Where do Roma belong in European societies?
Did you know Roma are Europe’s largest minority group? #Nando_Sigona, a social scientist at the University of Birmingham, breaks down this group’s history of belonging on the continent and the reality of their so-called integration.
The #compact experiment. Push for refugee jobs confronts reality of Jordan and Lebanon
In September 2015, as Europe veered between fear and compassion in response to the refugee crisis, the outline of a radical reform to refugee policy appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs. Its authors – Paul Collier, an influential development economist, and Alexander Betts, a social scientist and then-head of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford – proposed a pathway for Syrian refugees into Jordan’s labor market.
https://dh1rvgpokacch.cloudfront.net/atavist/60258/image/derivative/scale~2800x0x0x0~gettyimages-1512838472-1.jpg 
https://dh1rvgpokacch.cloudfront.net/atavist/60258/image/derivative/scale~2800x0x0x0~gettyimages-1512838590-49.jpg 
[Dossier] Migrations | Nature
via @ljegou sur Twitter
Data on movements of refugees and migrants are flawed
Accurate and timely information on the flow of people is crucial for policymaking and apolitical interpretations / Une information précise et opportune est cruciale sur la circulation des personnes pour l’élaboration des politiques et les interprétations apolitiques.
“The headline “710,000 migrants entered EU in first nine months of 2015” blared from a press release that year by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in Warsaw. Not so, said social scientist Nando Sigona, an expert on refugees and migration at the University of Birmingham, UK. Frontex, he pointed out, had been counting the same people two or three times or more — for example, a person who was recorded on arrival in Greece and left the EU by going to Albania was again counted on re-entering the bloc by a different route. Frontex has since made this caveat clear in its releases of cross-border data. But it is often the headline numbers that are retained by the media, and by the many populists and politicians who abuse data on refugees and migrants for political ends. We simply do not know the true figure.”
►https://www.nature.com/news/data-on-movements-of-refugees-and-migrants-are-flawed-1.21568
Lire le dossier : ▻https://www.nature.com/news/human-migration-1.21521
Image credit: Alberto Seveso
#migrants #migrations #réfugiés #data #Syrie #Nature #mouvements #flux
Stefano Boeri Architetti
▻https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/about
Stefano Boeri Architetti (SBA), based in Milan, with offices in Shanghai and Tirana, (called Boeri Studio until 2008) is dedicated since 1993 to the research and practice of architecture and urbanism. Among the most known projects there are: the Vertical Forest in Milan, the General Local Plan of Tirana 2030 in Albania, the Villa Méditerranée in Marseille and the House of the Sea of La Maddalena.
#Stefano_Boeri Architetti has provided services for the architectural and urban design for over 20 years, especially on large scale projects and public space renewal. It develops projects and regeneration strategies in complex environments, outlining and supporting synergies between the various stakeholders, public and private entities. Counting on a staff of over 40 co-workers, in the design process SBA collaborates with a wide network of professionals, from engineering consultants and landscape architects, to social scientist specialist, to provide ad hoc solutions over a wide range of territorial and socio-economic contexts. This approach towards collaboration has allowed the studio to spread its practice and to pair with professionals such as Jeremy Rifkin, to develop a concept of urban planning for the third industrial revolution.
#Otto_Neurath (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
▻https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/index.html
Neurath was a social scientist, scientific philosopher and maverick leader of the Vienna Circle who championed ‘the scientific attitude’ and the Unity of Science movement. He denied any value to philosophy over and above the pursuit of work on science, within science and for science. And science was not logically fixed, securely founded on experience nor was it the purveyor of any System of knowledge. Uncertainty, decision and cooperation were intrinsic to it.
More people than ever before are single – and that’s a good thing
▻http://theconversation.com/more-people-than-ever-before-are-single-and-thats-a-good-thing-7465
The ascendancy of single living has left some in a panic. US News & World Report, for example, cautioned that Americans think the country’s moral values are bad and getting worse, and one of the top reasons for their concern is the large number of people remaining single.
But instead of fretting, maybe we should celebrate.
I’m a social scientist, and I’ve spent the past two decades researching and writing about single people. I’ve found that the rise of single living is a boon to our cities and towns and communities, our relatives and friends and neighbors. This trend has the chance to redefine the traditional meaning – and confines – of home, family and community.
Jordan Experiment Spurs Jobs For Refugees
Policy experts are hoping that a small patch of desert in Jordan can provide global answers to the refugee crisis by giving displaced Syrians the right to work.
The compact experiment: push for refugee jobs confronts reality of Jordan and Lebanon
In September 2015, as Europe veered between fear and compassion in response to the refugee crisis, the outline of a radical reform to refugee policy appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs. Its authors – Paul Collier, an influential development economist, and Alexander Betts, a social scientist and then-head of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford – proposed a pathway for Syrian refugees into Jordan’s labor market.
Invisible
Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes is Trevor Paglen’s long-awaited first photographic monograph. Social scientist, artist, writer, and provocateur, Paglen has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies—the “black world”—for the last eight years, publishing, speaking, and making astonishing photographs.
