Too many rights: too many people without rights—two opposite case studies of claiming spaces and rights in Turin and Geneva

Introduction The multiple forms of living in the contemporary city clearly demonstrate how the relationship between living space and rights reveals itself in many ways, even to the point of being divergent and contradictory. Case description In order to analyze this point, we decided to observe two case studies that are emblematic for the divergence of issues that they are able to highlight. The neighbourhood of Les Grottes in Geneva can be described as a ‘manifesto of living’ based on sharing, solidarity, and freedom. On the other hand, the former Olympic Village in Turin expresses the “individual need to exist” of a population (of political refugees and migrants) not legitimatized to be in that place but one which, generally speaking, has nowhere to live. Discussion and evaluation These two situations are able to highlight how the right to housing today no longer has a universal meaning as in the struggles of the last century (70 s) but explodes in very different meanings. Conclusions For this reason the aim of this paper is try to rethink the concept of housing rights in order to emphasize how this term is still able to tell a lot about the urban and social transformations in contemporary cities.

Who Was He? Internment, Exile and Ambiguity in Norbert Gstrein’s Novel Die englischen Jahre (The English Years) (1999)

Winner of the Alfred Döblin Preis in 1999, the novel Die englischen Jahre by the Austrian novelist Norbert Gstrein deals with internment and exile in Britain dur- ing and after the Second World War. It centres on the (fictitious) character of Gabriel Hirschfelder, a writer and refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria who is detained, with oth- er ‘enemy aliens,’ in a camp on the Isle of Man. There, Nazi sympathisers are interned together with Jewish and political refugees, and the central chapters in the novel depict the conditions and resulting conflicts in the internment camp. Hirschfelder dies in exile at Southend-on-Sea, having confessed shortly before his death that he killed a fellow inmate. This confession as well as reports of a transport of internees sunk off the coast of Scotland in 1940 incite a young Austrian woman to try to solve the mystery surrounding Hirschfelder and his allegedly lost autobiography The English Years. The paper discusses how Gstrein combines different genres like the historical novel/historiographic metafic- tion and the whodunit as well as using multiple narrative perspectives and refractions to pinpoint questions of shifting identities and allegiances, and of belonging and alienation in the wake of internment and exile.

The Problems of Survival for the Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Society Depicted in the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature

Diasporic Literature becomes a prominent place in the field of literature. So is to the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature. It is because the Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic literature speaks about the identity of the Sri Lanka Tamils who are in the verge of losing their language and culture in the hosting countries where they seek political asylum. The present study analyses the challenges faced in the life of the displaced Tamils. Also, this study explains not only the emergence of the new life condition when the large number of Tamils displaced from Sri Lanka during the ethnic conflicts broke out after 1980’S and the challenges, and oppression that they underwent in the aspect of family, profession, education, language, and culture as they have been put into the new life condition as political refugees, but also asserts the fact that the diasporic literature is the social documentation to expose such vulnerabilities of the diasporic victims. Therefore, the present study arrives at a conclusion that there.

CONNECTIVITY BEYOND BORDERS IN DOMNICA RĂDULESCU’S TRAIN TO TRIESTE

The novel Train to Trieste by Domnica Rădulescu features the role played by transnational channels of communication in maintaining connections across physical and temporal borders between Romania and America. The discussion will focus on the particular networks employed by the protagonist Mona Manoliu (letters, phone calls, radio/TV transmissions) in order to transcend the alienating effects of exile in America. The argument combines a cultural studies approach with a close reading of the text, seeking to establish the manner in which contemporary fiction of migration presents the impact of linear transnationalism upon Romanian political refugees and their families.

