• Etudier en France, un rêve suspendu pour les jeunes issus de pays classés en zone rouge
    https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2021/06/29/etudier-en-france-un-reve-suspendu-pour-les-jeunes-issus-de-pays-classes-en-

    Etudier en France, un rêve suspendu pour les jeunes issus de pays classés en zone rouge. Même s’ils ont été admis par un établissement français, les jeunes originaires de certains pays, comme le Brésil ou l’Inde, ne peuvent obtenir, à ce jour, de visa étudiant en raison de la crise sanitaire.
    Natalia Helen Ferraira, docteure en sciences, doit rejoindre en septembre le centre de recherche en cancérologie et immunologie de l’université d’Angers en tant que stagiaire postdoctorale. Raissa Chielle a décroché une bourse afin de poursuivre sa thèse en océanographie au Museum national d’histoire naturelle, à Paris. Valquir Francisco Pacheco Neto a été admis à la rentrée à l’Ecole des mines, à Nancy…Tous les trois sont brésiliens, désireux de poursuivre leurs études en France. Mais leur projet de traverser l’Atlantique est mis à mal : le Brésil figure sur une liste de 21 pays où la situation liée à l’épidémie de Covid-19 est si préoccupante que la France ne délivre plus de visa, sauf motif impérieux. Y figure également le Chili, la Colombie, l’Argentine, la Russie, l’Inde, l’Afrique du Sud… « Les étudiants résidant dans les pays classés en zone rouge n’ont pas été inclus dans les catégories de voyageurs considérés comme ayant un motif impérieux pour voyager en France », confirme le ministère des affaires étrangères.
    Combien sont-ils, ces étudiants qui voient leur rêve suspendu ? Quelques milliers, si l’on se base sur les derniers chiffres rapportés par Campus France, l’organisme public chargé de la mobilité des étudiants étrangers. A la rentrée 2020, 4 800 visas étudiants ont été délivrés à des étudiants originaires des Amériques – un chiffre en baisse de 60 % par rapport à l’année précédente, en raison de la pandémie. A la même période, 8 700 visas avaient été délivrés à des étudiants asiatiques aspirant à suivre un cursus en France.Si la situation ne se débloque pas dans les semaines qui viennent, « c’est la fin d’un rêve » pour Anna Sançao. « Cela fait cinq ans que je me prépare à ce voyage. J’ai énormément travaillé à l’université pour avoir les meilleures notes possible, j’ai dépensé de l’argent pour prendre des cours de français et j’ai obtenu ma place à l’université Lyon-III en relations internationales », soupire la Brésilienne de 22 ans, qui, prête à partir, a déjà vendu sa voiture et quelques effets personnels.
    Laura Reyes, Colombienne de 22 ans, diplômée d’un master de psychologie de l’éducation de l’université de Bogota en février, est aussi très inquiète. Elle a été admise en master de psychologie des troubles du développement chez l’enfant à l’université de Nantes. Le 28 mai, elle a reçu un courriel lui signifiant qu’elle était acceptée : la rentrée est fixée au 30 août… Mais, à ce jour, l’ambassade de France ne peut donner suite à sa demande de visa. Quant à poursuivre ses études dans son pays, c’est impossible. « En Colombie, les inscriptions universitaires sont closes depuis avril », explique-t-elle.Pour les établissements français, cette incertitude est source de difficultés logistiques et budgétaires. En particulier dans les grandes écoles, où les frais de scolarité payés par les étudiants étrangers contribuent pour une large part à leur équilibre financier. « Nous avons admis plusieurs étudiants colombiens et brésiliens, et à ce jour nous n’avons aucune visibilité sur leur venue », regrette Alexandre Nominé, responsable des relations internationales de l’école d’ingénieurs Mines Nancy. De même à l’Institut de management et de communication interculturels (ISIT), qui reçoit des demandes d’étudiants tentant de trouver un moyen de rejoindre l’école : « Ils sont coincés par la situation sanitaire, et nous sommes démunis », regrette Sarah Bordes, directrice du développement international de l’ISIT.Les établissements envisagent de proposer des cours à distance pour ces jeunes, à la manière de ce qui a été mis en place l’année dernière, tout en leur permettant d’arriver en milieu de trimestre si la situation se débloquait. La liste des pays en zone rouge est « régulièrement réévaluée », souligne le Quai d’Orsay, qui conseille aux étudiants de déposer quand même leur demande de visa, dans le cas où la situation sanitaire de leur pays s’améliorerait. L’ambassadeur de France en Inde a même publié, le 14 juin, une vidéo dans laquelle il encourage vivement les étudiants indiens à ne pas laisser tomber leur projet d’études en France.Un collectif d’étudiants et de chercheurs brésiliens tente, par ailleurs, de susciter une mobilisation autour de ce sujet. Ils ont créé un compte Instagram, au travers duquel ils demandent à la France de considérer leurs projets d’études comme un « motif impérieux », condition sine qua non pour obtenir, aujourd’hui, le précieux visa. Il compte, à ce jour, un peu plus de 4 000 abonnés.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#france#sante#etudiant#circulation#frontiere#listerouge#visa#inde#bresil#motifimperieux

  • A la frontière entre la #Lituanie et le #Bélarus, Loukachenko se fait maître passeur

    Pour se venger de Vilnius, qui accueille l’opposition en exil, l’autocrate semble avoir organisé une filière d’immigration clandestine, qui mène des candidats au départ de Bagdad à la frontière de l’Etat balte.

    Depuis la fin du mois de mai, les gardes-frontières bélarusses postés aux lisières de la Lituanie sont au repos. Ils ferment les yeux sur les silhouettes qui traversent les bois dans l’obscurité, sur les traces de pas laissées dans le sable du no man’s land qui sépare les deux pays. Dans leur dos, passent chaque jour plusieurs dizaines de personnes. Des migrants, Irakiens pour la plupart. Depuis le début de l’année, les #gardes-frontières lituaniens ont rattrapé 387 personnes qui venaient d’entrer dans leur pays – et au passage dans l’espace Schengen. Le rythme s’est largement accéléré en juin, avec plus de 200 entrées en quinze jours. Soit plus en deux semaines qu’au cours des deux années précédentes réunies : 81 migrants avaient été arrêtés en 2020 et 46 en 2019.

    « Tout cela découle de raisons géopolitiques. D’après ce que nous voyons, les officiers bélarusses coopèrent et sont potentiellement impliqués dans le transport illégal de migrants », a affirmé la ministre lituanienne de l’Intérieur, Agne Bilotaite. « Les gardes-frontières bélarusses ont stoppé toute coopération avec leurs homologues lituaniens », confirme le porte-parole du service lituanien de protection des frontières, Giedrius Misutis.

    #Chantage migratoire

    Le mois dernier, après l’atterrissage forcé à Minsk d’un vol Athènes-Vilnius, l’arrestation de l’opposant #Raman_Protassevitch et l’opprobre international qui avait suivi, Alexandre #Loukachenko avait prévenu : « Nous arrêtions les migrants et les drogues. Attrapez-les vous-même désormais. » La menace lancée par l’autocrate bélarusse à ses voisins paraissait alors assez creuse. Son pays est loin des principales voies d’entrée en Europe empruntées par les migrants ce qui ne lui permet pas d’avoir recours au type de #chantage_migratoire utilisé l’an dernier par la Turquie ou plus récemment par le Maroc pour solder leurs différends avec Bruxelles.

    Alors, pour augmenter sa capacité de nuisance, il semble que le régime bélarusse se soit lancé dans l’organisation de sa propre filière d’immigration illégale. Pour cela, il a trouvé un nouvel usage à #Tsentrkurort, l’agence de voyages d’Etat, qui travaille avec Bagdad depuis 2017. Entre le mois d’avril et la mi-juin, le nombre de liaisons aériennes opérées par #Iraqi_Airways entre Minsk et Bagdad est passé d’une à trois par semaine. Pendant la deuxième quinzaine de mai, les habituels Boeing 737 ont aussi été remplacés par des 777, à la capacité plus importante.

    « A l’aéroport de Minsk, personne ne vérifie les documents des Irakiens qui ont réservé avec Tsentrkurort. Ils obtiennent automatiquement des #visas », indique le rédacteur en chef de la chaîne Telegram Nexta, Tadeusz Giczan. La compagnie aérienne #Fly_Baghdad, qui dessert presque uniquement des villes du Moyen-Orient, a également ouvert en mai une liaison directe entre les capitales irakienne et bélarusse, qui effectue deux rotations par semaine.

    Agitation à la frontière

    Les autorités lituaniennes ont fait les mêmes constats. « Il y a des #vols Bagdad-Minsk et Istanbul-Minsk deux fois par semaine. En tout, quatre vols qui correspondent aux vagues de migrations [hebdomadaires] », a expliqué le président du comité parlementaire lituanien consacré à la sécurité nationale, Laurynas Kasciunas. La ministre de l’Intérieur estime, elle aussi, que les migrants arrivent par avion de Bagdad et d’Istanbul, avant d’être conduits à la frontière lituanienne, pour des tarifs allant de 1 500 euros par personne à 3 500 pour une famille.

    Ces flux migratoires soigneusement orchestrés semblent dirigés uniquement vers la Lituanie. Le pays est le plus fidèle allié de l’opposition bélarusse, dont la cheffe de file est exilée à Vilnius. C’est aussi un petit Etat, d’à peine 2,8 millions d’habitants, peu habitué à gérer une pression migratoire. Le centre d’accueil des étrangers installé à la frontière du Bélarus arrive déjà à saturation et des grandes tentes viennent d’être installées à sa lisière pour héberger 350 personnes supplémentaires. Lundi, la ministre de l’Intérieur a repoussé l’instauration de l’état d’urgence, estimant que « l’aide internationale prévue » suffirait pour tenir le choc.

