On asylum-seekers in Germany

Heather Horn in The Atlantic interviewed Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute and discussed the difference between refugees and asylum-seekers — There’s no clear parallel for this sort of influx in the United States. On paper, the U.S. is a giant in the refugee-acceptance business, taking in more refugees than every other country in the world combined, […]

On Willkommenskultur

The Economist looks into how Germany is dealing with an influx of asylum-seekers locally and regionally — But Germany’s biggest political push will be to reform the EU’s rules so that all member states share refugees based on a binding quota system. This vision is aligned with the plan that Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of […]

On resettlement to the US

Major kudos to Dara Lind over at Vox for writing up one of the best descriptions I’ve seen yet in the news on how resettlement to the US works — The US sets an annual quota for global refugees, as well as regional quotas. In 2015, the US anticipated taking only 33,000 refugees from the Middle […]

On numbers

Hannah Postel, Cynthia Rathinasamy and Michael Clemens over at the Center for Global Development’s Views from the Center blog investigate the numbers being thrown casually around in the media about Europe’s refugee crisis — Journalists have warned you that there are now 60 million refugees worldwide, and that Europe faces “the worst refugee crisis since World War […]

On dehumanizing others

Tanvi Misra at City Lab writes about a new paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, The study finds that some groups in America are considered less human than others, and that people who regard these groups as such are not shy to express their sentiments or behave in accordance with them. “In […]

On safe passage, asylum and R2P

Alex J. Bellamy over at IPI’s Global Observatory writes about safe passage and asylum on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the international community’s adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle — The relationship between R2P and the protection of refugees was understood from the outset. Indeed, R2P itself grew out of earlier […]

On meetings: Mediterranean migration crisis + EU

On 4 September 2015, I attended the NUPI seminar The Mediterranean migration crisis and the role of the EU. Ferruccio Pastore, director of FIERI, gave the central presentation, discussing the roots of the current migration crisis and exploring potential scenarios and response strategies. The video of his talk is worth watching for his discussion of […]

On lunch

Foreign Minister (Utenriksministeren) Børge Brende visited HVB today for a public lecture and lunch. update: Norsk utenrikspolitikk i en ny tid

On UNHCR + NGO dialogue

Stumbled across the Final Report on the 2015 UNHCR-NGO Annual Consultations, posted by the International Council of Voluntary Agencies. Of further note (archives!) — ICVA’s work on forced displacement: Forced displacement was ICVA’s first focus area in 1962 and remains highly relevant today as the ICVA network responds to the overwhelming number of displaced persons. […]

On solidarity

From Avtar Brah in the introduction to Cartographies of the Diaspora, … My relationship to these political formations in the USA was inextricably entwined with my status as a ‘foreign’ student who ‘looked Indian’. I was not categorized as ‘Asian’, for this descriptor was then reserved largely for Chinese and Japanese Americans. the highly publicized […]