Combating Modern Slavery: The Strategy of Indonesian Government to Protect Migrant Workers

Economic migration create opportunities as well as humanitarian challenge. People travel across national boundary looking for work in the country destination. They would benefit their hosted as well as sending high amount of remittance for home. However, those dream were not applicable to all economic migrant when some of them fall victim into human trafficking. This research would investigate the strategy as well as challenges by Indonesia government and NGOs to promote protection of Indonesian migrant worker. It is imperative to evaluate state policies, state diplomacy, transnational advocacy network, and the nature of companies as agent of service provider. It would show how current practices and law has loopholes that create challenges for public private partnership to provide adequate support for Indonesian migrant worker. Investigation is conducted through interview, observation and literature review. The struggle to end modern slavery shall be one among priority in protecting civilian abroad, if the government is serious to minimize economic inequality and to change itself into welfare nation.

The battle of numbers: Refugee protection, race, and Neoliberal politics of bureaucratic efficiency

This paper examines the early years of systematic refugee claim processing in Canada to explore the ways neoliberal bureaucratic practices rely on and (re)produce racialization in their day to day operations. I argue that due to the rise of neoliberalism, systematic refugee protection in Canada has come to exclude claimants who have borne the label of economic migrant. Furthermore, I argue that the exclusion of economic migrants from refugee protection has been a racialized and racializing project. The institutional procedures that worked to exclude these migrants inherited, drew upon, and reproduced racialized knowledges about certain national groupings. Racialization of economic migrants provided the claim processing bureaucracy with quick and efficient means of screening large numbers of claimants out of their workload. Thus, I argue that neoliberal governance of refugee claims in Canada has been a racialized and racializing bureaucratic practice. El artículo examina los primeros años de proceso sistemático de solicitudes de asilo en Canadá para explorar la forma en que las prácticas burocráticas neoliberales se apoyan en, y (re)producen, la racialización en sus actividades cotidianas. Argumento que, debido al auge del neoliberalismo, la protección sistemática a los refugiados en Canadá ha terminado excluyendo a solicitantes que llevan la etiqueta de migrantes económicos, y que la exclusión de los migrantes económicos de la protección a los refugiados ha sido un proyecto racializado y racializante. Los procedimientos institucionales que han servido para excluir a dichos migrantes heredan conocimiento racializado sobre determinados grupos nacionales. La racialización de los migrantes económicos ha proporcionado a la burocracia de procesamiento de solicitudes unos medios rápidos y eficaces de excluir a numerosos solicitantes del sistema. Por tanto, argumento que la gobernanza neoliberal de solicitudes de asilo en Canadá ha sido una práctica burocrática racializada y racializante.

Freedom and possession in the letters of Andrzej Bobkowski

For Bobkowski, to maintain personal freedom based on material independence achieved through his own work was a fundamental existential issue. Freedom and financial independence were: a declaration, a life’s motto and an economic programme. The writer’s concept was, eventually, reduced to a change of his status as a political exile to the situation of an economic migrant who also supported Poland’s freedom.

Words don’t come easy: Al Jazeera’s migrant–refugee distinction and the European culture of (mis)trust

Al Jazeera’s August 2015 editorial decision to substitute ‘refugee’ for ‘economic migrant’ in its coverage of ‘the Mediterranean Migration Crisis’ provides an opportunity to re-frame the relationship between the politics of race, immigration and media representations of refugees. Situating the broadcaster’s publicly announced rationale for the decision within a critique of the migrant–refugee dichotomy enforced by European public policy, this article, first, demonstrates that the policy couplet mobilizes oppositional yet interdependent identities. The discursive distancing of ‘migrant’ from ‘refugee’ in news content does not dislodge their mutually reinforcing power to define the parameters of ‘inclusion’. Second, the article examines how the policy onus placed on refugees to justify their claim as ‘victims’ reproduces racialized codes of belonging that perpetuate the denial of autonomy. Persons seeking refuge in Europe must sustain an identity of ‘non-threatening victim’ if they are to gain recognition in a securitized culture of (mis)trust. Al Jazeera’s intervention strengthens the media representation of refugees as human beings without choice; yet, the broadcaster’s decision to ‘give voice’ by ‘challenging racism’ does not break the European political consensus on immigration and asylum that positions ‘non-Western’ peoples as victim/pariah, to be ‘saved’ and ‘suspected’. The media–policy–migration nexus ensures that refugee exclusion is always possible.

Combatting fraud as a disincentive of an unintended economic migrant: A comparative review of the direct Turkish model and the indirect Australian model

Under the new Turkish Law on Foreigners and International Protection (Article 54) represents a rapid deterrent approach as the consequences of fraud are implemented within 30 days. In contrast to the Turkish approach, Public Interest Criteria 4020 used in Australian law implies a lengthy process that may take up to two years. A quantitative analysis of retrospective data (2010-2014) of the Australian Migration Review Tribunal substantiated the notion that in contrast to the Turkish model, the Australian model is used as a procrastinating tool to the advantage of unintended economic migrants to remain in Australia.

Wandering Greeks

Most classical authors and modern historians depict the ancient Greek world as essentially stable and even static, once the so-called colonization movement came to an end. But this book argues that the Greeks were highly mobile, that their movement was essential to the survival, success, and sheer sustainability of their society, and that this wandering became a defining characteristic of their culture. Addressing a neglected but essential subject, this book focuses on the diaspora of tens of thousands of people between about 700 and 325 BCE, demonstrating the degree to which Greeks were liable to be forced to leave their homes due to political upheaval, oppression, poverty, warfare, or simply a desire to better themselves. Attempting to enter into the mind-set of these wanderers, the book provides an insightful and sympathetic account of what it meant for ancient Greeks to part from everyone and everything they held dear, to start a new life elsewhere—or even to become homeless, living on the open road or on the high seas with no end to their journey in sight. Each chapter identifies a specific kind of “wanderer,” including the overseas settler, the deportee, the evacuee, the asylum-seeker, the fugitive, the economic migrant, and the itinerant, and the book also addresses repatriation and the idea of the “portable polis.” The result is a vivid and unique portrait of ancient Greece as a culture of displaced persons.

The Economic Migrant

This chapter examines the reasons for becoming an economic migrant. In the modern world, economic migrants tend to be both entrepreneurial and dynamic, having demonstrated their willingness to take risks and leave their homes in order to create opportunities for themselves and their families. There is every reason to suppose that economic migrants in the ancient world would have been equally entrepreneurial and dynamic. A primary motivation for the movement of people in the modern world is the desire to escape financial destitution and starvation, though distress caused by political upheavals runs a close second. In the ancient world by contrast, where servile labor was readily available, merchants and craftsmen were the ones most likely to better their economic circumstances by migration.