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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

Exile Of Mind: To Be Young And Far Away From My Native Egypt

BERLIN — On the bus I now take to university in Berlin every day, I reach compulsively for my phone to check Facebook for updates from Egypt. I see that someone else has been arrested, this time a PhD student like me, who was also doing his fieldwork in Egypt. I get flustered and feel […]

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In The News OneShot

Watch: OneShot, A Ghost Town After Expulsion Of Immigrants

As nationalism and anti-immigration campaigns shake and split Europe, photojournalist Tommaso Bonaventura went last winter to a small village in southern Italy where immigrants had given new life to the town emptied of its young inhabitants seeking jobs elsewhere.

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In The News

Salvini v. Macron: A Battle For The Soul Of Europe

The French president is the populist Italian Interior Minister’s favorite target. But is Salvini attacking Macron to mask his own failure to unite Europe’s nationalists?

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In The News

Just A Handshake? Touchy Subject For Pious Muslims In The West

A series of recent legal cases across Europe have questioned whether those who refuse to shake hands with people of the opposite sex for religious reasons are guilty of discrimination.

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Ideas Trump And The World

With Italy’s Conte, Trump Forges New Alliance Against Germany

-OpEd- This must have been the moment he was waiting for: an energetic handshake with Donald Trump, with a smile and a deep look into his eyes to top it off. The two men seemed to be sealing a fresh pact. Cameras flashed, capturing the important moment for newspapers and history books — the five […]

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Migrant Lives

Protecting Ethiopian Women Migrant Workers In Gulf Region

In 2013, Ethiopia announced a ban on domestic workers from going to the Middle East. Authorities estimate nearly 1 million Ethiopians working legally and illegally in the region. It comes with opportunity and risk, especially for women.

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Ideas Migrant Lives

Toward A More Humane Response To Migration

The world can do a lot better than incarcerate migrants en masse, or turn away boatloads of desperate passengers, argues former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos.

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In The News

In Sicily, Documenting Mediterranean Deaths Of Migrants

Meet the Italians driven by a sense of history and humanity to identify the refugees and migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.

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In The News

Poverty In Mexico, The Roots Of López Obrador​’s Victory

The bulk of Mexico’s 122 million people remain mired in poverty, and with little chance to escape it. Even the middle classes struggle to be upwardly mobile. Food for thought, for incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

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Geopolitics Ideas

Why German Turks Can’t Get Enough Of Erdogan

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 […]

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In The News OneShot

Watch OneShot: Immigrant Children Torn From Parents, A Sight And Sounds

The chilling stories of migrant children being torn from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border now have their first visual and audio record.

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In The News

Rotten In Denmark? Europe’s Happy Bellwether Turns Dark

Crackdowns on immigration are one more sign that the small but influential northern European nation is now on the front edge of more sinister trends.

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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

In Southern Italy, A City’s Perfect Storm Of Populism

The populist Five-Star Movement and the right-wing League won over half the vote in the struggling mid-sized city of Foggia by promising more jobs and less immigration.

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In The News

Austrian Wunderkind? Kurz Eyes Pivotal Role In Geopolitics

-OpEd- BERLIN — With his most recent visit to Vienna, made on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin has now met Austria’s 32-year-old Chancellor Sebastian Kurz for the second time this year. Meanwhile, Richard Grenell — U.S. ambassador to Berlin and a Donald Trump confidant — has called Kurz a “rock star” in a recent interview […]

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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

Fields Of Despair: Punjabi Farm Workers Exploited In Italy

A sociologist is helping underpaid, over-worked agricultural laborers organize in the city of Latina, southeast of Rome.

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In The News

In Prosperous Chile, Immigration Policy Smacks Of Racism

New restrictions in Chile effectively target poorer migrants, many of whom are Afro-Caribbeans from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They also coincide with a rightward shift in opinion.

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Migrant Lives Society

Deep In Italian Mob Territory, Migrant Workers Face Violence

ROSARNO — A shantytown of tents and shacks stretches out across an abandoned industrial district halfway between the towns of Rosarno and San Ferdinando, deep in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Some 2,500 farm workers from at least 16 different countries live in deplorable conditions surrounded by waste, with no access to running water […]

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Migrant Lives Society

Inside The Right-Wing Stronghold That Elected Italy’s First Black Senator

Voters in the northern town of Spirano helped put a hardline conservative in the senate. Only the man in question —Toni Chike Iwobi — is an immigrant from Nigeria.

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Migrant Lives Society

Italian Elections: Using ‘Guerrilla Art’ To Change Immigration Debate

Anti-immigrant rhetoric has become increasingly commonplace as political forces jockey for position ahead of this Sunday’s national elections.

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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

A Half-Million And Counting: Venezuelans Pour Into Colombia

Decades ago, thousands of war-weary Colombian made their way to Venezuela in search of better opportunities. Nowadays, the flow of migrants runs in the opposite direction.

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In The News

Face The Maras Or Migrate: A Young Honduran’s Harrowing Tale

Like so many people from gang-plagued Central America, Brayan sought safety by leaving home, even if it mean leaving his beloved mother behind.

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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

Why They Leave, Understanding Immigrant Psychology

The latest disturbing images along the modern immigrant journey arrive from the French-Italian border. Five migrants from the Ivory Coast, in flip-flops and soaked t-shirts, were rescued last week in 80 centimeters of snow, as they tried to pass from Italy into France. “We didn’t know it would be so cold,” one of the rescued […]

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In The News

How Immigrants Built Argentina, And Why They’re Needed Again

The surge in worldwide refugee numbers may be alarming, but for Argentina it should be seen as an opportunity to boost its economy. Much like in the past.