    Jamais cette frontière de 500 kilomètres de long n’avait connu autant d’agitation. La nuit, les migrants récemment débarqués au Bélarus tentent le passage, suivis ou précédés par des opposants à Loukachenko qui prennent le chemin de l’exil dans la clandestinité. Le jour, ce sont les Bélarusses déjà réfugiés en Lituanie qui s’y rassemblent, avec drapeaux et pancartes. Ils réclament l’imposition de nouvelles sanctions contre le régime et l’ouverture des frontières pour leurs compatriotes. Car dans le Bélarus de Loukachenko, les migrants sont encouragés à franchir les frontières, mais les citoyens sont assignés à résidence, interdits de quitter le pays, sauf s’ils sont en possession d’un permis de résidence permanent à l’étranger.

    https://www.liberation.fr/international/europe/a-la-frontiere-entre-la-lituanie-et-le-belarus-loukachenko-se-fait-maitre

    #frontières #réfugiés #réfugiés_irakiens #migrations #asile #Protassevitch #compagnies_aériennes #Irak #Biélorussie

    ping @reka

  • Etats-Unis : « Les restrictions de voyage sont devenues un régime discriminatoire »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2021/06/01/etats-unis-les-restrictions-de-voyage-sont-devenues-un-regime-discriminatoir

    Etats-Unis : Au moment où les pays de l’UE s’apprêtent à faciliter l’accès à l’espace Schengen aux Américains vaccinés, il est essentiel que l’administration Biden assouplisse les conditions d’accès à son territoire pour les citoyens européens, estime, dans une tribune au « Monde, la politiste Célia Belin.
    En juin, les Etats européens rouvriront leurs frontières aux voyageurs américains vaccinés, un assouplissement non contraignant décidé à vingt-sept, sur proposition de la Commission européenne. La France travaille à une ouverture avant la mi-juin, une fois mis en place un système de vérification vaccinale, encore à l’étude. Pour les Américains interdits de séjour en Europe depuis quinze mois, c’est un soulagement. Non seulement les plages de la Méditerranée leur seront accessibles, mais ils pourront aussi librement retrouver leurs proches. Les Européens, eux, n’ont pas cette chance, et des milliers de familles, de couples et de proches restent séparés par un océan.
    Les restrictions mises en place par proclamation présidentielle américaine en mars 2020, pour limiter le nombre de voyageurs entre les Etats-Unis et l’Europe, sont toujours en vigueur. Brièvement résiliées par le président Trump à son départ en janvier, elles ont été immédiatement réinstaurées par Joe Biden, qui a fait de la lutte contre le Covid-19 la priorité de son administration. A ce jour, l’entrée aux Etats-Unis reste interdite aux voyageurs « physiquement présents au cours des 14 derniers jours » dans l’espace Schengen, au Royaume-Uni et en Irlande, sauf en cas d’attribution d’une national interest exception [exception d’intérêt national].
    Binationaux, titulaires de carte verte, diplomates, journalistes et étudiants ont un droit d’entrée automatique, tandis que les national interest exceptions sont attribuées au cas par cas aux travailleurs « apportant un soutien vital aux secteurs d’infrastructures critiques ». Pour les autres, voyageurs d’affaires ou de tourisme, investisseurs, salariés en poste aux Etats-Unis, créateurs d’entreprise, visiteurs d’échange, dizaines de milliers d’expatriés avec carrière dans un pays et famille dans l’autre, l’interdiction d’entrée n’a connu aucun répit depuis quinze mois. Etre titulaire d’un visa de long séjour lié à un statut ou une activité professionnelle n’ouvre pas pour autant le droit d’entrer aux Etats-Unis. Soumis au même régime que les touristes, ces Européens titulaires de visas dits non-immigrants doivent demander une national interest exception pour pouvoir retourner aux Etats-Unis, ce qui, le plus souvent, leur est refusé. En outre, les services des visas des consulats américains en Europe fonctionnent en régime réduit depuis des mois. D’après le site du département d’Etat, le délai actuel d’attente pour un rendez-vous pour un visa non-immigrant est de 98 jours à Berlin, 165 jours à Madrid, 372 jours à Paris et 999 jours à Rome.
    Acceptées au début de la pandémie de Covid-19 comme une réalité douloureuse mais inévitable, les restrictions de voyage sont devenues un régime discriminatoire, bloquant les populations dans des situations kafkaïennes. Certains renoncent à rendre visite à un parent gravement malade en Europe, sous la menace de ne pouvoir revenir dans le pays où ils ont leur emploi, leurs enfants ou leur conjoint. D’autres se retrouvent coincés pendant des mois en Europe faute d’obtenir un rendez-vous à l’ambassade pour renouveler leur visa, alors même qu’ils continuent de payer leurs impôts aux Etats-Unis.
    Des travailleurs sous visa valide passent quinze jours dans des pays tiers (Mexique, Colombie, Turquie) pour contourner l’interdiction, accroissant leur risque de contamination. Relayés sur les réseaux sociaux par les hashtags #LoveIsNotTourism, #Test4Travel ou #LiftTheTravelBan, des milliers de drames personnels racontent l’isolement, l’angoisse et le désespoir d’individus pris au piège d’une situation qui a trop duré.
    Lire aussi Covid-19 dans le monde : l’Europe lève progressivement les restrictions, malgré la menace du variant indien
    Avec la décision des membres de l’Union européenne d’ouvrir leurs frontières aux Américains vaccinés, l’asymétrie de traitement ne va faire que s’accentuer. Pressés de faire revenir la manne touristique américaine, les Européens n’ont pas attendu l’obtention d’une garantie de réciprocité de la part des Etats-Unis. Le 12 mai, Clément Beaune, secrétaire d’Etat chargé des affaires européennes, assurait que l’Europe exigerait des pays vers lesquels elle s’ouvre une « situation sanitaire solide, une preuve fiable de vaccination ou de test, et la réciprocité ». Toutefois, alors que la position française et ses modalités restent à définir, l’Europe se dirige vers une réouverture aux Américains sans contrepartie.
    Pour autant, les leaders européens doivent continuer de défendre leurs compatriotes auprès des autorités américaines. A court terme, l’Europe doit demander un assouplissement des conditions de délivrance des national interest exceptions, pour qu’elles soient attribuées automatiquement aux voyageurs sous visa, qu’ils soient visa d’échange, immigrant ou non-immigrant. Les services consulaires américains en Europe doivent également reprendre une gestion normale des processus de visa, afin de remédier au goulet d’étranglement actuel. A moyen terme, les Européens doivent encourager les Etats-Unis à énoncer les critères sanitaires qui déterminent la levée ou le maintien des restrictions, afin de visualiser un horizon de réouverture. A long terme, Européens et Américains doivent travailler ensemble à des protocoles sanitaires durables qui construiront l’industrie du voyage de demain. A ce jour, des restrictions d’entrée aux Etats-Unis affectent aussi les voyageurs en provenance de Chine, d’Iran, du Brésil, d’Afrique du Sud et d’Inde. En outre, la diffusion du variant indien inquiète les autorités sanitaires, américaines comme européennes. Mais perdure depuis près de quinze mois une situation bureaucratique discriminatoire, qui touche en premier lieu les personnes qui constituent le maillage social et économique qui lie nos sociétés. Alors que le président Biden se rend en Europe mi-juin pour une série de sommets mettant en valeur l’engagement américain envers ses alliés, la levée, au moins partielle, des restrictions de voyage à l’égard des Européens serait un geste fort, préalable à la relance de la coopération transatlantique

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#UE#etatsunis#sante#politiquemigratoire#expatrié#binationaux#visas#variant#discrimination#restrictionsanitaire#frontiere#circulation

  • In Silicon Valley, many find it impossible to make ends meet | The Big Issue
    https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/in-silicon-valley-many-find-it-impossible-to-make-ends-meet

    Facebook, Google and hundreds of other companies that drive our digital lives call Silicon Valley home, but so do people who find it almost impossible to make ends meet, even if they are key to keeping billion-dollar industries running.

    In a new book, photographer Mary Beth Meehan presents a series of portraits that show another side of the people who power the world’s tech capital.

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Mary Beth Meehan: Seeing Silicon Valley - LENSCRATCH
    http://lenscratch.com/2021/05/mary-beth-meehan-seeing-silicon-valley

    “For more than seven decades, business leaders, politicians, and would-be entrepreneurs have tried to unravel the secrets of Silicon Valley. In just over one hundred powerful, haunting pages, Meehan and Turner have captured a side of the valley rarely seen: the deeply inequitable landscape of contingent and disproportionately foreign-born labor that makes its high-tech magic possible. Humane, insightful, and deeply compelling, this book tells the story of Silicon Valley in a completely new and utterly magnetic way.” – Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

    Photographer Mary Beth Meehan has a legacy of considering the complexity of communities and reminding us of our humanity through her portraits and interviews. For her newest project and book published by the University of Chicago Press, Seeing Silicon Valley, she joined forces with Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.

    When considering the population central to this American mythology, we might consider the characters of the television show Silicon Valley–rag tag techies that carry dark under eye circles from long days in front of a screen without sunshine and a small cluster of visionaries who have gotten very rich from technology. But the reality of place is very different. Behind this image lies another Silicon Valley, one segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways. Its beautiful landscape lies atop underground streams of pollutants left behind by decades of technological innovation, and while its billionaires live in compounds, surrounded by redwood trees and security fences, its service workers live in their cars.

    With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible. Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle—families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation. If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America—as so many of its boosters claim—then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.

    Mary Beth Meehan uses photography to transform public spaces, works collaboratively to reflect communities back to themselves, and aims to jolt people into considering one another anew. Combining image, text, and large-scale public installation, Meehan’s work challenges notions of representation, visibility, and equity, and prompts people to talk with one another about what they see.

    Meehan’s first book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America, with Fred Turner, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in Spring of 2021.

    “Seeing Newnan,” Meehan’s most recent public installation, was featured on the Sunday front page of The New York Times on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, in January of 2020, and has shifted the dialogue about representation, identity, and race in that small Georgia city.

    Meehan has held residencies at Stanford University, the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and at Brown University upcoming in 2021. She has lectured and led workshops at the School of Visual Arts, New York, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

    A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, Mary Beth holds degrees from Amherst College and the University of Missouri, Columbia. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
    Book spread 2

    Spread from “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    Seeing Silicon Valley

    Seeing Silicon Valley is a collaboration between myself and Silicon Valley culture scholar Fred Turner. During the Fall of 2017 I was invited by Turner to hold an artist’s residency at Stanford University, in order to try to see, ­through my own eyes, what life was like for the thousands of workers in that mythic place. Since then Turner and I have worked together to present what we found – a place, within one of the richest economies in the world, where life is tenuous and where people struggle to find stability, connection, and community. These portraits and narratives are meant to draw viewers in to considering Silicon Valley on an intimate, human scale, and reflecting on what it means for our future.
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    ©Mary Beth Meehan, RAVI and GOUTHAMI Between them, Ravi and Gouthami have multiple degrees — in biotechnology, computer science, chemistry, and statistics. After studying in India and working in Wisconsin and Texas, they have landed here, in the international center of technology, where they work in the pharmaceutical-technology industry. They rent an apartment in Foster City and attend a Hindu temple in Sunnyvale, where immigrants from India have been building a community since the early 1990s. Although the couple have worked hard to get here, and they make good money, they feel that a future in Silicon Valley eludes them — their one-bed-room apartment, for example, costs almost $3,000 a month. They could move somewhere less expensive, but, with the traffic, they’d spend hours each day commuting. They would like to stay, but they don’t feel confident that they can save, invest, start a family. They’re not sure what to do next. From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America”

