industryterm:transnational network

  • If mayors ruled migration : Promises and gaps

    On 8th December 2018, two days before the UN Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, some 80 cities around the world convened in Marrakech for the 5th Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development. The cities signed a Mayors’ Declaration, identifying common priorities in the follow up and review process of the Global Compact. On that same occasion, a new initiative called the Mayors Migration Council was launched, to support cities’ engagement in international deliberations and policies concerning refugees and migrants. A couple of months afterwards, on February 9th, 2019, the mayors of the main Spanish and Italian cities launched an alliance to oppose the ‘closed harbours’ policy of the Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini and to denounce the incapacity of the EU to address the situation appropriately.

    These are just two recent examples that show how city policies and mobilisation on migration can resonate well beyond municipal and national walls. Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? Cities’ enthusiasts like Benjamin Barber, founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors, have no doubts about the governance capacity of city networks (CN henceforth): ‘Mayors can rule the world because cities represent a level of governance sufficiently local to demand pragmatism and efficiency in problem solving but sufficiently networked to be able to fashion cooperative solutions to the interdependent challenges they face’. Pragmatism and cooperative interaction are presented as the key assets of mayors, cities and, by extension, city networks’ mode of governing global challenges. On the basis of – the still scarce – existing research on city global mobilisation on migration-related issues and of the preliminary results of the MinMUS Project, we can identify the promises and challenges of transnational city networks for the building of a new multilevel governance of international migration.

    Is local policy more pragmatic?

    The idea that local governments must deal with the situation ‘as it is’, therefore taking distance from abstract – and presumably ineffective – ideological recipes, has underpinned the development of research on local migration policy. However, evidence is contradictory and, especially in the US, studies seem to show that pragmatic attitudes and accommodative solutions are just as likely to occur as decisions aiming at excluding migrants or simply ignoring the issue altogether. What a ‘pragmatic solution’ is cannot be easily established a priori, but will depend on policymakers’ interests, perceptions, and definitions of the situation.

    Data collected by the Cities of Refuge project on 27 transnational city networks in Europe show that the most networked cities are leaning towards the centre-left, progressive-side of the political spectrum. And even if membership usually outlasts political shifts, this might not correspond to active participation, as pointed out by research in the field of climate change mitigation. Furthermore, according to Cities of Refuge, cities that adhere to international networks have an average population of 1.5 million, meaning that they are primarily large cities. However, as noted by OECD, while nearly two-thirds of migrants settle in metropolitan and densely populated regions, asylum seekers are more spread across urban-rural areas.

    Territorial dispersal of asylum seekers reflects evidence on reception policies collected by the CeasEVAL Project. To face the sense of pressure generated by increasing inflows since 2011, national governments in both federal/regional countries (Germany, Italy and Spain) and centralised ones (Finland, Luxemburg, Greece and Bulgaria), have redistributed asylum seekers all over their territory, including small municipalities in rural and mountains areas. Even though the reaction of local populations has not necessarily been negative, CeasEVAL points out a high level of heterogeneity in the type of accommodation and quality of services provided, as well as in opportunities for effective integration. Policy learning and exchange of best practices would probably be of great interest to these ‘new immigrant destinations’; however, they often do not have the financial, human and political resources required to participate in international network activities.

    Hence, the international arena is a highly selective one, which risks excluding those – especially small – cities that might be more in need of accessing knowledge and other – mainly financial – resources in order to deal effectively with the challenges of migration and asylum. Modes of inclusion will also depend on the goals of city networks, which are extremely diverse.

    Cities as key players in the multilevel governance of migration?

    City networks gather together on a voluntary basis local authorities in order to pursue perceived collective interests or purposes. They lack authoritative power, and therefore have to rely upon horizontal coordination and mutual cooperation to carry out and implement their initiatives. As such, city networks are organisations which aim at realising quintessential multilevel governance policy processes: on the vertical dimension, they interact with institutions operating at different – local, regional, national and supra-national – territorial scales; on the horizontal dimension city networks establish new relations between cities and with non-public actors mobilised at a city level.

    To assess these hypotheses, the MInMUS project (website) has carried out an in-depth analysis of four transnational networks on migration, i.e.: the Migration and Integration Working Group of Eurocities, the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR), the Intercultural Cities Programme (ICC) and Welcoming America. Results show that these networks: 1) pursue different agendas and 2) are engaged in different types of policymaking processes.

    Regarding agendas, ECCAR and ICC are focused on the promotion of a specific type of local policy, i.e. anti-discrimination and interculture respectively; Eurocities seeks to represent main cities vis-á-vis the European Commission, being involved primarily in lobbying activities; whereas Welcoming America is concerned with soliciting grassroots participation and community partnerships. As for policymaking processes, Welcoming America prioritizes relations with actors such as NGOs, CSOs and private business, whereas Eurocities is more focused on relations with the European Commission and national governments. A more balanced pattern of multilevel political dynamics can be discerned in the other two cases. In particular ICC, starting from 2016, has adopted an explicit multilevel governance approach aimed at promoting cooperation and coordination both on the vertical, i.e. between different levels of government, and on the horizontal, i.e. with non-public actors, dimensions of policy-making.

