Migration and Its Impact on Cities

30. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für Migration and Its Impact on Cities · Kategorien: Hintergrund, Lesetipps, Social Mix · Tags:

World Economic Forum | 25.10.2017 | Download pdf

The World Economic Forum has released a report taking a deep dive on migration and cities, exploring the types, causes and patterns of migration, the most affected corridors and cities, the impact on urban infrastructure and services, the solutions that can be employed and how cities can seek to future proof themselves to address this growing challenge.

The report captures the migration stories of 22 of the most affected cities around the world, including from North America (Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, New York and Boston), Latin America (Sao Paulo and Medellin), Middle East and North Africa (Dubai, Amman, Ramallah), Sub Saharan Africa (Cape Town and Dakar), Asia (Pune, Surat, Guangzhou and Davao City), Europe (Berlin, Athens, Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam) and Oceania (Auckland). The report also presents a high level framework to achieve long term migrant integration and in delivering urban infrastructure and services efficiently and effectively to meet the needs of migrants.

Key highlights of the report can be found here.

You can download the entire report here (High resolution) or here (Low resolution).

Essay: Life After the Jungle, the Route That Will Not Close

30. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für Essay: Life After the Jungle, the Route That Will Not Close · Kategorien: Frankreich, Großbritannien, Lesetipps, Schengen Migration · Tags:

Refugees Deeply | 25.10.2017

On the anniversary of the demolition of the Calais Jungle camp, Behzad Yaghmaian reflects on the stories of the migrants who continue to flock to the area and who are taking riskier and more expensive journeys across the English Channel to the U.K.

Behzad Yaghmaian

On a midsummer night, three young Iranians pushed a small boat out to sea on the French coast a few miles from Calais. It was midnight and there were no guards around to stop them.

Using a small inflatable dinghy and two oars they had bought for 600 euros ($705), the men started a journey into the rough waters of the English Channel on July 18. They were attempting the unimaginable. There is a reason Calais is not known for migrants risking their lives by boat. The waterway is too rough to cross without a motorboat – which is hard to get in France, even for well-connected smugglers.

One of the trio, Saman, a slim 28-year-old university graduate, did not know how to swim. To be on the safe side, the others had bought him what they described as a “cheap Chinese life jacket.” Saman made a quick call to his elderly mother in Iran. “I will call you soon from England,” he told her, before joining the other two men on the boat. They began rowing.

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„All refugees want to go home. Right?“

21. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für „All refugees want to go home. Right?“ · Kategorien: Lesetipps · Tags: ,

openDemocracy | 18.10.2017

Wanting to return home and restore one’s country should be a choice, not an obligation placed upon you by those also claiming to offer you protection.

Lena Kainz and Rebecca Buxton

We all know the story. On almost every continent, men, women and children are driven from their homes by persecution, poverty, or the effects of climate change. Regardless of geographic location or individual circumstance, we are told that refugees just want to return home.

In January, the UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and Hollywood actor Ben Stiller told TIME that all the refugees he had met professed a profound desire to eventually return home. Two months later, Sir Paul Collier (co-author of the recently-published Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System) informed CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that most refugees are currently in developing regions close to their country of origin and prefer to go home when the conflict is over. Melissa Fleming, Head of Communications and Chief Spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), stated in May that she “never met a single refugee who does not want to go back”. Diplomats such as the US Ambassador and Australian representatives to the UN have repeated the same sentiment.

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End all immigration controls – they’re a sign we value money more than people

18. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für End all immigration controls – they’re a sign we value money more than people · Kategorien: Lesetipps · Tags:

The Guardian | 16.10.2017

Humans have always travelled, but barriers are lifted for capital while, for the global poor, borders are made ever tougher to cross

Gary Younge

When I was a teenager I went to West Berlin with my local youth orchestra to take part in an Anglo-German cultural exchange. It was 1983 and the wall was up. As we toured the city over 10 days, we would keep butting into this grotesque cold war installation blocking our way, and butting up against my 14-year-old’s defence of socialism.

At that age I reflexively rejected most dominant narratives about race, class and nation. During a period of sus laws and anti-union legislation, I already understood there had to be another version of freedom out there that included me, and I was busy piecing together the fragments of my own worldview. And yet no amount of rationalisation could shake my conclusion that people whom I disagreed with about pretty much everything else were right about the wall.

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Buchpremiere am 17.10.: „Diktatoren als Türsteher Europas“

13. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für Buchpremiere am 17.10.: „Diktatoren als Türsteher Europas“ · Kategorien: Afrika, Europa, Lesetipps, Termine [alt] · Tags: ,

taz  | 13.10.2017

Jahrelange Recherchen machen die prekäre und verheerende Abschottungspolitik Europas deutlich.

Europa zieht erneut seine Grenzen durch Afrika. Migrationskontrolle – nicht nur in Form des Abkommens mit der Türkei – ist in der EU zu einer Frage von höchster innenpolitischer Bedeutung geworden.

Mit Hochdruck baut sie daher ihre Beziehungen zu den Regierungen auf dem afrikanischen Kontinent aus. Diese sollen ihre Bürger daran hindern, nach Europa zu gelangen. Die EU bietet dafür milliardenschwere Militär- und Wirtschaftshilfe.

Sie arbeitet mit Regimen zusammen, die schwere Menschenrechtsverletzungen begehen, und bildet deren Polizei und Armeen aus. Die Bewegungsfreiheit in Afrika wird eingeschränkt, Entwicklungshilfe wird umgewidmet und an Bedingungen geknüpft: Wer Migranten aufhält, bekommt dafür Geld.

