“A Small Story With Great Symbolic Potential”: Attempts at Fixing a Cemetery of Unknown Migrants in Tunisia

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Zagaria
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Face ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Southeast Tunisia

From the summer of 2015, as Europe faced the so-called “refugee crisis,” a cemetery in southeast Tunisia started gaining fame. Journalists, researchers, filmmakers, photographers, and activists began traveling to the coastal town of Zarzis to report on a burial site for the victims of the European Union’s border. They were welcomed by local actors, and in particular by Chamseddine, a former fisherman who over the years became deeply involved in these burials. Told through one man’s charitable commitment to provide dignity to those who died at the European Union’s liquid border, the cemetery was fixed as a place epitomizing both the deadly effects of migration policies and the compassion of simple citizens in the face of horror. Different individuals and groups also began organizing to materially fix the cemetery. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Zarzis between 2015 and 2018, this article explores the conceptual and practical acts of “fixing” surrounding the cemetery. These resulted in turning it into a focal symbol triggering moral and political discourses not only of empathy and hope but also of blame and responsibility, bringing to the fore the colonial and neocolonial legacies of the “refugee crisis.”

Convivial linguistic practices: lived togetherness through language in the United Arab Emirates

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robert Amilan Cook
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper takes up conviviality as an analytical tool to investigate everyday language choices made by foreign residents living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It draws on recent work in human geography and cultural studies to understand conviviality in terms of practices rather than outcomes. Specifically, it investigates some of the linguistic dimensions of conviviality deployed by residents of the city in everyday situations of linguistic contact and negotiation of difference. The paper focuses on participants’ “small story” narratives (Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2015. Small stories research: Methods – analysis – outreach. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 255–272. Malden: John Wiley & Sons) that exemplify everyday language choices in the face of a highly ethnolinguistically diverse as well as racially and economically stratified society. Considering the multitude of ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic divisions in the city and the country as a whole, the paper unpacks how such cross-border contact is negotiated through everyday language practices. The paper identifies four types of convivial linguistic practices described by my participants: language sharing, benevolent interpretation, language checks and respectful language choices. In the process, I also probe the limits of what studying conviviality can tell us about everyday linguistic togetherness in highly segregated societies marked by stark inequalities.

scholarly journals Naked in the Face of Contamination

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Normal Forms ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Chemical Exposures ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Ecuadorian Amazon ◽  
The Face ◽  
Material Process

While chemicals are often described and acted upon in technoscientific forums as isolated, discrete entities, vernacular experience points to possibilities of experiencing, speaking about, and imagining chemical exposures that have otherwise been rendered politically obsolete. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this article invokes accounts of daily life in order to argue that vernacular experience is necessary for understanding what it means to live in a place of environmental hazard, and for building a more inclusive politics of knowledge production in models and assessments of toxicity. Descriptions such as “naked in the face of contamination,” “swimming in oil,” “smoke thick like marmalade,” or exclamations of pain re-lived “tsaac!” refuse hegemonic assumptions about how chemicals alter and enable life. To take these descriptions of life seriously is to recognize the ways that chemical concentrations often far exceed the ‘normal’ forms and quantities modeled in risk assessments of standard oil operations. The chemically saturated present demands a reconfiguration of toxicity – as a socio-material process, epistemic concept, and embodied experience – in order to work towards political and environmental, as well as epistemological, justice.

scholarly journals ‘If you don’t have documents or a legal procedure, you are out!’ Making humanitarian organizations partner in migration control

2020 ◽  
pp. 147737082093207
Author(s):  
Mieke Kox ◽  
Richard Staring
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Control Policies ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Support Organizations ◽  
Migration Control

The paradoxical merger of humanitarian care and securitization imperatives can be seen not only at external and externalized borders, but also at the internal borders in the Netherlands. Here, humanitarian organizations that sprang up to support migrants without a legal status in response to – and given their disagreement with – the state’s exclusionary migration policies have become involved in migration control. During a gradual and subtle responsibilization process, the Dutch authorities have used specific measures and redirected monetary flows in order to incorporate these organizations into its broader migration control policies. This has resulted in a decrease in the number of support organizations for unauthorized migrants, a reduction in their independence and autonomy, and an increased focus on selection and return. Ethnographic fieldwork amongst unauthorized migrants illustrates the consequences of this exclusionary control. These migrants experience exclusion, selection and enforcement by humanitarian organizations and doubt the trustworthiness of these organizations. This development seems to fit in with the broader trend of European states disarming humanitarian organizations for unauthorized migrants by either responsibilizing or criminalizing them. However, these strategies are not without consequences because they run the risk that unauthorized migrants will further withdraw and turn away from this type of assistance altogether. We use both a humanitarian and a pragmatic perspective to argue that it would make sense for states either to allow organizations to continue their – uncompromised and unconditional – support for unauthorized migrants or to adapt their migration policies in such a way that humanitarian support becomes redundant.

