This week, in the final issue of Migration Matters before the Holidays, we mark International Migrants Day with a look at Radio 1812, in which FOMACS is participating, and a round up of recent and forthcoming FOMACS projects. The next issue of Migration Matters will be published on January 14, 2010. You can subscribe to the email edition here. In the meantime, we wish you Seasons Greetings and good luck in the new year, and in particular, to all those travelling, a safe journey.

Today is International Migrants Day and for this week's Migration Matters we'll be looking at the Radio 1812 initiative and FOMACS's own current projects.

Radio 1812 is essentially a global radio marathon that coincides with International Migrants Day, with the aim of bringing stories from migrants to radio audiences across the world. In 2008, 175 radio stations from 48 countries took part. This year, FOMACS is amongst them.

FOMACS has contributed two radio documentaries to Radio 1812, Neighbours, by Abiba Ndeley, and Candidates, by Migration Matters editor Colin Murphy.

Neighbours offers a snapshot of Ndeley’s life growing up in Cameroon, leaving for Ireland, and starting a new life in Dublin. It explores the similarities and differences between her hometown, Limbe, and her adopted home in Dublin. In Dublin, she moved with her husband and four children into the inner-city Pearse Street Flats, and soon found herself a part of a tightly-knit community of neighbours.

Neighbours was made as part of a radio mentoring course, ‘Having your Voice Heard’, run by FOMACS, part-funded by EPIM (European Programme for Integration and Migration) under the ‘Migrants and the Media’ project, and led by broadcaster Roisín Boyd. The course consisted of 12 classes and mentoring, and explored a range of topics, such as the relationship between  ‘voice’ and ‘accent’ – issues of particular interest to migrants who wish to break into the Irish broadcasting sector. Six migrant women, including Ndeley, with experience of or interest in the media, took part.

Candidates has been covered recently on Migration Matters. It is a documentary about immigrant candidates in the 2009 local elections in Ireland, in two formats: a 20-minute version, available here and on Radio 1812, and an eight-minute version, produced with Ronan Kelly for RTE Radio One's The Curious Ear slot.

For a short audio introduction to Radio 1812, there is a compilation of last year's event here.

Radio 1812 is an initiative of the organisation December 18, which is an online resource centre on the human rights of migrant workers.

For more on the background to Radio 1812, see here, and the FAQ, here.

There's a guide to UN sites on migration here.

FOMACS has published a combined DVD and booklet package of the digital stories series, Undocumented in Ireland. The DVD contains the series of stories, and the booklet includes the following:

A summary of the goals of the Bridging Visa Campaign, run by the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI);
An explanation of the collaborative methodology underpinning digital storytelling;
A short updated biography of the storytellers alongside their individual scripts;
A brief description of the weekly workshop written by the facilitator and creative director, Darcy Alexandra;
A synopsis of what happens to migrant workers when they become undocumented;
Excerpts and recommendations from the MRCI publication Life in the Shadows – An Exploration of Irregular Migration in Ireland;
A list of cross-references and links for further exploration.

The digital stories are also available to view here. The package may be purchased here. The previous FOMACS digital stories series, Living in Direct Provision, is here.

These stories were the result of a collaboration between FOMACS and the MRCI. 

The FOMACS series of ultra-short films on asylum and refuge in Ireland, Sanctuary, is screening all this month before features at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) in Dublin. The particular feature films before which it is showing are: First day of rest of your life; Nowhere boy; The Red Shoes; and Humpday. For screening times and details, see here. FOMACS hopes to subsequently distribute Sanctuary to cinemas across Ireland and to produce an accompanying education package for schools.

Sanctuary features some of Ireland's leading actors and writers, as well as some emerging voices, performing a series of short monologues based on the true stories of individuals who have sought asylum in Ireland. It was produced in solidarity with ice&fire theatre company, who originated the concept and play Asylum Monologues.

Promise and Unrest, a documentary feature by Alan Grossman and Áine O’Brien, will premiere at the Jameson Dublin Film Festival in February 2010.

The film tells the story of Noemi Barredo, who was separated from her infant daughter, Gracelle, when she left the Philippines for work in Malaysia, in order to support her parents and extended family. Barredo subsequently arrived in Ireland to work in 2000.

According to the filmmakers, Promise and Unrest is an intimate portrayal of a migrant woman performing caregiving and long-distance motherhood, while assuming the responsibility of sole provider for her family back in the Philippines. Dublin may be a long way from Noemi’s hometown of Babatngon, yet she retains a sharp eye on the welfare of her family, attentive to a range of small businesses she has financed, and paying for the education of her daughter and son, medication for her terminally ill father and her sister’s nursing degree. The film observes the everyday intricacies of Noemi and Gracelle’s relationship, their subsequent reunion in Ireland and the beginnings of a domestic life together in the same country for the first time. Promise and Unrest unravels a familiar yet subtle migration story of maternal sacrifice, loss and love, yet to be seen in Irish cinema. It was filmed over a five-year period.

Alan Grossman is co-director of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice in DIT.

Áine O'Brien is director of FOMACS and co-director of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice.

Their most recent documentary feature was Here to Stay, an intimate portrait of Filipino nurse Fidel Taguinod and his political activism in Ireland.

Click here to see a short trailer of the film.

Also in February, FOMACS will launch the teaching pack for the third installment of the animated series Abbi's Circle.

Abbi's Circle is a three-part animation series aimed at 10-13 year olds, telling the story of Abbi, a young Nigerian girl at school in Dublin, and her adventures with family and friends as they negotiate the nuances of being migrants in Ireland. Part one, The Memory Box, told a story of family reunification. Part two, Team Spirit, told a story of asylum. Part three, New Beginnings, tells a story of undocumented migration.

Each episode has been accompanied by a teacher's pack, and the Volume 3 New Beginnings Teaching Pack will be published in February 2010. Written by teachers Liz Morris and Niamh McGuirk, the pack covers issues related to undocumented migration, as well as religious and cultural diversity. As with previous packs, it focuses on the primary school curriculum, offering suggestions for use in SPHE, History, Geography, Visual Arts, Mathematics and more. It employs a combination of in-depth background information sections for teachers, together with a broad range of lesson ideas that are both child-friendly and age-appropriate.

The animation series and teaching packs have been reviewed in the latest (winter) issue of Film Ireland.

The Irish (& Other Foreigners) – From the First People to the Poles is a new account of the history of immigration in Ireland, by Irish Times journalist Shane Hegarty.

According to Liam Harte's review in the Irish Times, Hegarty's 'informative and very accessible popular history of Irish immigration' ranges from pre-historic fossil records through to a dissection of the mythology of the Celts, followed by accounts of the successive arrivals of the Vikings, Anglo-Normans and Protestant New English, culminating in an account of more recent immigration.

'For an avowedly non-academic book, The Irish (and Other Foreigners) distils a great deal of scholarship into its 200-odd pages,' Harte writes. 'Shaming episodes of xenophobia are duly dealt with, from the anti-Semitic boycotts in Limerick in 1904 to then minister for Justice Patrick Cooney’s desire to exclude a tiny cohort of Chileans fleeing Pinochet’s regime 70 years later, on the grounds that their “absorption” could prove “extremely difficult” for Ireland’s monochrome society. Intriguing details punctuate each chapter, such as the fact that the genetic make-up of modern Icelanders is heavily influenced by the Gaels who accompanied the Viking colonisers; that there was one, lone Jew living in Tyrone in 1891; that 10 times as many people moved from America to Ireland in 1932 as went in the other direction; that Polish was the Republic’s unofficial second language in 2006; and that there were 400 “lost” immigrant children in the state in 2008.'

Hegarty made a YouTube trailer for the book, available here. He can be followed on Twitter here.

The reviewer, Liam Harte, is the author of The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725–2001, reviewed here.

The Irish Times also published an excerpt from the book. A short extract follows, on the history of the Italian chipper.

'Irish visitors to Italy will no doubt have noticed that its national dish is not burger and chips. You do not swing onto Rome’s Via del Corso to be met by the smell of boiling oil. You do not sit down for dinner, and choose an antipasto of batter burger and onion rings. Which has always made it somewhat curious that the Italians in Ireland became renowned for their chippers, and that many of the names that were serving fish and chips half a century ago will still be serving snack boxes to peckish or drunken Irish this and every weekend.

'It began sometime in the 1880s, when an Italian, Giuseppe Cervi, stepped off an American-bound boat that had stopped in Cobh and kept walking until he reached Dublin. There, he worked as a labourer until he earned enough money to buy a coal-fired cooker and a hand-cart, from which he sold chips outside pubs.

'Soon after, he found a permanent spot on Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), where his wife Palma would ask customers ‘Uno di questo, uno di quello?’, meaning ‘one of this and one of the other?’ In doing so, Palma helped to coin a Dublin phrase, ‘one and one’, which is still a common way of asking for fish and chips. The shop, meanwhile, had launched an industry.'

Everyone Has the Right is a call for scripts by London-based theatre company Ice & Fire, a company to the fore of both the 'documentary theatre' movement in the UK, and the treatment of issues of asylum and human rights in drama.

A joint initiative with Amnesty International UK, this is a rolling script submission service for human rights themed plays. Of course, it's not enough to have a well meaning subject. As they say: 'But how can human rights be transformed from formalised, aspirational ideals to real, breathing situations that form the basis for excellent theatre?'

They quote Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech: 'Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task.'

The FOMACS short film series, Sanctuary, currently showing at the IFI, has been produced in solidarity with Ice & Fire. Ice & Fire are also the company behind Asylum Monologues. 

The company is currently working on a play about journalists investigating human rights issues. Read their blog here.

Also of interest may be the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) Human Rights Film Award, which was launched last month.

A play based on the verbatim words of asylum seekers had a short run in Dublin recently. Asylum Speakers was scripted by Christine Bacon, writer with Ice & Fire (as above), and produced as part of a mini-festival at the Project Arts Centre, called The Theatre Machine Turns You On. It was reviewed here and here. Ice & Fire are on Twitter.

Media coverage of the impact of the budget on asylum, immigration and integration has been slight, so I will publish some of the reactions here. Firstly, that of the relevant minister, the Minister for Integration, John Curran.

The Office of the Minister for Integration had been threatened in the report of An Bord Snip Nua, headed by economist Colm McCarthy (for more, see here), but has been retained. This was welcomed by the Minister for Integration, John Curran, who said this was a 'recognition of the contribution being made to Irish society by migrants and of the need to continue to promote integration'.

Curran noted that he had assumed responsibility for Integration matters in addition to his other responsibilities, resulting in 'the saving of the normal costs associated with the appointment of a Minister of State, as staff previously employed in the separate Office of the Minister had been allocated to other offices'.

His office received €5.465 million in the budget, compared to a revised estimate of €5.165 million for 2009. The closing of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism had resulted in a saving of about €500,000 euro a year, he said, saying that the functions of the NCCRI had been subsumed into his office.

Some of the key expenditure of that office this year has been:

Local authorities: €950,000

Resettlement: €500,000

National sporting bodies: €470,000

Employment for People from Immigrant Communities project: €390,000

Immigrant Integration Fund administered by Pobal: €280,000

Buried in the small print of the budget was a significant amendment to the Social Welfare Act to exclude all asylum seekers from qualifying for social welfare benefits.

The Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) was quick off the mark in spotting this, and denouncing it as 'mean-minded, petty and divisive'.

According to their statement: 'The Government proposal would mean that no-one who had not been given a right to reside in the State could qualify for payments like Child Benefit, State Pensions and Carers Benefit. This would exclude people who had already spent years awaiting an asylum decision.

'There are already provisions under the Habitual Residence Condition to prevent so-called ‘welfare tourism’ and stop people getting benefits unless they have been here for some time and have established links here. (Download FLAC's paper on the habitual residence condition here.)
 
FLAC Senior Solicitor Michael Farrell said the measure would penalise children, persons of pension age and people caring for sick children.

'It will cause divisions in schools where asylum-seekers’ children who may have been here for a number of years will not be able to take part in school trips and will be marked out as different. It will set back efforts at integration.'

FLAC said the Government proposal followed a series of successful appeals taken by FLAC on behalf of asylum-seekers who had all spent years awaiting decisions on their asylum applications. In a total of nine such cases, the Chief Social Welfare Appeals Officer had rejected claims by the Department of Social and Family Affairs that no one in the asylum process could qualify for benefits.

Michael Farrell said the decision showed a cavalier attitude to the system the Government had established to hear social welfare appeals.

'When those tribunals showed genuine independence and made decisions the Government did not like, the Minister’s reaction was to change the law, not to listen to the valid points the Appeals Office was making.'

Watch out for more on this on the blog, Human Rights in Ireland.

FLAC has recently launched an online audio archive, featuring interviews with key people in its 40 year history, and describing the fight for access to justice in Ireland.

Earlier this year, I hit the roads on the campaign trail with some of the 40 immigrants who ran in this year's local elections. The end result of that is a pair of radio documentaries, in eight-minute and twenty-minute versions, called Candidates. The eight-minute version is to be broadcast on RTE Radio One on Saturday at 6.45pm in the Curious Ear slot (and can be heard online on that page) and the 20-minute version will be broadcast on RTE Choice in the near future. Earlier outputs from this project were a feature article and podcast for Le Monde Diplomatique and an article for the Sunday Tribune.

From Patrick Maphoso's activist independent politics on Dublin's northside to Anna Rooney's staunch support for the Government in Clones, this project aimed to chart the diversity of experience and opinion amongst an emerging group of politicians. Ultimately, the experience was a sobering one for many of those. "It will take a long time for people to get used to immigrants participating in the elections," said Maphoso, "but the first generation have to pave the way." In Letterkenny, Michael Abiola Phillips is also philosophical: "I won't be disappointed even if I don't get in this time around," he said. "It means I have to work harder."

This week sees Michael Collins perform two of his plays about Traveller life and culture in Dublin. On Wednesday at 1pm, he performs Mobile, a one-man show about feuding in the Traveller community, at the Axis Ballymun (tel 01 883 2100). From Thursday to Saturday, at 2pm, he performs in his new play, Worlds Apart, Same Difference, at the Project Arts Centre (tel  01 881 9613), alongside Nigerian-Irish actor Tiny James. This play deals with the reaction in the Traveller community when a Traveller woman marries a Nigerian.

I interviewed Collins for the Irish Independent last week: see here. For more on Mobile, see here. These performances are part of Traveller Focus Week 2009. There doesn’t appear to be a website for the week, but there is a small amount of information here, and Pavee Point should be able to provide more.

Tiny James is an actor and comedian. His website is here (it features some of James's stand up routine, which dwells on immigration and multicultural issues).

The Vatican has recently hosted the sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, which prompts me to look at their online resources on the issue.

Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the congress is here.

‘Why not consider the contemporary phenomenon of migration as a favourable condition for understanding among peoples, for building peace and for a development that concerns every nation?’ he asked. ‘Migration is an opportunity to emphasize the unity of the human family and the values of acceptance, hospitality and love of neighbour.’

Benedict publishes an annual message for World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The archive is here.

Next year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees, on January 17, is dedicated to the theme of minors. There’s a video report on the Pope’s message (which was published in advance, in October) here and the full text here.

The Vatican has a Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. Within this there are resources on migrants, refugees, nomadic peoples, and others.

The Vatican website, however, is rather imposing and text-heavy.

The World Congress appears to have received little coverage other than in the Catholic press. A Google News listing is here.

The European lobby group network Migreurop has published an interesting statement on its website, to which I thought it worth drawing attention. They cite statements by Nicolas Sarkozy and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on the anniversary of the Berlin wall, and draw implications for what they term the 'militarisation' of Europe's borders in the 'war' against migrants, as follows:

Sarkozy: 'La chute du mur de Berlin sonne aujourd’hui comme un appel à combattre les oppressions, à abattre les murs qui, à travers le monde, divisent encore des villes, des territoires, des peuples.' (The fall of the Berlin wall echoes today as a call to fight oppression, to knock down the wall that, across the world, still divide towns, territories and peoples.)

Zapatero: 'No podemos perder de vista que hay otros muros en el mundo que deben caer.' (We can't forget that there are other walls in the world which should fall.)

Migreurop: 'Since it was set up in 2002, the Migreurop network, a collection of more than forty organisations on both sides of the Mediterranean, has been denouncing the imprisonment of migrants, the militarisation of the European Union’s borders and its policies of control and repression of emigration. Understandably, therefore, we wish to see in official declarations calling for walls to be knocked down, like Nicolas Sarkozy’s ’Berlin appeal’, signs of a turning away from what is in effect a war being fought against migrants. For too long, this war has shaped European Union migration policies, and it has caused thousands of victims...' Continued here.

Other resources of interested on Migreurop's site include maps of detention centres and links to other sources. There doesn't appear to be any Irish involvement in the network.

Readers across Ireland may be interested to note today's announcement by the Minister for Integration, John Curran of €499,300 in grants to local authorities to promote integration of immigrants. As this seems unlikely to be covered in detail elsewhere in the Irish media, and as some of this money will presumably find its way to cultural and media projects of interest, through local funding rounds, I thought it worthwhile to publish the figures here, as follows:

Clare County Council: €35,000

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council 62,500

Galway City Council: 45,000

Kerry County Council:  46,800

Kildare County Council: 40,000

Limerick County Council: 30,000

Mayo County Council: 30,000

Meath County Council: 45,000

South Dublin County Council: 110,000

Wicklow County Council: 15,000
 
According to the Minister, these grants will fund:
- the establishment of forums to enable local authorities to apprise themselves of immigrants' needs on an ongoing basis and to facilitate communication in both directions;

- the payment of small grants to local groups working on integration;

- integration strategy development;

- intercultural centres; and

- intercultural events.

The Minister previously approved a grant to Dublin City Council of €250,000 for integration measures. That was to cover activities including the expansion of the Tell Me More language programme; the Libraries Intercultural Programme; a digital  storytelling and multimedia project; an Ethnic Entrepreneurship Programme; an Anti Racism Discrimination Transport Campaign; a Dublin City Sports Integration initiative; integration dialogue
forums; developing monitoring mechanisms and indicators on integration at city level; and grants to local groups carrying out integration measures.

Some further details on that, including how to apply for grants, are here. I have sought further details from the Council but they have not been forthcoming.

'Sanctuary' is a series of short films comprising the stories of people seeking asylum in Ireland, produced by FOMACS and screening before main features at the Irish Film Institute throughout December. There's a preview here.

The 26 ultra-short monologues, all less than one minute long, are based on the true stories of individuals, and are performed by actors and writers.

Amongst the stories are George Seremba's account of escaping death in Milton Obote's Uganda, told by the actor himself, and stories of children being sent into exile alone, of people stuck in legal limbo in the asylum system, and of people triumphing over huge odds to make new lives in Ireland.

Sanctuary will travel to cinemas across Ireland in 2010, and has been produced in solidarity with Ice and Fire Theatre Company, UK

FOMACS has just released a DVD and booklet package, 'Undocumented in Ireland: Our Stories'. It comprises documentation and commentary on the stories produced in the ‘Undocumented in Ireland: Our Stories’ Workshop, which was the result of a collaboration between FOMACS and the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI). There is more on the digital stories themselves here.

In addition to the digital stories on the DVD the booklet includes:
•    A summary of the goals of the MRCI ‘Bridging Visa Campaign’ Group
•    An explanation of the collaborative methodology underpinning digital storytelling
•    A short updated biography of the storytellers alongside their individual scripts
•    A brief description of the weekly workshop written by the facilitator and creative director, Darcy Alexandra
•    A synopsis of what happens to migrant workers when they become undocumented
•    Excerpts and recommendations from the MRCI publication ‘Life in the Shadows – An Exploration of Irregular Migration in Ireland’
•    A list of cross-references and links for further exploration.
 

Dublin City University has recently partnered with a Dublin-based company, Channel Content, to produce a video-based training programme on 'Managing Workplace Diversity'.

The programme was launched last week by the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Seán Haughey who described it as an example of successful collaboration between universities and the business community, based on research in intercultural training was created through DCU’s leadership of a collaborative pan-European project entitled the European Intercultural Workplace (EIW). The programme addresses core diversity issues including food, religion, gender, body language and racism.

Channel Content describes itself as 'a learning and communications company that creates digital and social media to boost user access and engagement.' The company has a YouTube channel here.
 

RTE Prime Time last week reported on the issue of separated children seeking asylum, reporting that 396 children were currently missing from state care. The report was prompted by the release of a publication by the Children's Ombudsman on the issue, which focussed on the poor quality of the hostels where children are accommodated. That report, as well as a document comprising statements by separated children, are available here. There's a useful summary here. In an editorial, the Irish Times called the neglect of these children 'a festering administrative sore'. The Times's news report is here. This is an issue that has long been flagged by the Dun Laoghaire Refugee Project, a group which arose some years ago primarily in response to the large number of separated children then being accommodated in hostels in Dun Laoghaire. The photo here, by Derek Spiers, is from an early campaign the group ran, called 'Please Let Us Stay', seeking permission to remain in Ireland for former separated children who had 'aged out', or passed the age of 18.

I've had occasion to write about Western Sahara a number of times on Migration Matters. This week, there have been developments on two fronts worth flagging here. The leading Western Saharan human rights activist Aminatou Haidar is entering the second week of a hunger strike in Lanzarote airport, having been expelled by Morocco following a bizarre incident where she apparently refused to write her nationality as Moroccan on the landing card at the airport (as she arrived home from receiving the Civil Courage Prize in the US), and was accused by Morocco of renouncing her citizenship. The only regular updates on this situation appear to be in the Spanish press, such as El Pais, which has reported that the Moroccan authorities, contrary to their statements, had planned Haidar's expulsion in advance. I've written about this at more length here, and wrote previously about Haidar here. See also the photos here. For the Moroccan take on this situation, which also provides an update on US policy, see this article by a former US ambassador, now an advisor to the Moroccan government.

More positive news comes from Aziza Brahim, a Western Saharan singer from the refugee camps in Algeria, on the other side of the berm that divides Western Sahara, featured here on a number of previous occasions. This week, she was nominated for (but didn't win) the Freedom to Create Prize, in London. The prize was won by the Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who was interviewed by the Guardian here. The Sunday Times had a good overview of this year's nominees here.

From the Facebook page of Joe Higgins, I picked up this eye-witness account of the 254 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees currently moored in Indonesia, following a failed attempt to get to Australia to seek asylum. The report includes a letter from an eight year old, Brintha, which I have reprinted here.

'We are Sri Lankans, there were, kidnap, kill, gun shots and bombing. Because of that reason we lost our half family and we were Sri Lankan refugees and also we lost our properties and gutere. At that time we heard that Australia takes refugees in the country. So we got ready to go to Australia. We came to Malaysia. After two months we went to the forests. We got a hard life. For example: we got wet in the rain and drank muddy water. And also we live in middle of insects. And later we started our journey on the wooden boat. One day suddenly the engine stopped and the weather condition was bad. It shook a lot. And the engine was okay. While we were traveling to the Indonesian border we were arrested by the Indonesian Navy. We came to Indonesian habour of ‘Merak’. And we are waiting in the boat for one month asking Indonesian government to give us a solution. But still we didn’t get an answer. While we were arrested by the navy we asked the Australian Embazy so that lady said “you can go to the land” but we didn’t get down if we have done it we would have been in the ‘detention centre’ She was a big liyer... We had a hard life every where please gives us a solution.'

Two Seas TV is a South African tv production company which has recently set up an online social network for tv professionals working in South Africa or on Africa-related issues. They used SocialGO to set up the network - SocialGO allows you to set up a social network for free, quickly. Two Seas TV's own website is here.

Through Two Seas, I came across Nomadsland, an online forum for video on social issues. As they explain:

'What is NomadsLand? It’s a new destination built by nomads - professionals who have spent much of their lives traversing the globe – gathering, recording and sharing in our collective human experience. We are video producers, filmmakers, activists, nonprofit staffers and social entrepreneurs who are joining forces to curate, create and distribute visual media that raises awareness and support of worthwhile international projects and important global issues. As our logo indicates, we are squarely focused on media that addresses issues affecting the "base of the pyramid."

'We believe that online video – or what we refer to as "micro-documentaries" – is how socially responsible organizations and companies will tell their story in the age of Web 3.0. A "micro-documentary" captures the essence of a project and the characters that propel it in a way that a blog or a Tweet simply cannot.

'At NomadsLand, we aim to boost the signal and reduce the noise of video found on the Internet. On these pages, we are curating the best social issue video available on the web while creating a community for filmmakers and organizations to partner on original productions.'

There's a section of videos on migration, and you can subscribe to email updates.

Anybody interested in the potential of online video for campaigning and advocacy should look at these videos on health reform in the US. They're the finalists in a competition run by the Obama campaign spin-off organisation, Organizing for America, to solicit videos made by supporters.

Closer to home, the EU Commission recently sponsored a competition as part of the Darklight digital film festival in Dublin for one-minute videos on the theme of 'Democracy and Dialogue'. The winner was this beautifully produced short, 'Noise to Get Heard', by Alan Early, on the subject of gay marriage. 

Taking their title from an iconic 1968 rock sampler, 'The Theatre Machine Turns You On' is a weeklong sampler of theatrical experimentation from the next generation of theatre makers in Dublin, at the Project Arts Centre from December 1 to 5. Each night sees separate shows at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30 pm. Amongst them is ‘Asylum Speakers’, a piece of documentary theatre in which four performers tell the real stories of people seeking asylum in Dublin, developed in association with one of the UK’s leading documentary theatre companies, iceandfire, by director Tara Robinson and writer Christine Bacon. Iceandfire and Actors for Human Rights have developed a series of documentary plays, including 'Asylum Monologues' and 'The Illegals', which tour the UK to raise awareness.

Also on during the festival is a play called ‘The Cappuccino Culture’, a multilingual piece of documentary theatre exploring Dublin’s cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The festival is presented by THEATREclub, an emerging theatre company in Dublin, and an intriguing initiative called Exchange Dublin, a new artists' collective based on Exchange Street in Dublin's Temple Bar. What's intriguing about Exchange is that it's led by a group of teenagers and early twentysomethings, and was founded by Dylan Haskins, who's been organising arts and cultural events in Dublin since he was 16 or so. Read the interview with him by Jim Carroll of the Irish Times (on Carroll's blog) from earlier this year to get a glimpse of what's happening in the worlds of youth and 'DIY' culture in Dublin.

