The language of a captive community acquires certain durable habits; whole zones of reality cease to exist simply because they have no name
Quote of the day
 ColumnsPaul Rogers Li Datong Fred Halliday Mary Kaldor Daniele Archibugi Email & RSSSign up to oD's editorial summaries email:
Who's linking?
Our Authors around the Web
NavigationoD Twitter Stream
Most discussed this month
 |
 |
people flow: migration in europeIn the first phase of our migration in Europe debate, Theo Veenkamp and his Demos colleagues launched the People Flow prototype offering a new way of thinking about how Europe could use people’s movement for the benefit both of migrants and of the societies that receive them. This provoked a wide range of responses from many of the key contestants in the migration debate today: restrictionists, such as Anthony Browne and Peter Brimelow; open border advocates like Nigel Harris and Franck Duvell, multiculturalists such as Cem Ozdemir or Ali Rattansi; those looking for a national solution, like Martin Kovats, a European solution, like Ash Amin, or a global solution, like Arthur Helton; those like Tony Curzon Pryce who say that asylum is in crisis and those, like Gil Loescher, who say it is not. Veenkamp wraps up part 1 with an invitation to take the arguments even further.
Phase two – the Challenge to People Flow – tackles one of the thorniest obstacles for any Europe-wide advance – the debates within the nation states, where politicians often face head on a growing desire for national boundary control. We start with Britain. Our roundtable – an edited extract from an event sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) at this year’s Labour Party conference – features Home Secretary David Blunkett – the architect of the UK’s controversial migration polices, in dialogue with economist Bob Rowthorn and the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips. Ben Page from Mori provides a snapshot of British public opinion on this hot button political issue. Dirk Jacobs, analysing the rise of the Arab European League, detects a similar policy quagmire in the Belgian response, while Liza Schuster, in an overview of European approaches to asylum, urges the People Flow authors to hold European governments to proper account. Also: Ulf Hedetoft’s superb overview of the Danish debate. An era of worldwide "people flow" demands radical new thinking on migration
The work of Chinese immigrants in the rich west puts them in a trap with many locked doors
A stream of asylum-seekers fleeing conflict in Sudan presents Israelis with tough questions
Whatever their backgrounds, newcomers to Britain have more in common than they might think. Linda Grant reflects on family history and real-life experiences. Read the rest of this post...
The Rabat gathering’s "plan of action" to control migration flows from south to north is based on a faulty diagnosis and will not succeed even in its own terms, says Gregor Noll. Read the rest of this post...
In the United States and Europe alike, immigration policy isn't working – and the failure is most evident at the crossing-points of the rich and poor worlds, from the Mexican border to the Canary Islands, says Saskia Sassen. Read the rest of this post...
Whatever methods the United States uses to control or manage the flow of people from Mexico, immigrants will find a way to enter and make their lives anew, says Hank Heifetz. Read the rest of this post...
Two years after the deaths of twenty-three migrant workers who drowned while cockling on England's Lancashire coast, Hsiao-Hung Pai reports on the economic roots of the disaster, which remain unchanged despite public attention, debate, and new legislation. Read the rest of this post...
Asylum-seekers from Uganda, after horrific experiences in their own country, endure detention, ill-treatment and deportation once they reach Britain, reports Jason Parkinson. He tells the story of Harriet, a Ugandan woman incarcerated at Yarl’s Wood detention centre north of London. Read the rest of this post...
Martin Baldwin-Edwards, an expert advisor for the Global Commission on International Migration, defends its report from Gregory A Maniatis’s critique. Read the rest of this post...
The death of African immigrants near Spain’s Moroccan enclaves is a humanitarian crisis with deep political implications, writes Nicholas Mead. Read the rest of this post...
The Global Commission on International Migration set out to change minds about managing the movement of people in the 21st century. Gregory A Maniatis of the Migration Policy Institute reflects on what it got right – and wrong Read the rest of this post...
Alessandra Buonfino recently cited The Silent Invasion by Alberto Carosa and Guido Vignelli as a particular, Italian example of fear-inducing anti-immigrant analysis that has parallels across Europe. On behalf of the co-authors, Alberto Carosa vigorously responds in the name of “good common sense”. Read the rest of this post...
