Category Culture & Integration
You Make a Decision and You Start Your Journey
by Iddrisu Wari Founder of CEHDA This blog post is composed of excerpts from a chapter of the same title in the book Understanding Migrant Decisions, edited by Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom, Routledge 2016. Potential migrants in Sub-Saharan countries often do not know much about the situation in Europe. For them, they cannot imagine that […]
Shaping and Reshaping Identity on Immigrant and Refugee Receptivity
Europe is in a “polycrisis.” That was the theme of a workshop I recently attended, along with colleagues from Kennesaw State University, at the Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen, in Germany. “Polycrisis” in this case refers to the challenges faced by European Union (EU) member states, including financial problems, terrorist threats, and, in particular, the increase in […]
Making a New Home: Olveston, Linden, and the Jewish Museum of Australia
In 2002 I visited Poland for the first time. I took an overnight train from Berlin and arrived in Katowice on a freezing November morning. The skies were overcast, buses belched smoke, and the ground was covered in muddy ice and snow. In other words, it was miserable. And yet, as I made my way […]
Telling Refugees’ Stories: The Voices Hidden Behind the Panic
How do refugees and other forced migrants impact their host communities? Do they take local jobs? Are they reliant on aid? How do r efugees around the world maintain livelihoods in the face of insecurity, instability and precarity? The Refugee Economics project is a multi-site reporting project headed by Montreal-based journalist Flavie Halais that seeks to answer […]
New Art for a Migrant World: Brisbane’s Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial
Since 1993, Brisbane, Australia has hosted a remarkable and unique cultural event: the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. The eighth instalment opened in November 2015 at the venerable Queensland Art Gallery and its shiny young neighbour the Gallery of Modern Art. Two years ago I wrote about Brisbane and a spectacular exhibition of Cai […]
Open arms, open hearts: Canada’s (belated) response to Syrian refugees
It’s a little over three months since the Government of Canada began expediting the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Canada, celebrating the open door with the government’s newest hashtag: #WelcomeRefugees. Two months since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waited late into the night at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport to help the first planeload of newcomers into […]
The Other Sudan: Music, War and the Nuba Mountain Refugees
“I’m really into music – I’m not a musician, but I’m really into music.” says Hajooj Kuka. The director of the 2014 documentary Beats of the Antonov tells a hundred different stories in his film. But they all come back to one thing: the music played by the people of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. […]
Kenya should follow Uganda’s refugee labour example
The current refugee population in Kenya is estimated at 600,000, yet refugees in Kenya at present do not have the legal right to work without paying exorbitant fees to access short-term work permits. According to Article 6 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees must be exempt from any requirements to obtain work permits if they […]
Can we do it? A view of the refugee crisis response from Schorndorf, Germany
By Tina Kreitmayr I got back to Germany in September after a year abroad and I was very curious about the situation of refugees in my medium- sized, Southern German home town. I had heard all the great stories about public engagement in Berlin and Munich, but I did not quite know what to expect […]
Narrating a national migration history: The UK’s Migration Museum Project
The London-based Migration Museum Project was started a few years ago by a group of professionals who were driven by the unfortunate absence of a national institution or museum documenting the “lively part” that migration to and from the UK has played, and continues to play, in national life. Although at the moment limited to […]