    ©Mary Beth Meehan, RICHARD Richard has spent his entire adult life in the auto industry, loving his work and making good money. In 2010, the year that GM went bankrupt and the plant he worked at in Fremont closed, he was earning $120,000 a year. After Tesla took over the plant, Richard got a job on the manufacturing floor. He was paid $18 an hour, or less than $40,000 a year. Richard started noticing things that didn’t seem right. As a line worker assembling car doors, he was required to work twelve-hour shifts, five or six days a week. Richard had a home, but he noticed young guys “who came in broke, with a bag of clothes” being hired, working the long shifts, sleeping in their cars, showering in the break room, and doing it again the next day. When a friend invited Richard to meet with the United Automobile Workers union, he agreed. Soon after that, when people complained to him about the low pay or long hours, he’d tell them that with the union, they could stand up for themselves. He handed out buttons and T-shirts, told people they had a choice. “We don’t want to break ’em,” he said of the company. “We just want a little larger piece of the pie — so we can have a cooler of beer every now and then, go camping once in a while.” Though he’d never received a negative review, Richard was fired last October, along with more than four hundred other workers. The UAW has filed a complaint, alleging that Tesla fired workers who were trying to unionize. The worst part for Richard, he says, is that he hears the employees are now too scared to talk about the union. He believes that all his hard work has been in vain. From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    ©Mary Beth Meehan,WARREN In junior high, in Illinois, before he knew anyone else who had a personal computer, Warren got to play Lemonade Stand on his uncle Bob’s Commodore PET. At thirteen, he attended a computer trade show in Chicago: “I didn’t even know what I was looking at,” he says. “But it was cool. It piqued my curiosity profoundly.” In high school, Warren sought out a friend who could teach him all the workings of computers. After he graduated as his school’s valedictorian, Warren went to Stanford to study engineering and business. Then he became a venture capitalist, backing such fledgling firms as Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla (and turning down the founders of Theranos, one of Silicon Valley’s legendary frauds). Ten years ago, he says, “I did a very Silicon Valley thing”: he called a few of his industry pals to launch Thuuz, a service that creates highlights of sporting events in real time. He runs the company out of a bungalow in Palo Alto, adjacent to his house—just a block away from the garage where Hewlett-Packard began. Warren’s company is small, and while he wants it to be successful, he doesn’t strive to make it one of Silicon Valley’s giants. “Many of those companies are huge because they are willing to cross some lines,” he says—ethical, moral lines. “Steve Jobs was irascible,” he says, “Jobs was tough, Jobs was rude.” But, says Warren, thanks to the iPhone, billions of people in India and China now have access to information. “I put Steve Jobs above that line and say, ‘Yeah, he could have been a jerk, but he’s above that line.’” Warren feels differently about Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. “He has broken some massive, massive rules,” he says. “He is completely abusing his users.” Facebook has “corrupted our election. They corrupted Brexit, over in Europe. They’ve destroyed minorities in Asia. . . . They are below the line, below the line. Absolutely, below the line.” From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Great Reads in Photography: May 16, 2021 | PetaPixel
    https://petapixel.com/2021/05/16/great-reads-in-photography-may-16-2021

    Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy-reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!

    Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America — Lenscratch
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    Elisa and Family © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press. 2021
    Mary Beth Meehan © Molly Heller

    Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner join forces to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.

    “With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible,” says Aline Smithson in Lenscratch. “Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle—families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation.

    “If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America—as so many of its boosters claim—then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.”
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    Ravi and Gouthami © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021

    Silicon Valley glitters with the promise of extraordinary wealth and innovation. But behind the façade lies a world segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways.
    Cristobal was born in Bakersfield, out in the desert. After high school, he served eight years in the Army, including one tour in the Iraq war. He now works full time as a security guard at Facebook. He starts at dawn, guiding cars on and off the campus, and making sure walkers looking down at their phones cross safely. Despite this job, he has no health benefits, and he can’t afford to have a home in Silicon Valley. He’d like to go back to Bakersfield, to be near his mother, but there’s no work there. So he keeps doing his best. Cristobal feels he works hard, and has given back to his country, but his pay forces him to live in a rented repurposed shed, in a back yard in Mountain View. He’s starting to get angry. “Silicon Valley is a shithole,” he says.
    Cristobal © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021

    “For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve,” say photographer Meehan and Turner in The New York Times.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • 12 则真实硅谷故事:不一样的硅谷,残酷的人生百态_详细解读_最新资讯_热点事件_36氪
    https://www.36kr.com/p/1220133179347336
    https://img.36krcdn.com/20210512/v2_d8cd77d36e0b4b2783b64ed25a14d3be_img_jpg

    Les journaux chinois en parlent... l’édition originale est en français
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    则真实硅谷故事:不一样的硅谷,残酷的人生百态
    神译局
    昨天
    关注
    在硅谷看不到未来。

    编者按:作为全球科技精英的圣地,硅谷似乎永远与创新、财富、机会、奇迹、梦想和成功这些令人心潮澎湃的词汇紧密相连。但在创造巨额财富、改变世界进程的同时,硅谷也是美国贫富分化最严重的地区之一,生活成本极其高昂,从赤贫的流浪汉到年入百万的白领精英,硅谷各个阶层的居民们都背负着巨大的生活压力。一起来看硅谷最真实的另一面吧!本文编译自《纽约时报》,作者Mary Beth Meehan和Fred Turner,原标题Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley,希望给您带来启发。

    La véritable histoire de la Silicon Valley : une Silicon Valley différente, une vie brutale
    Le Bureau de la traduction
    Hier
    Suivez
    L’avenir n’est pas en vue dans la Silicon Valley.

    Note de l’éditeur : en tant que Mecque de l’élite mondiale de la technologie, la Silicon Valley semble être associée pour toujours aux mots enivrants d’innovation, de richesse, d’opportunités, de miracles, de rêves et de succès. Mais si la Silicon Valley a créé d’énormes richesses et changé le cours du monde, c’est aussi l’une des régions les plus polarisées des États-Unis. Le coût de la vie y est extrêmement élevé, des sans-abri démunis à l’élite millionnaire en col blanc, les habitants de la Silicon Valley de tous horizons subissent une pression énorme pour vivre. Découvrez le vrai visage de la Silicon Valley ! Cet article a été compilé à partir du New York Times par Mary Beth Meehan et Fred Turner, sous le titre initial Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley, et j’espère qu’il vous inspirera.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Providence photographer captures overlooked truths about Silicon Valley - The Boston Globe
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/11/metro/providence-photographer-captures-overlooked-truths-about-silicon-valley
    https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/mqqHgBHUEptHJkF7FfCDhgzWBfI=/506x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/67J7OLM57BGGVAUNUEHMVARROA.jpg

    From Brockton to Providence, from small-town Georgia to Silicon Valley, photographer Mary Beth Meehan is challenging communities to see themselves in new ways, spurring discussions about race and inequality, the economy and the environment.

    “We want people to see beyond the myths of Silicon Valley’s wealth and innovation to the ways in which real people struggle in that environment,” Meehan said. “They struggle in terms of financial security but also to find connection and community.”

    In “Seeing Silicon Valley,” Meehan introduces us to Cristobal, a US Army veteran who makes $21 an hour working as a full-time security officer at Facebook but lives in a shed because he can’t afford a house in the area’s high-priced housing market.

    Meehan said a former colleague connected her to Turner, a Stanford communications professor who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lived in Boston for 10 years, and graduated from Brown University. The book was designed by a Providence resident, Lucinda Hitchcock.

    Turner, who now lives two miles from Google headquarters, said Silicon Valley excels at marketing itself. “But the actual community that is here on the ground is much more diverse and much more unequal than the mythology tells us,” he said. “Very few people look or make money like Mark Zuckerberg.”

    Turner said Meehan’s large-scale portraits demonstrated her ability to capture images that tell you something about both the person and their community, and as a Brockton native, she brought to bear a working-class background.

    “I hope people can see that the seemingly magical world of technology depends on the really hard work of a whole lot of different people,” he said. “In the same way that the Industrial Revolution in Boston didn’t just depend on the people who went to Harvard, Silicon Valley is not just the Zuckerbergs and Jobs.”

    Turner said the nation’s industries need to sustain the people that build them – not just a few people at the top. “The lesson is that if you just pursue profit and innovation, you can injure your workers, pollute your landscape, and build a society you wouldn’t want to be a member of,” he said. “We can do a lot better than that.”

    As an artist-in-residence at Stanford, Meehan spent six weeks introducing herself to strangers, sitting in kitchens and living rooms, listening to their stories.

    She said she found tremendous unease among the people there, not only among the cashiers and waiters, but among the tech professionals and other high-income earners. And she found the anxieties of Silicon Valley reflect a nationwide gulf between the rich and the poor – the hollowing out of the middle class.

    “Even though the stock market is doing well, people are struggling,” Meehan said. “If people are not doing well in Silicon Valley, then what does that say about where the country is headed?”

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/economy/seeing-the-real-faces-of-silicon-valley.html

    The workers of Silicon Valley rarely look like the men idealized in its lore. They are sometimes heavier, sometimes older, often female, often darker skinned. Many migrated from elsewhere. And most earn far less than Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook.

    This is a place of divides.

    As the valley’s tech companies have driven the American economy since the Great Recession, the region has remained one of the most unequal in the United States.

    During the depths of the pandemic, four in 10 families in the area with children could not be sure that they would have enough to eat on any given day, according to an analysis by the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Just months later, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, who recently added “Technoking” to his title, briefly became the world’s richest man. The median home price in Santa Clara County — home to Apple and Alphabet — is now $1.4 million, according to the California Association of Realtors.

    For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve.

    Here are 12 of them, who originally appeared in our book, “Seeing Silicon Valley,” from which this photo essay is excerpted.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Stanford scholar’s new collaboration reveals the complexities of life in Silicon Valley
    https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2021/05/04/revealing-complee-silicon-valley

    To capture what it’s like to live and work in Silicon Valley – for the affluent, those who are barely getting by and the many people in between – Stanford communication professor and Silicon Valley scholar Fred Turner teamed up with renowned photographer Mary Beth Meehan.

    Turner hopes his new project, a collaboration with renowned photographer Mary Beth Meehan, can shine a spotlight on some of the complexities of the region known as the center of tech innovation.

    “I knew that there were things that photographers could see that I couldn’t quite put into words,” said Turner, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences, “I thought that if I worked with a photographer like Mary Beth Meehan I would find a new way to express some of the kinds of things that I wanted to express in academic work but hadn’t really found an idiom for.”

    The result of their academic-artistic collaboration is a new book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America, (University of Chicago Press, 2021), an intimate look into the everyday experiences of people who live and work in Silicon Valley, from some of its more wealthy residents to its poorest – and the many people in between. In a collection of over 30 portraits photographed in 2017 and 2019, readers see Silicon Valley workers inside their homes and at their workplaces – images that convey the realities of what life is like in one of America’s wealthiest regions.

    Meehan, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, had never spent much time in Silicon Valley. What she knew of the region came mostly from stories she read in newspapers and magazines that had for a long time portrayed the region as a place of the future, where tech geniuses were transforming society.

    “Silicon Valley was a mythic idea for me,” Meehan said. “I had this idea of it as a place where everything sparkled, where everything was possible, where people were young and healthy – that it was a place in which all of the best of human ingenuity was put into play.”

    What Meehan encountered was far different from what she imagined.

    “Nothing could have prepared me for the uneasiness and human stress and suffering that went along with being a part of that economy,” Meehan said.

    Over several extended trips, Meehan immersed herself in Silicon Valley culture. She approached strangers she encountered on neighborhood streets and had long conversations with the cashiers she met at the taquerias she frequented. She attended a United Auto Workers meeting and went to a party with tech entrepreneurs – and through these interactions, Meehan began to see themes emerge from the valley’s hustle and bustle.

    Some of Meehan’s observations surprised Turner, particularly the feelings of economic insecurity workers reported experiencing on a daily basis.

    “One of the things that really surprised me was how Mary Beth heard a persistent humming of anxiety in the workers that she was talking with – at every level: from folks at the taqueria up to the executive, C-suite,” he said. “Across the board, you find folks worried about whether they can make it, whether they can survive, whether they can get ahead.”

