had begun to be voiced, an abandoned truck with 71 dead migrants inside was found on an Austrian road just as the German Chancellor was arriving in Vienna for a meeting. The debate was already noisy with echoes. And then, two days after Merkel’s key announcement, a family of Syrian Kurds set out in a plastic boat from Bodrum in Turkey, hoping to reach the Greek island of Kos. Their boat sank and among those who drowned was a three-year-old boy called Aylan Kurdi. His body soon washed up, face down, on a beach in Turkey where a photographer captured the image. This image went around the world. An issue that was already a contest between head and heart, practicality and emotion, saw the heart override the rest of the system at the crucial juncture. The photograph dampened respectable opposition to Merkel’s open-door policy in Europe. Opponents had to explain how they could be immune to the image of dead Aylan. Newspapers that ordinarily called for tight immigration suddenly changed their tune to fit with their cover image. Some papers and politicians questioned whether this wasn’t the time to start bombing Syria, in order to alleviate such suffering. Meanwhile actors and other celebrities took to Twitter with the hashtag ‘Refugees Welcome’ and insisted that Europe must open its doors. To be opposed to this was suddenly to be indifferent to dead children. Unsurprisingly, even the British Prime Minister – who had struggled to resist any EU-enforced migrant quotas to date – buckled and agreed to start by allowing in a further 20,000 Syrian refugees (albeit over the course of five years). Dams broke elsewhere in Europe too, with media cameramen running alongside migrants as they poured through fields, down roads and across borders. For her part, Angela Merkel announced that there was ‘no limit’ on the number of migrants Germany would accept, announcing, ‘As a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary.’ Over the next 48 hours The New York Times reported a surge of migrant movement from Nigeria, among other countries, as people saw that a window of opportunity had opened for citizenship in Europe.