Publishing Perspectives (featured here recently) brings news from London of the 25th anniversary celebrations of Wasafiri, a magazine showcasing the best in international contemporary writing. They report:

'Wasafiri is a Kiswahili word and translates as “travelers.” Susheila Nasta [the editor] says the name was chosen “because many of those who created the literatures in which Wasafiri was interested have all been cultural travelers, either through migration, transportation or else in the more metaphorical sense of seeking an imagined cultural ‘home.’”

'The magazine’s journey reads like a short story you might find on one of its pages. In its early days, it was edited in various living rooms in London and Kent, while back issues were stored in an Islington pub... Today, Wasafiri is regarded as Britain’s premier magazine for international contemporary writing, and it continues to expand and break new ground within the international literary and publishing landscape.'

Wasafiri's home page describes itself as having 'continued to provide consistent coverage to Britain's diverse cultural heritage and publish a range of diasporic and migrant writing worldwide.' Wasafiri has 'consistently aimed to shift the contours of established literary canons and extend the borders of international contemporary writing, creating imaginative spaces and publishing some of the most promising new literary voices.'

Nasta tells the story of the magazine's birth and role here. She says: 'The best literary works – whatever the particular trajectories of the often mixed cultural traditions which inform them – are challenging precisely because they take us to the limits of what can be expressed, in forms which extend understanding and carry us to new vistas where hope and desire would like to reside. If we lose the ability to continue to cross frontiers, confront change, write the stories of the future, we may not only lose our way but also our humanity.'

The magazine has made a selection of the best writing over its 25 years available in a free download. Wasafiri is also on Facebook.

The latest Migration Information Source newsletter from Kirin Kalia at the Migration Policy Institute has a useful overview of coverage of the situation of asylum seekers in Australia. I have reprinted it here:

Boatloads of asylum seekers headed for Australia made headlines nearly a decade ago. The response of the government then was to process them on island territories or persuade Pacific Island countries like Nauru to accept them while their claims were being processed (see the Australia country profile).

A new wave of asylum seekers in the past year, most of them from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, has set off a new public outcry. The issue recently reached a boiling point when the Oceanic Viking, an Australian customs ship that had rescued 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers in international waters, attempted to bring them to Indonesia for processing in mid-October.

In a standoff that lasted nearly a month, the Sri Lankans refused to come ashore in Indonesia, saying they wanted to be taken to Australia. Last Friday, 22 of the Sri Lankans agreed to enter an Australian-funded processing center in Indonesia after the Australian government essentially promised them their claims would be fast tracked. They could be resettled to Australia, but the government has made no guarantees (see the ABC News story)

Australia's opposition leader has attacked the government's offer, saying it will only encourage more human smugglers. The Australian government's attempts to reach a broader agreement with Indonesia on human smuggling had another setback Monday when Indonesia's president postponed his visit to Australia. In addition, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admitted his staff were involved in the asylum-seeker deal, but he maintained he had no prior knowledge of it (see The Age).

According to provisional statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of asylum seekers in Australia increased 27 percent in the first half of 2009 (2,501 claims) compared to the same period in 2008. The 2009 level remains well below those Australia experienced in 2000 and 2001.

For more on how Australia and others, including the United States and the European Union, approach migrants who arrive by sea, see MPI's report The New Boat People.

The MPI's website is here and is on Facebook here.

This week we launch a redesigned Migration Matters newsletter, and are sending it out to our entire database. If you have received the newsletter and wish to remain subscribed, there's no need to do anything. If you wish to subscribe, go here. If you wish to unsubscribe, please follow the link at the top of the newsletter.

Migration Matters is an online report on how the media covers and documents migration issues. The newsletter contains a précis of the week's reports, and is published each Friday.

Migration Matters is a project of FOMACS, the Forum on Migration and Communications. It is edited by Colin Murphy.

If you know of any media that we should be reporting, but haven't, do let us know. Contact us with your thoughts or suggestions at migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

The latest report from Fortress Europe records 33 border deaths in September: 25 of whom died in a shipwreck that occurred in the high sea off the Moroccan coast on the route towards Spain, on 19 September, with eight others killed by the shots fired by Egyptian police at the border with Israel, they report.

'Some days after the Perejil shipwreck, a little more information surfaced. There were 19 men and 17 women from west Africa on board, with four babies born during the journey, in Morocco, whose age was between one and three years. Out of 17 women, at least eight were pregnant. 16 were Nigerian, aged between 15 and 25. One of the young women was a 22-year-old Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The majority of the men were Nigerian, except for two Senegalese and a Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The dinghy was heading towards Cádiz. At three in the morning, the first call for help went out. Someone living in Spain received the call and warned the emergency service. When the rescue services arrived it was too late; the dinghy had capsized at sea. Eight corpses were recovered (a 25-year-old Nigerian man and seven young women, Nigerian as well, aged between 16 and 24, four of whom were pregnant). There were 11 survivors: seven young Nigerian men and four Nigerian women. Those missing at sea were 17. The survivors were taken back to Morocco, to Tangiers harbour, from where they were expelled the following day and accompanied back to the Algerian border, to Oujda, from where it was assumed that they had entered Morocco.'

I reported from Oujda on a similar story last year, and later, in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the north Moroccan coast, heard more accounts of the long and dangerous journeys made to get into Europe.

Also on the Fortress Europe website, which now houses a substantial multimedia archive:

The Northern Jungle. Reportage from Calais and London. A documentary by Vincent Nguyen and Jean-Sebastien Desbordes (in French), with the voices of Eritrean refugees, trucks drivers, smugglers and social workers met along the route.

A review of border deaths in the first six months of 2009

Sent back to Libya: Exclusive Photos from Paris Match of the return of 90 people, shipwrecked while crossing the Mediterranean, to Tripoli by the Italian coastguard patrol boat that rescued them.

Currently touring the highlands and islands of Scotland is the Africa in Motion film festival. The festival runs each year in Edinburgh in late October, and this year has followed that with four 'mini-festivals' in New Galloway, Isle of Skye, Drumnadrochit and Lerwick. The rural tour programme is here.

'By working alongside established rural film venues,' they say, 'we hope to establish a broader platform to expose issues as well as challenge conceptions of the African continent and African cinema.'

The programme for the full festival, which is the biggest African film festival in the UK, is here.

Of particular interest is the film 'Come un uomo sulla terra' (Like a man on earth). According to the blurb: 'In 2005, a law student from Addis Ababa fled Ethiopia to escape violent political repression, setting off for Libya across the desert border. Once in Libya, he attempted to make his way to the Mediterranean, only to be caught by one of the numerous criminal gangs that control the route. After many ordeals he was betrayed by the gang to the Libyan police, and deported back to Ethiopia. Having eventually escaped to a refugee camp in Rome, this film is his attempt to bring together his own story with those of the many other refugees who have suffered in their attempts to escape brutality at home, stories of great suffering and great dignity. 'Come un uomo sulla terra' is a journey of pain and dignity, through which Dagmawi Yimer voices his memories of unthinkable human suffering to denounce a tragic political and humanitarian situation.

More on the film, including a clip, on its website, here.

Professor Alessandro Triulzi from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, who worked as a producer and researcher on the film, gave a seminar on the research context of the film at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

The festival's Facebook page has more information on individual films and activities.

Photoinsight is a website showcasing and archiving multimedia responses to 'forced migration'. Run by John Nassari, an artist and academic at the University of East London, it's well worth a look. The design of the site appears curiously static in the Web 2.0 era, but it proves to be an understated but effective curatorial form: see Nassari's photographic and audio exhibition on the Greek Cypriot community in London here and one exhibit from that here. Amongst the many other works on the site is Perry Ogden's 'Pony Kids', documenting traveller children and their horses at the horse fair in Dublin. Ogden went on to make the drama-documentary style film 'Pavee Lackeen' about a young Traveller girl in Dublin. There is also a collection of essays and an introduction to postcolonial theory, amongst other resources. The website's main aim, they say, 'is to create a resource of visual and written work which addresses ethnicity, identity and cultural difference. Its purpose is to share multi-disciplinary research in the field of refugee studies. To create a resource of art and theory which explores issues of exile, memory, home and identity in the context of forced migration.' More on John Nassari on Pilot, a curatorial archive, here. 

Thinking laterally, this might be of interest to Migration Matters readers: a lecture on issues of heritage and the dispersal of cultural artifacts by the director of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis. The lecture is titled ‘Collections present and absent at the new Acropolis Museum?’ and is on next Wednesday in Dublin at 6.30pm in the Ceramics Room, National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street. This is the annual Irish Museums Association James White Lecture. (Admission is free, but booking essential.)

Dimitrios Pandermalis has been Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1979 and is internationally known for his lectures on classical archaeology. From 1996 to 2000 he was a national member of the Greek parliament.

The new Museum of the Acropolis, designed by Bernard Tschumi, the renowned Swiss architect opened in June this year, and is located 300 yards south of the Acropolis hill, where the 134-year-old original museum still stands. The new glass-marble structure faces the Acropolis, providing a view of the Parthenon Temple and other key structures. The museum is mounted on roller bearings so the structure and contents will be protected from earthquake tremors. The project was a multicultural enterprise drawing on glass crews from Germany and the UK and concrete workers from Albania, India, Russia and Greece. The new museum echoes the ascent to the Acropolis with the top floor displaying the friezes of the Parthenon. Copies have been put in place of the parts of the friezes that are housed at the British Museum, the original artworks having been taken to London in 1801, by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.

There's an interview with Pandermalis, along with extensive other information on Elgin, on the site Elginism, and video of a talk by Pandermalis on Fora.tv, 'the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences'.

Booking contact details: (01) 4120939; office@irishmuseums.org; www.irishmuseums.org.

Watch this. It's a short video animation titled 'Boot racism out of football', made by Bruntsfield primary school in England and hosted on the Irish Show Racism the Red Card campaign site. Gorgeous, witty, very smart.

Show Racism the Red Card is a campaign seeking to harness the profile of sport to educate against racism, and supporting programmes encouraging integration through and within sport. One current initiative is the Online Anti-racism Creative Competition, which seeks to engage schools and youth services through producing multi-media artwork and entering it online. There is an education pack with DVD, clips from which are also available online, and young people are asked to produce a piece of art - whether a painting, photo or written article - on the themes of the DVD. There is another short video here, an example of a video entry to the competition. There's also a downloads section on the site, and a Facebook page. More on this subject to follow.

Show Racism the Red Card leads me to the anti-racism resource on teachers.tv, a British site. Teachers.tv is an online video resource and has an extensive selection of videos on themes of racism, integration, asylum, etc. There is an interview with the Watford player Al Bangura, about his childhood and how his life has changed since arriving in Britain as an asylum seeker, here. (Alas, these videos are not available to view outside the UK though there is a brief text summary of the interview.) The British Show Racism the Red Card campaign is here. The campaign has a number of films available. There's a trailer for their film on Islamophobia here. Teachers TV programmes are also available on Sky 880, Virgin Media 240, Freesat 650 and Freeview 88 (4-6pm) and through iTunes U.

As I write, on Friday afternoon, Joe Duffy's 'Liveline' programme on RTE Radio One is discussing the theatre show 'Adolf' which opened last night in Dublin. The play is a one-man show based on Adolf Hitler by Pip Utton in which Utton plays Hitler, in the first half, and then plays a contemporary racist character in the second, making racist jokes, etc, with apparently the intent of provoking the audience to reflect on the enduring risk of fascism and racism.

The theatre director Peter Sheridan was in the audience and, shortly before the end, interrupted the performance to shout out 'Tolerance, tolerance' and left. There were other walkouts. Sheridan and another woman talked to Duffy on air, and argued that the play apparently had the effect of simply repeating (and thereby endorsing) the sentiments of the characters, rather than satirising them. 'When you're dealing with material this provocative and this incendiary you'd better be absolutely sure that you've got the balance right, and this show hasn't got the balance right,' said Sheridan. Utton came on air to defend the show.

Utton has been touring the show for over a decade, including playing three times in Berlin, and has received strong reviews, including in Edinburgh. Utton was interviewed at some length on Newstalk's 'Culture Shock' programme last night (which doesn't appear to be available to listen back), and came across as a sensitive and thoughtful writer-performer. There's a video clip of the play, which I haven't yet seen, here.

I've recently come across a new online/email magazine in the US, which I thought worth mentioning here. 'Publishing Perspectives' purports to be something of an online trade paper for the publishing industry, but in fact is a much broader-themed resource, dealing with questions of media and literature more generally. The magazine publishes one lead story daily, online and via email, with 'bonus material' and 'global updates' alongside. It's published by Edward Nawotka, who did doctoral work at UCD in Ireland in the 1990s (where we knew each other) and is now based in Houston, Texas. It strikes me as a particularly clean and effective example of online publishing, combining print and low-fi video in an accessible but uncluttered format. Material of particular interest to readers includes:

An interview with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on 'straddling continents'.

An interview with Anita Diaman, author of 'Day After Night' which tells the fictional story of a group of young women who escaped Nazi Europe for Palestine, only to be detained in a British run camp for illegal immigrants.

A report on Mike Kim's book 'Escaping North Korea', the story of Kim's efforts to help North Korean refugees cross the border into China. Kim was also interviewed on BBC World Service's 'Outlook' programme. See also Kim's own site.

The civil liberties monitoring organisation Statewatch has highlighted a number of reports of interest to Migration Matters in recent bulletins. These are:

1. A FRONTEX (EU borders agency) report on 'The impact of the global economic crisis on illegal migration to the EU'. The report seeks to draw conclusions based on the decrease in the numbers of undocumented migrants reaching the EU (or attempting to do so) and the economic crisis in the EU leading to fewer job opportunities.

2. 'Spooked! How not to prevent violent extremism' by the Institute of Race Relations in the UK. An excellent report and critique of the counter-terrorism Prevent programme from the IRR, according to Statewatch. To quote: 'There is strong evidence that a significant part of the Prevent programme involves the embedding of counter-terrorism police officers within the delivery of local services, the purpose of which seems to be to gather intelligence on Muslim communities, to identify areas, groups and individuals that are ‘at risk’ and to then facilitate interventions, such as the Channel programme, as well as more general police engagement with the Muslim community, to manage perceptions of grievances.'

"The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to risk losing funding and facing isolation as an ‘extremist’, while those organisations which support the government are rewarded. This in turn undermines the kind of radical discussions of political issues that would need to occur if young people are to be won over and support for illegitimate political violence diminished. The current emphasis of Prevent on depoliticising young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive because it strengthens the hands of those who say democracy is pointless.'

3. An online news report on Der Spiegel on the acquittal of the Cap Anamur crew in Italy. On 7 October 2009, a Sicilian court acquitted the former chair of the human rights organisation Cap Anamur, Elias Bierdel, his former captain, Stefan Schmidt, and the first officer of the ship, Wladimir Dschkewitsch. In 2004, the three had rescued 37 refugees off the Italian coast from distress at sea and helped them to land in Sicily. They were then accused of and prosecuted for assisting in illegal entry. They faced the possibility of four years imprisonment and a fine of 400.000 EUR. The organisation Cap Anamur and the German asylum rights organisation Pro Asyl had started an international campaign for justice to acquit the three and have reacted positively to the decision.

4.'The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a Global View', a working paper by the Global Detention Project, a Geneva based institution that seeks to map the use of detention as a response to immigration. Readers may also have missed this quote from Silvio Berlusconi, featured on the homepage of the Global Detention Project: 'I think it is much easier to examine individual situations in the country of origin, otherwise they [irregular immigrants] come here and go to a camp which, I should not be saying this, is very similar to a concentration camp.'

This just in from ArtPolonia: If you missed the performance in September of the experimental theatre performance, based on the post-Kantor Minimal Art theatrical method, 'The Boot's On the Other Foot', you can see it tonight, Friday 30 October at 7pm in the Tivoli Theatre. It's part of 'The Destructors Manifesto' Festival, billed as 'a night with a twist, from great bands, fantastic art exhibitions, short film tents and much more'.

Also upcoming from ArtPolonia: Lutosphere experimental music concert, November 30, Liberty Hall Theatre. Poland’s most celebrated musicians present their daring and innovative interpretation of works by Witold Lutosławski, Poland’s most renowned composer of the 20th century.

An 'x-ART market' will take place in the Centre for Creative Practices from December 4 to 20, with arts, crafts, music and performance. Artists interested in presenting their works for sale at the market should email info@artpolonia.org by November 22.

With all the talk here of the recent Dublin theatre festival and fringe, I ommitted to mention the show that most affected me, because in the throes of the festival I missed its relevance to Migration Matters. 'Silver Stars', a song cycle about the lives of older, gay, Irish men, was most obviously about being gay - but it was also, critically, about the experience of emigration, for many of the stories told were of men who had been forced to leave Ireland. Based on interviews by the musician Sean Miller, the show was put together by the innovative young theatre company Brokentalkers. (Miller plays a one-off concert in Dublin at the Project tonight, which will feature some of the (gorgeous) songs from 'Silver Stars'.)

I wrote about the show in the Irish Independent; it was also reviewed in the Irish Times. Brokentalkers' Facebook page is here. 'Silver Stars' has been invited to play at the Under the Radar festival in New York in January. I have little doubt that, once the American press gets word of it, it will become a sensation. In fact, the show is absolutely un-sensationalist; but the combination of its narratives of emigration to the US and self-empowerment with its sexual politics, Irish origins and sensitive deployment of cutting edge theatrical practice seems to me likely to be very well received in New York.

'Migrations, Exile' is the theme of a talk next Friday (November 6) as part of the Cervantes Institute Festival of Literature. The discussion will feature the authors Antón Castro, Marifé Santiago Bolaños, Marina Oroza, José FA Oliver and Gerald Dawe and will be moderated by Catherine O’Leary.

The festival is titled 'Rucksacks and Suitcases: Mutant Geographies' and the various events tackle the themes of travelling, exile, migration, tourism, pleasure traveling, journeys, and travels to the past and to the future, with writers from Cuba, Chile, Ireland, Argentina, Germany and Spain. Click here to download the programme. The festival runs from Thursday 5th to Saturday 7th. Other events are:

Thursday, 6.30 pm: Rucksacks and suitcases: opening talk

Friday, 10.30 am: A suitcase for an island: talk

Friday, 2.30 pm: Screening of the documentary, 'Even the Olives Are Bleeding' about the Irish in the Spanish Civil War

Saturday, 12 pm: Return and writing: literary brunch.

The Cervantes Institute is a Spanish government-funded institute to promote and spread the Spanish language and Spanish and Hispanic-American culture. Its head office is located in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, author of 'Don Quixote'.

Following last week's special report from the Western Sahara refugee camps, my article for Le Monde Diplomatique on Aziza Brahim and her music will be online here in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here are some further thoughts on Western Sahara, migration and the media...

‘Africa’s last colony’ was how one of the authorities on the Western Sahara in English, Toby Shelley, described the country, in his sharp and accessible book, 'Endgame in the Western Sahara'.

Having reported from the colony/country/disputed territory last year (in an article and a radio report), I had the opportunity to visit the territory of the Western Saharan government-in-exile, the Polisario Front earlier this month. Their ‘territory’ encompasses a series of refugee camps in Algeria, in the desert near the Algerian city of Tindouf.

‘Desert’ is in no way a euphemism: is unremittingly hot and utterly barren, compelling and very beautiful in its way, but land that feels viscerally hostile to human beings. Yet the Sahrawi people have lived there – not through choice – for 34 years and counting, and have built a functioning (though perhaps barely) polity there.

One of the ways they have managed to do so, it seemed to me, has been through using migration as a strategy for development and empowerment. The Sahrawis are a nomadic people by origin and nomadism is still practiced to some extent form the camps, with people leaving the camps for periods in the ‘free zone’ that is the area of Western Sahara occupied by the Polisario (east of the berm built by Morocco securing their occupation of the core territory). In the years since their exile, however, it might be fair to speak of a globalised nomadism.

The Sahrawis are a highly travelled people. Young people go abroad for secondary education, and often for third: Cuba and Algeria appear to be the leading destinations. During the week I was there, a van drove through the camps at night broadcasting public announcements via a loudspeaker: “Children going to study in Libya are to be assemble with their bags in the morning.”

Some Sahrawis travel to Mauritania, and from there can travel into the ‘occupied territory’ of Western Sahara – though this is officially disallowed by the Polisario. Others, like the singer Aziza Brahim, obtain Algerian passports (with the backing of the Polisario) and can travel internationally. There are large numbers of Sahrawis living in Spain, where many have obtained residency and citizenship through former colonial ties.

According to some sources, those who have gone to Cuba for their education - such as Aziza Brahim - have often found it difficult to reintegrate into life in the camps upon their return. Students who study closer to home maintain closer contact and have better access to the few formal opportunities in the camps, in administration and basic services. Those who go to Cuba often spend five years and more away from home without visiting, and typically form very tight bonds amongst themselves. In the past, some of these have subsequently not resettled into life in the camps, and have sought opportunities abroad. One group of young intellectual emigrés formed a group called the Generación de la Amistad Saharaui to promote their culture internationally (modelled on the pre-civil war Spanish Generación de la Amistad); more recently, some of these have been 'reincorporated' into the official Polisario international network and appointed as cultural ambassadors. They keep a blog here.

With regard to media, the camps are poorly served. There was no evident newspaper or magazine circulation; there is a Polisario radio station and a recently inaugurated and extremely basic tv station - the station is, however, a smart user of limited resources; we met one correspondent at the airport, who travelled on his own, filming his own reports and filing them each evening over the internet. Internet access was very sparse, though the proliferation of mobile phones suggests that, once data packages become more accessible, internet access will quickly become widespread, which is likely to provoke innovative usage of already existing online media and have interesting cultural effects. 

Internationally, Spain is the sole western country that pays extensive attention to Western Sahara. An online campaign, Todos Por El Sahara, has been supported by the actor Javier Bardem and singer Manu Chao have recently supported a campaign, Todos Con El Sahara. An indicator of the relative indifference to or ignorance of the story is the fact that the New York Times online lists just ten articles in ten years on the story. The most recent, last year, focussed on the controversial issue of criticism of the Polisario regime by former refugees in Algeria who fled to Western Sahara.

October 16 marked the anniversary of the International Court of Justice ruling in 1975 that Western Sahara had the right to self determination, as was noted in a letter to the Guardian. Less politically, this travel blog post on the Guardian leads me to Listen to Africa, the online record of a two year journey across Africa by bicycle, recording African sounds and voices, which crossed through Western Sahara earlier this year. Enjoy.

I've just returned from a week in the Sahara, in the Polisario Front refugee camps in Algeria. The week was spent working on a documentary, which has just finished production, about the Western Saharan exile singer, Aziza Brahim.

Earlier this year, director Donal Scannell and I joined Brahim and her Spanish group, Gulili Mankoo, on tour in Spain (during which we stopped off at the Roman ruins in Merida and captured this spontaneous performance - also posted below); more recently, we were in London for the African Music Festival (for which the Independent interviewed Brahim). Last week, we travelled with her to visit her family in the refugee camps, on her first visit home in three years.

Brahim’s mother was pregnant when she fled Laayoune in Western Sahara, with her family, in 1975, following the Moroccan invasion. (The BBC's overview of this conflict is here.) She was born in the refugee camps, and grew up there, before being sent to Cuba for secondary school, along with many of her peers. She refused the option of pursuing third level in Cuba, and returned home to the camps, where she started to perform, taking first prize in an annual singing competition. She moved to Spain to pursue a singing career; there was an early hiatus, during which she quit, but when she started singing again more recently, she quickly found a measure of recognition and success both in Spain and on the world music circuit.

Her digital release ‘Mi Canto’ topped the world music chart on emusic.com and she has rapidly acquired status as a cultural representative of the Saharawi people, alongside the renowned singer Mariem Hassan.

Scannell recorded Brahim’s September concert in London, and on Thursday last, it was given a public screening in one of the refugee camps, in a community hall. Though this screening was a largely spontaneous outcome of the ongoing process of making the documentary, it seemed to be one of some significance. Till now, Brahim had not had the opportunity to raise her profile, or to play her music, in the refugee camps. (Travel to the camps is complicated by cost – there are no direct flights – and by visa issues.) The public screening, which was coordinated by the Polisario Ministry of Culture, gave her the opportunity to firmly introduce her music to Polisario’s senior members and the Ministry of Culture itself, and to the Saharawi public.

The screening was publicised the previous night in the typical form in the camps – a loudspeaker announcement from a Ministry van. The screening took place in the morning, and the audience was almost entirely women. Those we spoke to spoke of being very proud of their compatriot, and of being excited to see Saharawi music being blended with foreign, modern influences, such as rock and blues. The official response was very enthusiastic, and they hope to replicate the screening in the many community halls throughout the camps, and hoped to broadcast it on Polisario radio and on the recently started tv station.

There is a skeleton market economy in the camps, which has arisen only in recent years, and there is no electricity supply: people use solar panels to charge car batteries, which they use to power lights and basic appliances such as a music player. Thus there is no formal market for distribution of music. What has arisen instead, though, is a bootleg, digital market: digital music is downloaded onto mobile phones, often from privately-run kiosks which also offer phone services, and people then pass these files from mobile to mobile via bluetooth.

Accordingly, Scannell made a low-res version of the Merida music video of Brahim and gave it to Brahim’s younger family members; as we left the camps, this was already seemingly hopping from phone to phone, and seemed to have the potential for going ‘viral’, providing perhaps as much potential exposure as the more formal distribution and publicity of screenings and broadcasts.

There is an annual film festival in the camps, and Scannell was encouraged to present his film on Brahim for inclusion next year. In the meantime, Brahim has been nominated for an international human rights prize. More on these to follow.

A number of Brahim’s songs are versions of poems in Hassania, her native language (a dialect of Arabic) by her grandmother, an acclaimed Saharawi poet, Ljadra Mint Mabruk. There is an article on her (in Spanish) here and a video of her reciting here. Brahim’s myspace page is here.

Scannell received Irish Aid ‘seed funding’ (via the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund) to develop the documentary. (The seed funding strand is unusual – and very useful – in tv production funding, as it provides small amounts up front to allow a producer get started on a project, with almost no strings attached.)

Incidentally, Scannell came to Brahim’s music through that of the Touareg group Tinariwen, leading figures in 'desert blues'.

This time next week I'll file a further report on the interplay between migration and media issues in the Saharawi camps. Normal Migration Matters service - regular, shorter reports, will resume thereafter. As always, new readers can sign up for the email newsletter version here.

Colin Murphy

'Ideas worth spreading' is the catchy tagline of TED, an online collection of videos of talks by inspirational public intellectuals. TED is more than that - it started life in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym), but it is its more recent emergence as a prominent online video platform that is of more interest here. 