As an artist, Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as truth-telling, but his mysterious, compelling pictures often stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. Showcasing the artwork of an important emerging talent, Invisible speaks to the multidisciplinary practices employed by many of today’s most interesting contemporary artists. The book highlights the array of tactics used by Paglen to depict both what can and cannot be seen.
Rebecca Solnit, noted author on culture and photography, contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape.
http://aperture.org/shop/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/208x300/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/a/paglen_cover.jpg 
http://aperture.org/shop/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/n/invisiblespread01final-copy.jpg #invisibilité #paysage #photographie #Trevor_Paglen #livre
cc @albertocampiphoto @reka
Stress Gives You Daughters, Sons Make You Liberal - Issue 31: Stress
▻http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/stress-gives-you-daughters-sons-make-you-liberal-rp
The Northwestern University economist Charles Manksi calls it the “reflection problem”: How can we know if person A is affecting person B, or the reverse? Without being in each person’s head or observing every subtle non-verbal cue in their interactions, it’s impossible to know what’s causing what, who is the leader and who is the follower. Families are especially complex: Cause and effect are hard to disentangle in the bubbling cauldron that is a household. There are the daily negotiations between husband and wife, instructions to (and rejections by) children, and interactions with people outside the family. Taken as a whole, it is a challenge for a social scientist to analyze. But there is at least one lens through which family interactions and feedback have become apparent: gender. It (...)
Josh Landis should be credited for putting his... -
by Reinoud Leenders
▻https://www.facebook.com/reinoud.leenders/posts/924899757598688
en réponse à ►http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/regime-change-without-state-collapse-is-impossible-in-syria-landis-int (voir ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/426341#message427231)
Josh Landis should be credited for putting his finger on a host of important issues and dilemmas. But he’s wrong on several counts:
“The West falsely believes that it can separate the regime from the state. It argues that it can pursue regime-change while simultaneously preserving the state and its institutions. Washington believes it can avoid the chaos it sewed in Iraq. I don’t believe it can.”
But surely equating the Syrian state to a narrow and ruthless regime hasn’t generated ’statehood’ either by even a minimalistic definition of that term: It has failed to enforce a monopoly on violence (and that’s putting it politely), it outsourced violence to an array of shady and unaccountable militias and foreign mercenaries, it doesn’t control (any of?) its borders, its fails to provide security to even its staunchest supporters, and it helped to chase out one-fifth of the country’s 2011 population (and still counting). And that’s leaving aside the responsibilities that supposedly come with state sovereignty; none of which are upheld by this regime ostensibly embracing the Syrian state.
“Westerners believe that because their own state institutions are run by professional civil servants, Middle Eastern states are too. But they aren’t. Political appointees make up the entire edifice.”
That’s an incredibly dangerous (Chalabi-ist?) thing to say as it could be read as giving a green light for anyone opposing the Syrian regime to eradicate any single public servant along the “entire edifice” when given the chance. But more importantly, it is inaccurate as many rebel forces and opposition activists who worked with dedicated public servants to get garbage collected, to operate bakeries and facilitate food distribution in opposition-controlled areas will be able to confirm. Also, if all civil servants are supposedly part and parcel of the regime, why then did the regime itself try so hard to marginalise them, selling out state assets to well-placed crony businessmen, and starve them from resources to effectuate their perceived significance to the regime? Most state employees are there for their salary only; they don’t inherently owe allegiance to the regime but for the fact that the latter keeps paying their wages.
“... many top US generals, like the Syrian opposition, continue to insist that Assad is the magnet drawing ISIS into Syria and thus must be destroyed first. This argument makes little sense. After all, when did Al-Qaeda pour into Iraq? Only after Saddam was deposed and the Americans ruled the country.”
The analogy doesn’t fly. Al-Qaeda in Iraq fought US forces; ISIS hardly fights Syrian regime forces. The Syrian regime (and now with the Russians) make an effort to keep ISIS in place while fighting all the other insurgents. Furthermore, the Syrian regime from the start of the uprising has been begging the opposition to turn to ’takfiri’ extremism for it to remain the only game in town; whatever one may think of the Americans in Iraq but at least they weren’t hoping for a fully armed ’takfiri’ adversary. When a regime needs ISIS to retain a modicum of acceptability or to present itself as a less disastrous alternative, it follows that it sustains ISIS and it shows how far it has itself moved up to the wrong end of that scale of disastrousness.
“Those that argue that the US squandered its opportunity to train, arm and finance moderates to destroy both Assad and Jihadist militias delude themselves.”
Up to the Summer of 2012 there was a window of opportunity for arming and supporting ’moderates’ and, arguably, after having squandered that opportunity the Jihadist militias had free reign.
“The price of regime-change is chaos.”
That’s a prediction; fair enough. But we know for a fact today that the price of regime maintenance is ... chaos. Arguably, without it the regime wouldn’t have survived up to this day.