    Multilevel governance, far from being the essence of city networking initiatives, is only one possible mode of policymaking interactions and it is not even the most relevant one. City networks may well find it more convenient or appropriate to pursue other types of policy interactions, centred on a vertical dimension as in the case of Eurocities or on the horizontal dimension as in that of Welcoming America. Multilevel governance seems easier to pursue in the case of networks that are already established as multilevel organisations. This is the case of ECCAR, launched by Unesco in 2004, and of ICC, officially started in 2008 as a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Patterns of relations and modes of policymaking seem to reflect to a large extent the genesis of city networks and their distinctive policy agenda.

    Getting back to our initial question: Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? While one cannot deny the key role played by cities in the managing of migration crises as well as in supporting integration and community cohesion more generally, city networks’ skewed membership that consists mainly of larger and politically progressive cities should make us cautious about their impact on improving migrants’ living conditions at a grassroots level. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the initiative of supranational institutions ‘from above’ has played a key role in favouring cities’ collaboration around specific policy issues such as interculture and anti-discrimination. Indeed, cities and their networks represent a new actor in the multilevel political dynamics around migration; yet whether and to what extent they will be effective in promoting collaborative multilevel governance relations and influencing national government and EU agendas on migration remains to be seen.

    https://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/mayors-ruled-migration-promises-gaps
    #municipalisme #migrations #villes #collectivités_locales #asile #migrations #réfugiés #gouvernance

    Ajouté à la métaliste sur les #villes-refuge :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/759145

    ping @karine4

  • After #Ara_Güler: Capturing the Feeling of Loss in Modernizing #Istanbul

    Ara Güler, the world famous photographer born in 1928 in Istanbul passed away on the October 17, 2018. His remarkable career encompassed photographs from around the world, portraits and interviews of politicians and celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, Alfred Hitchcock, John Berger, Bertrand Russell, James Baldwin and many more. Güler was an example of a cosmopolitan artist who was integrated into transnational networks of artists, while being simultaneously rooted in his hometown of Istanbul. He had a site-specific presence in “his” district of the city, Beyoğlu, one of Istanbul’s most cosmopolitan neighborhoods that for centuries has been a diverse melting pot of the different communities that lived across the Ottoman Empire, including Armenians like Güler.

    Historian Edhem Eldem defines the “embedded cosmopolitanism” in Beyoğlu in the 19th century as consisting not only of the mere juxtaposition of diverse actors, but by a cosmopolitan cultural milieu that in turn transformed them as well. Besides visually documenting the district, Güler also was an integral component of its cosmopolitan culture, with his studio and archive, situated in the heart of Beyoğlu, on Istiklal Street. Next to it, there is Ara Café named after him, a café frequented by artists, students, expats, and intellectuals where you could see Ara Güler himself very often before his passing.

    Among the variety of his photographic work, Güler is mostly associated with his city Istanbul, and was even given the nickname “The Eye of Istanbul”. Meticulously documenting this city marked by mind blowing transformation, he left a heritage of visual urban memory. This article aims to explore Ara Güler’s photographic work as a visual guide to comprehending Istanbul’s journey of modernization and urbanization in the 20th century.

    Our focus is Güler’s portrayal of Istanbul in black and white in 1950s and 1960s, where Istanbul appears as a metropole “in progress”, or under construction. As described by the sociologist Nilüfer Göle, in the context of non-Western countries modernization, involves a cultural shift, a process of changing habitus, aesthetic norms, values, and lifestyles in the public sphere. The economic development of the country goes along with this social and cultural transformation. In 1950s and 60s Turkey, the construction of highways and railways connected the national periphery to the center. Istanbul received a mass wave of migration and expanded with slums during this improvised, unplanned urbanization process. The city became the scene where center and periphery, modern and traditional lifestyles encountered, confronted, and transformed one another and found ways to coexist. Urban poverty became an issue with this contrast becoming more and more visible in the city.

    My Prostitute Love (Vesikalı Yarim (1968)), the cult movie directed by Ömer Lütfi Akad, depicts the emerging social issues of 1960s Istanbul through the lens of a poetic and impossible love story between a greengrocer and an escort. In this movie influenced by French and Italian new wave, Istanbul is not a simple background, but the protagonist of the movie, a transforming urban space making Halil and Sabiha’s encounter possible. Halil is a simple man, married to a traditionally veiled “village” woman subordinate to him and the mother of his children. He is dragged out of his neighbourhood to a casino in Beyoğlu by his friends and discovers the neighborhood’s emerging nocturnal scene, where women drink with men, a new type of socialization. There he sees Sabiha, a blond escort with heavy makeup, smoking and drinking. He falls immediately in love with this feminine and modern looking woman from beyond his world. He starts to drink, frequenting the nocturnal scene of Beyoğlu and detaching himself from his family. The impossibility of their love not only comes from their different moral values, but also them living in different spatialities and temporalities in the same city. These different temporalities are powerfully exposed by Güler in his photography.

