The EU response to the increasing number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea is riddled with falsity. Activists in touch with many of those attempting to cross respond.
Migrants in Morocco often attempt to cross the Mediterranean only after years of exploitation and exclusion. Their vulnerability is a product of EU policy and its preoccupation with ‘transit migration’.
The populist discourse of Podemos and Syriza is the attempt to cope with a post-industrial and crisis-ridden economy in which traditional class identifications fail to mobilise the electorate.
North Koreans’ migration to China is highly complex, more so than when it is depicted simply as ‘human-trafficking’ and/or ‘modern slavery’ in anti-trafficking discourse.
Thanks to extremely complex electoral laws and the ease with which alliances are created and broken, as is usual in Italy, all sides claim victory. However, there are some striking conclusions we can draw from the results.
Greece needs a radical overhaul of its corrupt University system. The creation of autonomous University Councils, such as those in the UK where I teach, would be a good step towards this.
Migrant domestic workers in the Middle East act as if they were already free when they resist the constraining kafala system by setting out on their own as freelancers.
We can take advantage of the flaws that run across our current data landscape in order to investigate corruption and abuse of power.
Syriza cannot and will not default on its people by stopping paying wages and pensions. If matters come to a head, it will default on its creditors because democratic principles are not negotiable.
Transatlantic slavery relied on force to move people, while today’s ‘trafficking’ does not. Vulnerable migrants have more in common with those escaping from historical slavery than those entering into it.
The question of mobility was central to struggles against the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. Current campaigns focus on the journey into slavery, overlooking the spatial captivity entailed in ‘modern slavery’.
The uniting effect of a shared European Identity is of paramount importance when considering the multi-ethnic makeup of the European soil and the increasingly fractious nature of its politics.
