Tag Archives: borders

El Pueblo Sigue Luchando (The People Keep Fighting)

January 16, 2018 · by · in Guest post, Personal Stories, Politics & Policy · Leave a comment

by Leonard Olsen It was a hot and sticky morning in the central park of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. Sweating profusely, I quickly realized that me and my towering, 65-liter backpack looked silly surrounded by hundreds of men and women who had packed all of their belongings into a gym bag. I paused to look around […]

“Swarms” from “the Jungle”: Calais and the new refugee reality

August 13, 2015 · by · in Politics & Policy, Public Discourse · 3 Comments

By Alex Johnson Make no mistake, what’s happening at the Channel Tunnel entrance in Calais is not a temporary crisis. This is not a short term problem, a blip before a return to regular programming. From Lesvos to Lampedusa, from Ceuta to Calais, the flow of desperate people seeking refuge from war and hunger shows […]

The Razor-Wire Curtain: Europe’s New Anti-Migrant Fences

June 25, 2015 · by · in Politics & Policy · 2 Comments

By Alex Johnson Next month will mark the 26th anniversary of the ‘Pan-European Picnic’, a day that changed the face of Europe. On 19 August 1989, Communist Hungary stopped policing its border with Austria, allowing some 600 East Germans holidaying at Lake Balaton to cross over to the West. Soon after, the Hungarian authorities officially […]

The Man on the Tube and the Community of Value

September 19, 2013 · by · in History, Literature, Personal Stories, Politics & Policy, Public Discourse · 1 Comment

Reading Us and Them: the dangerous politics of immigration control by Bridget Anderson The UK immigration debate has always seemed a bit of a shrill theatre to me. Populist scaremongering from the right finds its way into the mainstream in the form of outright crazy policy propositions like last month’s Go Home campaign and the […]