As they put it, they make 'riveting talks by remarkable people free to the world'. Currently on the home page is a talk by a remarkable writer, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie. Adichie draws on her own experience as part of the diaspora to speak of the hegemony of the Western worldview, the need to tell diverse stories and 'the danger of a single story'. Her talk is here.

TED held a conference in 2007 on the theme of 'Africa: The Next Chapter'. Those talks are here.

Of general interest, the site has a selection of short videos, 'Ted in three minutes', here and the top ten talks are here.

A belated note on a play in the recent Absolut Fringe festival in Dublin with the intriguing title of 'Jesus Has My Mom in There and Has Beat Her Up Real Bad'. This was a new play by Dee Roycroft produced by the well established Dublin company, Loose Canon. Roycroft's play was unconventional in style, merging diverse narratives and staged in a deliberately untheatrical way (now commonly referred to as 'post-dramatic' theatre). One of the narratives threaded through it was the story of two teenagers from Guinea, Yaguine Koïta and Fodé Tounkara, who stowed away on a flight to Brussels in 1999, and froze to death. They carried a letter with them to be read in case they 'sacrificed' themselves and were killed en route. This letter was widely published internationally. Addressed to 'Excellencies, Messrs. members and officials of Europe', it concluded, 'if you see that we have sacrificed ourselves and risked our lives, this is because we suffer too in Africa and that we need you to fight against poverty and to put an end to the war in Africa. Nevertheless, we want to learn, and we ask you to help us in Africa learn to be like you'. Roycroft's play succeeded in presenting their story in an unsentimental but arresting fashion, in an engaging if enigmatic production. However, it got a hostile review from the Irish Times, here. An article on the tragedy from the London Independent is here.

This year's Polish film festival, Kinopolis, runs Oct 22-26 at the Cineworld Cinema on Parnell Street, Dublin, with 13 films. The festival opens with Little Moscow by Waldemar Krzysztek (reviewed here), the winner of a Golden Lion at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia in 2008. The festival concludes with the Cinema of Historic Transition - a film retrospective commemorating the 20th anniversary of the defeat of communism and the re-birth of democracy in Poland.

Renowned director Agnieszka Holland will take part in a Q&A on Saturday 24th, after a screening of 'Copying Beethoven' (trailer here), her most recent (2006) film. Holland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for her 1985 film, 'Angry Harvest', about a Jewish woman on the run in World War II. Her best-known work is 'Europa Europa' (1991), based on the biography of Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager who fled Germany for Poland following Kristallnacht in 1938, but who subsequently found himself enrolled in the Hitler Youth. It became one of the most successful German films released in the US, and won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay (according to Wikipedia). Holland collaborated with Krzysztof Kieślowski on the screenplay for his film, 'Three Colors: Blue'. Kieślowski's 'Decalogue X' (1988) will screen on Sunday 25th.

The programme is here and booking is here.

Today fortnight sees the start of the fifth annual Carlow Film Festival, running October 16 to 18. As well as the film programme, there is a symposium on October 17 titled 'Effective Collaboration: Instrument of Development in the African Movie Industry', featuring Afolabi Adesanya of the Nigerian Film Corporation, Susan Wamburi a film director and producer with the Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communication and one of Nollywood's most prominent/prolific directors, Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen. The screenings programme is here. During the festival, a call for submissions for 2010's festival will be announced. The festival director is Nigerian Ade Oke, who presents a multicultural show on KCLR radio station, The Rainbow. That leads me to a conference paper presented by the director of programmes at KCLR, Mags Murphy, on the potential of local radio to provide more accurate images of developing countries, in which she cites Oke's show. The paper was presented at the annual Cleraun media conference.

An apparent cookery programme might be a less obvious source of stories on migration, but then Hidden Kitchens is no ordinary cookery programme. Produced by the Kitchen Sisters, a leading American radio duo, the series explores the world of hidden kitchens and how communities come together through food. Being the US, many of these communities are immigrant in origin. See, for example, the episodes 'Birth Of Rice-A-Roni: The Armenian-Italian Treat', about how a friendship between a Canadian immigrant and a survivor of the Armenian genocide led to the creation of a popular San Francisco dish, or 'The Sheepherder's Ball: Hidden Basque Kitchens'. Short and sublime radio essays: one of their characteristic features is the lack of a voiceover, with all contributors introducing themselves. More than merely a stylistic device, this is indicative of a deeply democratic ethos underlying the Kitchen Sisters' work.

Political anoraks will thrill to the new Irish website, KildareStreet.com, a non-partisan site which 'aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected representatives in the Houses of the Oireachtas'. The site allows an easy-to-use search of the websites and transcripts of the Irish houses of parliament, the Oireachtas (comprising the Dáil and the Seanad). The Oireachtas has its own site, but this is more unwieldy.

A search today for 'immigration' brought up these results, amongst them (for example), a written answer by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to a question on an unnamed individual's application for asylum. You can receive email alerts every time a particular person speaks, or a key word (eg. asylum) is said in the Oireachtas.

The site is still in beta (ie. trial), and does not feature the same range of features as the British equivalent, on which it is based, TheyWorkForYou. This allows much more comprehensive analysis of individual MPs' records. This site is run by mysociety.org, a British charitable organisation that 'builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives (and) teaches the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives'. More about their work here.

One of the consequences of the international economic downturn has been a weakening in the commercial position of newspapers, and an apparent acceleration in the trend towards providing and consuming news online. One offshoot of this has been a gathering of forces amongst investigative journalists seeking to use the internet to pursue and publish their stories. The Center for Investigative Reporting in California is a long-standing non-profit investigative centre, publishing multimedia work.

Their mission statement is worth quoting at length: 'We are living in an age of upheaval, institutional collapse, and historic unforeseen change. And journalism is not immune. The only “business” protected by the Constitution, the business of informing the public, has been eviscerated in recent years. The role that journalism plays in a functioning democracy—informing the public and holding the powerful accountable—is at serious risk. Major issues affecting the very fabric of this nation and the world go uninvestigated. As we struggle to find solutions to two wars, climate change, immigration, a recession, and myriad other global issues, a thriving media is more important than ever.

'CIR is working to ensure that high-quality, credible, unique journalism does not die, but flourishes. Our innovative new model relies on in-depth collaboration with other news organizations, journalists, public policy organizations and universities, and fully exploits new storytelling technologies, to provide citizens—local and global—with critical, actionable information that impacts their lives. Important to this model is our search for new revenue streams that can help sustain high-quality journalism in a digital age.'

A portfolio of CIR investigations is here. Amongst them is a story from June this year, 'Immigration Courts Make Do With Limited Resources Despite Mounting Caseloads'. This was a collaboration with truthdig.com, a 'progressive' current affairs web magazine. Truthdig's list of stories on immigration is here

Cited in the above article is another piece in The Nation on 'secret courts' exploiting immigrants. The Nation's list of stories tagged Migration & Immigration is here.

Here at Migration Matters we find ourselves spending increasing amounts of time on online social networks, and not just poking people. Facebook still seems to be largely about having fun (during working hours), but there are other, smaller social networks dedicated to more serious matters.

One such is Africa Media Network, which describes itself as a 'networking community for people who are professionally involved in the African Media Industry'. You can sign up more or less immediately, and then contribute blog posts and start discussions. One discussion from earlier this year was on human trafficking, anticipating the impact of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

This network is hosted by Ning, a platform for creating your own special-interest social network. A quick search for social networks on Ning dealing with migration issues throws up Team Grassfire, a US network providing 'a place for conservatives to get informed, connected and engaged', and (for balance) freeDimensional, an international activists & arts community. Perhaps Migration Matters should be amongst them?

Another network of potential interest, though not using the social network form and somewhat clunky in its web design, is the AfricaNews network of African reporters. A search for contributions on migration issues produced this list.

Let us know about any interesting examples of social networks out there. Email migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

On tonight (Friday) and Saturday, at the Teachers' Club on Parnell Square, Dublin: Polish theatre director Darek Skibiński, of A3 Teatr stages an experimental production, 'The Boot's on the Other Foot', based on a workshop held with young Polish and Irish actors. The workshop and performance are based on the 'Minimal Art' method: according to the pre-publicity, 'Post-Kantor theatrical Minimal-Art aims to unearth the emotional and physical cohesion of the performers and the truth of the characters they present. These truths, and the truths of each intention and situation, get further tested through absurdity, deformation and a peeling away of the blurring pathos.' I have no idea what that means, but it's certainly intriguing.

This has been facilitated by ArtPolonia, a Polish-Irish cultural exchange centre in Dublin. ArtPolonia has just moved into a new venue, the new Centre for Creative Practices. For Culture Night, tonight, the centre will celebrate with an open day from 12pm to 11pm, with a programme of workshops and talks. There's more on culture night here.

Incidentally, the recent Polish production in the Dublin Fringe festival, 'Emigrants', was reviewed here. Meanwhile, I wrote a piece on Gerardo Naumann's play in the Fringe, 'A Useful Play', which used 'post-dramatic' techniques to explore the story of a Bolivian immigrant to Argentina, here.

The UK Refugee Week this year ran a 'Simple Acts' campaign with an online video component. Various people recorded videos of themselves defining the word 'refuge', and posted them on wordia, a website devoted to video definitions of words (ie. a searchable video dictionary). The Archbishop of Cantebury's definition is here. There was also a parallel YouTube channel. 

It's an intriguing idea, which would seem to have some potential for a 'viral' impact, with members of the public uploading their own videos, but the campaign does not appear to have got much traction, with just a dozen videos on YouTube. 

The campaign also included these written contributions on refuge from established authors.

Placing Voices - Voicing Places is a collaborative project exploring 'the meaning of heritage for 21st century Ireland', and there's much in it of interest.

One component is the Home Project, a project led by curator Ian Russell and playwright Ursula Rani Sarma, to explore the concept of 'home' against the changing landscape of the past, present and future of the inner-city Clanbrassil Street area in Dublin.

The words for the project are taken from a series of creative writing workshops run by Sarma with 10-12 year olds. A postcard was designed and was distributed throughout Dublin, and in July, a selection of statements about 'home' were chosen and stenciled onto both footpaths of Clanbrassil Street. (See the photos on flickr here.) The children's statements were collated in a simple booklet, which can be downloaded here.

Amongst those contributing are Abdi Salem Taher Haji, who writes that 'home is the place where you live with your family', and quotes his father: 'I used to live in a small village in Somalia. I like living near my son's school. Home is one place because I only have one.'

Placing Voices - Voicing Places explores what heritage means to people today and how heritage has a central role to play in the integration of a multicultural Ireland. It is a collaboration between University College Dublin, CREATE and Dublin City Council, bringing together archaeologists, artists, policy analysts, local government officials and sociologists to work with the diverse communities of inner-city Dublin in articulating and exploring the many heritages that are part of their everyday lives. 

Another of its publications is a zine on the history of Clanbrassil Street, which can be downloaded here. The latest issue of Create's newsletter can be downloaded here. It features an interview with Tadhg O'Keefe on histories and Heritages beyond the surface.

The American online journal McSweeneys is always fruitful territory for Migration Matters, and a quick look there points in some typically interesting directions...

The Voice of Witness project is a series of books of oral history from crisis zones, which was inspired by Dave Eggers's collaboration with Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng in 'What is the What'.

The Voice of Witness site leads me to this interview with the editor of the volume 'Out of Exile' in an attractive online cultural magazine, 'The Rumpus', and to this trailer for a HBO documentary on child migration, 'Which Way Home'.

Also on the site are links for Dave Eggers's latest book, a documentary account of the struggle of a Muslim family from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There's an interview with Eggers on altmuslim.com here. There are reviews of the book, which sounds fascinating, here. From Salon:

'Zeitoun is a story about the Bush administration's two most egregious policy disasters — the War on Terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina — as they collide with each other and come crashing down on one family. Eggers tells the story entirely from the perspective of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun.. At first, as a reader, I felt some resistance to this tactic — could the Zeitouns possibly be as wholesome and all-American as Eggers depicts them? — but the sheer momentum, emotional force and imagistic power of the narrative finally sweep such objections away.'

Not really related to migration issues, though certainly an interesting use of mainstream media to highlight social issues, 'Assignment Detroit' is a year-long project by Time Inc to investigate the predicament of the blighted US city of Detroit, as Roy Greenslade explains in the Guardian. Time Inc has bought a house in the city and tasked reporters from its stable of publications to spend time there and find stories. There's a smart, short vox pop video introducing the project, 'How to Survive in Detroit', here.

Looking ahead to the Dublin Theatre Festival, which opens on September 24, there are a couple of shows of particular interest. Foremost amongst them is 'The Blue Dragon' (October 7-10), the latest theatre work by the Canadian theatre and film maker, Robert Lepage. Lepage is of interest for two reasons: his work is steeped in multicultural references, and he is a pioneer of technology-driven innovation in the theatre, where he has attempted to create something of a fusion of cinema and live performance. Lepage is Quebecois who is entirely comfortable in English, and his early work explored bilingualism and Canada's bifurcated identity. He made his name internationally with 'The Dragon's Trilogy' in 1985, an epic which told stories of three Chinatowns in Canada. 'The Blue Dragon' returns to the hero of that earlier play, 25 years on, and finds him now living in China. Tickets & info here. There is an extensive interview with Lepage here.

I spoke to Lepage during the week for my theatre column for the Irish Independent, which I will post here once published. In the meantime, he referenced a recent French production called 'Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées)' which played in New York in 2005. This was a six-hour theatre work by Ariane Mnouchkine's Paris-based Théâtre du Soleil that explored the phenomenon of asylum and refuge, and Lepage said it was extraordinary.

According to the New York Times, the show was 'based on letters, interviews and testimonials collected by Ms. Mnouchkine and assistants from several years of visits to refugee camps and detention centers in Sangatte, France; Sydney, Australia; Auckland, New Zealand; and Indonesia. It was developed, as are most of Ms. Mnouchkine's productions, slowly and painstakingly, with the cast of 36 drawing on their own experiences in improvisational workshops. (Ms. Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil collective is a thoroughly international organization, with 25 nationalities represented.)

'The arduous process involved in the show's creation imbues it with the kind of specificity and vividness you normally find only in documentary film...

'Ms. Mnouchkine and her remarkable assembly of artists evoke the struggles and suffering of their subjects with a simplicity and compassion that allows the production to transcend its few aesthetic miscalculations. Despite its broad scope, "Caravansérail" is a profoundly intimate theatrical work that brings us into uncomfortable communion with the everyday anguish of men and women fleeing oppression and violence at home, only to discover that the indifference of the wider world can be equally brutalizing.'

According to the Guardian, 'Le Dernier Caravansérail opens with a vast storm, an army of stage-hands agitating an immense billowing stage-cloth. We are, a slide informs us, on the Kyrgyzstan/ Kazakhstan border. A tiny boat, packed with people who have paid their dues to smugglers, is attempting to navigate the crossing. The wind threatens to whip them out of the boat. Some founder. One makes it to the other side, only to be shot by a smuggler. He hasn't paid.

'What follows draws on hundreds of taped conversations, the migrants' stories of family, fanatic oppression back home, dangers in the camps, on railway sidings and on the road. These tales are brief, laconic and often surreal. An amputee in Sangatte receives his metal crutch and plays "All the lonely people" on it like a flute. A beggar slumped beneath a telephone on a Moscow street picks through his old medals: "Chechnya ... Afghanistan ..." A young woman returns from a demonstration to a living room in Teheran. She screams when her father hugs her: her back has been whipped raw by the faithful. Talibans cluster salaciously around a house in Kabul where a couple are making love.

'These scenes are played by a company of actors who, like the stories, originate from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Kurdistan and Russia. They play what dialogue there is in their own or each other's language, subtitled. The French philosopher Hélène Cixous accompanied Mnouchkine on her visits to the camps, and tried to write a play based on the stories. But that text felt too constructed and "aesthetic". In the end it was set aside, and the speeches and scenes were improvised.

'Le Dernier Caravansérail doesn't go in for economic or political overviews; instead, it confines itself to the real experiences of the actors and the inhabitants of refugee camps. The recorded voices of the original tellers punctuate the action, and what they say is striking. One woman, who was denied education in a fundamentalist theocracy, insists: "Both women and men must study. It's not right that only men study. In our religion, knowledge is a matter for all Muslims. In our religion, it's said that one must study and study as much as one can. We have to go on studying right to the edge of the grave." Such voices give the play the immediacy and intimacy of a radio documentary.'

There is another account of it here.

This year's festival has a strand of 'documentary theatre', plays created based on the experiences of 'real' people rather than fictionalised dramas. 'Radio Muezzin' (October 6-11) is particularly interesting. By the German company Rimini Protokoll, it tells the story of four of Cairo’s Muezzins as they challenge the Egyptian government’s decision to centralise the call to prayer, showing the devastating effect it will have for tens of thousands of lives. Tickets & info here.

Rimini Protokoll have previously brought some intriguing shows to Dublin. 'Cargo Sofia' took place in the back of a truck as it rolled through Dublin's Docklands, and its Bulgarian drivers told of their lives on the road. 'Call Cutta in a Box' took place, essentially, on the phone, as the audience had individual conversations with employees of an Indian call centre. I wrote about that here.

The company will participate in a post-show discussion on October 7, and the Festival is hosting a panel discussion on documentary theatre in the Samuel Beckett Theatre on October 10 at 4.30pm.

Immigrants are overwhelmingly choosing to stay put in their adopted countries, rather than return home, despite the impact of the economic downturn on employment, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute for BBC World Service. 'Migration and the Global Recession' reports that some migration flows, particularly illegal migration, are also down as would-be migrants are being deterred by reduced job prospects in countries that would previously have offered them better opportunities.

The report focuses on migration flows to and from the major migrant-destination regions of the world, including: the United States, European Union, Canada and Australia; as well as movement in major migration corridors: the United States-Mexico; United Kingdom-Eastern Europe; Spain-Romania and Spain-Morocco; and Gulf State flows from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and the Philippines.

The 130-page report provides data on migration, remittances, employment and poverty rates for immigrants and the native-born alike; and examines the policy changes some countries have enacted to suppress migrant inflows, encourage departures (including through recent “pay-to-go” plans) and protect labor markets for native-born workers.

The report also examines internal migration in China, and how the recession affected the 70 million rural migrant workers who returned to their hometowns for the 2009 Chinese New Year, in what amounts to the world’s largest annual movement of people.

The report can be download here. There's a related story on the BBC here.

A Kenyan TV company has boldly gone where very few have dared - or managed - to go before (reports Reuters AlertNet, a good source on 'humanitarian' issues): they have gathered rare footage of the Oromo Liberation Front and the insurgency they are fighting in Ethiopia's south. The Ethiopian government bars all access to this region and has tried to force the four-part documentary series off the air, but you can watch it on YouTube. The report is by NTV. It has has 22,500 hits on YouTube.

The Oromo Liberation Front has been fighting for self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call "Abyssinian colonial rule" since the early 1970s. It has been designated a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government. See Wikipedia and this and other reports on Refworld, which is UNHCR's online information database.

Architecture is one medium we have never yet featured on Migration Matters. However, a notification from the Forced Migration Studies Programme in Johannesburg of an upcoming guest lecture (on September 23) has alerted me to the work of the San Francisco architectural firm, Public Architecture. They have developed a design for a 'Day Labor Station' to provide facilities for the growing numbers of (mostly Hispanic) day labourers that gather at key point in US cities seeking construction and other work.

Public Architecture practices and proselytises for 'pro bono architecture'. The firm 'puts the resources of architecture in the service of the public interest. We identify and solve practical problems of human interaction in the built environment and act as a catalyst for public discourse through education, advocacy and the design of public spaces and amenities,' they say.

'Can't sophisticated design serve social justice? It can, and it should. The distinction between progressive design and popular design is a class prejudice—and a red herring. Public Architecture brings the values of design—formal innovation, intellectual currency, critical appraisal of the status quo—to bear on real problems in our communities.'

Their Day Labor Station 'is a simple, flexible structure [to be erected at] informal day labor locations. It is a sustainably-designed project that utilizes green materials and strategies and exists primarily, if not completely, off-the-grid. It provides a sheltered space for the day laborers to wait for work as well as greater community amenities and resources. Our design is a responsive one, addressing the needs and desires of the day laborers themselves, as our clients. As such, the structure will be flexible enough to serve in various capacities, including as a meeting space or classroom.

'Despite day laborers' contributions to key economic sectors of our society, they receive little in return. Their role in the informal economy has forced them to occupy spaces meant for other uses, such as street corners, gas stations, and home improvement store parking lots. A relatively small number of officially sanctioned day labor centers have appeared in recent years, but the previously mentioned informal gathering sites remain the norm. These sites are far from being ideal; their presence in spaces designated for other uses means that they often lack even the most basic of amenities (shelter, water, toilet facilities, etc).

'Conscious of the controversy surrounding day laborers, our goal is not to cast an opinion about public policy. Instead, we seek to fulfill our professional responsibility: to give day laborers a more dignified environment and to advance the debate about day laborers and the spaces they inhabit.

'The Day Labor Station project was introduced as part of the Design for the Other 90% exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York... However, this project is intended to be more than just a museum piece; we are actively working to locate a day labor site, which can serve as a permanent home for the first full prototype. Ultimately, Day Labor Stations will be deployed across the country.'

There is a gallery of images here, a radio debate on day labourers from NPR here, and a list of affiliated firms and organisations here.

Liz Ogbu is the member of Public Architecture due to speak in Johannesburg. She has an essay on the Day Labor Station project here. She writes: 'In proposing the Day Labor Station, Public Architecture is identifying the day laborer, not a municipal entity or a nonprofit, as its client. As such, we acknowledge their individual and collective voices: their realities, their needs, and their desires. The social structure that forms the underpinnings of their lives is not viewed as an appendage that will adapt to whatever structure is built, but instead an armature on which the design is based. With this perspective and with further research, and creative exploration, Public Architecture seeks to produce an actual product that provides an institutional spatial visibility to the day laborers and engages the debate around their presence in a new light.'

I wrote last month (see the Special Report on 21/08/09) about my recent trip to Angola, a country whose history has in many ways been critically shaped by migration. 'Angola After the War' is a one-minute documentary I've just completed, the first installment in an ongoing documentary project looking at the history of the town of Kuito. It is being entered into a competition in the Darklight digital film festival, which runs in Dublin from October 8 to 11. The programme is here.

This article from the LA Times investigates the facts behind an email chain letter about the impact of 'illegal' immigrants.

Reporter Hector Tobar wrote a sympathetic story about Mexican immigrants, and attracted an email calling him a 'crybaby' and citing statistics claiming that social services were being overwhelmed. He decided to check on the claims in the mail (which was being circulated as a chain mail). Here's an excerpt:

'What did I find? A stew made up for the most part of meaty exaggerations and spicy conjecture, mixed in with some giblets of truth. Two of the "stats" are the musings of a conservative op-ed writer. Another takes its information from a government "report" that is, in fact, a work of fiction...

'Here they are, from 1 to 10:

1. "40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. . . . This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card."

The source of this information seems to be a 2005 study by the Economic Roundtable on the informal economy in Los Angeles County. Its findings were reported in The Times and other papers.

But the chain-mail's author more than doubled the figures in that study, which estimated that 15% of the county workforce was outside the regulated economy in 2004. Illegal immigrants getting paid in cash, it said, probably made up about 9% of the workforce.

A later Economic Roundtable report, by the way, credited immigrants with keeping the local economy from shrinking in the 1990s.

2. "95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens . . . "

We traced this "fact" to a 2004 op-ed in The Times by Heather Mac Donald of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Mac Donald said "officers" told her about the warrants. She conceded that there were no such data in official reports but suggested the LAPD "top brass" was hiding the truth.

I called the LAPD's press office, which contacted the department's Fugitive Warrant Section. Officers confirmed that the statistics in item No. 2 and No. 3, which follows, don't exist.

3. "75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens."

We traced this figure to something circulating on the Internet under the name "the 2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants." The "report" contains similar figures for Phoenix, Albuquerque and other cities. But it isn't an actual government document. The INS ceased to exist in 2003, after the Department of Homeland Security was created...

4. "Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers."

Once again the "statistic" more than doubles the actual figures. According to a 2006 story in The Times, there were 41,240 Medi-Cal births to "undocumented women" in the county in 2004. They accounted for 27% of all births.'

It's a useful examination of how statistics can be distorted, misused and made up. Read the rest here.

Some general surfing this week threw up some interesting sites and insights, not related specifically to migration issues, but with the potential for exploitation by readers and interest groups.

Arts Audiences is a new Arts Council project being run by filmmaker and director of the Stranger Than Fiction documentary festival James Kelly. The project is looking at how the internet can be used by arts organisations to develop their audience ('Audience 2.0'...) and therefore is of potential interest to anybody producing creative media. More details here.

A post by James led me to this video, 'Social Media Revolution', on YouTube, which should be mandatory watching for anybody who isn't sure quite what Facebook is and why anybody bothers blogging. The video is a spin off of Erik Qualman's 'Socialnomics'.

More details on the figures cited, including sources, is here. The comments suggest that (as you might have guessed from the video) there is a level of slippage between the original data and the claims being made in the video. Take it as a piece of polemic rather than hard science. I think it's usefully provocative.

Arts Audience has some related, Irish-based information here. One impressive figure cited is that the Barbican arts centre in London generated £110,000 in ticket sales through a single mail shot to its email list (of 100,000 names) - a pound per email.

Searching for migrant-issues organisations utilising social media brought me to this article from the Toronto City News about LoonLounge, a Canadian initiative that describes itself as an immigration and settlement online community'.

('LoonLounge was created to improve the Canadian immigration process for the millions of people involved... By facilitating communication and centralizing member information, the purpose of LoonLounge is to empower Canadian residents, immigrants, and potential immigrants with the knowledge we need to build a stronger Canada together.')

There's clearly much more out there, though. Readers with their own experiences of using social media for either producing and distributing media, or for organising, are welcome to send on any links or information. Email me at migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org. As always, new readers can subscribe to Migration Matters here to receive the weekly email update.

Last week's 'Humanitarian Heads Up' from Reuters AlertNet looked at Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of people have returned home to the battle-scarred Swat Valley:

'Pakistan has been encouraging more than 2.3 million people to return to homes in the Swat Valley and wider northwest region which they fled in April when the government launched an offensive to retake the area from Taliban control.

'Those who have returned - and officials estimate over 80 percent have now gone home - face unexploded ordnance, sporadic militant attacks and a lack of basic services . Hospitals and clinics were looted, vandalised or destroyed in the fighting, and many health staff have not yet returned.

