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 […]

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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), […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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