the drop » Demography & Migration

Outsourcing Migrant Processing

New proposed rules for those seeking refuge in Australia

Last month, when Australian opposition leader Kim Beazley proposed that migrants and visitors sign an agreement to respect Australian values, a volley of debate ensued. Today, the Australian government released a discussion paper on refugee admission policy changes, which include an English-language course for refugees before they reach Australia’s shores. The discussion paper is currently up for community feedback.
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The Shock Effect and Public Awareness

Parody of an AIDS campaign

Finding new ways to keep media attention on pressing yet unchanging topics is not an easy task. As more public awareness campaigns seek to be controversial, more critique is dished out. In recent news, critics have decried the tastelessness in the blackface cover of The Independent and the I am an African ads.

The controversy used to elbow for the public’s attention can obscure the original intent. One LA Times journalist confused a Doctors Without Borders campaign in Paris, which distributed tents to homeless people, with tourists camping out.

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Olympic Development and Social Costs

Is gentrification part and parcel of the Olympics?

Many cities look forward to Olympic bids as a chance to provide a burst of development into ailing downtowns. Local residents are often less enthusiastic, watching neighborhoods turn into Potemkin villages as low-income housing and homeless people are relocated. With the Summer Games in 2008 slowly approaching, Human Rights Watch announced the closing of many Beijing schools for migrant workers’ children in China.
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NGO ACTION: Human Rights Watch calls on Swiss voters to reject asylum restrictions

Swiss referendum today on changes to asylum law (LaSi), Photo:Freefoto.com

In an e-mail bulletin sent yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on voters to reject changes to the Swiss asylum law (LaSi) in today’s referendum. HRW released an analysis of the proposed amendments in an open letter, detailing the failure to comply with international standards.

Elisa Mason provides a quick overview of pro and con links at the Forced Migration Current Awareness blog, including a post at the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR).
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“How can the Internet…serve to enhance our own communities?”

Women use the Internet cafe during a Refugees Emancipation computer course

“In order to turn that technology into something that enhances our communities, we need to direct the technology towards a specific end. We need to organize, and then technology alone won’t enable us to do that. It’s just a tool in – among many tools that have to be used to fight for that kind of vision.” - Anthony Arnove, activist, author and Table of Free Voices participant.
Fighting for that kind of vision, Eben Chu organized Refugees Emanicipation (RE), an NGO begun by asylum seekers in Germany.
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Migrant Crisis Continues in Spain

Spain signed a repatriation agreement with Senegal, Photo: BBC News
You had promised me that I would never be hungry
You had promised me of true activities and a future
Really up to here I still see nothing
That’s why I decided to flee

The lyrics are from DJ Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and producer, who is promoting awareness of the migrant crisis with his song Sunugaal and an online slideshow.
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Environmental Justice and Katrina

In the Wake of the Storm is a case-study based analysis of Katrina in the context of the greater movement for environmental justice, published by the Russell Sage Foundation. After the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) trends of the 70’s, U.S. environmental justice campaigns became more prevalent in the decades following, in an attempt to protect minorities and the disenfranchised from disproportionate effects of environmental hazards within their communities.
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Post-Katrina: New Orleans’ Culinary Heritage

As the rest of the world relives Katrina through the media’s one year after specials, New Orleans residents have been working through the aftermath, day by day. In last week’s New York Times, there’s an interesting glimpse into the attempts to preserve New Orleans’ culinary heritage, despite the everyday struggle.

Rebuilding recipe boxes, replacing cookbooks
The New Orleans Times Picayune Dining section has turned into a recipe exchange, where people looking for damaged and lost recipes can replace a part of their family history.
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Right-Wing Bigotry

Pat Buchanan only want to allow white immigrants into America

Think Progress takes a look at Pat Buchanan’s new book state of emergency where he argues for “an immediate moratorium on all immigration.” Why? To preserve the dominance of the white race in America. Using racist arguments of ‘genetic superiority’, Buchanan explains that:

“America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built. No nation has ever undergone so radical a demographic transformation and survived.”
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Preserving History with Public Art

Volunteers at the University of Mississippi Museum restored gravestones in rural communities. (Photo: Photocase)

Huge art projects like wrappings or anonymous snarky graffiti, posters and stickers are an integral part of the urban landscape. Limited financing or a new coat of paint gives this kind of public art an ephemeral “here today, gone tomorrow” quality. Lacking the grand scale, some public art integrates into its environment, engaging community members in dialogue and creating a lasting change of perspective.
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112 Free Voices: Pauline Tangiora, Aotearoa’s inspiration

“People who recognise that others have something to share must make themselves available too. I’m humbled to be able to offer our basket of the spirit for others to draw from, as well as to learn from other participants to increase my own awareness of what is happening in the world.”