Determinants of Local Economic Performance: Experience from Rural England

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Courtney ◽  
Malcom Moseley
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Local Stakeholders ◽  
The Face ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
Rural England ◽  
Depth Interviews

The determinants of local economic performance have provided a focus for theoretical debate and posed a conundrum for rural policy makers aiming to address local and regional disparities in the face of global competitiveness. The complex interrelationship of potential explanatory factors is conceptualized in terms of five ‘capitals’: economic, human, social, environmental and cultural. Findings from in-depth interviews with local stakeholders in eight English districts emphasise the interplay between local historical and cultural contexts, the capacity of local actors to stimulate development and the potential to create ‘open’ economies and societies in explaining uneven patterns of performance across rural England.

scholarly journals European Governments’ Responses to the ‘Refugee Crisis’

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Skleparis
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Common Market ◽  
Population Movement ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Control Policies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Security Concerns

In the face of the ‘refugee crisis’, many European governments, even in traditionally liberal states, unilaterally introduced a number of restrictive and, often, controversial migration, asylum, and border control policies. The author argues that past legal-bureaucratic choices on migration and asylum policies, ongoing developments in international relations at that time, the structural and perceived capacity of receiving states to cope with the refugee influx, and long-standing migration-related security concerns influenced the responses of many European governments amid the mass population movement. However, the author also suggests that the surfacing of particular policies across Europe was related to the newly elected Greek government’s attempted U-turn from similar repressive and controversial policies during that time. In this regard, the author maintains that repressive and controversial migration, asylum, and border control policies cannot simply be abolished within the context of the eu common market and interdependence of eu internal and external controls.

scholarly journals Poetics of Refraction

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Christian Rossipal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
European Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Public Sphere

Reduced to temporary guests, victims, threats, or enemies, those who are forced to seek refuge have to navigate a political minefield. To seek recognition in the public sphere is an especially treacherous endeavor under these conditions. Faced with a range of imposed identities–including the refugee label itself–the quest for “more visibility” through documentary images is fraught with contradictions for the displaced. This article considers the ways in which filmmakers and artists with experience of displacement work with documentary methods and forms in the face of these extreme difficulties. As they challenge and seek alternatives to conventional forms of documentary, a range of new expressions and tendencies can be discerned in the wake of “The European Refugee Crisis,” from so-called participatory documentary to essayistic and more experimental approaches. The article discusses, among other films, Purple Sea (2020), Midnight Traveler (2019), and My New European Life (2019).

scholarly journals Discontinuities Within Continuities: Solidarity, (Im-)Mobility and Migration Between Refugee Crisis and COVID-19 Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eveline Odermatt
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
And Migration

Since the peak of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, much has been written on the topic of solidarity towards migrants. However, the perspective of migrants on the issue of solidarity and their practices of solidarity has been addressed less. This article aims to outline solidarity in the context of migration in more detail. Firstly, I will outline how solidarity played out towards migrants during the refugee crisis, and I will sketch how migrants engage in cross-border solidarity, having left their sending countries and families behind. Secondly, I will illustrate continuities and discontinuities between the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 crisis with regards to migration policies implemented during these crises. Hereinafter, I will highlight the impacts of these migration measures on the migrants’ capacity to manifest solidarity as well as on forms of solidarity towards migrants. The main argument is that bridging these two crises - the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 crisis - can deepen our understanding of the interplay between migration policies put in place and forms of solidarity among migrants or towards migrants. Hence, the article aims to contribute to the broader discussion on the diverse ways of how crises and crises discourses affect migration policies and consequently the migrants.

Literacy And Power Of Words In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 150-155
Author(s):  
ANCY THRESIA N K
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
The Face ◽  
Small Story ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Power Of Words

The work selected for the study, The Book Thief (2005) by Markus Zusak, belongs to the category of indirect Holocaust literature.The Book Thief is a moving story written by Markus Zusak from the German perspective of everyday civilian hardships and survival under the Third Reich. It celebrates the power of words and love in the face of unutterable suffering. This is the tale of the book thief, as narrated by death. It’s just a small story about, amongst other things: a girl, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.The most important theme in “The Book Thief” is the idea that words can give people a sense of security, power and expression. The first theme is the power of words accomplished by the book thief Liesel.

Why the Japanese Law School System Was Established: Co‐optation as a Defensive Tactic in the Face of Global Pressures

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
pp. 365-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayumi Saegusa
Keyword(s):  
School System ◽  
Law School ◽  
Judicial Reform ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
System Solution ◽  
The Face ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Japanese Law ◽  
Absolute Control

In the face of pressures to expand the rule of law, in 2004, Japan introduced a new law school system in order to produce more and better qualified lawyers. This article explains why the new law school system solution was selected from among other alternatives such as reforming the national bar exam, abolishing mandatory legal training, reforming existing legal education, or redefining the jurisdiction of lawyers. I argue that the law school system was adopted because the legal establishment co‐opted pro‐law school scholars and other reformists. Although American‐style law schools have been introduced in Japan, power has not yet shifted entirely from the legal establishment to the pro‐law school scholars; while the legal establishment may no longer have absolute control of the Japanese judicial arena, it remains powerful because it successfully co‐opted pro‐American elites into judicial reform. By analyzing the case of the Japanese law school system, this article indicates that transplants of global institutions may often be more symbolic than practical due to co‐optation tactics used by powerful local actors.

scholarly journals Co-responsibility between countries of origin, transit and destination: Lessons from Spain’s experience with migration

European View ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Senge
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
External Migration

This article gives an overview of Spain’s experience of regular and irregular migration in the past and of the subsequent development of the EU’s framework for external migration policies. It argues for a realistic rather than ideological approach that involves co-responsibility between countries of origin, transit and destination, in compliance with human rights standards. Co-responsibility means a system in which migrants’ countries of origin, transit and destination share the burden of dealing with both regular and irregular migration whenever possible. Such a system is sometimes characterised by long and difficult discussions and negotiations to define common goals and balance interests in the spirit of a partnership of equals. This article first tackles immigration in Spain, with an emphasis on the 2006 Spanish refugee crisis or the ‘Cayucos crisis’. It then looks at EU migration policy, before recommending ways of improving it.

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