Worldcrunch
As Italy prepares to vote, migration from Africa is once again a hot topic, even as the number of arrivals is dropping. A view from the tiny Italian island that has been at the center of the debate for more than a decade, where the specter of migrants is rolled out as prime election propaganda.
Staying in a theocracy whose rulers subjugate women was not an option, but trying to get to destinations in Europe and beyond comes with unthinkable perils of its own.
Guatemala has become a transit country for migrants seeking to reach the United States, but it is also a hub for those seeking refuge. Hundreds of migrants remain trapped waiting to be considered as refugees. The chances of receiving a positive response are slim, especially for the LGBTQ community.
As people open their homes to Ukrainian refugees, some in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are criticizing the lack of a similar welcome for Syrians in 2015. Do we have a responsibility to offer the same level of help to all those in need — and are we even capable of that? The answer might just be found in philosophy.
It is not heroism that is creating the long lines to enlist in the country’s fight against Russia, nor is it the opposite that explains the refugees trying to get out alive. There is a single objective for both.
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
The deaths of 27 migrants off the French coast of Calais is one more tragedy on a long list in the European Union. After the initial shock, however, we tend to forget, get used to it and in the end, become indifferent.
In October 1943, nearly the entire Jewish population of Denmark made a perilous crossing from their Nazi-occupied country to neighboring Sweden. Setting out from ports and beaches along the coast, some 7,000 people arrived in rowboats and canoes to the safe shores of the port city of Malmö. Now, 78 years later, in the same […]
Shella Jean was part of a new migration path from Haiti to the relatively prosperous nation of Chile. But she has since left behind her “Chilean Dream” on a perilous journey northward toward the U.S.-Mexico Border. This is her story.
While remaining a remarkably safe country, Sweden is facing a recent surge of gang crimes that worries authorities, including a bombing in Gothenburg on Sep. 28th that injured more than 20. The fact that these family-based networks often have roots in North Africa and the Middle East is fueling criticism about the country’s immigration policies.
Crunch the numbers, or just look around…and we see that immigrants, wherever they may come from, are not a disproportionate cause of crime or cultural degradation across Europe.
While the rise of European right-wing populism is becoming a pan-continental phenomenon, we seem determined to miss its one common driver.
As tempting as it may be to just turn away, we lose a piece of our humanity every time we do.
Mexican President López Obrador has made it clear that he prefers keeping the United States at arm’s length.
Funds sent back by emigrants to Africa are helping residents in Zrariyeh, about 75 kilometers south of Beirut, survive Lebanon’s full-blown economic crisis.
Over the past decade, as Italy has become one of Europe’s prime destinations for immigrants, stereotypes spread about those arriving from foreign lands. It’s a story that has come full circle.
Qualified health care workers are urgently needed in the Islamic Republic. But because of the COVID-19 crisis, they’re also exhausted — and eyeing opportunities abroad.
The pandemic has prompted many city workers to seek refuge back in the countryside roots. For the government, it’s an extra challenge, but also an opportunity for long-term rural development.
In mid-September, fires destroyed Greece’s largest migrant camp, the vastly overcrowded Moria facility on the island of Lesbos. The disaster left some 13,000 already desperate people with no shelter at all, and raises new questions about Europe’s collective responsibilities toward migrants five years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously opened her nation’s doors to fleeing […]
Testimony from Afghan and Somali migrants, as well as locals on Greek island of Lesbos, where Europe’s largest migrant camp has burned to the ground, leaving 13,000 migrants without shelter.
The word krisis was coined by the Greeks three millennia ago, meaning “turning point in a disease.” The meaning of course has evolved and expanded since, even if our pandemic has brought the word full circle to its ancient ramifications. In Greece’s more recent history, turning points have come in different forms, at rapid-fire pace […]
A strategy for fighting the pandemic, national confinement morphs into a dangerous ideology if it uses the pretext of health protection to target migrants.
-Essay- ROME — I’ve got a daughter who works abroad and, like many Italians, she is experiencing for the first time a different reaction when she says: “Yes, I’m Italian.” It is the gaze of mistrust and fear that makes her and her friends uncomfortable and cautious: Almost all of them have given up on […]
The camera pans across families waiting around with their luggage and children. Men stand with rifles slung over their shoulders, ready to board the evacuation buses north. Migrating birds pass overhead. “Where are they going, do you know?” asks a voice, from the man holding the camera. “Every year, they go to their homes and […]
A group of good Samaritans gathers regularly in Trieste, near the border with the Balkans, to receive weary migrants and tend their wounds.
Politics in the region have become even more complex since the Cold War era of revolutions and military juntas.
A top prosecutor in Sicily informed the UN in a recent report that so-called ‘phantom landings’ — vessels that reach the island undetected — are on the rise.
Italy reached a preliminary agreement with other EU countries on rescuing migrants at sea. But Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has not shared the news at home, and has kept attacking his supposed partners, especially Germany.
The murder of a local politician has put new attention on the kinds of verbal hate and periodic harassment that was largely repressed until recently.
A Colombian NGO is urging the state to take special measures to protect LGBT+ migrants fleeing hardship in Venezuela only to face new discrimination risks across the border.
The crush of migrants trying to flee Venezuela is only part of what makes the border region so chaotic. There’s also a dangerous power struggle between guerillas and criminal gangs.
Social media dialogue and reader comments on news stories suggest that the far-right’s xenophobic rhetoric resonates for immigrants.
By distinguishing between refugees and migrants, international law underestimates the plight of people displaced by poverty and climate change.
In the Colombian capital, residents are starting to balk at the arrival of so many desperate Venezuelans. There’s empathy, yes. But also caution and alarm.
As the Japanese government plans to accept up to about 340,000 new foreign workers over the next five years, coexistence may become an issue.
As Turkey takes sole responsibility from UNHCR for processing the asylum claims of Afghans and other non-Syrians, it must register them and allow them to access their basic rights.
NAPLES — It was the last game of 2018, and I was looking forward to it. I had planned to go with my brother, a staunch Napoli fan, my soccer-loving Argentine husband and a bunch of old friends. It was also a symbolic gesture: I am back in Italy after almost two decades living abroad, […]
Peter Koang has been displaced three times since the war in South Sudan began. Each time, he managed to salvage his sewing machine, which now brings him a rare bit of stability at a time of fragile peace.
PARIS — Human migration is the story of our times. Victims of conflict and climate change, pushed by poverty at home and pulled toward opportunity abroad, people on the move are both a catalyst and consequence of globalization. Yes, immigration is a polarizing political issue, but also a keen reminder of the shared circumstances that […]
What if the world’s refugees could be organized into a loosely connected, transnational polity? Critics call it a pipe dream. But migration researcher Nicholas Van Hear says his ‘Refugia’ idea may be the best way out of current crisis.