'Government officials have dismissed concerns from aid workers that returnees are at risk while the army conducts its mopping up operations, and say people help the army hunt down remaining militants.Aid agencies have, by and large, applauded the government's response to this crisis.

'But some say the return process may have started too early, with huge numbers returning in a short space of time - more than 1.3 million people have returned since the beginning of July.

'Meanwhile a lot of the displaced have experienced post-traumatic stress syndrome and many women have stopped breastfeeding because of mental stress , says Maria-Luiza Galer, country director for Merlin. 

'Some families will remain displaced over the winter because of ongoing fighting near their homes, says Manuel Bessler, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The newsletter contains a list of contacts in the region for media seeking more information or a report.

Pakistanis rally to support the war-affected – AlertNet

Fresh clashes in Pakistan's Swat valley; dozens killed – Reuters

Amputees bear lifelong cost of Pakistan's conflict – Reuters

INTERVIEW-Having baby full of risks in Pakistani conflict zone - AlertNet

INTERVIEW-Over 80 pct of Pakistan's war-displaced return home– AlertNet

INTERVIEW-Some Pakistan war displaced must winter in camps-UN - AlertNet

A Clash of Principles? Humanitarian Action and the Search for Stability in Pakistan – Humanitarian Policy Group

The Swat Conflict: An Arc of Instability Spreading from Afghanistan to Central Asia and Xinjiang - The Jamestown Foundation // Global Terrorism Analysis

In the Irish Times on August 29, Declan Kiberd wrote a provocative essay on contemporary Irish culture. He had some interesting points to make on the role of immigrants in Irish society and culture in recent years, and in the years to come:

'Sometimes, when a people are about to surrender a culture, outsiders come to its rescue. It was TS Eliot, a young man from St Louis, Missouri, who saved English poetry in the 1920s, abetted ably by other outsiders like Pound and Yeats. In the previous generation, the English novel had been reconfigured by an American named James and a Pole named Conrad – as it would be by Joyce in the next decades. All cultures which survive strongly do so because they are open to injections of new life from without.

'It would not, therefore, be altogether surprising if immigrant writers from Africa or Eastern Europe reopened a dialogue with Cúchulainn and Deirdre. They may well find inspiration and new meaning in these marginal figures, who exist still as buried memories of that landscape in which these newcomers are choosing to live...

'The Irish State was solidly established, but the cultural domain, in whose name the whole separatist agitation had been mounted, remained largely marginal, even tokenistic. The family, named as the basis of society in the 1937 Constitution, often functioned as an alternative to the social itself. By the last century’s end, despite the growth of the State, there had been a further shrinkage of the cultural “public sphere”. By then, most people owned cars in which they hurried through streets from one private experience to another. Gated communities emerged on the edge of towns, in which domestic dwellings got much bigger. It was often left to immigrants to become the most enthusiastic users of streets, parks, beaches, galleries – as if Old Ireland were retreating into privatised space. 

'To understand what a huge reversal this represented, one has only to think of Ulysses , in which “street people” , far from constituting a problem, are seen as vital to a full civic life. In the free circulation of persons through all of Dublin’s streets, a young poet can confront his own inner strangeness by taking a late-night bread-roll and coffee with a Jewish ad-canvasser. By the 1990s such meetings seemed less and less likely. Even though the streets of Ireland contained many migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, the literature produced in Tiger Ireland (with some honourable exceptions) seemed largely incurious about the Other. Instead of attempting a total portrait of a city or society, writers tended to focus on this or that sub-group...' Read the essay here.

Declan Kiberd is professor of Anglo-Irish literature at UCD and author of Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living (reviewed here).

This week's Migration Information Source e-newletter features a new country profile of Ireland, originally written by Martin Ruhs of COMPAS as Oxford, and updated by the ESRI's Emma Quinn. 

Some of the key points:

'If international economic conditions improve, large-scale Irish emigration could resume. There are some indications this may happen: emigration rates overall rose 25 percent between 2006 and 2008. However, net migration remains strongly positive.' 

I should clarify that headline: this is a post about Twitter, not an announcement that Migration Matters is climbing aboard the Twitter train (yet, anyway). It occurs to me that many readers may be slightly bemused by the rise of Twitter as a force, if not yet in their lives, in virtual word at least. And some may be skeptical. However, references to it have become obligatory for any self-respecting commentator on popular culture, and as a result is appears to be ubiquitous. I thought it time Migration Matters took a look.

The reason it's of interest at all is largely due to two events this summer. The elections in Iran and the death of Michael Jackson were the first global stories to shape, and be shaped by, Twitter as a new medium. In both cases, Twitter broke stories. In the case of Iran, Twitter itself became a force in the development of that story, as it became a tool for mobilising dissent, as well as reporting it. In the case of Jackson's death, though Twitter obviously didn't affect it, it did set the tone for the initial coverage, which echoed that of the death of Lady Diana in its effusiveness and emotionalism. (For more on Twitter in Iran, see here, and for Twitter and Jackson's death, see here.)

So what is it? Twitter is basically a refinement of blogging - ie, the habit of writing short notes about your life and publishing them on the web. Essentially, it's designed for people who want to process greater quantities of trivial information, more quickly - though, as Iran proved, that information needn't be trivial. 

You can sign up for Twitter in about two minutes here. Wikipedia explains it here and there's an article about how it works, and where it comes from, here. Of interest to anyone also wrestling with the challenge of producing online video will be this short guide to Twitter produced by CommonCraft, specialists in making three-minute educational videos. (I was very impressed by the style and concision of this.)

So, to Migration Matters: what's happening on Twitter of interest to us? A quick search of Twitter for 'immigration' yields these results, showing that there's plenty of people tweeting about the subject. Immigrations is a particularly prolific tweeter.

A search for 'migration' in the 'Find People' section yields these results. MigrantHistory is the Twitter page for the NSW Migration Heritage Centre, in Australia. MigrationMuseum is the page for the Migration Museum in Adelaide.

Very curiously, this search seems to be pulling up entirely Australian tweeters. A search for 'migrant' leads me to Migrant Rights, the twitter page of this organisation in the Middle East.

In short, there's plenty of action on Twitter. That said, Migration Matters won't be tweeting just yet. We're busy enough getting to grips with the blogosphere. 

Adam Curtis is a television documentary maker with the BBC whose next project is to be a documentary looking at the history of the West's relationship with the Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, as readers will know, is the scene of one of the worst contemporary displacement crises: some online media here and here (though this latter piece, from the Irish Times, is marred by its reliance on some of the tropes of reporting on Congo, and Africa generally). However, this report isn't about Congo, or really about migration issues. Instead, it's a look at Adam Curtis.

Curtis has made numerous influential documentary series for the BBC, specialising in the use of archive footage (Wikipedia has a list with links). More recently, he has been experimenting with online video and other innovations, specifically a collaboration with the pioneering British theatre company, Punchdrunk.

In the Sunday Times recently, Bryan Appleyard explained:

'Indulged by the BBC, Curtis nevertheless feels that many of his employer’s ideas — notably its obsession with “multi-platform”, involving the internet, mobiles, podcasts and so on — fail to correspond with reality. He’s a web sceptic, and the ideology of the internet is the subject of a future series. It occurred to him, though, that the BBC’s neophilia did suggest an entirely new way of making documentaries. Thanks to the iPlayer and other technologies, people can now watch programmes many times. Yet all Curtis’s training was based on one prime directive — keep it simple, they’ll only see it once. Now, why not let it be as complex as it needs to be?

'“I was marching round the BBC saying, ‘If we can watch films over again on iPlayer, then the form is going to change. We can start making more complicated, more involving films, of different lengths.’” So he suggested a series of experimental films, dispensing with most of the conventions of documentary-making. This being Curtis, they said yes, but then, when he delivered, they got jumpy and gave him his own website instead.'

The website doesn't appear to be fully functional at the moment. However, there are selections of Curtis's work on Google Videos (this link brings you to his recent five minute film, 'The Rise and Fall of the Television Journalist as Hero') and YouTube. There's a trailer for Curtis's latest film, 'It Felt Like a Kiss', with an article, on the Guardian site, here.

'It Felt Like a Kiss' involved a collaboration with Punchdrunk, and premiered as a theatre installation in Manchester earlier this summer. The Guardian's theatre critic, Michael Billington, reviews it here. (There are reports it may be transferring to London later this year.) I've written about Punchdrunk and the trend towards making theatre in unconventional spaces for my column in this coming Saturday's Irish Independent and will link to that here next week.  

The Sunday Times's Bryan Appleyard keeps a blog, 'Thought Experiments', here.

Many readers will know the feeling: a pile of old Irish Times papers teeters in the corner, threatening to overwhelm the living room. Family members demand that they be thrown out; you insist that you're just about to read them. Well, I finally tackled my pile at the weekend and amongst the articles buried therein was this piece by Fintan O'Toole on the Jewish-Irish editor and writer, David Marcus, whose death becomes the cue for a meditation on the nature of diasporic communities and cultural integration.

O'Toole writes:

'David Marcus’s passing reminds us of the extraordinary and disproportionately significant contribution to 20th-century Irish culture of the small Jewish community from which he sprang. That community, largely concentrated in Dublin, Cork and Belfast, was never much more than 4,000 strong. Much of it, moreover, had its origins in a single shtetl in Lithuania...

'The passing of David Marcus does remind us that the Jewish community in Ireland is in decline and that the riches it has created can no longer be taken for granted. And this in turn makes it appropriate to ask what the experience of this remarkable enrichment of Irish culture by a Diaspora community has to tell us for the future.

'Much of what it suggests is obvious but needs to be repeated. The first point is that paranoia about an indigenous culture being somehow adulterated or weakened by immigration has no relationship to reality. Like the Irish communities around the world, the Jewish community in Ireland significantly strengthened the indigenous culture, both directly through the work of its own members and indirectly through its influence on indigenous artists (both Joyce and Beckett, for example.) The second lesson is that crude notions of “assimilation” are wrong-headed for many reasons, one of them cultural. Why do immigrant communities make a disproportionately large cultural contribution? Because they are complicated. Simple assimilation seeks to flatten out complexities, to absorb all differences into an assumed norm (which is usually itself a fiction). This is the opposite of art, which lives in ambiguities and uncertainties and enriches the world by hovering between different realities. Immigrant communities need to be integrated (and the integration of Jews into Irish artistic, political, professional and intellectual life is a fine example to follow) but they should not be expected to cease to have another life of memories and meanings.'

Further resources:

O'Toole cites Dermot Keogh's Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Antisemitism and the Holocaust.

There is a website for the Irish-Jewish community here and a gallery of images of the Irish Jewish Museum here. The long-standing curator of the Jewish Museum, Raphael Siev, died last January. There are obituaries here and here.

On a related subject, O'Toole earlier this year wrote about a play by Conall Quinn that explored something of Ireland's Jewish history (albeit through a historical counter-factual), 'The Death of Harry Leon'. That article is here. I wrote about the play and its author here.

One of the most interesting aspects of my recent trip to Angola was the opportunity to witness the emergence of China as a prominent actor in Angolan, and African, development and politics. Current TV's roving correspondent Mariana van Zeller has a report here and there's a short overview on Current.com here. There's a substantial overview on Migration Information Source here. French journalists Serge Michel and Michel Beuret have recently published 'China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa', which was reviewed in the New York Times here, and featured on NPR here and on Democracy Now! here. Time has a photo essay here. BBC Online ran a series of reports on the issue in 2007, here.

Also at the Absolut Fringe (as Dublin's fringe festival is now known) are Polish company Wiczy Theatre with 'Emigrants'. According to the blurb, this is a 'cramped reality show with 1 camper van, 2 emigrants, and 11 spectators'.

'Down on Cow’s Lane you’ll see a battered Mercedes camper van sitting forlornly at the kerb. After you and 12 others cram into it, you’ll find two Polish migrant workers engaging in a faintly absurdist tragic-comedy. As you knock knees with them, the men, XX and AA, lurch from an existential debate about eating a can of dog-food to a boozy exchange of philosophies over a melancholy New Year’s drink. Based on Slawomir Mrozek’s famous 1974 play, this vivid play questions the motives of migration, from raw economic need to a much more nebulous yearning for freedom.' So they say.

That's at Cow's Lane from September 5 to 11, with two shows nightly at 17.30 and 19.30. Tickets here.

While immigration, diaspora and multicultural issues have been prominent in the theatre and fringe festivals in Dublin in recent years, it's not evident from the Fringe programme that this is the case this year. (Though it's not very evident from the programme what is happening in the festival, such is the enthusiasm for 'post-dramatic' forms and jargon.) In any case, there are two shows which, on the face of it, may be of interest here.

Edit Kaldor is certainly someone who has lived a migrant's life: an émigré from Budapest to New York, now living and working between Amsterdam and Brussels. She brings 'Point Blank' to the Fringe. Here's some information on it

'The definitive spy-ware performance - a voyeur's paradise. Kaldor invites the 19-year-old Nada to present her large collection of photographs - for years she has been observing people, taking 'spy-photos' of them, capturing their private moments. The core of Nada's interest is to trace the various life-strategies that people follow. Driven by curiosity, she becomes witness to a wide range of - at times excessive - human behavior. Together with the audience she autopsies the images, implications and patterns that emerge. She aims to get a comprehensive overview and reach the ultimate conclusion: the vision of a life worth pursuing.

'Edit Kaldor was born in Budapest. At the age of 13 she immigrated with her mother to the United States, where she lived for ten years. After receiving her degree in English and Theater at Barnard College (New York) and University College (London), she worked for 6 years with Peter Halasz (Squat theater/Love theater, New York), collaborating on numerous theater performances and filmscripts. She then enrolled at DasArts (the postgraduate performing arts center in Amsterdam), where she started making her own theatre pieces, which soon received international acclaim. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels and makes theater performances that tend to integrate the use of digital media, like Or Press Escape (2002), New Game (2004), Drama (2005), Point Blank (2007). In the past years she has been invited to perform her work in about 30 countries around the world.'

(Runs September 5-8 at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 6pm. Tickets here.)

As Irish emigrants docked in New York in the mid 19th century, some of the men found themselves drafted immediately into the US army - not just during the Civil War of the 1860s, but during the earlier war with Mexico that coincided with the Great Famine, 1846-1848. One large group of these, apparently largely forgotten here, went on to have a significant impact on the war, and are well remembered in Mexico. These were a group of 500 or so defectors from the US army, who deserted in protest at their treatment by US officers. They formed the San Patricios Battallion, fighting at every major battle in the war, and were ultimately defeated at Churubusco. Following that defeat, 47 Irishmen were executed.
Irish writer Larry O’Loughlin has written a play about these men, '100 More Like These', and it is about to embark on a short tour to the Electric Picnic (in the Spoken Word tent, on Sunday) and then Clifden (September 10), Belmullet (September 11), Longford (September 12), and Blanchardstown (October 16). September 10-12 marks the 162nd anniversary of the executions.

O'Loughlin writes about the play's genesis here. There is some video of a schools workshop by the writer and actor here.

Mark Day has also made a documentary on the San Patricios: information here, and a YouTube clip here.

Venue details:
The Station House Theatre, Clifden, Galway, September 10th
Aras Inis Gluaire, Belmullet, Mayo, September 11th.
Backstage Theatre, Longford, September 12th.
Draoicht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown, October 16th.

I've just spent a somewhat bewildering, but enlightening hour on Current.com, the website of the tv network of Al Gore. In the wake of the 2004 US presidential election, Gore decided to set up an independent tv network to compete with the networks that dominate (and have dumbed-down) US news. As he subsequently explained: 'One of the main reasons why our political system has not been operating very well until this (the 2008) election is the deadening influence of the television medium as it has been operated' (from this speech at the Web 2.0 Summit last year).

Current TV was launched in 2005, and features a combination of user-generated content, driven to the TV network via its online sibling, Current.com, and in-house productions. All material is factual. Viewers/users can contribute both documentary segments (called 'pods') and ads (with the possibility of getting paid if their work airs on the network), and can organise and join groups to follow certain subjects online.

Though the diversity of media, programming strands, groups and ways of participating initially is at first a little confusing - with the venture having spawned its own lingo - there is clearly good content there, and the online platform is a dynamic and accessible one.

Current's News strand is here.

The news groups are here, with a short article on the groups here.

(I don't see a group devoted to migration/immigration issues - perhaps an opening there for America's Voice, or one of the US lobby groups, to tap the Current community.)

The network's in-house documentary strand is called Vanguard, and airs 30-minute programmes and shorter follow-up segments. There's a programme on migration from Mauritania to Europe here and a search list for material on migration here. And more on Vanguard here.

In Ireland, Current airs on Sky Channel 183.

Finally, the FAQ section will be invaluable to those, such as myself, outside of Current's target demographic (15-34) who therefore sometimes feel that these people are speaking a slightly different language. For example: 'Current pioneered the television industry's leading model of interactive viewer created content (VC2). Comprising roughly one-third of Current's on-air broadcast, this content is submitted via short-form, non-fiction video "pods". Viewer Created Ad Messages (VCAMs) are also open to viewers participation.'

Over the course of 70 days earlier this year, two young American filmmakers undertook a cross-continental road-trip covering 20,000 miles. Along the route, they sought out and interviewed a series of individuals with stories to tell. The filmmakers were Austin Lynch (son of director David Lynch) and Jason S, and the result, a series of more than a hundred short online videos, under the title of 'Interview Project', is being presented online by David Lynch. The videos are being released every three days, with each focussing on just one person.

In an introduction, David Lynch explains the rationale behind the project as being, simply, 'a chance to meet these people'. 'It's so fascinating to look and listen to people,' he says.

As an example, here's their interview with Jim Carter in New Mexico.

This project isn't about migration in the sense in which it's commonly covered here, though invariably some of the stories told in it deal with migration across the US. I stumbled upon it while researching the camera I used on location in Angola recently (see last week's report for more), the Sony PD 150, which was used by David Lynch to make the feature, 'Inland Empire'. (He discusses the making of the film here.) However, in its emphasis on the integrity and inherent drama of 'ordinary' people's own stories, and in its smart use of online video and distribution, I felt it echoed some aspects of our own work at FOMACS and might be illuminating for readers.

Interview Project is also on Facebook.

Your correspondent has just returned from a spell in Angola, where I was filming a documentary with seed funding from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund of Irish Aid. One of the great themes of modern Angola history and politics is migration, and I wish to reflect briefly on this here in a special report.

In the first place, Angola was both the destination for Portuguese colonisers and the provider of a slave population exported wholesale during the 18th and 19th centuries. Angolan author Jose Eduardo Agualusa, now making waves in English-language literature thanks to belated translations of his novels, gives an elegant account of the final days of the slave trade in his epistolary novel, 'Creole'.

Angola was, of course, also a destination for missionaries - the Holy Ghost fathers (or Spiritans), who run some of Dublin's best-known private schools, maintain a strong presence there - and for colonial-era internationalist administrators and businessmen. Amongst them Roger Casement, who was British Consul in Angola from 1898 to 1900, from where he was redeployed to Congo, leading to his groundbreaking report on human rights abuses there under the rule of Belgium's King Leopold. (Casement would later be executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising.)

Portugal abandoned its colonies in Angola and Mozambique almost overnight in 1975, following a successful coup against the Salazar dictatorship, partly prompted by the army's frustration at the expenditure of men and money in the colonies. Fearing wholesale slaughter in the face of the rapid advance of three liberation armies, the Portuguese resident population also abandoned Angola: Ryszard Kapuscinski's 'Another Day of Life' has an unforgettable description of this exodus.

Amongst those I interviewed, one Angolan in the town of Kuito told how his father, a Portuguese settler, had left overnight in 1975, leaving his son (born to an Angolan woman, not the settler's wife, in one of the bairros) behind. They have never had contact since.

With independence, the country descended into civil war, from which it emerged briefly in 1992, to hold elections, which prompted a renewed and more ferocious war, and again, briefly, in 1994, and finally (and so far successfully) in 2002.

The most striking account of the country at war is Pedro Rosa Mendes's 'Bay of Tigers', an idiosyncratic account of this Portuguese journalist's journey across the country in the late 1990s. (I previously reviewed this, here; also available here.)

The war provoked huge population movements. The conflict moved hundreds of thousands of soldiers around the country, often leaving them abandoned in areas far from their homes when they were injured. Large numbers of Angolans sought refuge in Zambia in particular, largely associated with the UNITA movement. And hundreds of thousands were internally displaced. Some of these people resettled in peri-urban areas, particularly around the capital, Luanda (as documented by Development Workshop), which is now a hugely overburdened city whose bairros are apparently increasingly dangerous.

Others moved periodically, fleeing their villages as one army raided and returning when they could. In one village in Bié province, local elders told me how they had sometimes spent up to ten months living in the bush, seeking to avoid the bombardment and attacks of one or either armed forces, losing many of their community to sickness (such as malaria) or violence en route. And many sought refuge in temporary camps that arose around the inland towns such as Kuito and Huambo. In some of these sites that I visited, former camps have been formally converted into bairros, and the residents had replaced earlier hastily-built huts, often with roofs of plastic sheeting donated by aid agencies, with more sturdy and spacious (but still very poor) houses of adobe bricks and corrugated-iron roofs. In others, the camps were gone, the people returned to their places of origin (or absorbed into the towns), and markets had sprung up on the sites.

I worked in Angola in 2000-2001, and a large part of my motivation for returning, and filming, was to witness and document the free movement of people on the roads. During the war, most inland towns were effectively islands, with land travel between them both dangerous and logistically complex, due to appalling roads and lack of transport. Travelling across the country on private buses and taxis (both minibuses and jeeps - motorbike taxis are also very common, though hair-raising), I witnessed a population exhilaratingly on the move.

Though the country hugely lacks formal opportunities, Angolans are highly entrepreneurial and trade is thriving. On one journey, the women travelling in the taxi I was in (an overcrowded Hiace, which broke down half way to our destination) started discussing their trade: one had been to Dubai last year, taking advantage of the new direct flight from Luanda, to buy goods for resale in Angola, but said that Namibia was actually more cost effective. The main problem was cash: you could only bring $5000 into Dubai she said, and "$5000 is nothing for doing business". These are people who by Western standards could only be described as poor in opportunity and resources, with very limited access to such goods as formal education, employment opportunities, credit or home ownership, yet they by a constant routine of travelling and trading, bringing products to areas to which franchises and larger-scale traders have not yet penetrated, they leverage their limited resources to make small profits on very high turnovers.

But there was a yet more surprising aspect to the migrations that characterise Angola today. The town of Kuito in central Angola was long a proxy for the Angolan war itself: hugely war-damaged, ringed by vast camps of displaced people, and with a population who lived for the best part of a decade effectively besieged (there were two formal sieges of Kuito by UNITA during the 1990s, both successfully resisted, both at huge cost in lives, damage and trauma). Now, it is rapidly being rebuilt, and foremost amongst those both rebuilding, contributing and taking advantage of new opportunities are a great diversity of migrants.

There is huge Chinese investment in Angola - controversial, as in other countries in Africa, for the extent to which Chinese construction firms rely on their own, imported, labour, and for allegedly poor conditions for those workers (according to some sources, Chinese prison labour is common, with prisoners serving out their sentences in construction in Angola. In one private business in Kuito, I met an Angolan entrepreneur who had gone into partnership with a Chinese firm to run a small cement brick factory producing 2,600 bricks a day: the firm brought with it a staff of 12 labourers from China, apparently on five-year contracts. There were camps of Chinese, sometimes guarded by the military, dotted throughout the areas I passed through. It is commonly said that they do not mix greatly with the locals, though in Kuito there was tangible evidence that they do: as one young woman said to me, excitedly, "they've made [Angolan-Chinese] twins!" There are also Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans running shops and small businesses locally. (See these articles on BBC and New York Times for more on Angola-China links.)

The informal businesses of currency exchange (dollars for kwanza) and resale of mobile phone credit in Kuito are dominated by Congolese, amongst them some who are the Congo-born children of Angolan refugees or expats. These are reluctant to talk as (presumably) they are 'sans-papiers'; they complained of harassment by the local police.

Various people told me of 'Arab' businessmen and traders: I met young men from Khartoum who had rented a prominent shop space from a local and were importing various electro-domestic and household goods for retail.

There has been renewed migration from Portugal to Angola, with many of those who left in the 1970s, and/or their children, returning, and new immigrants seeking business opportunities, and this has been accompanied by extensive immigration from Brazil, whose government is reportedly notably sympathetic to Angola's.

Another group to return in numbers are the Cubans: Cuba was a notable supporter of the new Angolan state (run by the socialist MPLA) in its early years, which were characterised both by the war with the South Africa-backed-UNITA (Cuban military support was vital in the State's success in the 1988 battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the largest land battle in Africa since World War II), and with the attempted extension of the State, in which Cuban teachers and medics were notable. There are again large numbers of Cubans working in third level education and as doctors throughout the country. Other counties contributing such 'solidarity' workers include the Czech Republic and North Korea. International non-governmental organisations, amongst them the Irish charities Concern and Trócaire, retain a presence in the country, though it is greatly diminished since the end of the war, and less reliant on expatriate staff.

From my point of view, work now begins on the difficult task of selecting and editing footage, and seeking further funding to facilitate this. The eventual output will be a short documentary; however, ideally, an interim step would be to release short selections of footage online, either via a YouTube channel or a dedicated website, or even perhaps Facebook. The aim of this would be make the material more readily available, both to any interested in Angola (about which there is a great shortage of English-language media) and in particular to those who participated in the filming and their community. Internet rollout in Angola is proceeding apace, and all of the towns I was in have cyber cafés (though connections are erratic and bandwidth is even slower than that of Ireland).

Though traditionally Angolans have been guarded in their discussion of the war and politics, there is a new openness in the country following the successful elections of last year, which themselves followed four years of stable peace. I found people everywhere very willing to talk on camera about themselves and their country, and when I needed to film in public places (such as on buses), as soon as I described the nature of the project, people embraced it. Though there are huge problems (neglect of poor communities, corruption, incompetent administration and heavy-handed state centralisation are amongst them), there is a tangible sense in the inland towns that the country is staking a claim for recognition as a modernising nation, and they largely welcomed this outsider come to document that. I will post further updates as the project progresses.

The project is in part a collaboration with the South African photographer Guy Tillim, who has photographed Kuito extensively. There is a selection of his work here. The thumbnail above is taken from his series of portraits of displaced people in Kunhinga, outside Kuito town, in 2001.