    Güler starts from the micro level, photographing people in their small routines: working, smoking, having a cup of tea, coffee, or an alcoholic drink. These people can be defined as the urban poor, not synchronized with the rapid urban growth and the modern ideal of progress. They are portrayed in the public sphere rather than in the intimacy of their private sphere. Their eyes, facial expressions, hands, and postures incarnates their poverty, highlighting modes of being that contrast sharply with the Westernizing public sphere they have entered. An emotional relation is established between people and the space they inhabit by enacting the space in the body and the body in the public sphere, hence humanizing the city and spatially contextualizing the people. As Jacques Lecoq announces in his pedagogy of movement in theater, only the body engaged in the work can feel, and thus reflect the evidence of the space. Güler’s urban poor portrayed in their work express the social reality with their bodies.

    The relation between human body and urban space is particularly staged in work and places of leisure. Güler often portrayed professionals; workers, repair men, shopkeepers, fishermen, bargemen, boatmen, etc. as they worked. These are craftsmen, working with their hands and heads before these two were separated by modernity and the mechanization of labor. Craftsmanship is based on the impulse of doing a work well, developing a skill through training and practice. Physical acts of repetition and practice develop skill from within and reconfigure the material world through a slow process of metamorphosis.

    Richard Sennett distinguishes the singularity of craftsmen’s work places, workshops, as productive and autonomous spaces reproducing a hands-on transmission of knowledge from generation to generation. These spaces are not products of spontaneous, mindless occurrence. Craftsmen observe and experiment with tools in relation to their own bodies. Workshops have always glued people together through work rituals consisting on transmission of knowledge by personal contact. Most of these professions don’t exist anymore or were transformed with machines replacing handwork. The work loses its centrality on the organization of daily life and public time. Güler thus becomes a pioneer by constituting a visual source of modernization process.

    People are also photographed in coffee shops and old fashioned bars where they socialize. Coffee shops have a particular significance in Istanbul’s urban culture, as they emerged as alternative public spheres to mosques in the 16th century. Coffee houses became popular by offering a venue for social occasions including leisure and political dialogue between men in the Ottoman world, thus creating a public culture, as noted by the historian Cemal Kafadar. As gender-mixed modern coffee houses gained popularity, traditional kahvehane became considered places of unproductive time pass activity. These alternative spaces, in turn, become a shelter for men alienated from the emerging modern public sphere and lifestyles. Güler’s men in coffee houses are “waiting”, as the opposite of circulating or producing that increasingly characterized the fast rhythm of the modern city.

    In the absence of plans in the present and for the deferred future, a temporal slowing manifests itself. Hence, it points out to a suspension referring to the interruption of social ties, the feeling of being cut-off, a sense of disbelonging, being removed from the context, being out of place, a sense of invisibility, immobility and arbitrariness. These traits resonate with people waiting in the photographs, who seem slightly erased, detached from the space and time surrounding them. Güler’s choice of décor, the Ottoman ruins, emphasizes this detachment by fixing our regard on the remains of the past embodied in the present and the obsolete corners of the city, not “illuminated” yet by the city lights.

    Perhaps this is the very reason why Güler’s Istanbul appears as the visual reflection of the Nobel winning author Orhan Pamuk‘s description of the grayscale Istanbul, marked by the feeling of hüzün. Comparable to Baudelaire’s description of Paris Spleen, hüzün is a feeling of melancholia, nostalgia and loss in a multilayered city where multiple spatialities and temporalities are superposed. Guler’s photography reflects this singularity of Istanbul, its vibe and the ambiance experienced when wandering in the city. Given that urban heritage is never patrimonialized and the events of the imperial and republican past haven’t been confronted, they haunt city’s present.

    An incarnation of this feeling can be traced in Pamuk’s novel A Strangeness in My Mind. Mevlüt, the protagonist, could perfectly fit in one of Güler’s photographs as a craftsman, selling boza (a wheat based traditional drink) and wandering the streets of Istanbul. While Mevlüt strolls in the city, the layers of past and the transforming present unfold before him. We observe the development of Istanbul from 1950s from the eyes of Mevlüt, who migrates to Istanbul and becomes a slum dweller, gradually alienated from the city and becoming rapidly outdated. Another person who shares the same fate is the lottery seller in a documentary on Narmanlı Han. He sits in the courtyard of the building that had been one of Istiklal Street’s key buildings until its unfaithful restoration, talking about the past: “We would sit here, we would walk around, we would come back to sit again…” The expression otururduk (we would sit) is repeated many times, showing the repetitive rhythm of the now out-of-time sociability.