    The project was supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Stanford Arts Initiative and the Departments of Communication and Art & Art History. An earlier version of the book was published in 2018 by C&F Editions in Paris, France.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • A l’aéroport de Roissy, des Indiens en transit illégal installés dans un terminal
    https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/05/03/a-l-aeroport-de-roissy-des-indiens-en-transit-illegal-installes-dans-un-term

    A l’aéroport de Roissy, des Indiens en transit illégal installés dans un terminal. Par crainte de la formation d’un cluster de contamination au Covid-19, les autorités ont installé une annexe temporaire à la zone d’attente pour personnes en instance (ZAPI) dans le terminal 2A de l’aéroport.
    Un terminal de l’aéroport Roissy - Charles-de-Gaulle a été aménagé pour accueillir plusieurs dizaines d’Indiens en transit illégal sur le territoire français et faire baisser le nombre de personnes maintenues dans la zone d’attente de l’aéroport, a-t-on appris, lundi 3 mai, de sources aéroportuaires.Par crainte de la formation d’un cluster de contamination au Covid-19, la Croix-Rouge et l’Association nationale d’assistance aux frontières pour les étrangers (Anafé) avaient décidé à la fin avril de retirer leurs salariés de la plus grande zone d’attente aéroportuaire de France, où sont maintenus les étrangers qui ne sont pas autorisés à entrer sur le territoire. Vendredi, les autorités, avec le soutien logistique d’Aéroports de Paris (ADP), ont donc installé une annexe temporaire à la zone d’attente pour personnes en instance (ZAPI) dans le terminal 2A de l’aéroport, une information dévoilée par Le Parisien.« Nous avons mis à disposition des lits de camp dans un terminal fermé depuis l’été et permis un accès aux sanitaires. Quatre-vingts à quatre-vingt-dix personnes en transit avec des problèmes administratifs de visa s’y trouvent actuellement », a indiqué lundi ADP à l’Agence France-Presse (AFP). Le nombre d’étrangers maintenus dans la zone d’attente principale est ainsi redescendu à « trente-cinq », selon une source aéroportuaire.
    Tous les étrangers installés dans l’annexe temporaire sont des ressortissants indiens, en grande majorité des hommes, a précisé cette source à l’AFP. Ils ont tous refusé de subir des tests, « mais certains sont arrivés avec des PCR négatifs et sont là depuis dix-sept jours ». Pour la plupart, ces Indiens sont en transit entre Moscou et Mexico, avec l’espoir d’immigrer en Amérique du Nord. Mais ils ne disposent pas de visa et doivent donc être réacheminés vers Moscou.En première ligne face à la pandémie, avec le Brésil, l’Inde a enregistré 3 400 décès supplémentaires et 370 000 nouvelles contaminations en vingt-quatre heures. Le bilan total provisoire culmine à plus de 219 000 morts, pour près de 20 millions de contaminations.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#france#inde#sante#circulation#variant#frontiere#cluster#transit#visa

  • Silicon Valley photograph book by Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner focuses on the unseen in the uber-rich area - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/silicon-valley-photography-book-mary-beth-meehan/2021/04/30/4867019e-a46f-11eb-85fc-06664ff4489d_story.html

    Four years ago, New England portrait photographer Mary Beth Meehan received a query out of the blue. A professor in California named Fred Turner wanted to collaborate on a project about the people who live and work in Silicon Valley.

    “It was just so bizarre,” Meehan recalls thinking. “It never occurred to me to think of Silicon Valley as an actual place where people lived.”

    This was precisely Turner’s point. A Stanford University historian and professor of communication who has studied Silicon Valley culture for 20 years, Turner has long been troubled by what he calls the “persistent mythology” of the region, a digital ecosystem in Northern California known mainly as the home of Apple, Google and Facebook, and as the hub of billionaire innovators.

    “We tell ourselves that Silicon Valley is a place where heroic geniuses invent products that somehow harness the invisible powers of electricity and information and magically change the world,” Turner said in an interview. “And the heroes in our stories are almost always White men.”

    Everybody else might as well be invisible. “You can literally be here and see the young tech bros not seeing the people cleaning the stores or their houses or the streets,” he said. “It’s a kind of low-key oblivious arrogance that comes from being genuinely brilliant, spending a lot of time with machines, working with code, which is highly abstract and rational, and being rewarded with lots of money.”
    Image without a caption
    Photographer Mary Beth Meehan. (Molly Heller)

    Turner, a photography aficionado, was familiar with Meehan’s work and knew that invisibility is one of her key themes. Her process is to immerse herself in communities and create large-scale portraits of ordinary, uncelebrated people and install them as huge banners on the sides of buildings in downtown areas. Invariably, her installations prompt townwide dialogue about race, inclusiveness and the meaning of community. Meehan’s work also is evocative of JR, the French photographer and street artist, though she has been influenced by many artists who activate public spaces.
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    “A common thread is moving past preconceptions to understand one another,” said Meehan, who has created installations in Brockton, Mass., where she grew up, Providence, R.I., where she lives now, and, most recently, in Newnan, Ga., a small town striving to embrace and celebrate change in the wake of a white nationalist rally there in 2018.

    Meehan was eager to take on a Silicon Valley project, though she and Turner were fuzzy about the end product. Banners were — and continue to be — a consideration, but, Meehan said, “I haven’t been able to get my head around what banners would look like. There’s no central Silicon Valley space. There’s no there there. It’s a conglomeration of towns.”

    They ultimately landed on a book, featuring text and Meehan’s images. “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” will be released May 3 by the University of Chicago Press.
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    “Silicon Valley has long been a shining example of those who dream of a society built around individual initiative and enabling technologies,” Turner writes in the introduction. “But what does it feel like to live in such a world? What kind of society does the relentless pursuit of technological innovation and wealth produce?”

    Meehan went to Stanford in the fall of 2018 as an artist in residence and set to work finding the answer. She introduced herself to strangers, sat in their kitchens and living rooms, met them in businesses and shops.

    “I chased them on the street,” she said. “I met people through workers’ rights groups and at a gathering of young tech engineers. I met a couple in a Hindu temple. And then there was the magic of connecting with someone in that moment, photographically.”
    Justyna, one of Meehan’s subjects: “If we want to achieve excellence in technology, why can’t we achieve excellence in being good to each other?”
    Justyna, one of Meehan’s subjects: “If we want to achieve excellence in technology, why can’t we achieve excellence in being good to each other?” (© Mary Beth Meehan)
    Mary came to the United States from Uganda more than a year ago: “I’ve discovered one thing. There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa . . . because our community cares for each other. . . . This place is lonely.”
    Mary came to the United States from Uganda more than a year ago: “I’ve discovered one thing. There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa . . . because our community cares for each other. . . . This place is lonely.” (© Mary Beth Meehan)

    She got to know affluent professionals, people behind cash registers and in homeless encampments, rising tech stars, a recent immigrant from Uganda, a food truck worker from Mexico who serves burritos to Tesla employees, a man in his 80s who can’t afford an apartment so he lives in a small trailer a couple of miles from the Google campus; he has no electricity or running water. She met the parents of a 19-year-old girl who had killed herself. They allowed her to photograph the suicide note, in which she apologized and wrote: “i am not super smart or talented.”
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    As Meehan pieced together a narrative about the unseen heart of the tech world, what emerged was a startling view of Silicon Valley.

    “What surprised me, and what stays with me still, was the unease that was palpable in Silicon Valley,” Meehan writes in the book’s afterword. “From those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum to those with higher incomes whose unease was more existential, people conveyed how hard it was to find balance, connection, and community. The sense of distress was so pervasive that I wondered if I was seeing things correctly.”

    Among the people she photographed was the blond-haired Justyna with a piercing gaze, originally from Poland. (No last names are used in the book.) She has a PhD, works on self-driving cars and shares a mansion with other scientists in Cupertino. She told Meehan she used to be idealistic but thinks people have lost track of the core values of integrity, respect for others and being good to each other. “We seem to be losing ourselves,” she said.

    Meehan met Mark, 39, born with severe brain damage. When his mother was pregnant, she worked in the electronics industry making the lasers that scan groceries. She later learned that the greenish substance she was inhaling was toxic — and the cause of her son’s birth defects.
    Image without a caption
    Mark is 39 and needs constant care. His mother worked in a Mountain View electronics plant making laser scanners with a mixture that contained high levels of lead known to cause birth defects. (© Mary Beth Meehan)

    Brenda and Abraham lost their home after the 2008 crash. They lived for a while in improvised shacks that are common in the region, though illegal. They now live in a trailer in a long row of other trailers in Palo Alto, parked in front of the Stanford campus.
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    Mary, from Uganda, told Meehan: “There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa.”

    She spent a lot of time with Cristobal, an Army veteran who works full time as a contract security officer at Facebook, earning $21 an hour. Meehan agreed to meet him at his home, which turned out to be a shed.

    “I was shocked,” she said. “[Cristobal and I] shared so much anger in the making of that picture. I mean, for God’s sakes. You have a full-time job, you served in the U.S. military. Should a home be so far outside your reach?”

    It was at times like this that the story she and Turner were telling became personal.

    “I was raised by working-class people, and there was a level of security that could be attained by hard work,” she said. “And when I think of the equivalent of that worker toiling away in Silicon Valley, I don’t see the same level of comfort or security or the ability to build a life or build wealth. It’s not a livable economy.

    “I don’t think the difference is in the character and ambitions of these people. I think the difference is in the system they entered. And that’s the part we’re not talking about.”

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Fred_Turner #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Visual Arts Review: “Seeing Silicon Valley” - Our Future Dystopia? - The Arts Fuse
    https://artsfuse.org/227474/visual-arts-review-seeing-silicon-valley-our-future-dystopia

    Meanwhile, Turner, now Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communications at Stanford, had embarked on similarly disillusioning project. Turner, who lives in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley, had studied the region’s culture for some two decades. In 2017, he invited Mary Beth Meehan, known for her “large-scale, community-based portraiture,” to spend six weeks in the Valley, photographing its inhabitants and listening to their stories.

    “He told me that he was troubled by the power of the region’s mythology,” Meehan recalls, “and wanted people to see the place as it is. He asked if I’d be willing to come and try to see it through my own eyes.” After her work got underway, Turner asked Meehan to his house once a week for a home-cooked dinner and would “pepper me with questions: ‘What are you seeing? What are you finding out there?’”

    But brevity, succinctness, and personal focus are among the key strengths of this powerful and important book, an account that fans out into other developing narratives about the decline of California as America’s paradise, social media’s mendacity and lack of civic responsibility, and the super-charged rise of economic injustice and insecurity. It is likely to attract a lot of attention, discussion, and controversy.

    Nowadays, the economy of Silicon Valley is based mostly on software, biotech, product development, and gigantic, Internet-based companies like Facebook and Google. Silicon and its industrial byproducts are no longer the raw materials of the region’s wealth, which is mostly generated via brand names and intellectual property. Meehan’s photographs and stories portray a different kind of environmental damage: economic and social disruption, especially the upheavals caused by a catastrophic rise in housing costs.