As always, correspondence is welcome to migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

Colin Murphy

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic of the Irish Times is Ireland’s sole Migration Correspondent. His most recent series of reports looked at the changing dimension of migration internationally (see the report below on 21/07/09, 'Irish Times on changing face of migration internationally'). In the first part of an online interview, he answers some initial questions from Migration Matters. Readers are welcome to raise further issues by emailing migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

Why did you start writing about migration? 

The Irish Times ran a fellowship a few years ago which gave a journalist the chance to select a project and pursue it for up to four months, filing weekly reports for the paper on a topic that was of "transnational significance" but of particular relevance to Ireland. I chose migration because it embraced so much, and I thought it could be sustained as a single theme over quite a long time. It was also a major domestic issue, and one the media had been slow to get to grips with.  

What challenges/obstacles did you face in writing about the area?

It’s a constant challenge to strike a balance between the local and the global. Migration is a big domestic story, and generally that’s why news media here have shown such interest, but it’s also one that’s being played out on the fringes of a larger drama, and cannot be fully understood without reference to the broader context.

The paper [the Irish Times] clearly recognises its importance (not to mention its potential for new types of stories), so I’ve always felt I’ve been pushing an open door in securing space. But with such an appetite for local, Irish-specific copy, the challenge has been to keep pushing the brief further and wider.  

There’s also the perennial problem of finding a balance between the diary-driven news stories and in-depth feature work. In some ways the two work symbiotically (coverage of a “diary” event might lead to a deeper treatment, which in turn informs and improves coverage of the story as it develops), but with 14 news pages or an hour-long bulletin to fill every day, news media can unwittingly overdo the coverage of events/ reports/ arguments that are of no serious value in the long run. The trick is to satisfy the demands of the news cycle in as much as possible while looking for every chance to delve deeper into a story that is, after all, more about the process than the event.

Has the Irish media done a good job covering this story?

There’s such variety and divergence in the industry that a phrase like “the media” has lost much of its analytical meaning. It depends very much on what you read, watch or listen to. In some places the coverage can be sophisticated and well informed, in others crude and sloppy. But there’s also internal variety within media organisations, and each one of us has our strengths and weaknesses. You might read a thoughtful and thorough piece on trafficking or separated children by a certain journalist in a paper that routinely mixes up terms like asylum seekers or refugees, or shows little interest in migration generally, for example. A lack of specialisation means the nuance of a topic can often be lost, or that coverage can be vulnerable to the different agendas that are in play in the sector, whether those of NGOs, politicians or government departments. We haven’t been helped by the fact that politicians tend to say very little about immigration in public.

Overall, I think media were slow to react. Newspapers and broadcast media can be flexible and fast-moving in some ways, but, by necessity, they’re also institutionally quite rigid. As a story, migration doesn’t adhere to the same patterns that apply to, say, health or education. It’s amorphous, it cuts across established specialisms, it’s a process more than an event, and there are few ready-made networks in place between the journalists and the immigrants they’re writing about. It takes time to find contacts and gain their trust, to master asylum law or to get a handle on trends, for example, and in most newsrooms time is generally in short supply. But the situation has clearly been improving in recent years. The job I’m in at the paper was, I think, a statement that this was a major issue of the day, but also an attempt to overcome some of these problems.

What was the most significant story you've covered?

We’ve had some running news stories – the controversy over the wearing of the hijab in State schools, inspection reports on asylum seeker accommodation centres, changes to immigration law, trafficking cases, reports of ongoing problems at immigration control at Dublin airport, and so on – though I think the most interesting material has looked at the lived experience of shifting trends. Some examples would be my trips to Gort in Co Galway and to then to Anápolis in central Brazil, looking first at the effects of remittances on the Brazilian town, and then, more recently, at the pressures the economic downturn was putting those who left for Ireland. Looking at the experience of other major immigrant-receiving countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany and Spain) was instructive as well, while some of our in-depth pieces – on the growth of African Pentecostalism or the life of Ireland’s first black mayor, Rotimi Adebari [see also here], for example – were useful ways of tracking the huge changes of the past 15 years.

How is the story changing? Is it becoming less important within the media - is it getting more difficult to get space in the newspaper?

I haven’t found it more difficult to find space, but there’s clearly an appetite for news and analysis of how the economic crisis is having an impact on immigrants and migration flows generally, so the focus has shifted naturally. Across the media, there’s less coverage of immigration-related material these days than there would have been last year, but that’s in large part due to the fact that economics has been the story of the past year, and everything else has been squeezed. It would be fairly natural for coverage to move into a new phase anyway – journalists can no longer get away with relying on stories that do little more than marvel at how Ireland has changed as a result of immigration – and perhaps it’s time for more sophisticated analysis of current and future challenges.

Media That Matters is an annual festival of short films that screens every June and then year round online and through distribution and broadcast. As they say, 'the festival is the premiere showcase for short films on the most important topics of the day. Local and global, online and in communities around the world, Media That Matters engages diverse audiences and inspires them to take action.

'From gay rights to global warming, the jury-selected collection represents the work of a diverse group of independent filmmakers, many of whom are under 21. The films are equally diverse in style and content, with documentaries, music videos, animations, experimental work and everything else in between. What all the films have in common is that they spark debate and action in 12 minutes or less.'

The website collects all previous films by subject: see here for those on immigration. The winner in the Immigration section this year was 'Immersion', a narrative docudrama, which can be viewed here. Read about the film here.

Last week's report on the representation of migration in the UK heritage sector has led me to a rich seam of media and archive resources dealing with migration. The 'Community Archives and Identities' blog is a site covering community heritage issues, and regularly dips into the subjects of migration, immigration and diasporas.

The researchers behind the blog are currently working on a series of studies of Black and minority ethnic community archives. As they explain:

By community archives we mean any collection of material that documents one or many aspects of a community’s heritage, collected in, by and for that community and looked after by its members. This material helps tell the story of groups of people who have often been excluded from mainstream archives, which have tended to focus on official documents and the lives of elites. In our project we will investigate the role community archives play in supporting a sense of rootedness and identity amongst members of a community, as well as what they do to raise awareness of these neglected stories in the wider public. Ultimately, we are interested in the social impact of community archives on their creators and on their publics.

Until now there has been very little concrete evidence demonstrating the potential benefits of community archives. Research that has been done has mostly focused on the social impact of museums. We aim to fill this gap by providing detailed evidence of the ways in which community archives and histories impact on the lives of those they touch.

To do this we will be working very closely over several months with the community archives that have agreed to take part in our research. Mary will be participating actively in and contributing to the work of the archives, documenting her experiences in order to build up a detailed picture of the organisation and the effect of its work that is much more than just a snapshot.

We hope that the community archives chosen will see the project as a collaborative venture with concrete benefits for themselves. Moreover, in contributing to the research we anticipate that in a small way they will be helping to secure the long-term future of the sector, by providing evidence of the value of community archives to today’s diverse society.

Today's Liveline on RTE Radio One featured a phone-in discussion on racism in Dublin, of which I caught a few moments. There seemed to be a consensus that racism was on the rise in Ireland in tandem with the recession, and that there was widespread and unjustified resentment of people who had migrated to Ireland to do jobs that Irish people didn't want to do, but now found themselves relying on social welfare. Also a feature was extensive discussion of racism targetted at English people in Ireland, and some discussion of the history of anti-Irish racism in the UK. A representative of Dublin-based advertising agency Ethnic Media was one of the participants. The usual host Joe Duffy is on holidays; Damien O'Reilly was in the chair. Listen back here.

For readers abroad, Liveline, an afternoon public phone-in show on the main radio station, is one of the most influential media spots in Ireland; under Joe Duffy and his predecessor, Marian Finucane, it has achieved an iconic status in Irish culture and has on many occasions created news through careful steering of public discussion of controversial issues. There's an overview of its history on Wikipedia.

The Irish Diaspora Studies List has alerted me to the publication of two new reports by the UK-based think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, exploring the representation of migration in the UK heritage sector and the prospects for a British museum of migration.

Working group report on the idea of a migration museum:

The Migration Museum Working Group was formed in late 2006 to discuss what more could be done to represent migration issues within the UK museum and heritage sector. It consists of people who share an interest in these issues and a passion for seeing migration more appropriately represented in cultural life in the UK.

Over more than two millennia migration has continuously shaped and reshaped the people of the British Isles. Migration is an important part of our history and of contemporary society. But while we have major museums on most other aspects of our national life, devoted to everything from war and science to transport and the media, there is no major museum of migration. It was in this context that the Migration Museum Working Group was formed in late 2006. The group's aim was to outline the case for a major Museum of Migration in the UK.

Supporting research report by Mary Stevens on the representation of migration in the UK heritage sector:

The history of migration to and from the British Isles is as old as the islands themselves. However, the common understanding of this history as passed down through the education system as well as by museums, archives and other heritage sites, has often glossed over or ignored this crucial aspect of our island story. This paper makes the case for representation of migration in the heritage sector.

The ecumenical Christian organisation Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) has produced a collection of resources for download for use on Racial Justice Sunday, September 13, available here. The introduction to last year's Racial Justice Sunday resources explains:

Migration is a fact of life. Increasingly, every community reflects more of the diversity of humankind. At many points in the Bible this reality is celebrated in the promise of a banquet to which all the peoples of the world are invited.

There are some further resources of relevance on CTBI's Black History Month section.

The Drum Beat e-newsletter on media and development has a report on the use of mobile phones in citizen media, citing a report by MobileActive.org, which may be of interest to readers exploring the potential of new media. As they say, the report explores the dynamics of the role of mobile phones in creating and enhancing access to information and citizen-produced media. It explores trends in the use of mobile telephony with a focus on software and platforms that make content creation and broadcasting easier. It also presents an inventory of current and potential uses of mobile phones to promote citizen media and freedom of information, and presents short case studies of examples from the MobileActive.org community.

It further discusses security considerations that might impact citizen media and freedom of information. Finally, it describes possible medium-term directions for future development and donor investments. The report is available here.

The Irish Times's award-winning migration correspondent, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, has just completed a three-part series on the impact of the economic downturn on global migration, 'The Changing Face Of Migration'. Links to the articles are below.

American dream, Brazilian reality: a report from Governador Valadares in Brazil

No regrets, as home beckons after the boom: Unemployment among immigrants in Spain could reach 30 per cent by the end of the year

Colder climate for those facing home truths: Many migrants’ morning routine now consists of scouring the internet and papers for jobs

Ruadhán has agreed to do a Q&A with Migration Matters. Any readers who wish to participate should email questions to me at migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org (replacing the [at] with @, to deter spammers).

Migration Information Source has updated its profile of the United Kingdom, titled 'A Reluctant Country of Immigration'. The profile includes an assessment of how the global recession is affecting UK migration flows, the latest immigration and asylum data, and overviews of new immigration and integration policies. Although early evidence shows a reduction in the number of immigrants coming to work, fundamental dynamics indicate sustained net immigration — 1.85 million for the 1997-2007 period — will continue, the authors report.

The profile is by MPI Senior Policy Analyst Will Somerville, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and Maria Latorre of the Institute for Public Policy Research. For a detailed look at the British economy and immigration, see Immigration in the United Kingdom: The Recession and Beyond by Will Somerville and Madeleine Sumption for the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission.

You can also discover the top destinations of British and other European migrants by visiting the MPI Data Hub's World Migration Map.

 

The Irish Times included a selection of figures taken from the World Bank Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008 in its recent series on migration, as reported above. I thought it worthwhile posting them here.

Migration at a glance: global figures

• Number of migrants: 190.6 million or 3 per cent of population (UN 2005 figure).

• Women as percentage of migrants: 49.6 per cent

• Refugees: 13.5 million or 7.1 per cent of the total migrants

• South-South migration is nearly as large as South-North migration.

More than 47 per cent of migrants from developing countries are believed to be living in other developing countries.

• Top 10 destination countries: United States, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France, Saudi Arabia, Canada, India, United Kingdom, Spain.

But as a share of population, top immigration countries include Qatar (78.3%), United Arab Emirates (71.4%), Kuwait (62.1%), Singapore (42.6%), Bahrain (40.7%) and Israel.

• Top 10 emigration countries: Mexico, Russia, India, China, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Turkey, United Kingdom, Germany, Kazakhstan.

• Top 10 migration corridors: Mexico-United States, Russia-Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia, Bangladesh-India, Turkey-Germany, Kazakhstan-Russia, India-United Arab Emirates, Russia-Kazakhstan, Philippines-United States, Afghanistan-Iran.

• Top 10 remittance recipients in 2007: India ($27.0 bn), China ($25.7 bn), Mexico ($25.0 bn), Philippines ($17.0 bn), France ($12.5 bn), Spain ($8.9 bn), Belgium ($7.2 bn), United Kingdom ($7.0 bn), Germany ($7.0 bn), Romania ($6.8 bn).

• Top 10 remittance recipients in 2006 (as percentage of GDP): Tajikistan (36.2%), Moldova (36.2%), Tonga (32.3%), Kyrgyz Republic (27.4%), Honduras (25.6%), Lesotho (24.5%), Guyana (24.3%), Lebanon (22.8%), Haiti (21.6%), Jordan (20.3%).

The Office of the Minister for Integration, which just recently, after two years in operation, got a proper website up and running, should be abolished, according to the Irish group known as the Bord Snip Nua, appointed by the Government to recommend expenditure cuts.

The group reported yesterday, and their comprehensive (and often savage) report is the lead across all today’s media. On an initial scan, recommendations in the area of immigration and integration services have not been singled out for coverage in the media. Accordingly, Migration Matters thought it useful to provide a synopsis, as follows. Most of the relevant cuts are within the Department of Justice, Equality & Law Reform (divided into cuts that fall within the ‘Equality’ remit of the Department and those to Immigration Services). There are also cuts within the Department of Education & Science. They are presented here without comment.

Department of Justice

In the area of Equality

Measure: Abolish the Office of the Minister for Integration.
Saving: €1.5m.
Justification: Its functions were previously carried out within the Department of Justice, Equality & Law Reform, and hence can return to it. Each Government Department should report annually on how they have contributed to the promotion of cultural integration.

Measure: The non-pay element of the allocation to the Office for the Minister for Integration should be reduced by 10% (immediately, prior to it being abolished).                                                            

Saving: €0.8m (including savings from similar reductions to the allocations to the Equality Authority and the Equality Tribunal).

Staff cuts: 30 people (including cuts in other areas of this Programme of the Department of Justice - broadly, the ‘Equality’ area).

In the area of Immigration Services

This area has a current budget of €143m and 740 staff, most of it to do with the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) which was established in 2005 in order to provide a ‘one stop shop’ in relation to asylum, immigration, citizenship and visas.

Measure: Cut staff by 240
Saving: €10m.
Justification: The numbers of staff in INIS has grown since 2006 from 580 to over 750. The extra staff were sanctioned on a temporary basis to address various issues that arose  such as applications for renewal of leave to remain from non-national parents of Irish born children following revised arrangements in December 2006. In the current climate of reducing immigration as well as asylum applications, an initial reduction to the 2006 level of core staff (i.e. 580) should be delivered in the short term, with a follow-up management review to investigate how quickly staffing levels can be got down to between 450 and 500 staff.
Note: This will involve the consolidation of all immigration-related actions, including the implementation of policy on work permits, within INIS. However, the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment should retain its role in shaping policy in this area.

Measure: A reduction of 10% in the non-pay allocation to INIS. Saving: €2m.

Measure: Transfer responsibility of immigration control at entry point to INIS.

Saving: €1m.
Justification: At present, members of An Garda Síochána are responsible for conducting passport control checks at Dublin Airport. This is an inappropriate use of Garda operational resources and and should be outsourced. In the first instance, responsibility of immigration control at Dublin Airport, and later, the major points of entry into the State, should be transferred to INIS.
 

Department of Education & Science

Measure: Reduction in the number of English language support teachers by 1,000.
Saving: €7m in 2010, rising to €21m in a full year.
Justification: There are currently almost 2,200 language support teachers providing services to non-English speaking children, which is due to reduce to about 1,500 from September 2009. This should befurther reduced in 2010 because of the decreasing levels of immigration, the increasing trend of immigrants leaving the country due to the current economic difficulties, and the length of time that most existing immigrants have now been in the country. This proposed reduction would return the number of language support teachers to long term trend requirements based on estimated immigration and labour market parameters.

More information:
The two volumes of An Bord Sip Nua’s report (scroll down)
RTE’s coverage
The Irish Times’s coverage
Migration Matters on the new Integration website: see the report on 26/06/2009 in the June archive

An Bord Snip Nua’s recommended cuts in the areas of immigration and integration will save €36.3 million, according to my calculations, based on the summary above. (This includes a projected €21 million saving in cuts in language teachers.) The question this raises - as with every sector of Irish society - is, should they have recommended alternative, or further, cuts or reforms in this area?

How much, if anything, would be saved by the Exchequer were the Direct Provision system to be axed, and asylum seekers allowed work, for example? There would potentially be greater costs in rent supplement and social welfare payments to families no longer catered for in ‘hostels’, but savings from those who would find work rather than rely on the dole.

How much would be saved were processing times in the Department of Justice, Equality & Law Reform to be reduced so that those seeking asylum moved through the system quicker? (In other words, would greater savings overall result from maintaining current staffing levels?)

Might cutting language support services have a detrimental economic effect in the long term, lowering the educational outcomes of non-native English speakers? Or has An Bord Snip got it about right? (For non-Irish readers, the nickname given to this group is both an Irish-language pun and a historical reference. Wikipedia explains all.)

What do you think? How would you cut services in the area of immigration and integration? Or how would you improve them, but in the context of the imperative to make savings?

Let us know. Here at Migration Matters, we’d be interested to hear from readers with any observations on these, or other issues arising from the report - particularly as this is an area not likely to get in-depth focus in the mainstream media.

The latest quarterly economic commentary by the leading Irish research institute, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), includes a useful, brief summary of the recent ESRI study on the impact of immigration on Irish schools. The introduction presents an elegant precis of the overall immigration situation, which may be useful for readers:

'The period since the 1990s has seen immigration into Ireland of a scale and speed unprecedented in comparative context. After decades of net emigration from Ireland, the strong economic growth of the last decade and resulting rapid immigration of non-Irish nationals from a wide range of countries has transformed Ireland into a country of net immigration. In recent years the inflow of migrants has become more diverse, with many nationalities represented, and return Irish migration declining from 50 per cent of the inflow in 1996 to less than 25 per cent in 2006. In little over a decade Irish society has become more diverse in terms of nationality, language, ethnicity and religious affiliation as the population share of non-national immigrants increased from 3 per cent in 1993 to 6 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent in 2006.'

This summary can be downloaded here. The full quarterly report is here. The original research report is here. Ruadhan MacCormaic's article on that report, from the Irish Times, is here.

America's Voice, the lobby group for reform of immigration legislation in the US, headed by FOMACS collaborator Frank Sharry, is running an intriguing new-media programme - a contest to find an immigration blogger. They intend to sponsor eight bloggers to attend the annual Netroots Nation convention in August. As they explain:

The annual Netroots Nation Convention, entering its fourth year now, is a unique gathering of progressive bloggers, activists, issue campaigns, and candidates. This year, America's Voice will send 8 immigration bloggers to Pittsburgh, PA to attend the convention, with the help of the Netroots Nation planning committee. America’s Voice is committed to supporting a vibrant and independent pro-migrant blogosphere and we believe it is critical for bloggers who write about immigration to be well-represented at Netroots Nation. So, do you know someone working at the intersection of new media and immigration, who blogs on the issue, and who needs some help getting to Netroots Nation?

Netroots Nation 2009 will include panels led by national and international experts; identity, issue and regional caucuses; prominent political, issue and policy-oriented speakers; a progressive film screening series; and the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date.

America's Voice is the newly-founded communications hub working for just, common-sense immigration reform.

Your correspondent has been absent without leave for the past few days, on a road trip in Spain. It was a trip with a purpose, however, and may be of interest to Migration Matters' readers. Last October, as a guest of the Irish charity Front Line, I visited the occupied territory of Western Sahara, officially a Moroccan province but the homeland of the Saharawi people, some 400,000 of whom live in refugee camps in Algeria, run by their government in exile, Polisario. I wrote about my experience in Western Sahara here and produced a radio documentary. Earlier this year, I was contacted by an Irish tv director, Donal Scannell of Scanarama, who specialises in music television. Scannell had discovered Western Saharan singer-in-exile, Aziza Brahim, via the internet, and was interested in making a documentary on her. He received seed funding from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund, funded by Irish Aid and, through the happy internet-enabled coincidence of finding my article online and realising we were practically neighbours, invited me to accompany him on the initial leg.

We joined Aziza Brahim in Seville on Saturday, where a march in support of self determination for the Saharawi people was held, after which Aziza Brahim headlined an outdoor concert. There is widespread popular support for the Saharawi cause in Spain, arising in part from Spain's colonial history in the country, and from the ongoing and successful programme of bringing Saharawi children from the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, to Spain to stay with families for the summer. (The camps are incredibly inhospitable, and amongst the benefits to the children are improved nutrition and a less oppressive climate.) Brahim performed a fusion of traditional Saharan music, desert blues and rock, to a wildly enthusiastic crowd, many of whom were Saharawi immigrants, or families hosting children. We then accompanied her and her group to their hometown, Leon, and on to Bilbao, where Brahim was to perform a further gig last night. 

We plan to join her in London for a performance at the Royal Festival Hall in the London African Musical Festival on September 12, and on a homecoming visit to the camps in Algeria in October. More on this project later; in the meantime, here are some further links on Aziza Brahim, etc: the Amazon download for her stunning short album, Mi Canto; her MySpace page; her blog (in Spanish); more on Saharan blues; from the New Internationalist on Western Sahara.

Morocco's position on the Western Sahara issue is here (from their Washington DC embassy).

This from the latest 'Humanitarian Heads Up' newsletter from Reuters AlertNet:

PHILIPPINES: About 387,000 people have been displaced by fighting between government forces and Muslim rebels which has escalated in the oil and gas-rich marshlands on the southern island of Mindanao in the last two months, pushing back peace talks stalled since August 2008. This footage posted on the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism's blog gives an insight into the the plight of the refugees. Bomb attacks in Mindanao, which led to a travel ban for U.N. and other diplomatic staff, forced the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) to suspend food distribution a week ago. But that was lifted on Monday, allowing WFP to resume the distribution of food to the displaced.

This week's 'Humanitarian Hook' from Reuters Alertnet focuses on Sri Lanka, where the long-term displaced 'want to go home', as follows (links follow below):

'More than 70,000 Muslims who were forced from their homes by rebel Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka's war-torn north in the 1990s, are now contemplating a return home. While the older generation are keen to go, some of the younger displaced who grew up in the displacement camps would rather stay in their adopted home. Sri Lanka’s relief and rehabilitation minister says many houses in the north which once belonged to the Muslims have been completely destroyed and some of the returnees will find it difficult to locate their ancestral lands.

Meanwhile, the majority of aid agencies still don't have free access to army-run camps for the 300,000 Tamils who fled fighting this year. The government has grown increasingly suspicious of aid agencies because their work has focused on Tamil areas in the north, reports the British Times newspaper. It is weeding out veteran aid workers it sees as pro-Tiger with a visa regime under which no-one can stay more than three years. And it has imposed a 0.9 percent tax on all funding for aid groups. Although the tax was introduced in 2006, it was not enforced and most agencies did not comply, hoping to persuade the government to change it. Now it is insisting they should pay the tax, backdated to 2005. 
 
When fighting escalated last year between government troops and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, the government ordered all aid agencies to leave the area saying it could not guarantee their safety. The only one allowed to remain was the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which continued to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded from the conflict zone.
 
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said any political solutions to the problems that helped fan the conflict must wait until after the presidential elections, which could happen any time between November this year and 2011. Rajapaksa had strong backing for his tough military approach from hard-line members of his ruling coalition. But he will have a tougher time getting them on board with a political solution if it involves significant concessions to the country's Tamil and other minorities, political analysts say.

AlertNet Sri Lanka crisis briefing
The ICRC in Sri Lanka
U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sri Lanka
Victims of Tamil Tiger war hit by Sri Lanka tax on aid workers - Times
Sri Lanka's 'forgotten' city poor need help too - blog
Sri Lanka's forgotten displaced Muslims - BBC

For more on AlertNet, see last month's report, below, from 18/06/09, Refugee Day links from Reuters AlertNet.

Love Music Hate Racism was set up in 2002 in the UK in response to the rise of the British National Party (BNP), to use 'the positive energy of the music scene to fight back' against racism. Now, Love Music Hate Racism is launching in Ireland, with a launch party on Thursday July 23 at The Twisted Pepper,Middle Abbey Street Dublin.

In a statement, spokesperson Kurt Nikolaisen said: 'there are elements of our society that continue to promote anger by the scapegoating and targeting immigrants including migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers or even students, we need to work to expose these myths and challenge racist ideas'. The statement continued: 'Love Music Hate Racism Ireland is not just an organization. It’s a movement. We need people from all walks of life to get involved. We want everyone to play a part in LMHR no matter how big or how small. We want to hear what you have to say, and address issues you find important. Issues that your community, neighbors, friends and family find important where you live. We aim to have a network of support for each and every person involved in LMHR across the county and we encourage people to make suggestions, put on their own events and start their own groups with help from this network'.

The launch event will run in three rooms at the venue, incorporating live music, comedy, graffiti art, photography, DJs, and short film screenings. (See report below for more on this.) Further information from Kurt Nikolaisen on 085 8244468 or email to lmhrireland@gmail.com. Follow Love Music Hate Racism on MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook.

The Love Music Hate Racism launch party, as featured above, will include short film screenings, amongst them 'Sol Ziemi', one of the '12 Angry Films' project. This was an intriguing art project in 2006, that seems well worth recapping here. The information below comes from an elegant 37-page booklet produced after the project, which can be downloaded here.

In 2006 artist Jesse Jones was commissioned by the Fire Station Artists’ 2 Studios in partnership with Dublin Docklands Development Authority to produce 12 ANGRY FILMS, an outdoor season of films tracing the history of labour and social justice issues in cinema. The end result of this commission was a site-specific public art event in the form of a temporary drive-in cinema. This was located in the disused industrial setting of Pigeon House in Dublin’s docklands, over a weekend in November 2006. The objective of this project was to create a collective social space, where films both by and about workers and activists could be shown, generating debate and reflection on globalisation and the changing nature of industrial labour.

The Fire Station Artists’ Studios and Jesse Jones chose to work with an elective community as opposed to a prescribed group. Viewing community in its broadest sense as any gathering of individuals who come together in support of a concept, a general call for participants was put out through union, community and activist networks. Participants were not limited to a particular geographical area, or social class. Rather this “community of being” came about through those with an interest in film, workers rights and/or social activism as well as an ability to commit to a series of evening workshops. This resultant elective community consisted of a diverse group of individuals ranging in ages 19 to 50 years plus, over half of whom were non-native Irish.