    Ara Güler might be referred as a Proustian in search of lost time, however his madeleine would be persons; the urban poor in the streets of Istanbul. His quest to seize what is being lost is not an interior process of romanticization, but comes from the external world. He always insisted that he is not an artist who proposes an interpretation of reality, but a visual archivist who documents life as it exists. In his photographs, it is the people who craft the urban sphere by sitting, waiting, settling, investing, appropriating it. Güler composes the cityscape of Istanbul by parting from the margins to join the center, the core of the city. This composition identifies the singularity of Istanbul, hüzün, a feeling of loss of firm ground, a loss of an emotional root, which opens up a wide range of emotions and experiences.

    https://ajammc.com/2018/11/26/after-ara-guler-modernizing-istanbul

    #Turquie #photographie #histoire
    ping @philippe_de_jonckheere

  • For an open migration policy to end the deaths and crises in the Mediterranean

    The current crisis surrounding migration is not one of numbers – migrants’ crossings of the sea are at their lowest since 2013 – but of policies. The drive towards closure and the politicisation of migration are so strong after years of tension that the frail bodies of a few thousand migrants arriving on European shores are triggering a major political crisis throughout the EU.

    One epicentre of this crisis is in Italy, where Matteo Salvini, the country’s new far-right Interior Minister, is preventing NGOs from disembarking rescued migrants. Such was the case with the 629 people on board the Aquarius.

    Another is Germany, where the governing coalition led by Angela Merkel is at risk as the hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has threatened to turn back refugees at the German borders. The European Council summit on 28 June 2018 promises to be rife with tensions. As EU member states will most probably continue to prove unable to offer a common response to migrants once they have arrived on European shores, they will reinforce the policy they have implemented since 2015: preventing migrants from crossing the sea by outsourcing border control to non-European countries.
    The consensus of closure

    This policy of closure has had horrendous consequences for migrants – such as the subjection to torture of those who are intercepted at sea by the Libyan coast guard, which has been equipped, trained and coordinated by Italy and the EU. Despite this, it has gathered growing consensus. Faced with the politicisation of migration which has fuelled the rise of far-right populist parties across Europe and threatens the EU itself with disintegration, even humanists of the centre left and right ask whether these inhumane policies are not a necessary evil.

    Would it not be better for migrants to “stay home” rather then reach a Europe which has turned its back on them and which they threaten in turn? Whispering or shouting, reluctantly or aggressively, European citizens increasingly wish migrants would simply disappear.

    Powerful forces driving migration, failed policies

    This consensus towards closure is delusional. Policies of closure that are completely at odds with the dynamics of migration systematically fail in their aim of ending the arrivals of illegalised migrants, as the record of the last 30 years demonstrates.

    Ever since the European states consolidated freedom of movement for European citizens in the 1990s all the while denying access to most non-European populations, the arrival of “undesirable” migrants has not stopped, but only been pushed underground. This is because as long as there are strong “push factors” – such as wars and economic crisis, and “pull factors” – such as work and welfare opportunities as well as respect for human rights, and that these continue to be connected by migrants’ transnational networks, state policies have little chance of succeeding in durably stemming the migration they aim to restrict.

    Over the last 30 years, for every route states have succeeded in closing, it has only been a matter of time before migrants opened several new ones. Forced to use precarious means of travel – often controlled by criminal networks, migrants’ lives were put at growing risk. More than 30,000 migrants are recorded to have died at sea since the beginning of the 1990s. A sea which has connected civilisations for millennia has become a mass grave.

    Fear breeds more fear: the vicious cycle

    These policies of closure, often implemented by centre governments allegedly in the aim of preventing the further rise of anti-immigrant sentiments, ultimately contributed to them. Despite the spectacular military means deployed by states to police borders, illegalised migration continued, giving European populations a sense that their states had “lost control” – a feeling that has only been heightened in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

    Migrants’ illegalisation has led to unjustifiable status inequality within European societies, allowing employers to pull salaries down in the sectors in which precaritized migrants are employed. This has lent to working classes the impression that migrants constitute an unfair competition.

    Policies of closure and discrimination thus only generate more fear and rejection of migrants. The parties which have mobilised voters on the basis of this fear have left unaddressed – and in fact diverted attention from – the rising unemployment, social insecurity, and inequality amongst Europe’s “losers of globalisation”, whose resentment has served as a fertile ground for anti-immigrant sentiments.

    In this way, we have become trapped in a vicious cycle that has fuelled the rise of the far-right.
    Towards an open migration policy, de-escalate the mobility conflict

    Over the years, the Mediterranean has become the main frontline of a mobility conflict, which has intensified in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings and European debt crisis. Since then, both the factors spurring migrants’ movement towards Europe and those leading to the drive to exclude them have been heightened.

    The lack of solidarity within the EU to respond to arrivals in so-called “frontline states” in southern and eastern Europe have further fuelled it. As long as the same policies continue to be applied, there is no end in sight to the political tensions and violence surrounding migration and the worrying political trends they are nurturing.

    A fundamental paradigm shift is necessary to end this vicious cycle. European citizens and policy makers alike must realise that the question is not whether migrants will exercise their freedom to cross borders, but at what human and political cost.

    State policies can only create a legal frame for human movement to unfold and thereby partly organise it, they cannot block it. Only a more open policy would allow migration to unfold in a way that threatens neither migrants themselves nor European citizens.