Italy has become one of the major destinations for migrants to Europe, without noticing or developing a coherent policy, says the deputy director of the centre for the study of international politics in Rome. Can the country move beyond its schizophrenia, where migrants are economically wanted but not welcome? Read the rest of this post...
Cem Özdemir is a child of Istanbul who became Germany’s first member of parliament of Turkish origin. The terrorist bombs of November 2003, he writes, attack the city’s most precious inheritance: its multicultural, tolerant heart. Read the rest of this post...
“The Silent Invasion” is a recent Italian addition to a growing wave – books which exploit scant evidence and post-9/11 fears to provoke anti-immigration sentiment. This, says a co-author of the People Flow project, is no way to hold a debate on migration – in Italy, or across Europe. Read the rest of this post...
“I can’t remember anything until I was five years old. Then what I noticed was war. My mother and father and I were running away.” A Liberian teenager recalls a childhood of war. Read the rest of this post...
Today’s utopia is tomorrow’s realism. Keeping alive the possibility of a free migration, “open borders” policy is an investment in everyone’s future. Read the rest of this post...
The right to asylum and legal “people flow” must be defended against government restrictions. But a policy of open borders would neither protect migrants’ human rights nor support economic development in their countries of origin. Read the rest of this post...
Art and healing are intimately linked in the writing of victims of torture and genocide, says a writer whose practice has been transformed by working with them. Read the rest of this post...
The post-cold war migration debate in Hungary has focused on the fate of ethnic Hungarians beyond its borders. Will the tensions in the Central European country – between nation and state, ethnic identity and civic politics – become more or less acute as Hungary moves towards European Union membership? Read the rest of this post...
Asylum-seekers in Europe are agents of change as well as victims, challenging national prejudices in the name of universal values. With a radical passion undimmed by years in exile, one former refugee sees in British people’s attitudes to outsiders an evasion of truths about themselves. Read the rest of this post...
Globalisation and European unification are challenging national definitions of citizenship. This long-term trend makes a pragmatic focus on the welfare aspects of "people flow" problematic. The key impact of migrants on developed societies goes far wider - to reshape how citizens relate not just to migrants, but to each other. Read the rest of this post...
Dutch society’s impressive commitment to anti-racist norms, influenced by revulsion against Nazi and apartheid regimes, is now pressured by an opposite trend: irritation with signs of cultural difference. How does the change impact on lives and identities in the modern Netherlands? Read the rest of this post...
There are few more urgent 21st century challenges for policy-makers than to communicate the benefits of immigration while containing its more negative consequences. Success requires three foundations: laws and regulations grounded in a realistic policy vision, an acute sensitivity to domestic requirements, and clarity about international obligations and objectives. Read the rest of this post...
Imelda and her family are economic migrants, in two directions: hunger led them to cross from Mexico to California, poverty made them return. Read the rest of this post...
The global governance of people flow faces the world community with urgent challenges. Can agreements on international trade offer a usable model for Europe’s future policy, one that combines freedom, regulation, and rights? Read the rest of this post...
People Flow proposes a regulatory system that is nationalist and discriminatory. Instead we need a global system of regulation based on the principles of free movement and universal justice. Read the rest of this post...
In Denmark, the radical shift in recent political debate about migration and asylum is registered in language as much as in public policy. Ulf Hedetoft charts the way that a new discourse is changing the way Danes talk to each other about the strangers in their midst. Read the rest of this post...
The People Flow discussion on openDemocracy has charted the question of how Europe should address the mass movement of migrants over the next fifty years. This issue has multiple national dimensions too. Here, leading participants in Britain’s migration policy debate how one nation-state is coping with the challenge of finding definition and cohesion in a world of flux. Read the rest of this post...
|
|
Live meetings
Democracy SupportThe World
Avaaz's Green Recovery Campaign |
Recent comments
51 min 52 sec ago
4 hours 24 min ago
6 hours 40 min ago
7 hours 50 min ago
10 hours 5 min ago
12 hours 51 min ago
20 hours 37 min ago
20 hours 38 min ago
1 day 6 hours ago
1 day 7 hours ago