Shifting questions of belonging and identity in the shadow of Brexit and EU elections.
Tag: identity
Every. single. time…
BERLIN — They lined up in motorcades, honking horns, waving flags. It was as if Turkey had just won the World Cup, except that Turkey isn’t even in the tournament this year. Instead, these enthusiastically noisy German-Turks were fans of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the just re-elected Turkish president who earned a particularly clear victory in […]
After the Christmas market attack in Berlin, the Western world would be wrong to assume it can prevent its cultural or political dissolution by merely repeating its prayers to the glory of diversity.
-OpEd- PARIS — “The era of multiculturalism is over …” This was the proud declaration of Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, back in the summer of 2015. One year later, Theresa May, the new British prime minister, took it one step further: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you’re […]
SEOUL — Young Chun is hardly the only U.S. citizen working as an English language teacher in South Korea. But he may the only one who landed the job after being forcibly recruited by the South Korean armed forces — and then shipped off to Afghanistan. Chun, 36, was born in the United States and grew up in Seattle, Washington. As one of the only Asian-Americans in his school, he remembers being bullied and discriminated against. “When I was in the States, I thought if I go to Korea, I’ll fit in,” he recalls. “But once I got to Korea, […]
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On Being Transgender In Egypt
CAIRO — Aisha was sleeping when her apartment was raided. She and three other friends had just moved in when the police came by asking if they had weapons or anything illegal. They said no, and were asked for their identity cards. Aisha and her friends are transgender women, but their identity cards say they […]
Colombians seem to worship all things Anglo-American, “Miami-style” most of all. It’s a sign of our own socio-cultural shame and some appalling choices made by past governments.
On March 18, hundreds of Taiwanese university students stormed and occupied the Legislative Yuan, the island nation’s parliament. Five days later, they joined other civic groups and invaded the Executive Yuan, before being evicted forcibly by the police. In technical terms, the demonstrators were protesting the unilateral decision of Taiwan’s ruling party to pass the […]
These thrills do not come cheap…
MILAN – “Prestanome for hire: thirty years old, good credit rating, permanent job…” More and more advertisements like this one are finding their way onto the Internet. Literally a “lend-name,” the prestanome has made the leap from mafia-esque dodgy dealings into the real world. “The only thing I had left was my name: so I […]
BUENOS AIRES – Eating is no longer just the primitive act of satiating hunger. It is a process that includes production, consumption, and evaluation for preparation of the next gastronomical experience. It’s a hedonistic experience with a concern for nutritional value, especially as the ”o” word – obesity – keeps cropping up. For most people, […]
BEIJING – After it was recently revealed that the entire family of a top housing administration official in the northern Chinese city of Zhengzhou had two sets of identity papers (or hukou), people have taken to joking online that China doesn’t really have 1.3 billion people, as many people have a “dual hukou.” The hukou […]
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – In the morning on Jan. 4 in Araucania, a region in southern Chile where the Mapuche people live, a group of masked men attacked and set fire to the house of a local landowner and farmer who had spent years litigating with indigenous groups. The landowner, Werner Luchsinger and his wife were […]