On girl crushes

Three lovely bits from a recent conversation with bell hooks and Emma Watson in Paper Mag: [bell] hooks: …I have an overall obsession in my life with beauty. I’m always wanting to surround myself with the kind of beauty that uplifts you, that runs counter to some of the stereotypes of feminist women. [Emma] Watson: Yes, yes. In […]

On Erna speaking about refugees, 2001

The perks of doing archival research is that you occasionally come across some gems: Status of Refugees – a speech by Erna Solberg, (then) Minister of local Government and Regional Development, at the Ministerial meeting of states parties to the convention relating to the status of refugees on 12 December 2001, Geneva: This 50th anniversary provides […]

On backlash and global opinion

A piece published at The Hill on 11 February by András Simonyi about the global backlash Denmark recently received in light of their response to an influx of asylum seekers caught my attention — But Danes — politicians and the general public alike — need to realize something that strangely eluded them completely: that they are […]

On podcasts: Freakonomics and Migration

From a recent Freakonomics podcast, Is Migration a Basic Human Right?, Michael Clemens briefly mentions the global resettlement response for Hungarians in 1956 as a moment in history to learn from when thinking about the global response to Syria today — CLEMENS: We know exactly how to handle this refugee crisis because this is not […]

On conferences: the discursive construction of ‘strangers’ @ Uni Birmingham

Ruth Wodak’s lecture on the discursive construction of ‘strangers’ during a conference held by the University of Birmingham on 5.11.15: Inclusion and exclusion of migrants and refugees are renegotiated in the European Union on almost a daily scale: ever new policies defining and restricting immigration are proposed by European member states. A return to more […]

On public lectures: Navigating Nakivale @ RCC

Morten Bøås gave a lecture at the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre on “Navigating Nakivale: the borderland economy of a refugee camp” on 13 November 2015. The talk focused on how the combination of conflict + different types of interventions produces outcomes: “what matters is not only the cards you were dealt, but your ability to play them”. […]

On what the news covers

Max Fisher over at Vox addresses the swirling accusations that the media (at large) ignores certain conflicts for others — It would be easy to blame the media for this, to say that if only media outlets covered Beirut rather than ignoring it, the world might pay attention. I have bad news: The media does […]

On conferences: Guterres @ 12th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference

On 29 October 2015, António Guterres gave the lunchtime keynote lecture at the 12th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference (video available). The High Commissioner echoes many of his statements from his Georgetown lecture; the quotes I’ve transcribed dive deeper into securitization, resettlement + US influence — On the US [@ :23:20] — Guterres: You have a […]

On punctuation + effortless writing

Reading this morning’s post on the incomparable Brain Pickings, Maria Popova highlights a passage from Quack This Way by David Foster Wallace + Bryan A. Garner. The bit about punctuation especially resonated after trying to transcribe quotes yesterday — Reading is a very strange thing. We get talked to about it and talk explicitly about […]

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 […]