    With legal access to Europe, migrants would no longer need to resort to smugglers and risk their lives crossing the sea. No longer policed through military means, migration could appear as a normal process that does not generate fear. States could better detect individuals that might pause a threat among migrants as they would not be pushed underground. Migrants’ legal status would no longer allow employers to push working conditions down.

    Such a policy is however far from being on the European agenda. For its implementation to be even faintly imaginable in the medium term, the deep and entangled roots of the mobility conflict must addressed.
    Beyond the EU’s incoherent and one-sided “global approach”

    Today, the EU claims to address one side of the mobility conflict. Using development aid within its so-called “global approach to migration”, it claims to tackle the “root causes” that spur migration towards Europe. Researchers however have shown that development does not automatically lead to less migration. This policy will further have little effect as long as the EU’s unfair trade policies with the global south are perpetuated – for example concerning agriculture and fishing in Africa.

    In effect, the EU’s policy has mostly resulted in the use of development aid to impose policies of migration control on countries of the global south. In the process, the EU is lending support to authoritarian regimes – such as Turkey, Egypt, Sudan – which migrants are fleeing.

    Finally, when it has not worsened conflicts through its own military intervention as in Libya, the EU has proven unable of acting as a stabilizing force in the face of internationalised civil conflicts. These are bound to multiply in a time of intense competition for global hegemony. A true commitment to global justice and conflict resolution is necessary if Europe wishes to limit the factors forcing too many people onto the harsh paths of exile from their countries and regions, a small share of whom reach European shores.
    Tackling the drivers of migrant exclusion

    Beyond its lack of coherence, the EU’s so-called “global approach” suffers from one-sidedness, focused as it is on migration as “the problem”.

    As a result, it fails to see migration as a normal social process. Furthermore, it does not address the conditions that lead to the social and political drive to exclude them. The fact that today the arrival of a few thousand migrants is enough to put the EU into crisis clearly shows the limits of this approach.

    It is urgent for policy makers – at the national and local levels, but also researchers, cultural producers and social movements – to not only morally condemn racism and xenophobia, but to tackle the deep forces that shape them.

    What is needed is a more inclusive and fair economic system to decrease the resentment of European populations. In addition, a positive vision for living in common in diverse societies must be affirmed, so that the tensions that arise from the encounter between different people and cultures can be overcome.

    Crucially, we must emphasise the commonality of fate that binds European citizens to migrants. Greater equality and solidarity between migrants and European citizens is one of the conditions to defend all workers’ conditions.

    All in the same boat

    Addressing the entangled roots of the mobility conflict is a challenging agenda, one which emerges from the realisation that the tensions surrounding migration cannot be resolved through migration policies only – and by policy makers on their own for that matter.

    It charts a path worth following collectively as it points in the direction of a more open migration policy, but also a more just society. These are necessary to bring an end to the unbearable deaths of migrants at sea and end the vicious cycle of closure, violence, and politicisation of migration.

    Policies of closure have failed to end illegalised migration and only fuelled the rise of the far-right and the disintegration of Europe. If Europe is to stop sinking, it must end the policies that lead to migrants’ mass drowning in the Mediterranean. The NGOs being criminalised and prevented from disembarking migrants in Italy are not only saving migrants, but rescuing Europe against itself. Whether we like it or not, we are all in the same boat.

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/charles-heller/for-open-migration-policy-to-end-deaths-and-crises-in-mediterranea

    #tribune #Charles_Heller #solution #alternatives #migrations #asile #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #fermeture #ouverture_des_frontières #décès #morts #mourir_en_mer

    • Une politique migratoire plus ouverte pour moins de morts en Méditerranée

      La fermeture des frontières a coûté la vie à plus de 30 000 migrants qui tentaient de parvenir en Europe. Cette vision politique a favorisé la montée de l’extrême droite qu’elle prétendait combattre. Il est donc temps de changer de paradigme et d’adopter une nouvelle approche.

      Le sommet du Conseil européen du 28 juin n’aura que confirmé ce que tous savaient déjà. Face à la montée des partis d’extrême droite et à la menace de désintégration d’une Union européenne (UE) incapable d’offrir un accueil solidaire aux migrants arrivés sur le sol européen, la seule solution envisageable semble être de les empêcher à tout prix de pouvoir y mettre pied en externalisant le contrôle des migrations (1). Malgré la documentation de nombreux cas de tortures parmi les migrants interceptés par les gardes-côtes libyens financés, équipés, et coordonnés par l’Italie et l’Union européenne, ce soutien a été réitéré (2). Des ONG, qui ont courageusement déployé leurs bateaux pour combler le vide mortel laissé par le retrait des secours étatiques, sont sommées de laisser les Libyens faire le sale boulot, criminalisées, et interdites d’accès aux ports italiens. Chaque jour, la mer charrie son lot de corps sans vie.