Each group was given three rules for the making of their film: firstly that it would not be in English, secondly that it would be three minutes long and finally that it would be set in a car.

The film 'Sol Ziemi' was one of those made as part of the collaborative workshops. It translated a scene from 'Salt of the Earth' into Polish, and was staged between two Polish immigrant workers in contemporary Dublin.

There is a short overview of the project here.

Dublin Community Television, DCTV, is now broadcasting into 200,000 homes via NTL, and amongst its programmes is a current affairs show, 'The Insight'. This recently featured local election candidates Patrick Maphoso and Tendai Madondo in a discussion of politics, immigrant-related issues and racism. The programme is briefly reviewed in the Dublin Opinion blog. Maphoso's own site is here and Madondo's is here. The programme is presented by the Ethnic Minority Forum.

M2M (Migrant to Migrant) Radio is an online initiative in Amsterdam that arose out of protests and commemorations of the 2005 Schipol fire, in which 11 detainees at the detention centre for migrants were killed. The radio broadcasts, and other activities, are a collaboration between survivors, immigrant-rights activists and artists. M2M operates a mailing list, and recently sent out the following alert.

'M2M (Migrant to Migrant) has received reliable information that several EU countries have planned a special charter flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to Africa, carrying tens of undocumented migrants back to Africa. Reliable church sources in Germany and Belgium ask for additional information and M2M calls for concerted action to protest against this form of "human trafficking".

'We have informed the detained migrants in two of Hollands detention centres: Schiphol Oost and Alphen aan den Rijn. Mamadou from Chad is already 14 months in detention and fears deportation. He has successfully resisted deportation on several occasions and is a leader of many collective actions in the last year. We talked with Mamadou and others through the fence, during the last commemoration of the Schiphol Fire.'

That interview can be listened to here.

The circular concludes:

'Please circulate this information widely in Europe and Africa. Let us know of any addictional information on this deportation flight you may have. Let's come together and organize support for the ongoing resistance inside these prisons. M2M proposes actions of protest and solidarity on the 14th of July: Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood. Visit the prisons, make phone calls, picket lines at Airports, Embassies and Institutions of Repression anywhere.

The mailing list can be accessed here or via email to m2m-eng@listcultures.org. For more, see the earlier Migration Matters report on M2M, on 17/11/2008, in the November archive.

Migration Matters has just been alerted to the existence of the Irish Oral History Archive. The archive was founded by sound archivist Glenn Cumiskey, who has been collecting a series of oral histories of Irish emigrants in Britain. The histories are not yet available online, but there is a short compilation of moments from them on the home page, here. The archive featured in an article in the Irish Times last January and in an interview on Newstalk.

An excerpt from that article, by Anne Flaherty:

"Capturing a moment in time," is how the 39-year-old from south Armagh describes his work. He asks his subjects - all pensioners in their 70s or 80s - to remember long-buried memories from childhood, of taking the boat to England and the difficulties of adapting to life in their new environment. The majority left Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s to escape harsh economic circumstances. But every narrative of exile is different.

"When I first start I find they have a little 10-minute biography in their heads as to what they think I would like to know," he says. "But then the real life story comes out. If there is anything too personal I check if they want to include it and they generally say 'Yes, it's part of the story'."

The oral archive is a pilot project funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, and encouraged by David Cooney, the Irish ambassador, who will be the next secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs and who is also the child of Irish emigrants to London.

Cumiskey, who worked with the traditional Irish music archive in Dublin before moving to London five years ago, aims to conduct up to 200 interviews in the first year.

Next year, Cumiskey hopes to expand the project around Britain and to put together a touring exhibition to publicise the project. Ultimately he hopes that the material will be in a national archive in the UK and Ireland, and available on the web.

 

Have you been reading Migration Matters and thinking a project close to your heart should be covered by it? Have you spotted something we haven't? Have you an ear to the ground locally, and knowledge of relevant media projects that haven't received wider coverage?

If the answer to any of the above is 'Yes', then please write to us at migrationmatters@fomacs.org. Send us anything from an interesting link to an archive of information. We cover all media - print, online, film, radio, theatre, community-produced, and more - as long as the work being done is of interest.

Where the work is already well documented online, we'll link to it with a short introduction. Where it hasn't been documented, we'll publish a more comprehensive report, within the constraints of this site.

Spread the word. Friends and colleagues can sign up for these weekly updates automatically here. You can also subscribe to a RSS feed from Migration Matters and from other FOMACS projects at the same page.

Thank you for reading.

Colin Murphy, editor.

There are an estimated 150,000 Mixtecs in California, and they occupy the lowest rungs on the Latino immigrant pecking order, mocked for their rural ways, their heavily accented Spanish or inability to speak it, and their low level of education, reported the New York Times recently.

The Times ran a feature on a radio show aimed at these Mexican immigrants in the US, which veers from Spanish into Mexico's indigenous languages.

'Even in an age of cellphones and online social networks, Mr. López’s radio show has endured since its first broadcast in 1995... The show is broadcast from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday on Radio Bilingüe, the only Spanish-language public radio network in the United States, and also streams on the Internet.'

Listeners to Irish radio will enjoy the following observation, contained in the article:

“It is like a replica of the talk shows in Oaxaca where you have a charismatic D.J. who combines a strong personality with lectures on culture and who we are,” Mr. Rivera-Salgado added. “This is really old-fashioned radio that has the special effect of making people feel they are part of this close-knit community and speaking in their language.”

Also on the Times site is a clip from La Hora Mixteca, the radio show in question.

Thanks to Sarah for the link. Please send links and suggestions to migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

Two new radio projects have recently been added to the FOMACS website. 'Having your Voice Heard' is a 12-week radio mentoring programme for migrant women in Ireland, being led by Roísín Boyd of the Irish Refugee Council. You can watch an audio slideshow showcasing some of the initial work of the participants, in which they discuss their ambitions to get into the Irish media, here.

'Standing for Election: the New Faces of Irish Politics' is a print and radio project by this writer, Colin Murphy, on the unprecedented participation in the recent local elections by immigrants. The outputs of this so far are a podcast for Le Monde Diplomatique and articles for the same publication and for the Sunday Tribune. A radio documentary is in process. 

The FOMACS Radio project page is here. Click on 'Projects' in the menu bar across the top of this page for details on the other FOMACS media projects.

'Soul Beat' informs me of an interesting project in South Africa, 'Music Against Xenophobia', aka MAX. Launched in November 2008, MAX brought together musicians from South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe to write and record songs about xenophobia as a way to raise awareness about migrant-related issues. Along with the musical release, the project included a survey of 100 migrants' experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The report continues:
Musicians from South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe worked together with migrants and young people to create four songs designed to raise awareness about xenophobia and encourage people to discuss the issue. The songs, written in Zulu, Shangaan, and Portuguese, talk about migration and hope to encourage feelings of pan-Africanism. The lyrics of the songs were based on research interviews conducted with 100 migrants from all over the continent about their experiences in South Africa. According to the organisers, the overwhelming majority told about how they personally suffered from discrimination, including from police and health services. Based on this, the musicians wrote lyrics to give voice to these experiences, calling on all people to respect one another. The music was made available to radio stations via the internet and through CD distribution.

The project also included research by journalism and musicology students to explore how music can be used for social change. This included interviews with academics, musicians, and people working on migration issues.

To further disseminate the counter-xenophobia messages, the music was included on Tjoon'In, a multiformat CD produced for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, which also included a segment on xenophobia. 1000 copies were distributed through public taxis (combis) in South Africa to raise awareness about gender issues. See Tjoon'in - 16 Days of Peace Taxi Campaign.

Johannesburg has become home to thousands of foreign Africans. Some are refugees, fleeing persecution and seeking asylum, others are looking for work and a better life. Many find that life is not what they expected and face discrimination from government services, harassment by police and degrading treatment from people, whether in the taxis, schools, shops or streets.

The organisation responsible for MAX, CMFD (Community Media for Development) Productions works with communities, non-profit radio stations and media organisations to strengthen the use of media and communication for development.

The blog on America's Voice leads me to this Weekly Immigration Wire, produced by the Media Consortium. It's a weekly thematic overview of media on immigration issues in the US. The Media Consortium is a network of independent journalism organizations that is seeking to create 'a solid cooperative infrastructure that will serve a 21st-century audience and offer a sustainable future for independent media'. That leads me on to Immigration Newsladder, a participatory site ranking immigration news stories. As the Newsladder explains:

'As immigration policy gains more notice in the media during the election season, its importance surpasses mere politics. A country built on immigration, the United States is in the midst of deciding the fates of millions of people who call America their home regardless of legal status. Many of the stories found here come from members of The Media Consortium, a network of smart, passionate journalists who are committed to changing and improving the political debate here in our country.'

Also namechecked is Immigration Impact, the blog of the Immigration Policy Center.

In a development of general interest to media watchers, some of the UK's leading investigative journalists have launched the Foundation for Investigative Reporting, and an associated Investigations Fund.

In an open letter, they write:

'Even before the onset of the recession, thousands of media jobs had been lost across Britain. The internet, digital television, falling advertising revenues and the commercial pressures of the 24/7 news cycle have all had an impact. While there continues to be great examples of courageous journalism, a growing number of news outlets are increasingly putting emphasis on entertainment, on rapidly-delivered and recycled news rather than the investigation and discovery of what the public wants and needs to know.

'We have decided to announce the formation of a Foundation for Investigative Reporting to look at what practical steps can be taken, both to experiment with new means of funding essential investigations and to inspire a new generation of reporters. The Foundation will act as an incubator for new ways of conducting journalism and for new ideas of how to finance this kind of reporting.
 
'As of today, we are creating a new rolling fund that will aim to help provide the initial cash required for the kind of risky, challenging reporting and film-making for which there is a crying demand, but few sponsors. This not-for-profit venture will not compete directly with established media, but will instead provide the seeds from which the big stories can grow.'

The full text of the letter is available here.

A report in the Media Guardian is here. It notes:

'Fundraising has yet to begin, but the Telegraph group has offered to make a contribution to start-up costs, and Google is to provide technical support and advice for free. Grey is talking to other media groups and is hoping to attract the interest of philanthropists or draw subscriptions from donors. A relatively modest budget of £500,000 could "transform things". The fund will, he hopes, give harried journalists the time to pursue the leads they are often forced to neglect. "Unless you have the resources or integrity to be able to spend a lot of money on something and still be prepared not to run anything, there's not going to be much integrity in your own investigation."'

Under the heading, 'The Crisis', the Foundation outlines the current depressed state of the media business:

'Even as the practice of investigative journalism – the pro-active search for facts and explanations in the public interest – is squeezed and endangered by ever-greater commercial pressure, global trends make world events themselves ever more complex. The ‘story’ itself has got beyond what any individual investigator – be they a newspaper or media organisation or official agency – can investigate with their own resources. In the regulation of the corporate sphere, investigation is increasingly privatised under the guise of ‘self-regulation’ or ‘due diligence’.'

And they note the following 'depressing trends':

- 60 local papers in Britain have closed in the last 12 months, and over 4,000 jobs in the UK media went from July 2008 to January 2009, including the jobs of at least 1,000 journalists.

- The average Fleet Street journalist now fills three times as much editorial space as he or she did in 1985.

- According to research commissioned for Nick Davies’ book 'Flat Earth News', only 12% of stories in Britain’s quality newspapers show evidence that they have been thoroughly checked.

- 54% of stories in Britain’s quality newspapers are wholly or mainly constructed from PR material.

The implications of these trends for reporting on the issue of immigration are clear: except in the scaremongering tabloids, migrant-related stories do not 'sell' papers. As Carol Coulter commented at the recent launch of new guidelines for reporters on refugee issues (see below), the media too often treats asylum stories simply as human interest ones, neglecting the stories and issues that do not have an immediate human interest angle and failing to subject the institutions of state and the justice system to adequate analysis. We wish the Foundation for Investigative Reporting well in its work.

After a number of false starts, the Office of the Minister for Integration, established in 2007, has launched a new, comprehensive website.

Some content of note:

Migration Nation: Statement on Integration Strategy and Diversity Management, from May 2008. This document is a Ministerial statement on the future direction of integration policy in Ireland. This Statement recognises that a key challenge facing Government and Irish society is the imperative to integrate people of different cultures, ethnicity, language and religion so that they become the new Irish citizens of the 21st century.

Key statistics on immigration

An archive of Press Releases

Funding: Details of the (small) amount of funding disbursed by the Office in support of integration projects countrywide.

Managing Diversity: A section containing comprehensive information on government policy and the international context.

Useful Information for Migrants

On the home page, John Curran, the Minister of State responsible, writes:

'The Irish people have vast personal experience of the challenges and opportunities that emigration and integration present as traditionally we were a country of emigration ourselves. Therefore, as a result of our own history, we understand emigration and the problems that emigrants can face. Uprooting your life, finding work, accessing services and building friendships in a new country can be a major challenge, even without the added complexities of cultural or language differences.

'In the 1990s, we saw a new, transformed Ireland emerge as a result of the economic success of the Celtic Tiger years. We became a destination-of-choice and over the past decade or so, many migrants have come here to live, work and study.

'By examining the official figures, we can clearly see the extent and indeed speed of this change - in 2002, approximately 5.7% of Ireland’s population of just under 4 million were immigrants while the 2006 Census figures show that over 10% of our population are newcomers and this represents an astonishing increase of 87% over the four year period. It is no overstatement to say that this has been a phenomenal demographic and social change for a small country to absorb over a relatively short timeframe.

'The 2006 Census figures show that we have over 420,000 migrants here who have come from 188 different countries and these people have a wide diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds. The level of migration we have experienced has brought both benefits and challenges but it is generally agreed that the benefits to Ireland have been substantial. Over the coming years, I expect that inward migration will continue to contribute to our labour force growth but that the level of immigration will not be as high as in recent years.'

The new Integration.ie website (as reported above) contains an 'information portal' on migrants and education developed by the Department of Education and Science.

According to the introduction on the site, the portal contains 'links to information on the Irish education system, links to resources available for intercultural education, and links to organisations and institutions (in Ireland and abroad) conducting educational research on migration. It will be of interest to all sectors of education from pre-school to higher education and will provide information for policy makers, parents, teachers, researchers and others interested in migrants and their education in Ireland.'

As a close reading of the above suggests, this is very simply a collection of links to bodies and information sources relevant to newcomers to the Irish education system.

According to the website, this information is also available on the website of the Department of Education & Science. After some navigating of that site, I found a section on 'Newcomers to Ireland'. This is distinct from the information in 'portal' on integration.ie, and has an eclectic but potentially useful collection of documents and official statements relating to migrants and interculturalism in the classroom.

The launch of integration.ie coincides with that of integration.eu, a new European Union site on integration matters.

Amongst the features of interest on the site are the following:

Good practices: a selection of examples of good integration practice from all across Europe, submitted by those involved. (The criteria for selection and details of how to do so are here.) 

An information sheet on Ireland, which appears to be a comprehensive selection of links and documents on key aspects of integration policy.

The PROMINSTAT database is a comprehensive inventory of statistical datasets on migration, integration and discrimination in Europe and currently contains descriptions of more than 1,200 statistical datasets.

A facility to contribute and share information on integration.

An extensive selection of information on national, European and private funding opportunities.

A discussion forum that has clearly not yet gained any traction, but nonetheless provides a potentially useful facility.

A revised edition of the journalists' guidelines, 'Reporting on Refugees. Guidance by & for Journalists' was launched last week. The guide can be downloaded here. It is produced by the National Union of Journalists, the Irish Refugee Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The launch event was chaired by Carol Coulter of the Irish Times, and the panel consisted of the press ombudsman, John Horgan, the head of the NUJ, Seamus Dooley, journalist Abiba Ndeley, originally from Cameroon, and myself. Carol Counter's excellent contribution can be heard in this podcast from community radio station Near 90 FM and can be downloaded here. I will also publish the texts of the various contributions in subsequent posts.

The following is the advance text of Carol Coulter's remarks at the launch of the guide, 'Reporting on Refugees'. Carol Coulter is Legal Affairs Editor of the Irish Times.

Others will speak of the need for accuracy, for a basic knowledge of what is involved in asylum-seeking, for avoiding stereotyping and the repetition of ill-informed and prejudiced comment, for treating asylum-seekers and refugees with courtesy and respect, so I won’t dwell on them.

I want to speak in more general terms – what are we trying to achieve when we write about this subject and, indeed, I would hope, any subject?

We are fortunate in that we live in a democracy, where our state institutions and our media, while flawed, do permit us freedom of expression within the constraints of the law and the limitations of the media’s thrust for circulation and profits.

Democracy can only thrive where there is an informed citizenry, where the institutions that are meant to serve us act in a transparent manner and are accountable, and where the members of the society can learn about sections of it they may never engage with in their own daily lives, as part of building a harmonious and tolerant society.

Writing about the issue of asylum and refugees is part of that. I use the word “issue” deliberately, because the key issue here, in my opinion, is process.

The media love a “human interest” story, and of course it is important to humanise what we write and ensure that the impact of public policy on real individuals is understood. But there are real dangers in covering the issue of asylum purely from a “human interest” point of view.

First, it tends to focus attention on the photogenic and articulate asylum-seeker, preferably with a couple of pretty children tagging alone - and I am not singling out any one individual here. There are several examples.

This individual then becomes the symbol of that particular category of refugee. Many refugees are not photogenic or articulate, and are no less deserving of protection for that.

Secondly, it reduces the issue to the individual story. The story might be heart-rending or heart-warming (the talented footballer who is the life and soul of the local GAA or football team), but the person concerned does not necessarily meet the criteria for protection under international refugee law. If the individual is refused asylum, this can cause confusion about the purpose of the asylum system.

Thirdly, and this needs to be said, we do not necessarily know whether the story is true. Checking the story of a person claiming to be a refugee is the task of the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, who have at their disposal staff with at least some training and access to international data, which is more than most journalists have. They still sometimes get it wrong.

Why should journalists, who normally (though there are many, very well-informed exceptions) have less resources available to them to check such stories, be sure the story is true?

The other side of this is the leaking by State agencies of stories aimed at discrediting the individual asylum-seeker to selected journalists, so that the person becomes the centre of a propaganda war.

Fourthly, if evidence does emerge that refutes the story, not only is the individual asylum-seeker discredited, but, by association, so are all asylum-seekers in that category or from that country and the argument for providing protection to those fleeing persecution is itself damaged.

None of this means we should not talk to refugees and tell their stories. Of course we should. But that is not, and cannot be, the whole story. We must give context. We must find out ourselves as much as possible about the countries they come from. We must know – and explain – what the criteria are for obtaining asylum. And we must not be afraid of saying when asylum is not warranted.

Not every asylum-seeker is fleeing persecution. We need only recall the total collapse in applications for asylum from Poland and the Baltic states following their accession to the EU. There was no sudden change in the character of their political regimes at home.

Telling the stories of individual asylum-seekers can only ever be part of the picture and, I would argue, a subordinate part. Our focus must be on the bigger picture – explaining why there are refugees, and what are our obligations to them, and examining how those who act in our name are meeting those obligations.

That brings me back to the issue of process. We, as tax-payers, are entitled to be sure that our money is well-spent and that our asylum process is one of which we can be proud.

Assessing claims for asylum is a difficult and complex task, involving both great sensitivity and extensive knowledge. It is of the utmost importance; people’s lives are at stake, and a wrong decision could send people to their death. We must do everything humanly possible to ensure this does not happen, while also ensuring that our system of protection goes to those who need it.

Thus the process of assessment must be transparent and accountable. We pay for it, and our reputation in the world depends on it.

Yet there is a culture of secrecy surrounding it. The institutions dealing with asylum applications, ORAC and the RAT, are not subject to Freedom of Information legislation and do not fall under the remit of the Ombudsman or the Information Commissioner.

The RAT fought tooth and nail against making its decisions available even to the legal representatives of those appearing before it, making a limited concession only on the eve of a Supreme Court case it was certain to lose, and where an embarrassing split in its members would have been revealed. Under the proposed Immigration and Residence Bill, disclosing previous judgments to an academic researcher, a journalist, or even to another lawyer will be a serious offence.

The issue of transparency and accountability in the system is a crucial one, and a fruitful one for journalists to explore, without losing sight of the human stories of those caught up in that system.

The following is the text of Colin Murphy's remarks at the launch of the guide, 'Reporting on Refugees'. Colin Murphy is the editor of Migration Matters and an independent journalist covering immigration issues.

I came into journalism relatively late. In early 2000, I found myself in Angola in Southern Africa, as an aid worker with an Irish NGO, where the main focus of our work was the people displaced by the Angolan civil conflict. When I came home, in 2002, and started writing, one of the aspects of Irish life that had changed most notably while I was away, and which I found most interesting, was demographics, and I gradually started to cover this as a journalist, initially with Village Magazine and, more recently, freelance.

I’ve covered various insidious aspects of the asylum system, such as the iniquities of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the situation of unaccompanied minors, the disappearance of children from HSE hostels, and the direct provision system. I’ve also covered the exploitation of migrant workers and the denial of full rights to immigrant married couples. It can be tempting, covering these areas – particularly when meeting people whose lives have been terribly damaged through their suspension in the limbo of the Irish system – to be overwhelmingly negative about that system.

More recently, however, I spent some time on the canvass with immigrant participants in the local elections. Just three were elected but, more importantly, 40 or so put their heads above the parapets and announced that they believed their communities were worth representing, and that they could and should participate in Irish politics. And wearing another hat, I spend a lot of time at the theatre, and there I’ve seen further evidence of cultural integration and enrichment.

Despite the injustices and some desperately sad stories, I think the Irish experience of immigration and demographic change in the last ten to 15 years has been very positive, for both sides. I think the Irish state, and the people as whole, n the media have done pretty well. I think it’s important to acknowledge that. It could be a lot worse. It’s a lot worse elsewhere. Acknowledging the positive is an important part of fighting to make sure it doesn’t get worse here.

Reporting on asylum and immigration issues has its own challenges and its own rewards. It is a great privilege to be invited into people’s homes, and to have them tell their life stories. Because there are many amongst immigrant communities who lack a voice in Irish society, or feel excluded from public discourse, and because there are many injustices being suffered by people, there is the potential to do journalism that actually impacts upon people’s lives in a tangible, positive way. On the other hand, issues that are often tricky for journalists – making contacts, getting access, gaining confidence, verifying information – can be even more so when dealing with people with whom you don’t share a first language, or cultural norms, as may be the case...

On a sheer practical level, this area of reporting can be slow, and difficult to fit into the hectic schedule and overbearing expectations of a news desk. Add to that the challenge of dealing with a chronically secretive and unaccountable bureaucratic-judicial system.

But on the whole, I don’t think this area of reporting is fundamentally any different from any other area where you’re dealing with issues of legal and emotional sensitivity. Treat everybody with respect, but don’t be credulous towards anybody. Make your own contacts. Don’t rely on mediators, though they can be invaluable. Be wary of received language. Avoid jargon, and clichés. Allow people to speak for themselves. Be precise. Seek detail. Strive for balance. Be clear about the difference between on and off the record. Interrogate. Don’t sentimentalise. Lastly, don’t reduce people to ‘victims’.

Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle recently rewrote ‘The Playboy of the Western World’, to feature a young man arriving in Dublin from Nigeria in the central role. He walks into a pub in West Dublin, and starts rumours flying. One of the locals refers to him as a “refugee”, but another corrects him – clearly, if this man has just arrived, he must be an “asylum seeker”.

There is a crucial, legal distinction between the terms refugee and asylum seeker, and the joke Bisi and Roddy were making was that Ireland had become so au fait with these terms that any auld fella in a pub would know the difference. That’s perhaps a good thing. It perhaps reflects a growing awareness of these issues amongst the media, and a more accurate treatment of them.

But there is a deeper resonance of the term ‘asylum seeker’, and it’s an example of how language works to shape people’s perceptions of reality, not just describe them.

When I worked in humanitarian aid in Angola, the word we habitually used to describe the people we were trying to help was ‘beneficiaries’. ‘How many beneficiaries does your project have?’ somebody might ask. We thought it was a neutral, factually accurate way to describe those people, like the number of ‘passengers’ on a train. But it wasn’t. It is a deeply ideological term, which suggests that the native population of a poor country inherently benefits from the interventions of the charity of a rich country.

‘Asylum seeker’ is something similar. In legal terms, it is a way of describing the place one has within the system. But the deeper meaning of the term is reflected in the way these people are treated in the system: their nature is defined by the fact that they are ‘seeking’ something – they are cast as mendicants, dependent on the largesse of the system and the state that has the power to award asylum or refuse it.

This is reflected in a real sense in the recently revealed circular from the Department of Justice to accommodation centres for asylum seekers, prohibiting political activity or canvassing in the centres – implying that asylum seekers need protection from politics, when in fact what some, at least, want, is more participation in politics.

It’s difficult to know what to do about this precise linguistic issue as a journalist. If I’m reporting on a hunger strike by a man from Iraq, say, who has been refused asylum, do I start my report by referring to ‘an Iraqi asylum seeker’, or to ‘a hunger striker from Iraq, who has sought asylum here’, or to ‘a member of the Iraqi opposition who was refused asylum in Ireland’?

Words matter. And the words that matter most in an article are the words you start with. Is there a way of reporting on his actions, and his predicament, without casting him as the helpless seeker of our sympathy? Because, though there may be some truth in that portrayal, it is never the full truth.

So, how can your use of language, as a journalist, both avoid perpetuating the alienation and marginalisation of people in the asylum system, and present the story vividly and coherently to the public?

More generally, when investigating or reporting on perceived injustices or abuses within the system, how can you do so in ways that do not sentimentalise the people involved, that recognise their agency as well as their problems? Or in other words: when is somebody a survivor, or even simply an individual, and not simply a victim?

Treading that fine line is perhaps the key challenge in reporting on asylum issues, and I have been privileged to be guided around it by various people who have come to live here.

The following is the advance text of John Horgan's remarks at the launch of the guide, 'Reporting on Refugees'. John Horgan is the Press Ombudsman and is Emeritus Professor of Communications at Dublin City University.