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In The News

As Libyan Route Shuts Off, Migrants Turn To Tunisian Coast

We have seen far fewer grim accounts of rescues and drownings of would-be immigrants in the Mediterranean in recent weeks, as the human trafficking route-of-choice between North Africa to Europe shuts down. But another dangerous route appears to be opening up right next door. The recent efforts to crack down on traffickers operating along the […]

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In The News

Italy’s Echos Of Fascism As Immigrants Blamed For Disease, Rape

At the epicenter of Europe’s migrant crisis, Italy is facing a new burst of blatant racism that comes with a whiff of fascist nostalgia from the country’s ugly past.

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In The News

Metaphors Of Immigration, From Mexico To The Mediterranean

Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall has been a rallying cry and all-purpose metaphor since his improbable campaign began in 2015. But if and when it gets built, the wall would also be, well, a wall. The U.S. president’s decision Tuesday to let the so-called DACA program expire is aimed at pushing Congress to find a […]

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Ideas Migrant Lives Trump And The World

How Immigration Could Make Or Break The Trump Presidency

WASHINGTON — President Trump is hurtling toward a crossroads on immigration — his signature campaign issue and a key source of his law-and-order reputation — where each path before him comes with significant political risks. Trump has temporarily placed the fates of roughly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children in the hands of Congress, buying himself time and shunting responsibility. Should Congress act, the president will have to choose whether to sign on to a legislative solution granting the “dreamers’ legal status — or to let the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, […]

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In The News

The Good, Bad And Pointless Of Trump’s Immigration Plan

Admitting newcomers based on their skills is smart; cutting their numbers in half is a mistake.

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In The News

In Scandinavia, Populists Face The Harsh Reality Of Governing

In Finland and Norway, right-wing, anti-elite and anti-immigration parties have had to adapt to the problems of power, but they still can fire up the base by playing to their gut.

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Geopolitics Migrant Lives

Can A Libyan Warlord Help Europe Solve The Migrant Crisis?

Hundreds of thousands of refugees want to reach Europe via Libya, constituting a billion dollar trade option for smugglers. But a local warlord, armed with only one boat and plenty of opaque motives, has declared war on the trafficking gangs.

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In The News

How Human Trafficking Carries Witchcraft To Switzerland

GENEVA — It may sound like hocus-pocus, but with the growing influx of African migrants, social services in Switzerland are having to tackle a new and perplexing problem: witchcraft. The phenomenon specifically involves African women — mostly prostitutes from Nigeria — who were “bewitched” before leaving home and suffer serious psychological consequences as a result. […]

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In The News

Europe As Eldorado, The Risks Of Enticing Migrants

PARIS — When the migrant crisis started spinning out of control in the summer of 2015, a deep fracture appeared inside the European Union, between countries willing to open their doors and countries ready to erect walls to block the flow of incoming migrants. The tension culminated in late September of that year, when the […]

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Eyes on the U.S. Geopolitics

Trump’s Policy Toward Latin America Is Worse Than Just A Wall

-OpEd- BOGOTÁ –– For some time now, Latin America has not figured on the U.S. State Department’s agenda. If the continent did appear, it was at the bottom of the government’s list. This indifference has only grown starker since Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. This state of affairs is neither good nor […]

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In The News

Africans Face Difficult Days In China’s ‘Chocolate City’

GUANGZHOU — After flocking to the megalopolis by the tens of thousands, Africans seem to be going sour on Guangzhou, or “Chocolate City,” as it’s been nicknamed by the Chinese. Home to the largest African community in Asia, Guangzhou, an important global trade platform located opposite Hong Kong, attracted scores of migrants starting in the […]

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In The News

Let Them Speak French! Why I Believe In The ‘Molière Clause’

-OpEd- PARIS — A lot is being said and written about the “Molière clause,” first introduced by Vincent You, an elected representative in the western French city of Angoulême, and which mandates the use of French language on construction sites. This is, first and foremost, a case of guaranteeing safety at dangerous sites. A large […]

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Geopolitics Terror in Europe

How A Website Used Anti-Immigration Fears To Sell Guns

MUNICH — On Oct. 5, German doctor Alexander Haase* opened his web browser and dropped merchandise he wanted to purchase into a checkout basket. He paid 590,99 euros — money that went into a Hungarian bank account. A few weeks later, an inconspicuous brown package arrived by DHL delivery. He opened it. There was a […]

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In The News

Can This City Predict The Fate Of The Dutch Elections?

ALMERE — Founded in 1976, this city 30 kilometers from Amsterdam offers a glimpse into the future of the Netherlands. Leaving behind the tourist droves of the capital, a 20-minute ride on an Intercity train — equipped with WiFi — whisks you through windmills and farmland to reach Almere. Lying 3.2 meters below sea level, […]

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In The News

Kinder, Gentler Trump Still Has The Heavy Lifting Ahead

President Donald Trump’s address to Congress marked a change in tone, but his ambitious agenda will bring conflict with lawmakers down the road.

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In The News

Why Haitian Migrants Are Flocking To Tijuana

With dire economics and the Trump immigration crackdown, the situation is fluid in the troubled Mexican border city.

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Eyes on the U.S. Geopolitics

Mexican Smuggler: Trump’s Wall Is A Business Opportunity

Illegal border crossings won’t stop, but prices will rise.

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