    Meehan’s photographs are unsentimental. Nobody smiles. The images are saturated in California sunlight and color and classically composed, suggesting the long heritage of Western portraiture. The various poverties they encompass do not immediately strike the eye, as Evans’ images do. The pain lurks below, like Turner’s underground toxic plumes.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • Short Fuse Podcast #39 : « Seeing Silicon Valley » : The Fraying of Life in America - The Arts Fuse
    https://artsfuse.org/227588/short-fuse-podcast-39-seeing-silicon-valley-the-fraying-of-life-in-america

    N’oubliez pas que la version orginale de ce livre est celle en français de C&F éditions, il y a deux ans. Le livre est toujours d’actualité, c’est pourquoi les Presses de l’Université de Chicago le publient aujourd’hui.
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    Perception vs. Reality. For many, the words “Silicon Valley” signify the egalitarian opportunities offered by America’s cutting-edge tech industry. Stark reality reveals a much more complicated picture. Growing inequality and an ever rising cost of living are putting pressure on all of the area’s workers: at least seven percent of families live in poverty without access to quality education, health care or housing. Fred Turner and Mary Beth Meehan spotlight these realities in their new book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America. In a recent conversation with Elizabeth Howard, they talk about the situation they found there, and what it reveals about our country as a whole.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • The Man Who Sold His Skin (L’Homme qui a vendu sa peau)

    THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN (2020) by the Tunisian film director #Kaouther_Ben_Hania is not a master piece but it makes the viewer engaged. One the one hand it is a satire of the white art scenes in Europe and on the other hand it is about borders. For Sam Ali, a Syrian refugee the only way to cross borders is to become a commodity, a living art piece. He let an European artist to tattoo a massive Schengen visa on his back.
    There is a reference to Goethe’s Faust (selling his soul) in the film, but rather it is more Kafkaesque, as in his story ’In the Penal Colony’ and the torture machine which inscribes the text of the law onto the prisoner’s body.
    Indeed what the film depicts is not very far from the existing industry of visual representation of refugees.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10360862

    Trailer :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY4THtbaklE

    #film #frontières #migrations #réfugiés #chosification #marchandise #marchandisation #corps #tatouage #visa #peau #frontière_mobile

    via @isskein

  • « Il manque 250 000 logements », alerte l’Association des #résidences_étudiantes | Public Senat
    https://www.publicsenat.fr/article/societe/il-manque-250-000-logements-alerte-l-association-des-residences-etudiant

    Toutefois, comme l’indiquent tous les participants de la table ronde, les problèmes d’accès au #logement pour les #étudiants existaient déjà avant la crise. « L’offre de logements étudiants n’est structurellement pas suffisante, elle ne permet ni d’accompagner la démocratisation de l’#enseignement_supérieur, ni de développer les nouvelles mobilités que l’on connaît avec #Erasmus ou le développement de l’#apprentissage dans le supérieur », affirme Philippe Campinchi, le directeur général de l’Association interprofessionnelle des résidences étudiants et services. Il ajoute qu’il y a « 250 000 logements manquants, d’après certains spécialistes ».

    #APL #outre-mer #visale #logement_social #Crous

  • Silicon Valley’s Hidden Voices
    https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/silicon-valleys-hidden-voices

    Très belle critique de la version anglaise « Seeing Silicon Valley » qui va paraître en avril aux Presses de l’université de Chicago.
    Rappel : la première édition de ce livre est parue en France :
    Visages de la Silicon Valley
    25 € - ISBN 978-2-915825-86-2 - nov. 2018
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    Two new books — Seeing Silicon Valley and Voices from the Valley — reveal, if not the future I thought I would find, a critical part of Silicon Valley that most people never look for or think about, let alone see. These two books’ goal is the same: to reveal the Valley’s forgotten but essential communities — obscured more often than not by hyperbolic press releases, lawyers waving non-disclosure agreements, and journalists’ myopic view of what “working in tech” means. In some cases, these are the “people behind the platforms” — the unheralded engineers and programmers who, despite being paid far above the median salary still find themselves living precariously in houses they can’t afford to furnish. In other cases, they are the nannies, cooks, and gardeners whose hidden labor keeps the Valley’s financial, familial, and social circuits humming. That newly minted billionaire you read about might drive a McLaren but someone has to wash and wax it.

    After a brief essay from Fred Turner, a communications scholar at Stanford, Seeing Silicon Valley deploys an array of pictures captured in 2017 by Mary Beth Meehan, a photographer known for her “community-based portraiture.” For six weeks, Meehan rented an Airbnb in Menlo Park, introduced herself to strangers, and took photographs. She kept the statement “Invisible Community, Invisible Relationships, Invisible Human Beings” written on a sticky note above her desk.

    Meehan’s color photographs are accompanied by short but powerful life histories of her subjects. Along the way we meet, for example, Justnya, a Polish-born engineer who shares a mansion in Cupertino with other technologists, and Victor, an elderly man originally from El Salvador who lives in a small trailer a few miles from Google’s campus. Each photograph tells a story, and it’s rarely the one you might imagine. There’s a photo, for example, of “Mark,” a young white man. On closer inspection, you sense something wrong with his body position and facial expression. You learn that Mark’s mother worked for years in an electronics plant making lasers for supermarket checkout scanners. Every night she came home with “green gunk” on her face and hands. Only years later, after Mark was born with extreme developmental issues, mental and physical, did she learn this gunk was a mixture of chemicals, primarily lead. What was once billed as “the Valley of Heart’s Delight” became the eventual home of nearly two dozen Superfund sites created by now-defunct electronics companies. The non-defunct ones have taken their manufacturing, their jobs, and their gunk overseas.

    Meehan’s photos and captions sometimes reveal human warmth transcending the tragedy and unfairness. In another photograph, Abraham and Brenda are captured hugging each other in that special golden glow one sees near sunset in coastal California. But that glow can only do so much. They are in front of their dilapidated RV, which they have lived in since they lost their house in 2008. Normally, they parked on the edge of Stanford University’s land holdings along El Camino Real. But not on game days when the university forces them to move. On those days, like Steinbeck’s Okies, they drive their aged vehicle over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Half Moon Bay and look at the ocean together.

    The aforementioned essay by Stanford professor Fred Turner, which heads the Meehan collection of photographs, is titled “The Valley on the Hill.” It compares Silicon Valley’s present to the worldview of 17th-century Pilgrims recently arrived in the New World and seeking to build a “City Upon a Hill.” Technologists, many from outside the United States, flock to the Bay Area with “their sense of mission and their search for profits,” and — like their Puritan ancestors — they are motivated by deep, almost compulsive work ethics, argues Turner. He doesn’t say quite enough to give the analogy the depth it deserves — in part because his essay is a mere six pages, a disappointment given his oft-cited expertise on the topic. Still, in his erudite yet truncated telling, the idea of a “New Jerusalem,” a.k.a. Silicon Valley, goes back some 50 years to when Santa Clara County became a hotbed of innovation, albeit one eventually strewn with oozing Superfund sites.

    Turner’s comparison to the Puritans perfunctorily cuts in a couple of other ways. As a religious sect, the Puritans were notoriously dogmatic, and eager to sacrifice heretics. Some programmers share their belief in eschatology and denial of the body, he suggests. It thus makes a kind of sense that Soylent — a start-up company based on marketing a meal-replacement product named after a creepy post-apocalyptic movie — was developed there. But Turner sees present-day “denials of the body” primarily in people’s eager atomization into digital data to be “aggregated and repurposed.” He could go further. Believers in a coming technological Singularity imagine dispensing with the body altogether by uploading their minds. A hundred years ago, the mirage factory of Los Angeles produced the evangelist-huckster Aimee Semple McPherson. Today we have engineer and self-confessed felon Anthony Levandowski and his scheme for a religion based around worship of artificial intelligence. Long live the new flesh. Or, if another variant of Silicon Valley’s fixations is to be believed, long live the old flesh, rejuvenated by steroids and blood transfusions from the young.

    Eventually fruit and vegetable production in the Valley became the dominant crop. The number of workers needed — then and now — exceeded the local population. And so the labor-intensive work of picking and preserving the fruit fell largely to invisible Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Filipino, and Mexican workers. Much of it was performed by women employed as seasonal contractors and segregated by race and ethnicity, and they were the first to be let go when hard times came. The xenophobia, discrimination, and misogyny that runs throughout both books thus goes back a lot farther than when William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and committed racist, arrived in the Valley in 1956 and started an electronics company.

    Shockley Semiconductor begat Fairchild Semiconductor begat Intel and scores of other companies, large and small. Engineers accordingly multiplied. They flocked to the region and in general came to represent the second largest segment of American professionals — behind school teachers. Engineering was the most common occupation pursued by white-collar men.

    Along with their readers, the people who cover “tech” — whatever that term even means these days — too often portray Silicon Valley as a place apart from America. But, as Seeing Silicon Valley and Voices from the Valley reveal, with its racism, casual misogyny, economic inequality, and environmental devastation concentrated among poor communities, Silicon Valley is America. Given its innumerable sins, venal and moral alike, punching at Silicon Valley is as easy as ordering an Uber. Critiques of it take many forms, and the best of these are informed by an understanding of the region’s long and fraught history. These two books don’t fully take that history into account but they do point to the heart of what makes the region run: people, many of them hidden or invisible. Making them visible is a start to creating a more praiseworthy place. Silicon Valley may never be the Puritan’s “City Upon a Hill.” But in its pursuit of the future, it can and must do better.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary-Beth_meehan #Visages_silicon_valley

  • EU : One step closer to the establishment of the ’#permission-to-travel' scheme

    The Council and Parliament have reached provisional agreement on rules governing how the forthcoming #European_Travel_Information_and_Authorisation System (#ETIAS) will ’talk’ to other migration and policing databases, with the purpose of conducting automated searches on would-be travellers to the EU.

    The ETIAS will mirror systems such as the #ESTA scheme in the USA, and will require that citizens of countries who do not need a #visa to travel to the EU instead apply for a “travel authorisation”.

    As with visas, travel companies will be required to check an individual’s travel authorisation before they board a plane, coach or train, effectively creating a new ’permission-to-travel’ scheme.

    The ETIAS also includes a controversial #profiling and ’watchlist’ system, an aspect not mentioned in the Council’s press release (full-text below).

    The rules on which the Council and Parliament have reached provisional agreement - and which will thus almost certainly be the final text of the legislation - concern how and when the ETIAS can ’talk’ to other EU databases such as #Eurodac (asylum applications), the #Visa_Information_System, or the #Schengen_Information_System.

    Applicants will also be checked against #Europol and #Interpol databases.

    As the press release notes, the ETIAS will also serve as one of the key components of the “interoperability” scheme, which will interconnect numerous EU databases and lead to the creation of a new, biometric ’#Common_Identity_Repository' on up to 300 million non-EU nationals.

    You can find out more about the ETIAS, related changes to the Visa Information System, and the interoperability plans in the Statewatch report Automated Suspicion: https://www.statewatch.org/automated-suspicion-the-eu-s-new-travel-surveillance-initiatives

    –------

    The text below is a press release published by the Council of the EU on 18 March 2020: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021/03/18/european-travel-information-and-authorisation-system-etias-council-

    European travel information and authorisation system (ETIAS): Council Presidency and European Parliament provisionally agree on rules for accessing relevant databases

    The Council presidency and European Parliament representatives today reached a provisional agreement on the rules connecting the ETIAS central system to the relevant EU databases. The agreed texts will next be submitted to the relevant bodies of the Council and the Parliament for political endorsement and, following this, for their formal adoption.