I am honoured to have been asked to formally launch this leaflet containing guidelines for reporting on refugees. The reasons will be obvious to everyone here. The first is that issues connected with the reporting on refugees will continue to arise, and may well arise even more sharply in a world increasingly characterized by financial meltdown, democratic deficits, and real threats to the life and limb of individuals and ethnic groups in an ever-increasing range of countries and regions.
The second is because this is a leaflet offering guidance not only for, but by journalists themselves. It embodies, therefore, reflections based on the practical experience of those at the coal-face, and is not simply a wish-list compiled by people with the best of intentions in the hope that everyone will sit up and pay attention. It is therefore both detailed and practical.
The third is because it comes with the imprimatur of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNCHR deals with the poorest of the poor, those whose grip on a viable existence is the most fragile, and those who are most deserving of our help. Even if there is little we can do to help, they deserve, at an absolute minimum, our understanding and our sympathy.
From the point of view of best professional practice, which is what my Office is about, there are also three points I’d like to make.
The first is that precision, always important in journalism, is absolutely vital where critically important distinctions need to be made, to help prevent the creation of stereotypes, and as part of the public education function of professional journalism.
The second is that guides and codes, even the best of them, are at the end of the day just that – guides and codes. They can assist, but can never be a substitute for, the exercise by all journalists of a deep sense of personal responsibility, of their allegiance to truth and fair dealing, and of their vocation to public service.
The third is that the responsibility for responding adequately to the kind of problems with which the UNHCR is dealing, and to which this guide relates, does not rest on the shoulders of journalists alone. You don’t have to shoot the messenger if you can pretend that you didn’t hear what he had to say, or that he is the only person saying it. So the message has to come not only from journalists but from community and political leadership, and from individuals and social institutions at every level.
We do not have to be flag-wavers: but journalism, in the face of this constant and enormous human tragedy, should take special care to be neither complacent nor complicit, but to be critical and constructive. Our fellow human beings deserve no less.

The latest edition of the e-newsletter from Statewatch, 'Statewatch News Online', contains various items of interest to people working with migration issues. The full newsletter is here. You can sign up for it here. Statewatch is a NGO dedicated to 'monitoring the state and civil liberties in Europe', and attempts to fill the gaping hole in media coverage of the European Union as a political and institutional entity with rigorous analysis of EU documentation. Asylum issues feature regularly in Statewatch's commentaries, and the organisation published a useful study, 'Border Wars and Asylum Crimes', a few years ago.

The newsletter is essentially a selection of links to new material on the Statewatch site. An excerpt follows.

1. EU: Major report on the: Criminalisation and victimisation of migrants in Europe (255 pages, pdf) directed by Salvatore Palidda.

2. EU: European Commission: Tracking method for monitoring the implementation of the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum (COM 266 2009):

3. EU: Council discussions: "State of play": Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child-pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA - State of play and: Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings, and protecting victims, repealing Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA - State of play (EU doc no: 9892/09):

4. UK: The BNP's success reflects the new racism of our political culture (IRR News Service, link):

5. UK-N IRELAND: Guilty until proven innocent (Between the Lines, Paul Donovan's blog, link):

"The arrests of 12 Pakistani students in April on suspicion of terrorism hit the news headlines. Two weeks later there was less fanfare as all were released without charge. The pattern of arresting people under anti-terror legislation and then releasing without charge is familiar to Irish people who experienced the tactic during the conflict in the North."

...

20. Council of Europe: The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) releases its Annual activity report for 2008. It highlights the main trends with regard to the presence of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance across Europe.

22. UK: How MI5 blackmails British Muslims: 'Work for us or we will say you are a terrorist' (Independent, link):

________________________________________________
Statewatch: Monitoring the state and civil liberties in Europe
PO Box 1516, London, N16 0EW. UK
tel: +44(0)20-8802-1882; fax: +44(0)20-8880-1727
http://www.statewatch.org

This Saturday, June 20, is World Refugee Day. Below is a selection of links provided in the e-newsletter, 'Humanitarian Heads Up'.

World facing new displacement crisis, says UN refugee chief - Emma Batha, AlertNet
FACTBOX: Latest U.N. figures for refugees and displaced
Viewpoint from UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres
Countries to mark World Refugee Day with a dizzying array of events - UNCHR
UN refugee chief cites pressing needs as those uprooted tops 42 million - UNHCR
Insecurity prevents more refugee returns - UNHCR

'Humanitarian Heads-Up' is a very useful weekly bulletin provided by Reuters AlertNet as a service to journalists covering humanitarian crises and related issues. You can subscribe to it here.

AlertNet is a 'humanitarian news network' established by Reuters as a philanthropic activity. Read about it here. It provides a suite of online services aimed at journalists. Amongst these are this YouTube video giving an introduction to crisis reporting, and an e-learning site with a range of online self-training packages. These include one on 'Reporting on refugees and displacement' - getting the facts right and explaining the stories behind the numbers'

There is more on the background to AlertNet here. According to AlertNet, the site 'attracts upwards of ten million users a year, has a network of 400 contributing humanitarian organizations and its weekly email digest is received by more than 26,000 readers'.

And on the background:

'During the Rwanda crisis of 1994, the Reuters Foundation became interested in media reports of poor coordination between emergency relief charities on the ground. It surveyed charities on what could be done to remedy this. The conclusion was that there was a need for a service that would:
* Deliver operation-critical information to relief charities worldwide
* Encourage relief charities to swap information with one another
* Raise awareness of humanitarian emergencies among the general public.

Migration Matters has just stumbled across NowPublic, a 'participatory news network', or citizen journalism site, based in Canada, with a comprehensive array of content tools and an attractive and seemingly user-friendly interface.

A search for 'asylum' on the site produces this list of stories, amongst them the story of a Sudanese asylum seeker who was murdered after being deported from the UK.

According to NowPublic, the site 'mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In twelve short months, the company has become one of the fastest growing news organizations with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries... By harnessing the wisdom of crowds and tapping into the news creating potential of the hundreds of millions of Internet users, bloggers and photography enthusiasts, NowPublic is changing the way news is made and distributed.'

NowPublic was recently acknowledged as one of the top 20 Web 2.0 sites in Canada. According to the commendation: 'NowPublic is a crowdsourced media outlet. Sign up for an account and the site promises “You’re seconds away from publishing your news, your way.” If you’ve heard the term “citizen journalism” it’s because of companies like NowPublic. “This is a superbly thought-out and executed approach to crowdsourced news,” O’Connor Clarke said. “There are a lot of players in this space, but the way NowPublic have put things together, the way the site operates and their success in securing major partnerships with traditional media companies are all well worthy of recognition. NowPublic is a superb example of how 2.0 thinking can bridge the old and new media worlds to create something wholly new.” Other judges also raised the competition flag. Shuttleworth said there is “too much competition in this space” and Moffitt felt that “given its success already and its international scale, NowPublic could be creating an interesting form of new journalism, but it could also raise the hackles of well-moneyed competitors — but they have the head start.”'

A press release from South Africa alerts me to a new advocacy and public information project on trafficking, and to the role in it by a Cameroon-born South African musician, Wax.

According to a recent article in the Sowetan, Wax began his humanitarian work in Hillbrow and Yeoville in Joahannesburg, areas of the city that are largely black and are now notable for their large numbers of African immigrants. He is now involved in anti-trafficking awareness work with the International Organization for Migration, which publishes 'Global Eye on Human Trafficking', available here. (Or you can download an issue directly here.)

Wax says: 'I did a lot of work in counter-trafficking on a personal level working in places like Hillbrow, were I had contact with women who were victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

'My new album is 'African Dream', and that is what it’s all about. The fact that you could see a child on TV and this child is desperate and hungry. Yes the child does need food, but it doesn’t end there, that child has a brain that could produce a business idea like Facebook, that could build a plane, that child could be anything because a child has that ability.'

Wax's own website, with ample downloads and videos, is here. The 'bio' section contains an account of a fascinating life story.

(Incidentally, in the course of researching this item, I came across the advocacy blog, 'The Human Trafficking Project', which may also be of interest.)

This week is Refugee Week in the UK (June 13-21), and amongst the events, theatre company iceandfire is bringing its play 'Asylum Dialogues' to seven cities across the UK in collaboration with City of Sanctuary.

Drawn from real life conversations, 'Asylum Dialogues' explores the everyday encounters between asylum seekers and British people. According to the company's patron, Juliet Stevenson, "We regularly hear about the terrible hostility that asylum seekers and refugees face. But we rarely hear the stories of British people who are standing shoulder to shoulder with those seeking sanctuary in the UK. Asylum Dialogues tells these inspirational stories and shows how small gestures of welcome can make a big difference."    

There is some video of the play here. Note that the company performs the play, as with their earlier 'Asylum Monologues', as a reading, with volunteer actors, with scripts in hand.

There is a selection of reviews of the company's other work (all similarly political) here. Tour details are here.

Playwright Sonja Linden has a thoughtful piece on how she became a writer, and one motivated by such stories, on Open Democracy, here. She writes:

'What sustains oppressive regimes such as Hitler's Germany, is not just the machinery of terror that holds them in place, but the disempowerment of an entire people through ignorance and poverty. It is this that allows a lumpenproleriat to build and bulwark such regimes. Access to information and humane living conditions alone set people free, enabling them to disengage from oppressive ideologies. In a society as ‘liberal' as ours in the UK, if we are to maintain more than lip-service to a just and cohesive society, this is still what is needed.'

The City of Sanctuary movement aims to build a culture of hospitality for people seeking sanctuary in the UK. 
 
The theatre company iceandfire explores human rights stories through performance. Asylum Dialogues is performed by members of their national outreach network, Actors for Human Rights, made up of over 300 professional actors dedicated to drawing public attention to a range of contemporary human rights concerns. The actors and musicians involved volunteer their performance skills and public profile to encourage public acceptance of human rights laws and principles and to give voice to people whose basic human rights have been violated.    
 

The FOMACS digital stories, 'Living in Direct Provision', will be screened at the Guth Gafa Documentary Festival in Donegal this weekend (Saturday June 13, 5pm). Full details are here.

The nine digital stories were made in the context of a six-month (2008-9) participatory media workshop run by FOMACS, in partnership with Integrating Ireland and Refugee Information Services. The nine storytellers participated in a collaborative process that integrated storytelling, group and individual reflection, creative writing, photography and the use of multi-media technologies, in order to make a three-to-five minute story about their own experiences as asylum seekers and refugees.

A previous digital stories series produced by FOMACS, 'Undocumented in Ireland', can be viewed here.

The Guth Gafa festival takes place every year (this is the third) in Gortahork, Co Donegal.

'What the Bible says about the Stranger. Biblical perspectives on racism, migration, asylum and cross-community issues' is a booklet by Kieran J O'Mahoney OSA, first published in 1999 in response to the then-new trend of immigration to Ireland, and republished this week in a revised and updated version, by the ecumenical Irish Council of Churches. It can be downloaded here.

Eamonn Walsh, Catholic auxiliary bishop of Dublin and chairperson of the Irish Bishops Immigrant Council, launched it on Monday  at the long-running Vincentian Refugee Centre in Phibsboro, Dublin. There will be a Belfast launch on Friday at 4pm at Edgehill Methodist Theological College.

Amongst the points Eamon Walsh made were that “Any reference to people seeking asylum as irregular or, worse still, illegal migrants cannot be permitted or tolerated” and that recent changes to the work permit regime raised “major concerns”.

The full text of his speech follows.

A few days ago I noticed the “Wet Paint” sign on the door of Maynooth Church – it was in three languages – English, Irish and Polish! Just one of the signs, and not all limited to print on paper, of the new times in which we live and of the new people with whom we live. This has also found its way into Irish humour where I saw the ‘w’ of a sign on a Telecom van changed to a ‘v’: “Vorking for Telecom”.

While the composition of the Irish population was beginning to change in 1999 when the first edition of ‘What the Bible says about the Stranger’ was published, few of us could have foreseen the changes which have taken place in the past decade. Changes which have resulted in our living in a country where over 160 languages are spoken by people coming from countries as distant from us, and from one another, as Croatia is from China and Estonia from Ecuador.

But the pattern of change in the past ten years has not been along a straight line. At first it was people seeking asylum, people searching for a place of refuge, who made up the majority of newcomers to the country. In a relatively short time, their number was overtaken and far surpassed by people who came here to fill the growing jobs market. And now for a variety of reasons, some of which are very evident and others much less so, we witness a downward trend in figures of incomers to this country.

If reflection from a Christian faith perspective on living in a multiethnic, intercultural society was a need in the late nineties, it is an even more urgent challenge as we come to the end of the first decade of a new century. At a time when migration to this country – in all its forms – is no longer in its initial phase, when we in Ireland now have significant experience of inward as opposed to outward migration, what is the vision which is now needed to guide our living together? We know only too well that, “Without a vision, the people perish” (Prov 29.18).

As people who live in a common space, how can we share life in a way that contributes to the building up of a community? A space in which each one is valued, not according to external criteria like ethnic origin, language or religious or cultural background but, first and foremost, as a person created in the likeness of God, with the inherent dignity which that confers.
 
Matching the vision and ideals of individuals with action is a challenge for all regardless of creed or none. This challenges us to ask are we learning from the dear lessons of the past or are we repeating them in another context? The context for us here is in how we “welcome the stranger”.
 
While a vital aspect of welcome for the stranger is expressed in the interpersonal sphere, this welcome must be promoted and safeguarded too in the social, public arena. This is the arena of Government policies, procedures and practice. In all that relates to the right to seek asylum, it is essential that as a country we honour our international commitments by translating these into domestic legislation while, at the same time, putting in place effective mechanisms to ensure implementation.

Any reference to people seeking asylum as irregular or, worse still, illegal migrants cannot be permitted or tolerated. Similarly, legislation in relation to in-migration, whether it be for work, study, to join one’s family or whatever, must be in line with the relevant international conventions and other agreements to which Ireland is a signatory. In Ireland - as, indeed, everywhere - immigration policies must be located in a rights framework and be humane, transparent, sustainable and non-discriminatory. And while legislation alone, even when comprehensively implemented, is never sufficient, it is, nonetheless, an essential part of the foundation on which an intercultural society is built.

While Government policies and practice are on the one hand, a reflection - partial, at least - of societal values, on the other, they create and shape values. In forming public opinion through underscoring attitudes and actions that are acceptable - and, by implication, those that are unacceptable - legislation has a key function. This, for example, is why recent changes to the work permit regime raise major concerns.

I wish to highlight the requirement that a vacancy must be advertised for two months and no local or European Union applicant found before a work permit application from a non EU candidate can be considered. The condition applies equally to new applicants and to work permit holders already resident here who lose their jobs. Many people and their families who have made Ireland their home will be forced to leave or will have no other choice but to stay and work informally with the potential for exploitation that can accompany such working circumstances. This measure should be reconsidered urgently and not await a possible autumn review.

It is the call to Christian life – indeed, to human life – that ‘What the Bible says about the Stranger’ addresses from a wide variety of perspectives. Its breaking open of the Scriptures gives us a window into the mind and heart of God, made explicit in so many ways by the words and actions of Jesus. Discussion questions invite us to grapple with the difficult issues, not just intellectually but, more particularly, in a search for life-changing responses. The prayers included in each section, and a new feature of this edition, remind us that welcoming the stranger is, in essence, a task we share with God who is the One who first welcomes each of us and so enables us to welcome one another.

Addressing the deep-down questions is too profound a task for our heads alone. That is why the wide-ranging and very practical suggestions for dramatization offered in this publication are invaluable. They offer possibilities for participation, beyond language, age or acting ability, which allow for the involvement of everyone.

At a time of serious cutbacks for several agencies which worked to ensure that the human rights of all who live in Ireland were respected and upheld, not least in relation to racism, the mission of faith communities and of the Christian churches, in particular, is more crucial than ever and more urgent. At this time, in the face of the challenges which we face both globally and nationally, I am delighted to launch this publication. May it be widely distributed and, especially, widely used, and may “Wet Paint”, and every sign in our society, whatever its medium, be in a language that recognises, values and welcomes the Stranger.

And to end… an old Jewish tale told of the Rabbi and his students. The rabbi asked ‘How can you determine the hour of dawn – when the night ends and the day begins?’ One of the students suggested ‘when, from a distance, you can distinguish between a dog and a sheep’. ‘No’, was the answer of the Rabbi. ‘Is it when you can distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine?’ asked the second student. ‘No’, the Rabbi said. ‘Please tell us the answer,’ pleaded the third. ‘It is’, replied the wise teacher, ‘when you look into the face of a stranger and have enough light within you to recognise that person as a sister or brother. Up until then, it is night, and darkness is still within you.’

It was a disappointing election for most of the 40-odd immigrant candidates who stood in Ireland's local elections on Friday. Despite a surge in the vote for independents generally, independent immigrant candidates, such as Paddy Maphoso in Dublin, largely failed to take advantage.

As Ruadhan Mac Cormaic in the Irish Times reports, 'former mayor of Portlaoise Rotimi Adebari was one of just three immigrant candidates to secure local authority seats at the weekend.

(In fact, there was a fourth immigrant candidate elected: Anna Rooney, originally from Russia, took a seat on Clones Town Council for Fianna Fail. Rooney was one of those featured in the recent FOMACS print syndication articles for the Sunday Tribune and Le Monde Diplomatique. Her election was declared after the deadlines for Mondays' newspapers.)

The Irish Times continued: 'Mr Adebari was joined by Dutch former aid worker Jan Rotte, who retained his seat for the Labour Party in Lismore, Co Waterford, and Kristina Jankaitiene, a Lithuanian school teacher who took a seat for the Green Party in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.

'Taiwo Matthew, an Independent from Nigeria, lost the seat he won in Ennis, Co Clare, in 2004.'

Various other candidates came close to seats, notably Elena Secas, from Moldova, for Labour, in Limerick East. In Mulhuddart, three rival Nigerian candidates appear to have split any immigrant or Nigerian community vote, polling 15.4% in total but each failing to get elected, as the Times reports.

The Irish Independent also reported on this issue, however that paper incorrectly reported that Katarzyna Gaborec, originally from Poland, had been elected for Fianna Fail to Mullingar Town Council. That article is here.

Canadian investigative journalist Victor Malarek will be guest speaker at a seminar entitled, 'Sex Trafficking and Prostitution: The Dilemma of Demand' being jointly hosted by the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Irish Human Rights Commission at Trinity College Dublin on June 23.

There's an interview with Malarek here and a profile here.

Victor Malarek is the author of “The Natashas” and “‘The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It”.  Other speakers include co-author of the ICI’s recent research report, “Globalisation, Sex Trafficking and Prostitution”, Patricia Kelleher; Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission Policy Advisor, Rebecca Dudley; IHRC Commissioner Rosemary Byrne and ICI Senior Solicitor Hilkka Becker. For further information or to book a place at the seminar, please contact ICI Anti-Trafficking Coordinator Nusha Yonkova at nusha@immigrantcouncil.ie or call 01 674 0202.

A short animated film by Siobhan Twomey of FOMACS has been shortlisted in the inaugural ICCL Human Rights Film School Competition, run by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Her film, 'Team Spirit', can be seen here.

In the film, Sadiq, like so many refugees in Ireland, grapples with the fact that he must wait two years for his family’s visas to be processed, while his Grandmother has to remain in Darfur as she does not qualify under Irish law as a family member. All this while also being the star player in a football game against his team’s brutal arch rivals, the Bashers...

Online viewers can vote for their favourite shortlisted film here. There's also a short documentary on the making of 'Team Spirit' here and more on the FOMACS animation project, run by Siobhan, here.

Migration Matters is delighted to publish the following guest contribution from Charlotte McIvor on the intriguing recent theatre production by Upstate Theatre Project entitled 'Journey from Babel'.

Upstate Local’s first community-based initiative through their Louth International Theatre Project, ‘Journey from Babel’, was mounted from May 21-23, 2009, in Drogheda in the old Weavers’ Factory. This site-specific piece was written by a company of community members comprising eight nationalities who are currently living in Drogheda. ‘Journey from Babel’ was developed over a period of nine months in workshop rehearsals through the facilitation and, ultimately, direction of company founders Declan Gorman and Declan Mallon.

‘Journey from Babel’ led its audience members on a trip through time and space, addressing themes of migration from multiple perspectives. Audiences were issued a boarding pass with their programmes, and received a summary stamp as they hesitantly crept up a narrow stairway into an uncertain experience. Contemporary Ireland served as the anchor for the majority of the storylines, whether as origin point or final destination. Yet the play’s stories ranged from WWI-era Austria to the roaring 1920s in New York to 18th century Ireland. A hilarious and ribald Drogheda tea lady (Nicola Devine) shares performance space with lesbian newcomers to town from London and Quebec (Cara Brock and Shannon O’Donovan), while a French pilot (Sylain Pastor) threads his way through the crowd contemplating the philosophical reasons for flying at all, whether in the air or imagination.

The plight of a pregnant new immigrant to Ireland named Anna, who is about to give birth in the airport, is considered (Maria Copley), as a childless woman named Marguerite (Jenny Thompson) is made redundant after 30 years of work and wonders why she has never been able to go anywhere at all, finally settling for at least leaving her husband behind. Multiple generations of women writing to lovers away at war are presented through the story of a German woman named Alicia, who experiences loss and rebirth as a new immigrant to the US (Doris Genner), while the global traffic of sex workers is briefly and boldly explored through the competing perspectives of an Irish woman in London, Rose (Bianca Browne), and a Hungarian woman in Ireland, Florka (Alexandra Pap).

The whole show finally ends up on New York City’s Broadway, with the Drogheda tea lady, Alicia, and Anna sharing the stage space in hauntingly different roles before the cast appears for a candlelit vigil in honour of all those who have migrated to a new life for many different reasons.

This dizzying collection of narrative threads and intersecting geopolitical issues would tire any theatregoer, especially one who has stood for the better part of an hour and a half, winding their way through a maze of rooms. ‘Journey from Babel’ engages with a litany of push-button issues, most extensively the recent furore over pregnant immigrant women coming to give birth in Ireland, which resulted in the 2004 citizenship referendum.

At Anna’s first appearance, a scene in immigration control in which she is asked to hand over her visa is enacted over and over again without sympathy. By the time the audience is present at her delivery in the hospital, her pleas for an epidural turn into a plea for a free epidural, then social welfare, then a buggy, then designer shoes for her baby and so on. The scene ultimately dissolves into a pillow fight between the staff over whether this scene ever really happened, and whether the recession is the fault of the bankers or this woman and her baby. Meanwhile, Anna’s cries for help for her distressed baby are drowned out by the row.

When Anna reappears with her baby buggy, it is to sing ‘Pirate Jenny’, from Brecht’s ‘The Threepenny Opera’, on Broadway. She belts out the haunting song about a female worker who dreams of being rescued by pirates who will kill her unjust employers. As the actor cradles her baby and sings to the audience, “And they pile up the bodies/ And I'll say: 'That'll learn you/ That'll learn you,'” it is unclear whether the piece is revising stereotypes of aggressive and violent women of colour, or using the Brechtian context and the song’s history as a US civil rights anthem via Nina Simone.

This tension is the strongest feature of Upstate Local’s work here with ‘Journey from Babel’, and this section, as well as the stand-out performance from Nichola Devine as a well-meaning tea lady, who is continually frustrated by her straight talk being taken as racism when, “sure isn’t me daughter dating a black fellow, and he’s a lovely lad,” save the piece from pedanticism with their humour and striking theatricality.

The successes and shortcomings of ‘Journey from Babel’ dramatise anew the problems that community-based performance presents for theatre criticism. The performances here are uneven, the transitions often tedious in a small space with many audience members, and the piece frequently feels strained by its epic scope.

Yet, the staging of the piece manages to be site-specific in more than name only, utilising the unique architecture of the Weavers’ factory to not only create a world, but multiple worlds in the same rooms. And, most significantly, this piece is brave enough to push the audience literally into the same space with many issues that have received far too short a shrift in Irish performance spaces in the wake of the Celtic Tiger. It is also a piece that evolved through nine months of continuous contact between a group of community members with diverse opinions and points of origins, many of whom had never set foot on a stage before.

Upstate Local’s work with ‘Journey from Babel’ makes a strong case for more flexible models of theatre criticism in Ireland that can accommodate appreciation and support for this kind of work. ‘Journey from Babel’ ultimately demonstrates an impressive willingness to use a theatrical process to interrogate the questions most commentators agree Irish arts should be asking, as well as take risks aesthetically and theatrically.

Charlotte McIvor

Charlotte McIvor is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at University of California, Berkeley where she teaches courses in acting and writing. Her dissertation explores contemporary Irish performance that engages issues of race, immigration, and cultural belonging. She recently worked with the City Fusion Project as part of the St Patrick’s Festival in Dublin. A further article by McIvor, analysing actress Ruth Negga’s performance in Neil Jordan’s 2005 film, 'Breakfast on Pluto', is here.

'Journey from Babel' ran from May 21-23, 2009, at the Old Weaver’s Factory, Drogheda, and was presented by Upstate Local: Louth International Theatre Project.


 

Ireland's leading research institute has just released a new report on how schools are adapting to diversity. 'Adapting to Diversity: Irish Schools and Newcomer Students', published by the ESRI, is the first national study of school provision for newcomer (immigrant) students. It draws on a survey of 1,200 primary and second-level schools as well as detailed case-studies of twelve schools. Its main findings are as follows:

• The vast majority of second-level schools have newcomer students. In contrast, four in ten primary schools have no newcomers while there are a number of primary schools with quite high concentrations of newcomers.

• Newcomers are more likely to attend urban schools and those already catering for more disadvantaged student groups. This reflects the interaction between residential patterns, availability of school places and school admission policies.

• Newcomer students are seen by teachers as motivated and hard-working, placing a high value on education.

• Most newcomers do not have English as a first language. Language needs, if not addressed, are seen to hinder the academic development and social integration of newcomer students. Language needs among newcomer parents make it difficult to involve parents in their child’s education since few schools have access to translation services.

• Schools most commonly withdraw students from class for additional language support. However, newcomers spend most of their time being taught by mainstream classroom or subject teachers, few of whom have received training on teaching English as an additional language.

• Many schools have built up a team of committed and enthusiastic language support teachers. However, principals and teachers would like to see more training for teachers, guidance on best practice and access to teaching materials suitable for older students learning English.

• Two-thirds of second-level schools and half of primary schools have put formal measures in place to support the social integration of newcomer students. Relations between newcomer and Irish students are seen as broadly positive. However, there is some evidence of segregation in friendship patterns and incidences of bullying based on nationality or ethnicity.

• A positive school climate (that is, good relations among teachers, parents and students) enhances the academic and social development of newcomer students.

The report can be downloaded here.

Launching the report, integration minister John Curran noted that 'the majority of principals - and especially those from DEIS (Department of Education & Science) schools - report that academic achievement levels among newcomer students are at least as good as those among Irish students'.

