On public opinion

IOM and Gallup World Poll released global polling data on people’s attitudes towards migration. Find the press release here; the full report here. From the press release, How the World Views Migration – a newly released report produced by IOM in collaboration with the Gallup World Poll – provides, for the first time, a global […]

On “the social construction of victimhood”

Steven Walt asks the question “Whose lives matter?” in Foreign Policy’s Voice blog — The world has no shortage of victims of terrible tragedies these days. Death tolls are rising in places from Syria to Sudan and some 60 million people have been displaced from their homes worldwide. But which of these people will get widespread support […]

On meetings: Migration Across the Mediterranean

On 30 October 2015, I attended the Migration across the Mediterranean: Challenges and Solutions meeting hosted at Institutt for samfunnsforskning. The timing of the meeting was spot on: halfway through the budget addendum went public, relating specifically to the discussions of the Ministries represented. Also always interesting to hear discussions of more the technical issues […]

On creative solutions

[updated as further suggestions pop up] Islands: Egyptian billionaire: I found the island I want to buy for refugees Open the border: Best way US could help Syrians: open the borders Tradable quota: How a tradable refugee-admission quota system could help solve the EU’s migration crisis; see also: Fernández-Huertas Moraga & Rapoport: Tradable Refugee-admission Quotas (TRAQs), […]

On cities

David Miliband, writing in the Guardian, asks why no one is talking about cities — In all the many column inches on the European refugee crisis, one point has barely received a mention: the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees are not in refugee camps. Rows of white tents in an otherwise sparse landscape are often […]

On responsibility, visibility

One of my favorite current essayists, Roxane Gay, has a piece up in the NYT about the recent events in a school in Columbia, South Carolina — In the wake of such indecency, there has been a vigorous public response — shock and outrage, with many people denouncing Mr. Fields’s actions. There have also been […]

On Norwegian budget debates

[this post will be continually updated as debates about the final national budget continue — changes in immigration law included] 23.11.15: Her er budsjettet samarbeidspartiene skal godkjenne i dag 19.11.15: Disse innstramningene er partiene engige om 16.11.15: Krever at asylinnstramminger blir midlertidige 11.11.15: Anklager opposisjonen for politisk spill om asyl 10.11.15: Dropper flytningforhandlinger med kun […]

On intervention and vacuums

I feel like the same point keeps popping up in discussions about interventions: From David Ignatius in the Atlantic, on the spread of ISIS — The story of ISIS teaches the same basic lesson that emerged from America’s other failures in the Middle East over the last decade: Attempts by the United States or Islamist rebels […]

On blindness

The NYT just posted a wide-ranging conversation between George Yancy and Seyla Benhabib in their The Stone blog — George Yancy.: We far too often fail to understand each other across racial divides. A “post-racial” discourse might even occlude the effort to do so. How do we create spaces for understanding the conditions of others, especially within […]

On interviews

I think I safely fall into the camp that would happily have a conversation with Terry Gross. I’d be lying if — like the Ira Glass note below — I didn’t admit to listening to her interviews to study the nuance of the art. From Susan Burton’s profile of Terry Gross in the New York Times […]