    The adoption of these rules will be the final legislative step required for the setting up of ETIAS, which is expected to be operational by 2022.

    The introduction of ETIAS aims to improve internal security, prevent illegal immigration, protect public health and reduce delays at the borders by identifying persons who may pose a risk in one of these areas before they arrive at the external borders. ETIAS is also a building bloc of the interoperability between JHA databases, an important political objective of the EU in this area, which is foreseen to be operational by the end of 2023.

    The provisionally agreed rules will allow the ETIAS central system to perform checks against the Schengen Information System (SIS), the Visa Information System (VIS), the Entry/Exit System (EES), Eurodac and the database on criminal records of third country nationals (ECRIS-TCN), as well as on Europol and Interpol data.

    They allow for the connection of the ETIAS central system to these databases and set out the data to be accessed for ETIAS purposes, as well as the conditions and access rights for the ETIAS central unit and the ETIAS national units. Access to the relevant data in these systems will allow authorities to assess the security or immigration risk of applicants and decide whether to issue or refuse a travel authorisation.
    Background

    ETIAS is the new EU travel information and authorisation system. It will apply to visa-exempt third country nationals, who will need to obtain a travel authorisation before their trip, via an online application.

    The information submitted in each application will be automatically processed against EU and relevant Interpol databases to determine whether there are grounds to refuse a travel authorisation. If no hits or elements requiring further analysis are identified, the travel authorisation will be issued automatically and quickly. This is expected to be the case for most applications. If there is a hit or an element requiring analysis, the application will be handled manually by the competent authorities.

    A travel authorisation will be valid for three years or until the end of validity of the travel document registered during application, whichever comes first. For each application, the applicant will be required to pay a travel authorisation fee of 7 euros.

    https://www.statewatch.org/news/2021/march/eu-one-step-closer-to-the-establishment-of-the-permission-to-travel-sche

    #interopérabilité #base_de_données #database #données_personnelles #migrations #mobilité #autorisations #visas #compagnies_de_voyage #VIS #SIS #EU #UE #union_européenne #biométrie

    ping @etraces @isskein @karine4

    • L’UE précise son futur système de contrôle des voyageurs exemptés de visas

      Les modalités du futur système de #contrôle_préalable, auquel devront se soumettre d’ici fin 2022 les ressortissants de pays tiers pouvant se rendre dans l’Union #sans_visa, a fait l’objet d’un #accord annoncé vendredi par l’exécutif européen.

      Ce dispositif, baptisé ETIAS et inspiré du système utilisé par les Etats-Unis, concernera les ressortissants de plus de 60 pays qui sont exemptés de visas pour leurs courts séjours dans l’Union, comme les ressortissants des Etats-Unis, du Brésil, ou encore de l’Albanie et des Emirats arabes unis.

      Ce système dit « d’information et d’autorisation », qui vise à repérer avant leur entrée dans l’#espace_Schengen des personnes jugées à #risques, doit permettre un contrôle de sécurité avant leur départ via une demande d’autorisation sur internet.

      Dans le cadre de l’ETIAS, les demandes en ligne coûteront 7 euros et chaque autorisation sera valable trois ans pour des entrées multiples, a indiqué un porte-parole de la Commission.

      Selon les prévisions, « probablement plus de 95% » des demandes « donneront lieu à une #autorisation_automatique », a-t-il ajouté.

      Le Parlement européen avait adopté dès juillet 2018 une législation établissant le système ETIAS, mais dans les négociations pour finaliser ses modalités opérationnelles, les eurodéputés réclamaient des garde-fous, en le rendant interopérable avec les autres systèmes d’information de l’UE.

      Eurodéputés et représentants des Etats, de concert avec la Commission, ont approuvé jeudi des modifications qui permettront la consultation de différentes #bases_de_données, dont celles d’#Europol et d’#Interpol, pour identifier les « menaces sécuritaires potentielles, dangers de migration illégale ou risques épidémiologiques élevés ».

      Il contribuera ainsi à « la mise en oeuvre du nouveau Pacte (européen) sur la migration et l’asile », a estimé le porte-parole.

      « Nous devons savoir qui franchit nos #frontières_extérieures. (ETIAS) fournira des #informations_préalables sur les voyageurs avant qu’ils n’atteignent les frontières de l’UE afin d’identifier les risques en matière de #sécurité ou de #santé », a souligné Ylva Johansson, commissaire aux affaires intérieures, citée dans un communiqué.

      Hors restrictions dues à la pandémie, « au moins 30 millions de voyageurs se rendent chaque année dans l’UE sans visa, et on ne sait pas grand chose à leur sujet. L’ETIAS comblera cette lacune, car il exigera un "#background_check" », selon l’eurodéputé Jeroen Lenaers (PPE, droite pro-UE), rapporteur du texte.

      L’accord doit recevoir un ultime feu vert du Parlement et des Vingt-Sept pour permettre au système d’entrer en vigueur.

      https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/fil-dactualites/190321/l-ue-precise-son-futur-systeme-de-controle-des-voyageurs-exemptes-de-visas
      #smart_borders #frontières_intelligentes

    • Eurodac, la “sorveglianza di massa” per fermare le persone ai confini Ue

      Oggi il database conserva le impronte digitali di richiedenti asilo e stranieri “irregolari”. La proposta di riforma della Commissione Ue vuole inserire più dati biometrici, compresi quelli dei minori. Mettendo a rischio privacy e diritti

      Da più di vent’anni i richiedenti asilo che presentano domanda di protezione in un Paese europeo, così come i cittadini stranieri che attraversano “irregolarmente” i confini dell’Unione, sono registrati con le impronte digitali all’interno del sistema “Eurodac”. L’acronimo sta per “European asylum dactyloscopy database” e al 31 dicembre 2019 contava oltre 5,69 milioni di set di impronte cui se ne sono aggiunti oltre 644mila nel corso del 2020. Le finalità di Eurodac sono strettamente legate al Regolamento Dublino: il database, infatti, era stato istituito nel 2000 per individuare il Paese europeo di primo ingresso dei richiedenti asilo, che avrebbe dovuto valutare la domanda di protezione, ed evitare che la stessa persona presentasse domanda di protezione in più Paesi europei (il cosiddetto asylum shopping). 

      Nei prossimi anni, però, Eurodac potrebbe diventare uno strumento completamente diverso. Il 23 settembre 2020 la “nuova” Commissione europea guidata da Ursula von der Leyen, infatti, ha presentato una proposta di riforma che ricalca un testo presentato nel 2016 e si inserisce all’interno del Patto sull’immigrazione e l’asilo, ampliando gli obiettivi del database: “Eurodac, che era stato creato per stabilire quale sia il Paese europeo competente a esaminare la domanda di asilo, vede affiancarsi alla sua funzione originaria il controllo delle migrazioni irregolari e dei flussi secondari all’interno dell’Unione -commenta Valeria Ferraris, ricercatrice presso il dipartimento di Giurisprudenza dell’Università di Torino (unito.it)-. Viene messa in atto un’estensione del controllo sui richiedenti asilo visti sempre più come migranti irregolari e non come persone bisognose di protezione”.

      “Oggi Eurodac registra solo le impronte digitali. La proposta di riforma prevede di aggiungere i dati biometrici del volto, che possono essere utilizzati per il riconoscimento facciale tramite apposite tecnologie -spiega ad Altreconomia Chloé Berthélémy, policy advisor dell’European digital rights-. Inoltre si prevede di raccogliere anche le generalità dei migranti, informazioni relative a data e luogo di nascita-nazionalità. Sia per gli adulti sia per i minori a partire dai sei anni di età, mentre oggi vengono registrati solo gli adolescenti dai 14 anni in su”. Per Bruxelles l’esigenza di aggiungere nuovi dati biometrici al database è motivata dalle difficoltà di alcuni Stati membri nel raccogliere le impronte digitali a causa del rifiuto da parte dei richiedenti asilo o perché questi si procurano tagli, lesioni o scottature per non essere identificati. La stima dei costi per l’espansione di Eurodac è di 29,8 milioni di euro, necessari per “l’aggiornamento tecnico, l’aumento dell’archiviazione e della capacità del sistema centrale” si legge nella proposta di legge. 

      Le preoccupazioni per possibili violazioni dei diritti di migranti hanno spinto Edri, il principale network europeo di Ong impegnate nella tutela dei diritti e delle libertà digitali, e altre trenta associazioni (tra cui Amnesty International, Statewatch, Terre des Hommes) a scrivere lo scorso settembre una lettera aperta alla Commissione Libe del Parlamento europeo per chiedere di ritardare il processo legislativo di modifica di Eurodac e “concedere il tempo necessario a un’analisi significativa delle implicazioni sui diritti fondamentali della proposta di riforma”. 

      “Lungi dall’essere meramente tecnico, il dossier Eurodac è di natura altamente politica e strategica”, scrivono le associazioni firmatarie nella lettera. Che avvertono: se le modifiche proposte verranno adottate potrebbe venire compromesso “il dovere dell’Unione europea di rispettare il diritto e gli standard internazionali in materia di asilo e migrazione”. Eurodac rischia così di trasformarsi in “un potente strumento per la sorveglianza di massa” dei cittadini stranieri. Inoltre “le modifiche proposte sulla banca dati, che implicano il trattamento di più categorie di dati per una serie più ampia di finalità, sono in palese contraddizione con il principio di limitazione delle finalità, un principio chiave Ue sulla protezione dei dati”.

      “Si rischia di estendere il controllo sui richiedenti asilo visti sempre più come migranti ‘irregolari’ e non come persone bisognose di protezione” – Valeria Ferraris

      Le critiche delle associazioni firmatarie si concentrano soprattutto sul possibile uso del riconoscimento facciale per l’identificazione biometrica che viene definito “sproporzionato e invasivo della privacy” si legge nella lettera. “Le leggi fondamentali sulla protezione dei dati personali in Europa stabiliscono che l’interferenza con il diritto alla privacy deve essere proporzionata e rispondere a un interesse generale -spiega Chloé Berthélémy-. Nel caso di Eurodac, l’utilizzo delle impronte digitali è sufficiente a garantire l’identificazione della persona garantendo così il principio di limitazione dello scopo, che è centrale per la protezione dei dati in Europa”. 

      “Noi siamo contrari all’uso di tecnologie di riconoscimento facciale e siamo particolarmente radicali su questo -aggiungono Davide Del Monte e Laura Carrer dell’Hermes Center, una delle associazioni firmatarie della lettera-. Una tecnologia può anche avere un utilizzo corretto, ad esempio per combattere il terrorismo, ma la potenza di questi strumenti è tale che, a nostro avviso, i rischi e i pericoli sono molto superiori ai potenziali benefici che possono portare. Inoltre è molto difficile fare un passo indietro una volta che le infrastrutture necessarie a implementare queste tecnologie vengono ‘posate’ e messe in funzione: non si torna mai indietro e il loro utilizzo viene sempre ampliato. Per noi sono equiparabili ad armi e per questo la loro circolazione deve essere limitata”. Anche in virtù di queste posizioni, Hermes Center è promotore in Italia della campagna “Reclaim your face” con cui si chiede alle istituzioni di vietare il riconoscimento facciale negli spazi pubblici.