Excavating the Layers of Trauma in Homelands and Hostlands: Supporting Political Refugees in U.S. Schools

This article details how a newly arrived Turkish refugee student navigates schooling in the United States. It highlights the trauma a purged Turkish families experience in their home country and their challenges as newcomers unfamiliar with their new country’s dominant culture, language, and education system. The case narrative provides insight into how children of Turkish political refugees are often overlooked in the context of U.S. schools, where teachers lack adequate training and supports. By illuminating one refugee family’s experiences in U.S. schools, the case calls for leaders to develop holistic supports and teacher education focused on the needs of refugee students.

From the History of Turkestan Emigration: «Turkestan Charity Society» in Cairo

The article introduces the content of a previously unknown document related to the history of Turkestan emigration in Egyptin the 40s of the twentieth century. We mean the Charter of Turkestan Charity Society (Turkestan Jamiyat-i Khayriyesi), created inCairo in 1944 by a group of eminent people from the Bolshevik Central Asia political refugees. The document is written in two languages: Arabic and Turkish. Not only the main part of the document is of particular interest, but it also makes it possible to identify the names of prominent representatives of theTurkestan emigrant community who participated in the creation of the society. The relevance of the proposed material is caused by the fact that the information about the very process of creation and its initiators is not available neither in domestic nor in foreign theses published recently on the history ofTurkestan emigration. In addition, the article reveals some fresh evidence about a group of people who were in close relationship with one of the brightest representatives ofTurkestan emigration, a Tatar theologian, Musa Bigiev (1875–1949). Here we mean HH Princess Khadija Abbas Hilmi (1879–1951), a representative of the Muhammad Ali dynasty, as well as Musa Bigiev’s students Yusuf Uralgiray (1915–1976) and Muhammad Turkistani (1904–1991).

Empathy and Community in the Age of Refugees: Petzold’s Radical Translation of Seghers’ Transit

Petzold’s film constitutes a radical translation of Seghers’ novel by transforming her tale of political refugees in Vichy France into an existential allegory depicting the fluidity of identities and relationships in a globalized world. The transitory existence of Petzold’s war refugee serves as an extreme example of the instability of modern life, which allows spectators to identify and empathize with migrants’ unpredictable journeys. Moreover, the director conveys the universality of his protagonist’s story by portraying him as an Everyman bereft of distinctive personality traits, by intermingling the past (Seghers’ plot) with the present (contemporary settings), and by situating his experiences in non-descript, liminal “non-places.” Both thematically and aesthetically, narrative is portrayed as establishing a community in an unstable contemporary world. Like the anti-hero of many modern Bildungsromane, Petzold’s protagonist fails to develop a stable identity and enduring friendships that anchor him in a community, but he creates his own family of listeners through his storytelling. In a similar vein, the film’s voice-over/narrator that bridges the fictional world with that of the audience underscores the film’s (and the novel’s) central theme: in a world of rapid change and mobility, the individual who may not be able to establish a stable identity or relationships, can create, as a narrator, a community of empathic listeners.

From Comrades to Subversives: Mexican Secret Police and ‘Undesirable’ Spanish Exiles, 1939–60

This article examines the Mexican state's surveillance of Spanish political exiles. As the Mexican government publicly welcomed over 20,000 political refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), its intelligence apparatus characterised anarchist and communist refugees as subversive threats to the Mexican nation. Despite these efforts, the Mexican secret police failed to prevent the emergence of new political bonds between the two countries’ popular classes. This article shows the consequences of the Mexican secret police's campaign against radical exiles while also highlighting instances in which Spaniards evaded the state's purview and contributed to revolutionary projects in Mexico, Latin America and Spain.

A Corporate Stance for Social Justice

This chapter explores the leadership role the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael played in the social movement known as “sanctuary” that emerged in the Bay Area, California, in the 1980s. The enactment of the 1980s Refugee Act and the political crisis in Central America during the Reagan administration galvanized the San Rafael Sisters to make a “corporate and public declaration” of support and sanctuary for political refugees fleeing the violence of a civil war in El Salvador. This chapter examines this pivotal moment within the larger historical context of the Dominican Sisters’ mission in California since the state’s founding in 1850.