For the hundreds of thousands of migrants on the move across Europe, the pace of a day is dictated by forces almost entirely beyond their control: the heat of the sun, the location of guards or police, the reliability of a cellphone signal.
The bare earth often serves as their bed and table, but they rarely know when or where the next sleep or meal is coming from.
From the bridge of a naval ship in the Mediterranean, whose crew hopes to rescue people who have made the dangerous journey by sea, to the northernmost tip of France, where hundreds await a chance to go to England, Associated Press photographers captured 24 hours of a crisis that shows no sign of ending.
In just one day, Hungary’s main international train station descended into chaos, two ferries carrying 4,000 migrants left the tiny, overwhelmed Aegean islands where the migrants first came ashore and headed to the Greek mainland, and 1,200 people were rescued at sea.
Tuesday was punctuated by quiet moments as well: new arrivals in Vienna trying to get their bearings outside the train station, a shared dinner, a French grammar lesson.
Germany, where lines were orderly, expects to receive 800,000 refugees this year. Hungary, which says 150,000 have already arrived, abruptly refused to allow thousands to board northbound trains in Budapest, turning the area outside the station into a makeshift camp by nightfall.
Here is a glimpse of a day along the migrant trail in Europe.
In this very early Tuesday morning, Sept. 1, 2015 (1:05gmt) photo, Norwegian Chief Officer Jonas, left, sits on the bridge of the Siem Pilot ship during a migrants search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea, some 80 miles off the Libyan coast. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
In this Tuesday Sept. 1, 2015 (2:14gmt) photo, Syrian refugee Abed Hadi,19, feeds his nephew as he sits with other migrants at the railway tracks waiting to cross the borders from Idomeni town, northern Greece to southern Macedonia. Greece has been overwhelmed by record numbers of migrants this year. Nearly all head to Greece’s northern border with Macedonia, cross into Serbia and Hungary and go toward more prosperous European countries. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (3:11gmt) photo, migrants sleep in the early morning at a park where hundreds of migrants are temporarily residing in Belgrade, Serbia. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (4:08GMT) photo, the feet of a migrant poke out from underneath a blanket as he sleeps on the sidewalk near the reception center for refugees and asylum seekers in central Berlin. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (4:53 GMT) photo, migrants line up and wait for registration at the reception center for refugees and asylum seekers in central Berlin. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (5:04 GMT) photo, police detain a man from Syria on the suspicion of smuggling migrants from Austria into Germany in Pocking near Passau, southern Germany. German police intensified their operation in the border region to stop people smuggled into Germany. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (5:57gmt) photo, refugee children sleep on the outdoor floor of the Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary. Thousands of exhausted refugees and migrants camp around Budapest’s main train station aiming at traveling westwards. Flow of migrants continue to hit Hungary while the country is building a fence on the border with Serbia meant to stop the rising flow of migrants trying to enter the European Union. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (7:32gmt) photo, Norwegian Coast Guard nurse Bibbi Misje is reflected in a clock as she holds a stretcher on the deck of the Siem Pilot ship during a migrants search and rescue mission, some 80 miles off the Libyan coast. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (9:38gmt) photo, people arrive at the Western railway station in Vienna, Austria. Some hundreds of migrants arrive by train from southern Europe, after making a perilous journey into Europe. (AP Photo/Hans Punz)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (12gmt) photo, migrants walk on the rocky beach at the Franco-Italian border in Ventimiglia, Italy, where they camp on the Italian side. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (13gmt) photo, a man takes shelter under a tree inside of a tent city erected outside of a migrant reception center in Brussels. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every day in Belgium, some making perilous journeys through Europe. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (11:19gmt) photo, Senegalese tailor Youssou Seck, 33, works in his tailor workshop in the Lavapies neighbourhood of Madrid, Spain. Seck arrived at the Spanish Tenerife island in a boat with other migrants in 2006 where he was at first detained and held in a detention center. Since 2007, he has being living and working in Madrid where he has finally got his official resident permit in 2015. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (15gmt) photo, Tanir, a migrant from Sudan, writes on a board during a French course provided by Christiane Gayerie, a former French teacher, in a makeshift encampment in Paris, France. The U.N. refugee agency says more than 300,000 migrants have sought to cross the Mediterranean Sea this year, nearly 40 percent more than the record number in all of last year. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (1254gmt) photo, migrants sit on a Norwegian Coast Guard boat after being transferred from the Italian Navy Ship Fulgosi during a migrant search and rescue mission off the Libyan Coasts. Four dead bodies and hundreds of migrants were transferred on the Norwegian Siem Pilot ship from an Italian Navy ship and a Doctor Without Borders vessels after being rescued in different operation in the Mediterranean Sea. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (17:41gmt) photo, a group of refugees walk on the railway tracks after crossing from Serbia, in Roszke, Hungary. Migrants, fearful of death at sea in overcrowded and flimsy boats, have increasingly turned to using a land route to Europe through the Western Balkans. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (18:57gmt) photo, Yusuf Adam, a 32-year-old Somalian, prepares a meal in a squatted office building in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Adam has been living without a legal status in the Netherlands for 6 years and lives with a group of about 85, predominantly African refugees, who call themselves “We Are Here”, and who have changed squats at least six times over the past years. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (18:33 gmt) photo, Samuel, 26, center, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, stays inside a tent as he cooks food with friends at a camp known as ‘the jungle’ set near Calais, northern France. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (20:25gmt) photo, migrants from Afghanistan drink tea in a room of the Guillaume-Bude secondary school building in Paris, France, where they found a shelter. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
In this Tuesday evening, Sept. 1, 2015 (17:46gmt) photo, a man walks between the tents in the central refuge for asylum seekers ZAST in Halberstadt, central Germany. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 photo taken at 16.02 gmt (19.02 local time), Syrians Nezar, 55, civilian engineer with his son Sadeck, 18, University student and his daughter Abed Hadi,16, try to find the bus transporting them to the northern Greek border town of Idomeni as they stand under a banner of a department store at Omonia Square in Athens. The family left its home town of Aleppo a week ago, without the mother who hopes to meet her after a few days. They arrived from Turkish coasts to the northeastern Aegean island of Samos. The Syrian family want to go to Germany or Belgium. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (18.37gmt/21.37 local) photo, Syrian migrants disembark from the catamaran Terra Jet at the Athens’ port of Piraeus. About 1,800 refugees arrived from the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos as the country has been overwhelmed by record numbers of migrants this year. The vast majority of the people are from Syria and Afghanistan reaching from the nearby Turkish coasts and try to cross Balkans and continue to more prosperous European countries. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
In this image taken with a slow shutter speed, clouds pass by the burnt out gym in Nauen, west of Berlin Wednesday morning, (12:51AM local, 10:51 gmt) Sept. 2, 2015. The gym that was intended as temporary housing for refugees was arsoned on Aug. 25 before refugees could move in. It was the last in a series of arson attacks on unoccupied refugee shelters in Germany. (AP Photo/Ferdinand Ostrop)
In this Sept. 1, 2015 (17:58gmt) photo, hundreds of migrants wait in front of the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, after police stopped them from getting on trains to Germany. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
Rinas, a refugee from Kobane in Syria, video chats with his smartphone outside an emergency shelter for refugees in Berlin Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015 (1:48 AM local, 23:48gmt). People can stay in the air-inflated structure until they are registered as asylum seekers. (AP Photo/Ferdinand Ostrop)
Spotlight is the blog of AP Images, the world’s largest collection of historical and contemporary photos. AP Images provides instant access to AP’s iconic photos and adds new content every minute of every day from every corner of the world, making it an essential source of photos and graphics for professional image buyers and commercial customers.  Whether your needs are for editorial, commercial, or personal use, AP Images has the content and the expert sales team to fulfill your image requirements. Visit apimages.com to learn more.
AP Images Blog 
9 thoughts on “24 Hours of Migration in Europe”