      “La potenza di questi strumenti è tale che, a nostro avviso, i rischi e i pericoli sono molto superiori ai potenziali benefici che possono portare” – Laura Carrer

      Ma non è finita. Se la riforma verrà adottata, all’interno del database europeo finiranno non solo i richiedenti asilo e le persone intercettate mentre attraversano “irregolarmente” le frontiere esterne dell’Unione europea ma anche tutti gli stranieri privi di titolo di soggiorno che venissero fermati all’interno di un Paese europeo e verrebbe anche creata una categoria ad hoc per i migranti soccorsi in mare durante un’operazione di search and rescue. Verranno inoltre raccolti i dati relativi ai bambini a partire dai sei anni di età: ufficialmente, questa (radicale) modifica al funzionamento del database europeo è stata introdotta con l’obiettivo di tutelare i minori stranieri. 

      Ma le associazioni evidenziano come raccogliere e conservare i dati biometrici dei bambini per scopi non legati alla loro protezione rappresenti “una violazione gravemente invasiva e ingiustificata del diritto alla privacy, che lede i principi di proporzionalità e necessità”. Dati e informazioni che verranno conservati più a lungo di quanto non accade oggi: per i “migranti irregolari” si passa dai 18 mesi attuali a cinque anni.

      A complicare ulteriormente la situazione c’è anche l’entrata in vigore nel 2018 del nuovo “Regolamento interoperatività”, che permette di mettere in connessione Eurodac con altri database come il Sistema informativo Schengen (Sis) e il sistema informativo Visti (Vis), il Sistema europeo di informazione e autorizzazione ai viaggi (Etias) e il Sistema di ingressi/uscite (Ees). 

      “In precedenza, questi erano tutti sistemi autonomi, ora si sta andando verso un merging, garantendo una connessione che contraddice la base giuridica iniziale per cui ciascuno di questi sistemi aveva un suo obiettivo -spiega Ferraris-. Nel corso degli anni gli obiettivi attribuiti a ciascun sistema si sono moltiplicati, violando i principi in materia di protezione dei dati personali e diventando progressivamente sempre più focalizzati sul controllo della migrazione”. Inoltre le modifiche normative hanno esteso l’accesso a questi database sempre più integrati tra loro a un numero sempre maggiore di autorità.

      “Quello che chiediamo al Parlamento europeo è di fare un passo indietro e di ripensare l’intero quadro normativo -conclude Berthélémy-. La nostra principale raccomandazione è quella di realizzare e pubblicare una valutazione di impatto sull’estensione dell’applicazione di Eurodac per delineare le conseguenze sui diritti fondamentali o su quelli dei minori causati dalle significative modifiche proposte. Si sta estendendo in maniera enorme l’ambito di applicazione di un database, e questo avrà conseguenze per decine di migliaia di persone”.

      https://altreconomia.it/eurodac-la-sorveglianza-di-massa-per-fermare-le-persone-ai-confini-ue

  • Protection des migrants en Méditerranée : le Conseil de l’Europe s’alarme des politiques migratoires de l’UE
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/03/09/protection-des-migrants-en-mediterranee-le-conseil-de-l-europe-s-alarme-des-

    Protection des migrants en Méditerranée : le Conseil de l’Europe s’alarme des politiques migratoires de l’UE. Dans un rapport publié mardi, l’instance européenne épingle le « manque de volonté des Etats européens » d’établir des politiques de protection, qui cause la perte de « milliers de vies humaines ».Refoulements d’embarcations, naufrages plus fréquents…, la situation des migrants qui traversent la Méditerranée s’est détériorée en 2020, aggravée par la crise sanitaire. Le Conseil de l’Europe a vilipendé mardi 9 mars le « manque de volonté des Etats européens » d’établir des politiques de protection, qui cause la perte de « milliers de vies humaines ».
    « Depuis des années, les pays d’Europe se sont engagés dans une course vers l’abîme, pour maintenir hors de nos frontières les personnes ayant besoin de notre protection, avec des conséquences désastreuses », déplore Dunja Mijatovic, commissaire aux droits de l’homme du Conseil de l’Europe, en introduction d’un rapport publié mardi. « Leur réponse est l’un des exemples les plus flagrants de la façon dont les mauvaises politiques migratoires portent atteinte aux droits humains et coûtent la vie à des milliers d’êtres humains. »
    Le document dresse le bilan de la mise en place des recommandations publiées en 2019, dans un précédent rapport, par le Conseil de l’Europe. Et le constat est sans appel : « La situation des droits humains dans la région méditerranéenne reste déplorable », et s’est « encore détériorée ». Sur la période observée, entre juillet 2019 et la fin de 2020, plus de 2 600 décès ont été recensés par l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM). Le rapport rappelle que ce chiffre est sans doute sous-estimé, les noyades se produisant bien souvent hors des radars. « Les naufrages en Méditerranée demeurent tragiquement fréquents. » Le Conseil de l’Europe énumère plusieurs raisons à la détérioration de la situation, notamment « le retrait progressif des navires affrétés par les Etats », en même temps que les entraves, administratives et judiciaires, posées aux opérations de sauvetage menées par les organisations non gouvernementales (ONG). « L’approche des Etats consiste encore à limiter le travail vital des ONG, plutôt que de considérer qu’elles comblent les lacunes laissées par leur propre désengagement. »
    L’institution estime que ce désengagement des Etats européens vise à « accroître la possibilité » que les personnes en mer soient interceptées par les garde-côtes libyens et reconduites dans ce pays, malgré les « graves violations des droits humains » qui y sont commises contre les migrants. Certains pays n’ont d’ailleurs pas hésité à signer ou renouveler des accords avec Tripoli, et à « externaliser » certaines responsabilités.
    « Développer des voies de migration sûres et légales » Elle dénonce également la pratique, « en augmentation », des refoulements d’embarcations de migrants, documentée dans le cas des autorités maltaises, grecques et chypriotes, et suspectées de la part de l’agence Frontex. Le Conseil de l’Europe souligne que le contexte d’épidémie de Covid-19 a encore dégradé la situation : ainsi, en novembre 2020, un navire a été utilisé pour maintenir 1 195 migrants en quarantaine au large de la Sicile, et les délais de débarquement ont été allongés pour d’autres bateaux, quand les ports n’étaient pas tout simplement rendus inaccessibles.
    Le rapport invite les Etats européens à « développer des voies de migration sûres et légales », par exemple en généralisant les « visas humanitaires », encore « sous-utilisés », ou en assouplissant les règles permettant le regroupement familial. De telles réformes permettraient de limiter les « trafics et la traite d’êtres humains ».En conclusion, Mme Mijatovic appelle les pays membres du Conseil de l’Europe, tous signataires de la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme, à prendre des mesures pour préserver la vie des migrants tentant de traverser la Méditerranée. « Il s’agit là d’une question de vie ou de mort – et il en va de la crédibilité de l’engagement des pays européens en faveur des droits humains », prévient-elle.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#UE#conseildeleurope#politiquemigratoire#pandemie#politiquemigratoire#sante#mortalité#traite#regroupementfamilial#droit#visahumanitaire#quarantaine

  • Border barrier boondoggle. Trump’s promised inexpensive, impregnable wall was anything but.

    “I would build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I’ll build them very inexpensively,” Donald Trump said in 2015 as he announced his presidential run. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” During the campaign, Trump offered more details. His wall would span the entire length of the border, or nearly 2,000 miles, it would be fashioned with concrete — not unlike the Berlin Wall — and would be “impregnable” and “big and beautiful.”

    It didn’t quite work out that way. By the end of Trump’s term, his administration had completed construction of about 450 miles of barrier, none of which was concrete and all of which was demonstrably pregnable, at a cost at least five times that of the existing barriers. Mexico did not pay a dime for it. And the “beautiful” part? That, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

    When Trump first promised to build the wall along the border, he apparently didn’t realize that his predecessors had already constructed hundreds of miles of barriers. It all started in 1996, when President #Bill_Clinton signed the #Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Responsibility_Act. Fences were constructed in urban areas, such as #Nogales and #San_Diego, with the intention of driving border crossers into the desert, where they could be more easily apprehended — but also where they were at greater risk of dying of heat-related ailments.

    A decade later, President George W. Bush signed the #Secure_Fence_Act of 2006, authorizing the construction of 700 miles of barriers. As a result, 652 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers already lined the border, mostly between #El_Paso and San Diego, by the time #Trump was elected. All the evidence, however, suggests that it did very little to stop undocumented migration, in part because at least two-thirds of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. arrived on #visas and then overstayed them.

    Besides, no wall is truly impregnable, as Trump himself indicated in a speech on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he said: “Let the fate of the Berlin Wall be a lesson to oppressive regimes and rulers everywhere: No Iron Curtain can ever contain the iron will of a people resolved to be free.” Oddly enough, “iron curtain” may be the most accurate description of Trump’s new segments of the wall.

    On the day of his inauguration, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order halting further construction. Now, many observers are urging him to go further and dismantle the barrier, as well as try to repair the damage done. Or, as President Ronald Reagan put it in 1987, “Tear down this wall!”

    https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.3/infographic-borderlands-border-barrier-boondoggle
    #cartographie #infographie #visualisation #murs #prix #coût #longueur #barrières_frontalières #Trump #promesses #promesses_non_maintenues #statistiques #chiffres #George_Bush #overstayers #Joe_Binden #walls_don't_work

    ping @reka

  • Sur le droit d’asile, les migrations et les frontières... sur le droit et les violations du droit...

    Maître #François_Sureau, avocat, sur France culture, pour que ça soit dit et redit et re-redit...