Pauline Tangiora is an activist and campaigner whose work embraces both the local and the global.
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Planet of Slums

A family living in Cairo's City of the Dead

In his latest controversial work, Planet of Slums, Mike Davis rolls out a stupendous fact:

“China … added more city-dwellers in the 1980s than did of all Europe (including Russia) in the entire 19th century!”

Worldwide, people are moving to cities in greater and greater numbers. In a few years, for the first time in history, the majority of mankind will be urban, not rural.
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A New Era for Women in Rwanda

Staff at the Rwanda Women's Network © Rwanda Women Network 2006

Feministing find reasons to be cheerful in this article from the Seattle Times about the changing status of women in Rwanda. Since the devastating genocide which left the country with a 70% female population, Rwanda has out-paced Sweden and Norway as the nation with the highest percentage of female legislators in the world. 48% of MPs are women, as are 50% of the judges in the legal system, the head of the supreme court and half of Rwanda’s college graduates.

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Bill Clinton and World Mayors Form Alliance on Global Warming

Bill Clinton launches the Clinton Climate Initiative in LA.

Former US president Clinton and about 300 mayors of the world’s largest cities announced an initiative earlier this month to cut their greenhouse emissions as part of the reductions required by the Kyoto Protocol. After world leaders failed to agree on a global solution to tackle climate change, mayors joined an alliance spearheaded by Mr. Clinton to adopt stringent targets to reduce emissions in their cities. 279 US Mayors, representing 50 million Americans, are already implementing measures even as President Bush holds out against Kyoto.
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Aid Workers Murdered in Sri Lankan Violence

Internally Displaced Persons in northeast Sri Lanka.

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have been forced to flee their homes because of the escalating violence in the north-east of the country. A recent wave of killings across Sri Lanka included the execution-style murders of 17 aid workers. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told reporters at a briefing in Geneva that more than 50,000 internally displaced persons have had to take shelter in Trincomalee district, scene to some of the worst clashes in recent weeks. UNHCR is dispatching cooking sets, plastic sheeting, hygiene kits and other items to the affected areas, often in cooperation with local branches of NGOs.
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The Politics of Going Back to Nature in Europe

Bruno the Bear shortly before his demise (DDP © from Spiegel On Line, 2006)

The European Commission has clashed with Poland again over a scheme designed to protect wildlife and habitats in member countries. The Natura 2000 programme already protects 18% of the territory in the pre-2004 EU, and is now working out which areas to bring under its wing in the new, enlarged Union. Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski complained that:

“Natura 2000 has expanded so much that it is practically impossible to build anything.”

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A Total Clash of Civilizations

Shah Muhammad Rais in his Kabul bookshop

Suraya Rais, the wife of Afghan bookseller Shah Mohammed Rais depicted in the international bestseller ‘The Bookseller of Kabul’ by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, is applying for asylum in Europe because she claims the book has endangered her life. ‘The Bookseller of Kabul’ was recently published in Afghanistan, making life in Kabul impossible for the Rais family. But Mrs. Rais’ asylum application is only the latest development in the bitter aftermath of the book’s 2002 publication.
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Where is Everybody in 2025?

This first-of-its kind, high-resolution map is the most detailed spatial projection of human population growth and decline ever created. Produced by U.S.-based, non-profit policy advocacy group, Population Action International, the map forecasts population rise and fall worldwide between 1995 and 2025. As such, it represents a demographic resource par excellence for conservationists, climate specialists and anyone interested in the future of the planet’s renewable energy resources in the context of its shifting human populace.
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Relearning to Eat: Nutrition and Refugees

An Illinois state-funded program is helping resettled refugees adjust to eating responsibly in the United States, reports BBC News. Faced with overconsumption and overabundance, resettlers have problems finding familiar and healthy foods in their new American communities.
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Demography & Migration

Outsourcing Migrant Processing

The Shock Effect and Public Awareness

Olympic Development and Social Costs

NGO ACTION: Human Rights Watch calls on Swiss voters to reject asylum restrictions

“How can the Internet…serve to enhance our own communities?”

Migrant Crisis Continues in Spain

Environmental Justice and Katrina

Post-Katrina: New Orleans’ Culinary Heritage

Right-Wing Bigotry

Preserving History with Public Art

112 Free Voices: Pauline Tangiora, Aotearoa’s inspiration

Planet of Slums

A New Era for Women in Rwanda

Bill Clinton and World Mayors Form Alliance on Global Warming

Aid Workers Murdered in Sri Lankan Violence

The Politics of Going Back to Nature in Europe

A Total Clash of Civilizations

Where is Everybody in 2025?

Relearning to Eat: Nutrition and Refugees