Joshua Landis aux USA, Fabrice Blanche en France, et bien d’autres beaucoup moins pertinents à mes yeux... Une constante : le conflit syrien a définitivement enterré le mythe du « social scientist » remplacé par une sorte d’expert, conseiller, où le militant, quelle que soit la cause, remplace l’homme de science. Dans le contexte très particulier des études sur le monde arabe, c’est un étonnant retour de la figure de l’orientaliste, au sens donné par Edward Saïd à ce terme. Mais personne ne souhaite trop s’étendre sur cet aspect de la question.
Harvey: Gezi Park Resistance Still Continues Despite Leaving Park - Elif Akgül
▻http://bianet.org/english/people/164850-harvey-gezi-park-resistance-still-continues-despite-leaving-park
On the 2nd anniversary of Gezi Park Resistance, social scientist Prof. Dr. David Harvey attended the press conference, located in the building of Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects in İstanbul.
David Harvey said he was glad with being in İstanbul on the 2nd anniversary of Gezi Park Resistance.
About Gezi Park Resistance and the city life in İstanbul, Professor Harvey said:
"It’s very interesting about Gezi Park Resistance that the protests once started locally but then it turned a rebellion all around the country. It was not limited to İstanbul. As a traveler and an urbanologist I think Gezi is unique globally. I suppose these kinds of protests are contagious. There was a protest in Brazil, Sao Paulo and then it spread other cities.
“Even though these two protests had different factors, they had a mutual point: a demand for democracy. The second mutual point was police violence and the intensity of it. We understand that for people living in the cities life gets harder and harder day by day with deficiency of democracy and police violence.
“In the U.S.A. we faced police violence again in Ferguson protests.
“There is a question in our minds: Why don’t political parties want democratic protests and why do they use police violence against the protesters? If we are looking for the answer, we should look at the reflection of the capital on the cities. The capital functions in cities for dispossession. Cities are places for rich men to invest not for common folks to live in anymore.
"The capital loves mega projects. For instance, urban protests in Brazil started before the world cup against the mega projects and it kept going against the Olympic Games.
"These mega projects have social effects such as ecological, urban, displacement and evacuation. On demand of the capital, cities become an instrument for investment. Ecology and sustainability are ignored and cities become unlivable.
“In the last decade, protests against the low life quality in cities increased and even against the alienation among the society. As a result of that, people use violence against each other with this intolerant environment. This is a great mistake.
“Within this context, we should provide living space for humans to live side by side and without feeling alienated. In my opinion, Gezi was a struggle to create an objective unalienated alternative in an alienated environment. Instead of defending ourselves, we need to create a new life style.
“We should create new public places to make ourselves understood and we should protect them. Gezi Park Resistance still continues despite leaving the park. It’s only the beginning, keep struggling.” (EA/NV/BD)
The Machines Are Coming - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/the-machines-are-coming.html
In the 1980s, the Harvard social scientist Shoshana Zuboff examined how some workplaces used technology to “automate” — take power away from the employee — while others used technology differently, to “informate” — to empower people.
For academics, software developers and corporate and policy leaders who are lucky enough to live in this “informate” model, technology has been good. So far. To those for whom it’s been less of a blessing, we keep doling out the advice to upgrade skills. Unfortunately, for most workers, technology is used to “automate” the job and to take power away.
The culture of masculinity costs all too much to ignore
Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The phrase “violence against women” calls for comment. It names the victims but not the perpetrators . The fact that men are mainly responsible for violent and health-harming behaviours, not only against women and children but also against each other, is so taken for granted that it slips beneath the radar of commentators and policymakers.
[...]
In 1959 the social scientist and policy activist Barbara Wootton looked at the crime statistics and remarked that “if men behaved like women, the courts would be idle and the prisons empty”. Half a century later the British Crime Survey and police crime figures bear her out. In 2009-10, men were perpetrators in 91% of all violent incidents in England and Wales. The figures vary by type of incident: 81% for domestic violence, 86% for assault, 94% for wounding, 96% for mugging, 98% for robbery. MoJ figures for 2009 show men to be responsible for 98%, 92% and 89% of sexual offences, drug offences and criminal damage respectively. Of child sex offenders, 99% are male. The highest percentages of female offences concern fraud and forgery (30%), and theft and handling stolen goods (21% female).
[..]
On the road, men commit 87% of all traffic offences and 81% of speeding offences. More people are killed and injured in road accidents than anywhere else, and Home Office data reveal the bearing of masculinity here too: men are responsible for 97% of dangerous driving offences and 94% of motoring offences causing death or bodily harm. A World Health Organisation report in 2002 on gender and road traffic injuries cautiously broke the code of silence by remarking that masculinity “may be” hazardous to health.
[..]
Take prison costs alone – an estimated £45,000 per prisoner a year, 95% of whom are male. If men committed crimes leading to custodial sentences at the rate women do, the exchequer would save about £3.4bn a year.
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/25/dangerous-masculinty-everyone-risk