      Il serait illusoire de penser que cette énième crise pourra être résolue par les mêmes politiques de fermetures qui échouent depuis plus de trente ans. Celles-ci n’ont pas mis un terme aux arrivées des migrants désignés comme indésirables, mais les ont seulement illégalisées. Tant qu’existeront des facteurs qui poussent les populations du Sud global sur les chemins de l’exil - guerres, crises économiques - et des facteurs d’attraction vers l’Europe - travail, Etat social, respect des droits humains - et que les réseaux transnationaux de migrants relient les continents, les politiques de fermetures ne parviendront pas à réduire durablement les migrations (3). Pour chaque route que les Etats ferment, plusieurs nouvelles voies seront bientôt ouvertes. La liste répertoriant plus de 30 000 migrants morts en mer depuis le début des années 90 ne cessera de s’allonger (4).

      Ces politiques de fermeture, souvent mises en œuvre par des gouvernements prétendant lutter contre la montée de sentiments anti-immigrants, n’ont fait que les renforcer. En dépit des moyens militaires spectaculaires déployés par les Etats pour contrôler les frontières, la migration illégale s’est poursuivie, confortant chez les populations européennes le sentiment que leurs gouvernements avaient « perdu le contrôle ». L’illégalisation des migrants permet aux employeurs de baisser les salaires dans les secteurs où sont employés des migrants précarisés, et des ouvriers en ont tiré la conclusion que les migrants sont une concurrence déloyale. Les partis, qui ont mobilisé les votants sur la base de sentiments anti-immigrés, n’ont offert aucune réponse à la hausse du chômage, de l’insécurité sociale et des inégalités qui ont généré un profond ressentiment parmi les « perdants de la globalisation » en Europe (5). Ceux-ci ont été d’autant plus réceptifs aux discours haineux. Nous sommes ainsi prisonniers d’un cercle vicieux qui a encouragé la montée de l’extrême droite et qui a perpétué les politiques de fermetures.

      Au fil des ans, la Méditerranée est devenue la principale ligne de front d’un conflit de mobilités qui s’est intensifié à la suite des « printemps arabes » de 2011 et de la crise de la dette européenne. Depuis, tant les facteurs qui amènent les migrants à venir vers l’Europe que ceux qui poussent à leur exclusion se sont intensifiés. Le manque de solidarité entre Etats européens a attisé le rejet des migrants. Tant qu’on appliquera les mêmes politiques de fermeture, il n’y aura pas d’issue aux tensions politiques et à la violence qui entourent les migrations, et aux inquiétantes tendances politiques qu’elles nourrissent. Le seul horizon de sortie de cette crise permanente est une politique migratoire ouverte (5).

      Citoyens et dirigeants européens doivent se rendre compte que la question n’est pas de savoir si les migrants vont exercer leur liberté de mouvement en franchissant les frontières, mais quel en sera le coût humain et politique. Les politiques des Etats ne peuvent que créer le cadre légal pour les mouvements humains, donc les organiser en partie, mais en aucun cas les bloquer. S’il existait des voies d’accès légales à l’Europe, les migrants n’auraient plus besoin de recourir aux passeurs et de risquer leur vie. En l’absence d’une gestion militarisée, la migration apparaîtrait pour ce qu’elle est : un processus normal qui n’engendre aucune peur. Les migrants disposant d’un statut légal, les employeurs n’auraient plus les mains libres pour dégrader les conditions de travail. Une telle politique est bien loin d’être à l’agenda européen, et suscite de nombreuses peurs. Pour qu’à moyen terme sa mise en place soit envisageable, il faut s’attaquer aux racines profondes et enchevêtrées du conflit de mobilité.

      Si l’Europe veut limiter les raisons qui poussent de trop nombreux êtres humains sur les chemins de l’exil, elle doit s’engager fermement en faveur d’une justice globale et de la résolution des conflits. C’est-à-dire réformer complètement la prétendue « approche globale de la migration » (6) de l’Union européenne qui, prétextant s’attaquer aux « causes profondes » des migrations, a surtout imposé aux pays du Sud l’externalisation des contrôles migratoires en leur faisant miroiter l’aide au développement. Bien plus, obsédée par la migration comme « problème », elle n’apporte aucune réponse aux conditions qui mènent à l’exclusion des migrants par l’Europe. Un système économique plus juste et inclusif permettrait de désamorcer le ressentiment des populations européennes. Une vision positive de la vie en commun dans des sociétés marquées par la diversité, de vaincre les tensions nées de la rencontre entre peuples et cultures. Il est vital d’insister sur la communauté de destin qui lie les citoyens européens aux migrants : plus d’égalité et de solidarité entre eux est l’une des conditions pour défendre les droits de tous les travailleurs.