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„The Financial Journey of Refugees“

06. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für „The Financial Journey of Refugees“ · Kategorien: Lesetipps · Tags:

IHS | 09.2017

Executive Summary

The Financial Journeys of Refugees investigates what money and financial transactions can reveal about the journeys and experiences of forced migration. We examine money as a key node of the displacement experience: fueling transactions among formal and informal actors along the way; determining livelihood options; shaping or restructuring kinship networks; and coloring risks, vulnerabilities, or protective forces available to refugees. Our inquiry highlights these transactions and the power dynamics that unfold among refugees as well as between refugees and formal or informal authorities. Four specific areas of inquiry emerged during this study:
  1. How do refugees gather, move, store, spend, and make money along the journey of their displacement? How do their strategies lead to enhanced risk and/or self-protection along the way?
  2. How do financial transactions structure relationships among refugees, as well as between refugees and formal or informal authorities, such as smugglers, informal money transfer agents, and formal banking systems?
  3. How does the humanitarian system—and, in particular, cash assistance to refugees— shape the aforementioned financial transactions and relationships?
  4. What are the roles of refugee identity—in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, and family status—and the documentation of that identity in shaping financial transactions, relationships, vulnerability, and coping strategies?

[…]

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The Central Mediterranean: European Priorities, Libyan Realities

04. Oktober 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für The Central Mediterranean: European Priorities, Libyan Realities · Kategorien: Europa, Italien, Lesetipps, Libyen, Mittelmeer · Tags: , , ,

News Deeply | October 2017

This issue is freely available as both a PDF & eBook download.

by Daniel Howden

Prologue

August 14 began calmly for Riccardo Gatti. On the first morning of a new search and rescue mission in the central Mediterranean, the former yachtsman turned activist walked the grayed wooden deck of the Golfo Azzurro, a trawler that has been stripped of its bulky fishing equipment to make space for life jackets and water bottles.

Its previous mission had tested everyone’s patience when several Italian ports refused to allow the vessel to dock and unload its rescued asylum seekers, a sign of the increasing political pressure on rescue charities such as Gatti’s Proactiva Open Arms. The only consolation had been that the ship’s unwanted cargo were in fact a trio of Libyan musicians who serenaded the crew as they searched for a safe port.

Now stationed 27 nautical miles off the coast of Libya, Gatti’s vessel was on standby for boats in distress. Instead they were approached by the C-Star, a vessel chartered by European anti-migrant activists. The Golfo Azzurro crew braced for a confrontation.

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Philosoph Andreas Cassee: „Es gibt kein Recht auf geschlossene Grenzen“

24. September 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für Philosoph Andreas Cassee: „Es gibt kein Recht auf geschlossene Grenzen“ · Kategorien: Afrika, Europa, Lesetipps · Tags: ,

derStandard | 24.09.2017

Der Schweizer Philosoph erklärt, wieso er für globale Bewegungsfreiheit ist und warum wir uns in die Lage eines abgewiesenen Flüchtlings versetzen sollten. Ein philosophisches Plädoyer für offene Grenzen

Interview Lisa Nimmervoll

STANDARD: „Über den Wolken muss die Freiheit wohl grenzenlos sein“, hat der deutsche Liedermacher Reinhard Mey gesungen. Sie möchten diese Freiheit quasi für alle Menschen auf den Boden, auf die Erde holen, denn Sie fordern offene Grenzen und globale Bewegungsfreiheit. Heißt das: Weg mit allen nationalen Grenzen?

Cassee: Gegen die Existenz von Grenzen habe ich nichts einzuwenden. Zwischen deutschen oder österreichischen Bundesländern existieren ja auch Grenzen, die festlegen, wo welche Jurisdiktion gilt. Eine andere Frage ist, ob an diesen Grenzen Grenzwächter stehen, ob also die Bewegung von Menschen über territoriale Grenzen kontrolliert wird. Meine Ansicht ist, dass es aus ethischer Perspektive kein Recht auf geschlossene Grenzen gibt.

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„Latest figures reveal more than 40 million people are living in slavery“

19. September 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für „Latest figures reveal more than 40 million people are living in slavery“ · Kategorien: Lesetipps · Tags: , , ,

The Guardian | 19.09.2017

Forced marriage is included for first time in worldwide statistics that show ‘money and debt’ to be at the heart of the exploitation

An estimated 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery in 2016, a quarter of them children, according to new global slavery statistics released today.

The figures, from the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, show 24.9 million people across the world were trapped in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage last year. Children account for 10 million of the overall 40.3m total.

The 2017 Estimates of Modern Slavery report calculates that of 24.9 million victims of forced labour, 16 million are thought to be in the private economy, 4.8 million in forced sexual exploitation and 4.1 million in state-sponsored forced labour including mandatory military conscription and agricultural work.

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Still Moving Europe

14. September 2017 · Kommentare deaktiviert für Still Moving Europe · Kategorien: Balkanroute, Lesetipps · Tags:

Broschüre
Still Moving Europe
Resistance Along The Balkanroute
herausgegeben von Moving Europe

> Download als pdf
> Bestellung der Print-Ausgabe unter info@ffm-online.org

Aus dem Vorwort

It was not by accident that we chose ‘Moving Europe’ two years ago as the name for another project of support along the Balkan route. In summer 2015, we did not expect such a long and intensive struggle able to break the border regime, and in the same winter we could likewise not imagine such a quick and strong ‘roll back’ of the regime in 2016. But we anticipated, at least, that the increasing struggles of refugees and migrants and the immense wave of support and welcoming in the countries of transit and destination would have transformative and long-term effects for Europe – they were quite literally ‘moving Europe’. And although today (August 2017) the fight for freedom of movement seems to be pushed back into a defensive position, struggles on flight and migration are still vivid on various levels. Contested spaces still exist all over Europe and continue to shape the whole political landscape.

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