    à partir de la minute 18’45 :

    "L’origine de l’#imposture, on la voit fonctionner dans le discours préfectoral qui dit « Il y a un droit : si ils franchissent la #frontière en #fraude, ils sont en situation irrégulière, on les reconduit dehors ». Cela n’est pas le droit. Le droit c’est que toute personne qui demande l’#asile a droit de voir sa demande examinée sur le territoire de la République, a fortiori lorsqu’il est mineur.
    Tous les gens qui demandent l’asile sont en situation, par hypothèse, irrégulière, puisque la France n’autorise pas les #visas_asilaires, ne permet à personne de rentrer pour demande l’asile de manière régulière et que, surplus, quand vous avez été persécuté dans le pays d’origine, la première chose que vous faites au moment de vous en aller, ne consiste pas à vous précipiter à la police pour demander un passeport en bonne et due forme.
    Tout le monde sait, depuis la création de la Convention de Genève, depuis l’époque du passeport Nansen, depuis les républicains espagnols, depuis les Arméniens, depuis les juifs, depuis l’entre-deux-guerres, tout le monde sait que quelqu’un qui arrive pour demander l’asile est nécessairement en situation irrégulière. Si on excipe de cette situation irrégulière, pour lui interdire de demander l’asile en le reconduisant à la frontière, on viole à la fois la #Constitution et la #Convention_de_Genève. C’est une chose que rappelle la quasi-totalité des juridictions française depuis près d’une dizaine d’années. Il a fallu que la Grande Chambre de la #Cour_européenne_des_droits_de_l'homme intervienne pour interdire à la France de renvoyer des gens jusqu’en Grèce, parce que la Grèce ne traitait pas sérieusement les demandes d’asile.
    La France ne traite pas davantage sérieusement les demandes d’asile lorsqu’elle reconduit des gens, y compris des #mineurs en pleine nuit dans la #montagne, en leur disant ’Marche devant toi, là-bas c’est l’Italie’".

    https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/l-humeur-vagabonde/l-humeur-vagabonde-27-fevrier-2021

    #frontières #droit_d'asile #asile #migrations #réfugiés

    ping @isskein @karine4

  • Biden reverses Trump actions on green cards, architecture and ’anarchist jurisdictions’ | Biden administration | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/24/joe-biden-reverses-executive-actions-donald-trump-legacy
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2a4c02852e783a991cbdde5b216c74a872fa2669/0_255_5723_3436/master/5723.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    Biden reverses Trump actions on green cards, architecture and ’anarchist jurisdictions’. Move undoes actions that blocked many immigrants from entering the US and sought to cut funding to cities Trump deemed ‘lawless’
    Joe Biden speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House, 24 February 2021.Joe Biden has formally reversed a series of executive actions taken by Donald Trump, including a proclamation that blocked many green card applicants from entering the United States. Trump issued the ban last year, saying it was needed to protect US workers amid high unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden rejected that reasoning in a proclamation rescinding the visa ban on Wednesday. The president said it had prevented families from reuniting in the United States and harmed US businesses.
    Other actions undone by the president included one that sought to cut funding from several cities Trump had deemed “lawless” and “anarchist jurisdictions”, and another mandating that federal buildings should be designed in a classical aesthetic. The reversals come as the new president seeks to press forward with his own agenda and undo key aspects of his predecessor’s legacy. Since taking office last month, Biden has revoked dozens of Trump orders and issued dozens more of his own.
    Immigrant advocates had pressed in recent weeks for him to lift the visa ban, which was set to expire on 31 March. Biden left in place another ban on most foreign temporary workers.Curtis Morrison, a California-based immigration attorney who represents people subject to the ban, said Biden will now have to tackle a growing backlog of applications that have been held up for months as the pandemic shut down most visa processing by the state department. The process could potentially take years, he said.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#pandemie#sante#politiquemigratoire#immigration#visa#droit

  • #Garanties_locatives et #logement des #jeunes : une concurrence entre les dispositifs préjudiciable à la diffusion de #Visale
    https://www.banquedesterritoires.fr/garanties-locatives-et-logement-des-jeunes-une-concurrence-entr

    « Pas de garant, pas de logement ? » C’est la question posée par l’Union nationale des Cllaj (Comités locaux pour le logement autonome des jeunes) dans une étude publiée le 10 février 2021 d’analyse de l’impact des systèmes de garanties locatives sur le logement des jeunes. L’étude rappelle qu’il existe aujourd’hui deux sortes de garanties institutionnelles, la garantie Visale proposée par Action Logement et celle des Fonds de solidarité logement (FSL) des départements, à côté des « cautions solidaires » assurées par des personnes physiques et des assurances à la charge du propriétaire ou du locataire.

    […] Le système actuel est donc créateur « d’inégalités et d’exclusion pour les locataires, et à plus forte raison les jeunes ménages, qui portent en plus le poids de leur catégorisation en tant que ‘public à risque’ », souligne l’Uncclaj, qui propose des pistes de réforme du système de garanties locatives. Parmi ces pistes : élargir les publics éligibles au dispositif Visale « notamment en intégrant les jeunes en insertion sur une base forfaitaire à l’instar des étudiants », mieux communiquer autour du dispositif, réguler davantage le marché des assurances à la charge du locataire face à des pratiques jugées « discriminatoires et opaques ».

    #location

  • European Commission Publishes Findings of the First Annual Assessment of Third Countries’ Cooperation on Readmission

    Following changes to the #Visa_Code in 2019, the Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/pdf/10022021_communication_on_enhancing_cooperation_on_return_and_readmission_) assessed the level of readmission cooperation with third countries and submitted a report to the Council. While the report itself is not public, a Communication published this week summarises the main findings of this assessment and sets out next steps regarding the EU’s own return policy and in relation to third countries.

    The Commission has completed its first factual assessment on readmission cooperation, an obligation that stems from the recently introduced Article 25a of the Visa Code. It is based on quantitative and qualitative data provided by Member States and Schengen Associated Countries and data collected by Eurostat and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) on return and irregular arrivals. The third countries covered by the assessment are not listed but based on the information regarding the selection criteria, it is likely to include around 50 countries.

    While the actual report which the Commission prepared for the consideration of the Council is not publicly available, a Communication published alongside it summarises the challenges of return procedures within the EU and highlights the gap between the number of return orders issues and readmission requests to third countries.

    The different obstacles that Member States face in returning people range from the level of cooperation of third country governments in the identification and issuance of travel documents to the refusal of some countries to accept non-voluntary returnees. Those obstacles are experienced differently, depending on which type of cooperation framework is used. Cooperation on readmission is improved through the deployment of electronic platforms for processing readmission applications (Readmission Case Management Systems – RCMS) and European Return or Migration Liaison Officers who are based in third countries.

    The Communication points out that for almost one third of the countries covered by the assessment, cooperation works well with most Member States, for almost another one third the level of cooperation is average and for more than one third the level of cooperation needs to be improved from the perspective of Member States.

    To address this, the Council will discuss more restrictive or more favourable visa measures for third countries as foreseen under the Visa Code. The Communication also makes reference to the usage of EU funding to support the objective of increasing returns, such as the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), the Border Management and Visa Instrument (BMVI), the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI), and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA III) as well as changes introduced in the proposal for the recast Return Directive. It recalls that work on readmission will be part of the partnerships the EU is pursuing and the new proposals as set out in the Pact on Migration and Asylum. In relation to this, the model of return sponsorship and the upcoming appointment of the Return Coordinator is mentioned.

    For Further Information:

    – ECRE, Return Policy: Desperately seeking evidence and balance, July 2019: https://www.ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Policy-Note-19.pdf
    - ECRE Comments on Recast Return Directive , November 2018: https://www.ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ECRE-Comments-Commission-Proposal-Return-Directive.pdf
    - ECRE, Return: No Safety in Numbers, November 2017: https://www.ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Policy-Note-09.pdf

    https://www.ecre.org/european-commission-publishes-findings-of-the-first-annual-assessment-of-third

    –-> Dans le bulletin hebdomadaire d’ECRE, il est fait état d’un rapport élaboré par la Commission sur une évaluation factuelle en matière de réadmission. Ecre dit à ce propos que « Les pays tiers couverts par l’évaluation ne sont pas énumérés mais, sur la base des informations relatives aux critères de sélection, il est probable qu’elle inclue une cinquantaine de pays. »
    Ce rapport n’est pas public.

    #externalisation #réadmission #accords_de_réadmission #UE #EU #Union_européenne #asile #migrations #réfugiés #pays_tiers #code_des_visas

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste sur l’externalisation des frontières :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/731749#message765331

  • Les frontières se ferment donc la population étrangère augmente…

    À fin décembre 2020, 2’151’854 ressortissants étrangers résidaient en #Suisse. Le Secrétariat d’Etat aux migrations vient de révéler à ce sujet un drôle de paradoxe : alors qu’en 2020, l’#immigration a diminué de 2,6 % par rapport à 2019, la #population_étrangère a augmenté nettement plus rapidement qu’auparavant : +40’442 [+1.9%] en 2020 contre +30’243 [+1.5%] en 2019.

    Si la diminution de l’immigration durant cette année « COVID » s’explique aisément par les restrictions d’entrée mises en place par la Suisse et surtout par le manque de perspectives économiques liées à la pandémie, comment expliquer la croissance accélérée de la population étrangère ? La réponse est simple : de nombreuses personnes déjà présentes en Suisse ont renoncé à quitter le pays, tant et si bien que l’#émigration (les départs) a fortement diminué (-12.1%)[1]. On peut grosso modo considérer que 10’000 personnes étrangères ont ainsi décidé (ou été contraintes) de rester en Suisse l’an passé alors qu’elles seraient parties en temps normal. L’inquiétude de ne pouvoir revenir a joué un rôle, de même que les incertitudes sur les perspectives à l’étranger[2].

    Le solde migratoire de la Suisse (arrivées moins départs) a donc augmenté malgré les restrictions d’entrée !

    S’il surprend à première vue, ce paradoxe est bien connu des géographes et autres migratologues sous le nom de « #net_migration_bounce » (#rebond_du_solde_migratoire). Il avait été mis en évidence de manière spectaculaire il y quelques années par une étude sur les politiques de #visas de 34 pays. Il en ressortait que lorsqu’un pays d’immigration se montre très restrictif en matière d’entrées, ces dernières diminuent, certes, mais les personnes qui parviennent à obtenir le précieux sésame ne repartent plus, de peur de ne pas pouvoir entrer à nouveau[3]. Un résultat similaire ressort d’une étude sur les politiques d’immigration de la France, de l’Italie et de l’Espagne vis-à-vis des Sénégalais entre 1960 et 2010[4]. Ces derniers se sont avérés d’autant plus enclins à retourner au Sénégal que les politiques d’entrée en Europe ont été ouvertes. A l’inverse, le resserrement des conditions d’entrée a poussé les expatriés à le rester.

    L’année 2020 reste exceptionnelle, mais la leçon générale à tirer du paradoxe de la fermeture des frontières est que loin d’être statique, la population issue de la migration est – tout au moins pour partie – en constant mouvement. Il est loin le temps où une migration se faisait de manière définitive et pour toute une vie[5]. Beaucoup de gens arrivent, beaucoup de gens partent, et parfois reviennent ! C’est aussi cette réalité que les politiques d’accueil doivent prendre en compte.

    [1] Pour être complet, il y a lieu de tenir compte aussi des naturalisations et des décès (qui font diminuer la population étrangère) et des naissances (qui la font augmenter). L’évolution de ces facteurs a toutefois joué un rôle plus faible que le solde migratoire dans l’évolution de 2020.

    [2] Après le relâchement des contraintes de mobilité de la deuxième moitié 2020, le quatrième trimestre de l’année a d’ailleurs vu l’émigration reprendre son rythme habituel.

    [3] Czaika, M., and H. de Haas. 2017. The Effect of Visas on Migration Processes. International Migration Review 51 (4):893-926.

    [4] Flahaux, M.-L. 2017. The Role of Migration Policy Changes in Europe for Return Migration to Senegal. International Migration Review 51 (4):868-892.

    [5] On notera que dans des pays plus marqués par des migrations « traditionnelles » de longue durée et par moins de mobilité, le paradoxe que nous venons de relever pour la Suisse ne semble pas s’être manifesté. On peut faire l’hypothèses que ce soit le cas du Canada https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/closed-borders-halt-canada-s-population-growth-during-pandemic-1.150097

    https://blogs.letemps.ch/etienne-piguet/2021/02/05/les-frontieres-se-ferment-donc-la-population-etrangere-augmente

    #fermeture_des_frontières #migrations #démographie #paradoxe #solde_migratoire #frontières

    ping @isskein @karine4