      Une politique migratoire ouverte ne suffira ainsi pas à elle seule à surmonter les tensions entourant les migrations, elle devra être accompagnée d’une transformation profonde de notre monde. Mais pour se sauver du naufrage, l’Europe doit urgemment abandonner les politiques de fermeture qui sont la cause des dizaines de milliers de noyades en Méditerranée et ont attisé la montée de l’extrême droite. Les ONG aujourd’hui criminalisées font bien plus que sauver des migrants, elles sauvent l’Europe d’elle-même. Que nous le voulions ou non, nous sommes tous dans le même bateau.

      http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/07/03/une-politique-migratoire-plus-ouverte-pour-moins-de-morts-en-mediterranee
      #économie #illégalisation #extrême_droite #populisme #politique_migratoire #capitalisme #libéralisme #fermeture_des_frontières #ouverture_des_frontières #Charles_Heller

  • The Daphne Project

    Six months ago, Maltese journalist #Daphne_Caruana_Galizia was brutally killed by a car bomb just meters from her home. The investigation into her killing is ongoing, but there is little doubt that she was murdered because of her work. With a brazen, unapologetic and uncompromising style, she denounced corruption, nepotism, clientelism, and all kinds of criminal behaviours in her tiny EU member state.

    A group of 45 journalists representing 18 news organisations from 15 countries picked up Daphne’s work after it was abruptly halted by her gruesome death on the doorstep of Europe. For five months they kept digging — pouring over her findings, gathering documents, talking to sources — to try to get to the bottom of the many leads the formidable woman left behind.

    The Daphne Project is a unique collaboration coordinated and led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based organisation established specifically to continue the work of killed, imprisoned, or otherwise incapacitated journalists.

    The Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) contributed with its knowledge on mafias and illicit traffics in the Mediterranean area, assigning reporters to dig on the transnational network of criminals that thrive in Malta, on related money laundering as well as on wrongdoing among Malta’s elite.

    Forbidden Stories with IRPI, OCCRP, La Repubblica, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reuters, The Times of Malta, Le Monde, The Guardian, The New York Times, Tages-Anzeiger, Premières Lignes Télévision, Radio France, France 2, Die Zeit, Direkt 36, WDR, NDR are now shining lights onto the stories that killed her.

    On April 17, we will start revealing what Daphne left behind. Watch this space.


    https://irpi.eu/il-progetto-daphne

    #projet_Daphne #journalisme #médias #presse
    cc @albertocampiphoto @fil @reka

  • « WITH OR WITHOUT THE BROTHERS » un colloque à ne pas rater, aujourd’hui et demain à Sciences Po Paris.

    http://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/evenements/#/?lang=fr&id=4225

    Organisé par Laurent Bonnefoy, François Burgat et Stéphane Lacroix, il réunit des chercheur-e-s français, arabes, etc dont les travaux sont des références.

    WITH OR WITHOUT THE BROTHERS. DOMESTIC, REGIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL TRENDS IN ISLAMISM (2013-2015)
    du 29/10 | 09h30 au 30/10 | 18h00

    Dans le cadre du projet ERC When Authoritarianism Fails in the Arab World

    En partenariat avec l’IREMAM, l’IFPO, et l’Université d’Oslo


    Thursday 29th of October, 2015

    9:30-9:45 Opening address by Alain Dieckhoff, Sciences Po-CERI, CNRS

    9:45-10:30 Keynote address by François Burgat, WAFAW, IREMAM
    From Ghannouchi to al-Baghdadi: The ubiquitous diversity of the Islamic lexicon

    Panel 1: Linking political exclusion to violence?

    10:30-13:15

    Chair: Loulouwa Al-Rachid, WAFAW, Sciences Po-CERI

    Sari Hanafi, WAFAW, American University of Beirut
    Transnational movement of Islamic reform: New configurations

    Bjorn Olav Utvik, Oslo University
    Myths of Ikhwan disaster: Anatomy of the 2011-1013 power struggle in Egypt

    Amal-Fatiha Abbassi, IREMAM, Sciences Po Aix
    The Muslim Brotherhood and political disengagement. The consequences of an authoritarian situation

    11:45-12:00 Coffee break

    Monica Marks, WAFAW, Oxford University
    Survivalist club or dynamic movement? Generational politics in Ennahda today

    Joas Wagemakers, Utrecht University
    With or without the others: Consolidating divisions within the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood (2013-2015)

    Amel Boubekeur, SWP, Berlin
    Algerian Islamists and Salafis after the Arab Spring: Eroding or reloading the regime?

    Panel 2: A Resilient Muslim Brotherhood?

    14:30-16:45

    Chair: Stéphane Lacroix, WAFAW, CERI-Sciences Po

    Rory McCarthy, Oxford University
    When Islamists lose an election

    Marc Lynch, George Washington University
    Evolving transnational networks and media strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood

    Marie Vannetzel, WAFAW, CURAPP
    #R4bia: The dynamics of the pro-Mursi mobilizations in Turkey

    Dilek Yankaya, WAFAW, IREMAM
    A “transnational Islamic business network”? Rethinking the connections between Turkish, Egyptian and Tunisian “Islamic businessmen” after the Arab Springs

    16:45-17:00 Coffee break

    17:00-17:45 Open discussion on contemporary Muslim Brotherhood dynamics

    *

    Friday 30th of October, 2015

    Panel 3: The Iraqi/Syrian matrix of violence

    9:30-11:30

    Chair: Bjorn Olav Utvik, Oslo University

    Loulouwa Al-Rachid, WAFAW, CERI-Sciences Po
    The Disarray of Iraqi Sunnis

    Truls Tonnesen, FFI, Oslo
    The Iraqi origins of the “Islamic State”

    Yahya Michot, Hartford Seminary
    Ibn Taymiyya in ’Dabiq’

    Thomas Pierret, Edinburgh University
    Farewell to the vanguard: Syria’s Ahrar al-Sham Islamic movement and wartime de-radicalisation

    Tine Gade, Oslo University
    Sunnism in Lebanon after the Syrian war

    11:30-11:45 Coffee break

    Panel 4: Al-Qaeda vs. the Islamic State

    11:45-13:30
    Chair: François Burgat, WAFAW, IREMAM

    Hasan Abu Hanieh, Independent researcher
    New Jihadism: From harassment to empowerment (In Arabic)

    Brynjar Lia, Oslo University
    The jihadi movement and rebel governance: A reassertion of a patriarchal order?

    Stéphane Lacroix, WAFAW, CERI-Sciences Po
    Saudi Arabia, the Brothers and the others: the ambiguities of a complex relationship

    Abdulsalam al-Rubaidi, Al-Baidha University
    Ansar al-Sharia in South Yemen: configuration, expansion and discourse (In Arabic)

    Ismail Alexandrani, Independent researcher
    Sinai with and without the Brothers: did it matter?

    Panel 5: Muslim Brothers and their Islamist competitors

    14:30-16:45
    Chair: Sari Hanafi, WAFAW, American University of Beirut

    Muhammad Abu Rumman, Jordanian University
    Dilemmas in Salafi dynamics in the wake of the Arab democratic revolutions (In Arabic)

    Stéphane Lacroix, WAFAW, CERI-Sciences Po
    Being Salafi under Sisi: Examining the post-coup strategy of the al-Nour party

    Ahmed Zaghlul, CEDEJ, Cairo
    The nationalization of the religious sphere in Egypt (In Arabic)

    Myriam Benraad, IREMAM
    Iraqi Muslim Brothers: Between the Islamic State and a hard place

    Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, WAFAW, IFPO
    Hizbullah and Muslims Brothers: A political rupture or a contract renegotiation?

    Laurent Bonnefoy, WAFAW, Sciences Po-CERI, CNRS)
    Islahis, Salafis, Huthis: reconfigurations of the Islamist field in war torn Yemen


    16:45-17:00 Coffee break

    17:00-18:00 Concluding remarks and discussion with François Burgat (WAFAW, IREMAM) and Bernard Rougier (Paris III University).

    Conference in English and Arabic (with translation)

    Responsables scientifiques: Laurent Bonnefoy (Sciences Po-CERI, CNRS), Stéphane Lacroix (Sciences Po-CERI),François Burgat (IREMAM), Bjorn Olav Utvik (Oslo University)

    Sciences Po-CERI: 56, rue Jacob 75006 Paris (salle de conférences)

    INSCRIPTION OBLIGATOIRE auprès de nathalie.tenenbaum@sciencespo.fr

    langueAnglaislieuSalle des conférences, Bâtiment SorganisateurCERI

  • After Two Months in Operation: Insights into the #Watch_The_Med Alarm Phone

    On the 10th of October 2014, the Watch The Med #Alarm_Phone went live. It is operated by a transnational network of activist and migrant groups, located in various settings on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. The hotline is run by multilingual shift teams day and night, 24/7.

    http://watchthemed.net/reports/view/88
    #secours #mourir_en_mer #Méditerranée #naufrage #migration #asile #réfugiés #Forteresse_Europe

  • International Political Sociology - Virtual Issue: Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies - Wiley Online Library

    En accès libre pendant un an, et tous les articles sont en pdf téléchargeables

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1749-5687/homepage/virtual_issue__territorialities__spaces__geographies.htm

    Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies

    This special issue presents a selection of work at the interstices between international relations and geography. It is an invitation for intensifying debates in International Political Sociology on transformations of space and scales, the use of geographical methods and concepts, and the nature and limits of geographical thought in international and global relations.

    The international is a spatial category and has been invested by variable geographies. The world of the international is flat; a two-dimensional world of relations between sovereign states claiming exclusive power over their territory and people. The international also persistently and often violently draws lines between itself and its outside: worlds of colonies, the uncivilised, transnational networks, and others. Recently, topographic categories are increasingly challenged by topological modes of enacting spatial relations and by analyses foregrounding the importance of temporal practices and narratives.

    This special issue samples an international political sociology that deploys and critically engages territorial, spatial, geographical modes of thinking and politics. What are the limits and transformations of spatial practices in contemporary politics? How are territorialities, borders, and lines invested in methods of governing and conceptions of order? What is the impact of foregrounding temporality and mobility on spatial categorizing of the international? How are geopolitics and territoriality produced?

    #géographie #sociologie-politique #frontières #territoires #espace