He concluded by saying that newcomer students were 'a very positive addition to our schools, presenting an opportunity to enhance outcomes for all students and an opportunity for society as a whole. While there are challenges to be addressed, this report shows that with a positive school climate, it is possible to meet these challenges.'

'I'll be counted among those who tried to make a difference,' said Paddy Maphoso, an independent candidate in the local elections in Dublin, from South Africa. 'In 2009, I stood out and tried to make a change.'

Maphoso spoke to me for an article for the FOMACS print syndication project, which was published on Sunday in the Sunday Tribune. (An international version will shortly be available in the June issue of Le Monde Diplomatique.)

The Irish Times also had an article on immigrant participation in the elections this weekend. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic's article focussed on the parties' strategies for involving immigrants.

Metro Eireann has a good archive of articles on various immigrant candidates.

The latest e-newsletter from the development charity Oxfam highlights an issue we have looked at here before, the humanitarian consequences of climate change, increasingly at the root of natural disasters and consequent population displacement. Oxfam has released a report on the issue, 'The Right to Survive' (the report, summary and background paper can be downloaded here). According to Oxfam, in six years time the number of people affected by climate crises is projected to rise by 54 per cent to 375 million people, threatening to overwhelm the humanitarian aid system. There is a slideshow of images here and case studies here.

Migration Matters ran a series of reports on the issue of Environmental Refugees in January this year. 

An interesting collaboration between Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, and the Irish Travellers Movement, sees Saami theatre maker and musician Åsa Simma come to Dublin for a public lecture on 'Performing Culture'.

The Saami (Sámi) people are the indigenous people of northern Europe, inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. (There are in Norway approximately 60,000-100,000; in Sweden, 15,000-25,000; in Finland, 6,400; and in Russia, 2,000.) Their traditional languages are the Saami languages. The best known Saami livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding, with which about 10% of the Sámi are today involved.

Åsa Simma is Artistic Director for Saami Theatre. Her work as an actress, singer and director serves as a medium to bring Saami culture to the wider world.
 
Åsa’s approach to performance is to combine the traditions of her culture with her theatre training and modern media. The content of her work deals with both the day-to-day and the spiritual. She is particularly concerned with how Saami women, “as important bearers of culture within the Saami world, can reach out and receive essential support from Swedish society as a whole.”
 
Åsa will be in conversation with Catherine Joyce, Chair of the Irish Traveller Movement. The event is at 7pm on June 17 at Sean O Casey Community Centre, St Mary’s Road, East Wall, Dublin. The event is free to all but places need to be booked, via email to communications@create-ireland.ie or telephone, 01- 4736600.
 
Asa on Saami culture:
 
“When I was brought up, Saami people were not respected. Our language and traditions were made fun of. So for me it doubled the disappointment I had to carry. When I was brought up, our traditional singing was not heard, our Yoiks were not heard because that was a time of oppression. Everything Saami was blaah. It didn’t sound like anything. It sounded like something boring and monotonous. My mother taught me the songs in secrecy and she told me not to tell anybody I was learning these songs, because it would put me into trouble. And then, while I was brought up the sort of Saami culture Renaissance was just starting in the seventies. When I was nine years old, a Saami artist, who had meant very much for me, heard that I was singing the traditional songs. So he took me on a tour, when I was nine years old, among them to inspire the Saami people not to forget the songs. We were many children and lots of old people. We traveled together one summer. For me it was of big importance, because I learned so much about the singing tradition. Not only how to do it, but the whole philosophy behind it. I think the fact is when we look at the western way of conceiving a piece of music;
somebody sits down and composes music, writes it down, then puts his little signature on it: “This is mine! I did it!” But we did the Yoik tradition and the most beautiful thing in our singing tradition is that it is totally the opposite.”
 
You can hear Asa singing here. That is the track 'Shaman's Journey', which can also be found here.
 
There is a Guardian article on yoik traditional music here.
 
Create's arts audio site, Create Exchange, is here. 
 

Monday is Africa Day internationally, and Irish Aid has coordinated a series of activities and celebrations around the country, running this weekend and on. The headline event is a huge, free concert in the beautiful Iveagh Gardens in Dublin, this Sunday afternoon. The headline act is Malian blues musician, Vieux Farka Touré - yes, he is the son of the father, and himself a widely-renowned musician. There are also a series of spoken word performances, storytelling and interactive workshops at the Gardens. Other events include an Africa Day Film Festival at the IFI on Sunday, screening 'The Story of Concern', 'Kirikou and the wild beasts' (Kirikou et les bêtes sauvages) and 'Bled Number One'. For events across the country, see here.

Yes, it sounds like an outlandish satire, but the Newsnight team on BBC put their tongue firmly in cheek last week and paralleled the Eurovision Song Contest with their own Immigrant Song Contest, inviting immigrant musicians to play cover versions of classic British Eurovision hits of yesteryear in a week-long series of reports. You could deconstruct it on many levels, but the combination of earnestness, originality and craft of the entries seemed to outweigh the Oxbridge ironic cool of the idea and make this a surprisingly affecting piece of entertainment journalism which also raised some of the geopolitical issues underlying migration.

The competition was won by Font, an Iranian indie rock band, who were once jailed for playing a gig in their native Tehran. Watch them playing their winning version of Cliff Richard's Congratulations here. Readers in the UK can review each night's programme on the BBC iPlayer, access to which is blocked in Ireland (and presumably other countries).

However, you can catch up on it by working through the Newsnight blog. Monday's blog entry, with the intro report on the contest is here. You can then follow the contest through the week. Thursday's entry has a round up of all the contestants, here.

A friend recently drew my attention to the overlap between the work of PEN International and the areas of interest to Migration Matters, notably PEN's work with writers in exile. PEN is an international organisation devoted to promoting literature, facilitating writers, and freedom of expression. PEN maintains a Writers in Exile Network, which partners with Exiled Writers Ink, a London-based organisation that has a magazine, a monthly cafe, and various events (including an upcoming poetry evening), and with Icorn, the International Cities of Refuge Network. Icorn leads me on to Shahrazad, a project of 'stories for life'. According to their description:

'Shahrazad will bring new, original and challenging stories from all over the world into Europe. These stories will be created, told and disseminated by poets, journalists, novelists, editors, cartoonists, translators and essayists who are persecuted and silenced in their own homelands.

'Human rights, free speech, diversity and solidarity are core values within the project. Shahrazad will become a unique tool for integration and for understanding between insiders and outsiders within communities, countries and even continents. It will also generate a great number of literary events and projects, dialogue and debate, within the six partner cities...

'Ultimately, the Shahrazad project aims to provide Europe with new, more open and sustainable narratives about itself. By opening up to human and artistic impulses from ‘outside’, Europe can regain and revitalise some of its capital values: freedom, democracy and solidarity.'

For more, and some sample digital stories, see here.

Hot off the presses: RTE's current affairs programme Prime Time will feature a report this Tuesday night (19th) at 9.30pm on the pending changes to the Irish work permits system, due to come into effect on June 1. The Migrant Rights Centre is campaigning to have the changes postponed. They are holding a press conference on Wednesday, so look out for further reports on the issue on Wednesday evening and in Thursday's newspapers.

According to the MRCI, the changes would make it almost impossible for non-EEA migrants who are made redundant to get another job, regardless of how long they have lived or worked here. Many people and their families will be forced to leave Ireland or will have no other choice but to stay and work informally. For more information on the campaign to postpone the changes, see here.

If you miss the Prime Time report, you can watch it on RTE's new online player, here (this only works in Ireland).

Kirin Kalia at the Migration Information Source included the following compilation of links on the crisis in Pakistan's Swat valley in last week's e-newsletter:

The number of people fleeing fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley has increased steadily since May 2 to nearly 1 million as of today, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The latest figures from UNHCR: 987,140 people registered from the current influx, with only about 80,000 in camps. These people are in addition to 550,000 who have fled fighting since August 2008. UNHCR head Antonio Guterres is warning of a humanitarian disaster (more from UNHCR here).

Dawn, an English-language Pakistani media company, has photos of displaced children and vulnerable religious minorities in its media gallery.

Pakistani photojournalist Sajjad Ali Qureshi has uploaded numerous photos of a refugee camp near Mardan.

In times of crisis, the diaspora are often a source of financial support. A study of the philanthropy habits of Pakistanis in the United States showed they have a strong preference for giving directly to individuals in need.

Also, Reuters AlertNet is a useful source for reports on humanitarian crises.

FOMACS will be screening a series of digital stories at the Irish Film Institute on Thursday 28 May at 11 am.

‘Living in Direct Provision: 9 Stories’ was made in the context of a six-month participatory media workshop run by FOMACS, in partnership with Integrating Ireland and Refugee Information Services.

The nine storytellers participated in a collaborative process that integrated storytelling, group and individual reflection, creative writing, photography and the use of multi-media technologies, in order to make a 3-5 minute story about their own experiences as asylum seekers and refugees.

I saw these at an earlier, informal showing in FOMACS and they are very powerful.

The stories are the product of the FOMACS Digital Storytelling Project.

In order to secure a seat at the screening, please RSVP to Maeve Burke at FOMACS: T: +353 (1) 402 3006  E: maeve.burke.fomacs@dit.ie

Irish Modern Dance Theatre's 'Fall and Recover' was staged again in Dublin last weekend, and was the subject of a substantial article in the Irish Times as well as a striking audio-slideshow of the company in rehearsals. (The latter is a medium the Irish Times is now making good use of.)

The show is the result of a collaboration between John Scott of IMDT and the Centre for the Care of Survivors of Torture in Dublin, which provides care to asylum seekers, refugees and others who have suffered torture.

Here is an earlier article on the BBC site, which coincided with a feature on Radio 4's 'Dance Saves Lives' series (no longer archived online).

A new exhibition in Dublin features the life stories of ten survivors of the Holocaust in Lithuania, where ninety-five percent of the 240,000-strong pre-war Jewish population was annihilated, many at the hands of Lithuanian killing squads. 'Surviving History - Portraits from Vilna', by Irish-born researcher Shivaun Woolfson, is at the UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland from May 27-30.

The four-day event will feature a photographic exhibition, a series of public talks by Holocaust historians Ruta Puisyte and Robert Gerwarth and survivor Tomi Reichental, and screenings of the Surviving History documentary which follows Shivaun’s journey to Vilnius as she interacts with the narrators. This documentary premieres at the Cannes Short Film Corner this month.

Shivaun Woolfson is of Jewish-Lithuanian descent. She said: ‘To hear these experiences has been so meaningful for me, as the fate of these individuals is what would have awaited my own family had they not escaped to Ireland during the Czarist pogroms in the early 1900s. It is particularly timely to present these stories as Vilnius takes on the coveted role of European Capital of Culture for 2009 against a backdrop of increased anti-Semitic activity.’
 
The exhibition is a collaboration between UK-based Living Imprint, Holocaust Education Trust of Ireland and UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland, is free to the public. It will be officially opened by the Lithuanian ambassador to Ireland, H.E. Ms Izolda Bričkovskienė on Wednesday, 27 May.

The full programme is here. Pre-registration for the evening events is required and can be done online here or by calling Valerie Norton on +353 1 716 4690.

'Diversity' and 'integration' are opposing ideals, and the contradiction between them reduces much of the well-meaning pieties of pro-immigration campaigners to incoherence. That's the provocative argument of a new book on immigration in Europe, 'Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West' by Christopher Caldwell.

Perhaps surprisingly, Caldwell's argument gets a positive airing in two leading publications of the mainstream British left, the Observer newspaper and Prospect Magazine. Prospect publishes an excerpt in its May issue and David Goodheart (who is editor of Prospect) reviews the book in the Observer.

In Goodheart's introduction:

Caldwell 'asks some unusually direct questions: can you have the same Europe with different people? Why did mass immigration happen when so few people actually wanted it? Immigrants want a better life but how many of them want a European life? Why is minority ethnic pride a virtue and European nationalism a sickness? Is political correctness just fear masquerading as tolerance?'

And he concludes: 'As you can tell from those questions, the book is a sustained attack on the well-meaning liberalism that is still the dominant note in official immigration debates. Yet although Caldwell, a conservative American, believes that European immigration has not been a success, at least for the host societies, he is not anti-immigrant and says that he is a great supporter of the American melting pot.'

Prospect's archive of articles (and blog entries) on immigration and race is here. The Guardian's is here. Both are rich pickings...

FOMACS is undertaking a documentary project on immigrant participation in the local elections. A feature article is to be published in the Sunday Tribune, and a radio documentary will follow. These will, of course, be highlighted here. In the meantime, Metro Eireann offers comprehensive coverage of immigrant candidates and related issues.

Last Sunday saw an article in the Sunday Times on contention between three Nigerian candidates in the Mulhuddart area of Dublin, Fine Gael’s Adeola Ogunsina, Independent Ignatius (Iggy) Okafor, and Fianna Fail’s Idowu Sulyman Olafimihan. I haven’t been able to find this online – the Sunday Times doesn’t appear to archive its Irish edition comprehensively – but if anyone comes across it, please let me know. The Sunday Tribune wrote an earlier article on the rivalry last November and Metro Eireann has covered it also.

A recent article in the Sunday Independent gave voice to some of the anxieties around immigration now that the economy has hit a crisis. Journalist John Whelan (recently made redundant) documented some of the 'urban myths' and anti-immigrant prejudice and fears that are being generated by the downturn, in an article that was generally sympathetic. He wrote:

'Signing on last week the queue was getting longer and more restless. The talk was mounting of "those foreigners ripping off the country", "who do they think they are", "getting the dole sent to their bank account and they not even in the country", "getting the children's allowance as well and the kids not even here"...

'It all brings to mind the fantastic stories that were peddled when our black brethren started to arrive in droves on the back of the boom a few years ago... My own personal favourite was the one from the taxi driver who told me that as he collected a couple of black women on Main St it started to rain as they tried to get their children's buggies into the boot. Struggling in the shower they said to hell with it, left them on the pavement outside Shaws and declared they would get two new ones from the Health Board. Curious and concerned as to the possible veracity of the story I pressed the taxi driver, a sound man known to me, who explained that it hadn't actually happened to himself but to another colleague who told him. Duirt bean liom, go nduirt bean lei. [This is an Irish expression, meaning, 'A woman said to me, that a woman had told her...']

He conlcuded: 'A far cry from all that when in 2004, Nigerian Rotimi Adebari was elected to Portlaoise Town Council and in June 2007 became the country's first ever black mayor. Rotimi and Portlaoise beat Obama and the White House to it. The story was printed and broadcast in a positive light all over the world... Rotimi recently was a prime mover in establishing a new organisation in town called SUIL - Supporting Unemployed in Laois. Interesting to see how he fares in the local elections on June 5.'

One of the most significant issues facing immigrant candidates is the low voter registration amongst immigrant communities, many of whom are not aware that they are entitled to vote in the local elections, whatever their status in Ireland.

Integrating Ireland has launched a voter registration drive and a website, ivote.ie, offering key information and forms in a variety of languages.

They write: 'The website aims to provide you with information and materials to support immigrant organizations and immigrant voters around the country to have access to and share basic information and materials on registering to vote and the voting process, as well as highlighting events and activities taking place in the run up to the elections. It’s being updated every day, with more FAQs in more languages, the next being Romanian and a variety of new videos in other languages are also to be added on the weekend, in English, French, Urdu, Portuguese, Filipino and Russian.'

Tomorrow, Thursday May 14, they are holding a voter registration clinic in the Integrating Ireland offices, from 2-6 pm. There will be a community Garda present so that anyone who has not registered can come along and have their form stamped and submitted there and then.

Integrating Ireland and Dublin City Council have also produced posters in a variety of languages, which can be found here.

Some key dates and information:

Local and European elections will take place on Friday June 5th 2009

Deadline to Register to Vote is Monday 18th May 2009

The voters’ register was published on February 1st and was made available from February 15th. You can check it here.

As new figures suggest half a million failed asylum seekers are living destitute in Britain, the Guardian recently spoke to some of those for an online video report. According to the accompanying story: hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers are living in the UK in extreme poverty, because they fear torture or death if they return to their home countries, according to a report released today. (Download the report here.)

The report warns many failed asylum seekers are living in a "twilight zone", with no housing or financial support, and no right to work. Many failed asylum seekers are living on less than "a dollar a day", the global yardstick for extreme poverty, it claims. Recent research by the London School of Economics estimated there are 500,000 failed asylum seekers in the UK.

Christine Majid, from the refugee charity Pafras, who commissioned the Underground Lives report, says the number of destitute asylum seekers the charity dealt with tripled in the past two years and called destitution a "deliberate" policy to force asylum seekers out of the country.

She said: "In the 21st century the fact that the government is trying to starve people out of the country, it is absolutely inhumane and it just isn't working. These people would rather starve on the street here than return to their own countries."

A series of governmental policy decisions including preventing asylum seekers from working in 2002, cutting legal aid in 2004 and an overhaul of the system in 2007 has lead to an "untenable strain" on local charities, she added.

The report found that, on average, failed asylum seekers were surviving on £7.65 per week, but the majority lived on less than £5. Two thirds had experienced torture in their countries. Following the refusal of their asylum claims, 72% have spent time sleeping outside; of these, 38% have experienced physical attacks. More than a third of the women sleeping rough had experienced sexual assault, including rape.'

Connect-World is an Irish NGO that works with the development NGOs to foster improved coverage of development issues in the media. Migration is one of those core issues, and there is a wealth of information, media and links on their site. Here is a quick sample.

There is a short overview on the interrelation of migration and development, and selection of key links here
(various sub-headings give more substantial information and references, such as on international migration flows and trends).

Connect World runs a media funding scheme to promote coverage of development issues, the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund (funded by Irish Aid). Their site showcases funded projects in their ‘standard’ funding round (covering print, radio and multimedia), and in the ‘tv seed’ round (providing seed funding for tv documentaries). Some samples:

Fiona Whitty’s pilot on the migratory connections between Ireland and Nigeria, ‘Pathways of Movement’

Patrick Butler’s project to film in a rehabilitation centre for trafficked children in Benin.

My own story from Morocco and Melilla on people trying to enter Europe from north Africa.

Louise Williams’s award-shortlisted radio documentary from Senegal on the same subject.

There is also this short video documentary on FGM and the story of Pamela Izevbekhai, shortlisted in the multimedia awards run by Connect World for media students.

Connect World also produces an excellent fortnightly e-bulletin on development stories and issues in the media. Sign up here.

The next funding round is the tv seed, deadline September 30.

IDP Voices is an online project that aims to let internally displaced people tell their life stories, in their own words. According to the site, ‘the narratives in these pages are valuable complements to the official information on conflicts which governments and international organisations offer’. Thus far, the project covers Colombia and Georgia, with further countries to be added.

Here is Inga’s story. In summary: she is 38 years old. She is Abkhazian and her husband is Georgian. There are four children in the family. Fifteen years have passed since the family went into exile; they lived in Ochamchire district in Abkhazia before the war. Inga talks about the difficulties and hardship experienced during the period of armed conflict, how hard it was even to get bread to eat and the problems of equipping a new place. She speaks of the sadness of losing her home and leaving behind her elderly parents, whom she sees very seldom…

Inga’s story was originally recorded in Russian, but is presented here in English. (I’m not clear on whether they have used an actor, or she is reading a translation of her original script.) Her story is accompanied online by a map of her journey. There are a further 28 Georgian stories here. A book comprising a selection of these stories of displaced people from Georgia can be downloaded here.

IDP Voices is a collaboration between the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and Panos London's Oral Testimony Programme. (There is more on Panos in this week's other reports.)

This week's Soul Beat e-newsletter draws my attention to a manual, 'Heeding the Voiceless', offering guidance to the use of oral testimony in radio documentary. Following our recent focus on oral history, I thought it might be of interest. The manual is published by Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA). According to the publishers, the oral testimony approach focuses on "hidden" voices, contexts, and content. The hidden voices refer to the masses in the country that do not have the opportunity to make their voices heard at government level, or on public platforms. The manual can be downloaded here. The newsletter is published by the Communication Initiative Network, which I have cited before. 

In an introduction, Diana Denghor, director of the centre, describes their approach to oral testimony:

The Oral Testimony is a new format in community radio, adapted from a social research tool set up by Panos London. It is an inverted interview because it is guided by the interviewee and not the interviewer. It stems from the principle that to know what is really going on in a community, you have to listen patiently to the people at grassroots level, instead of asking only the leaders of that community as is usually the case. These leaders tend to hide problems in their efforts to present a nice face of their community to outside eyes and ears. The consequence is the vast majority of community members who effectively shape social trends, never get a chance to say their views, perceptions, experiences, priorities, values. Thus, a lot of projects have failed and a lot of community conflicts have remained unsolved because the attempted solutions have ignored the silent majority, or did not have the right approach in identifying the pitfalls ahead.

Because it goes deeper, the Oral Testimony is much longer and much more structured than a classic interview or traditional researchers questionnaires. In the classic interview, the questions are based on what we believe listeners want to know, or facts we want to establish for a project. In the Oral Testimony, the resource person is called the narrator. He or she is encouraged to tell things through his or her experiences, values, priorities. This is what informs behaviour more than hard facts. The idea is, for instance in cases of conflict in a community, when the adverse side hears the deep motivations of the narrator, his or her fears, aspirations, beliefs, it can foster understanding. The recorded interview can last several hours. For community radio it is adapted to the documentary format by selecting the dominant topic.

About to open in Lodz, Poland, is an exhibition of Irish photography, as part of fotofestiwal09, which features work by Mark Curran, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice here at DIT. His project, ‘Breathing Space’, which previously exhibited in Dublin, documents ‘the role and representation of labour and global labour practices’ in contemporary Ireland (albeit an Ireland that is fast disappearing, apparently). Another of Curran’s striking images is here.
Other artists on the festival programme are:
David Farrell – Nè vicino Nè Iontano. A Lugo // Neither Close, nor Far. Lugo.
Seán Hillen – The Troubles
Jackie Nickerson – Faith
Eoin O’Conaill – Common Place.

The guide issued by Panos West Africa on oral testimony, as reported above, leads me to the various websites of the Panos organisation, a development NGO focussing on the issue of communication.

The global organisation is a partnership of eight independent institutes in different countries/regions (West Africa being one of those). Panos London is currently showcasing an online video on asylum seekers in Britain, ‘Still human, still here’. (There is a collection of the photographs involved, as stills, here.)

From their site: ‘The shocking, hidden lives of refused asylum seekers are revealed in a new film by Panos Pictures. Abbie Trayler-Smith has photographed men and women who have fled torture and persecution. They had hoped to find sanctuary in the UK but instead are enduring a new kind of torment - destitution. All of the individuals featured in the exhibition have been refused asylum and are living in extreme poverty rather than return to their home countries, in most cases out of fear of what might await them upon their return. With just a handful of possessions they move from place to place, sleeping in phone boxes, on night buses or park benches'

The video was produced for Panos London by Panos Pictures, an independent photo agency who document issues and geographical areas which are under-reported, misrepresented or ignored.

Amongst the projects of particular interest on the site of Panos Pictures are this series of photographs of the Raika, a nomadic people in Rajasthan, India, and these pictures by George Georgiou of the Balkans in the aftermath of the Kosovo war. A collection of the agency's pictures on the subject of Migrants is here.

The image used in the thumbnail here is from the 'Still human, still here' collection, and is of a snow covered phone box in Highgate, North London. '28 year old Hamid from Iran used to shelter in phone boxes in this area in the years he spent living on the streets. "When you're sleeping outside one night feels like one year because it's so cold. I never managed to sleep for more than an hour or two and when it's raining it's hard to sleep for more than fifteen minutes at a time." Hamid is one of an estimated 300,000 rejected asylum seekers living in the UK.'

The Irish Times has a simple but impressive audio slideshow on its website today, featuring the work of celebrity photographer Rankin who has recently photographed displaced people in Congo. This work is being exhibited in Dublin at the moment, in Wolfe Tone Park, beside the Jervis Centre, in collaboration with Oxfam Ireland. In the audio, Rankin tells how he had felt that, in photography of crises in Africa, the pictures tended to show "people that don't seem to have any emotional connection with you". "They seem to be objects in a landscape." He set out to photograph displaced people in Congo in "the same way that I would photograph somebody famous." Specifically, he took his picture against a white backdrop, so as to focus on people's features, removed from oppressive context. "I was hoping I would get something full and spirit and light," he says, "to humanise the people" so that viewers here could "connect" more readily with them. The results seem impressive. The accompanying Irish Times article is here. Rankin's own site is here. An earlier slideshow on the Irish Times site of pictures from Congo, by Cork photographer Michael MacSweeney, is here.
    

On Africa Day, Monday 25 May, the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray will host four screenings of animated short films made by African filmmakers, as part of African Animation Day, according to a press release from the Mermaid.

This is a new concept, designed by Mermaid to mark Africa Day in Ireland and to celebrate African culture and society and the diversity of the continent. As is true of animation worldwide, animation in Africa does not only exist in the realm of children’s entertainment, but also acts as a document of local narrative and myth, political criticism and social commentary.

The work to be presented stems from a variety of African countries: Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Zimbabwe, the DRC, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Ghana and South Africa. Animation, as such an accessible medium, is very suitable for introducing young children to Africa.

The daytime screenings will be suitable for children and offered to school groups. With funding from Irish Aid, Mermaid will be able to offer the screenings free of charge to the public.

The programme of animations for children presents a collection of works that are both entertaining and educational in their scope. The content differs greatly from European animations, presenting images that reflect the identities of African children and the environment, in which they live. The animations draw from the imagery and symbolism of the respective countries, as well as their own myths and fables. With African animation at the cusp of a new and exciting period, it deserves the attention of a wider audience.

The schedule is as follows:

10am & 11.30: Primary level screenings

2pm: Secondary level screening with introduction by Curator

8pm: Arthouse screening with introduction by Curator, Paula Callus (SOAS)

In the reshuffle of junior ministers (Ministers of State) last week, John Curran TD was appointed Minister with responsibility for integration. In his first remarks in the Oireachtas since then, he spoke this week in the Seanad on the subject of 'Minorities, Crime and Justice', on the occasion of a debate on the annual conference of the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development.

The Seanad (the second, or upper, chamber in Ireland's houses of parliament, the Oireachtas) gets paltry coverage in the Irish media, so I thought it of potential interest to report this speech at length here. The full speech is available here. The statement in reply by Fine Gael senator Eugene O'Regan, and further statements in the debate, are here.

Curran prefaced his remarks with some general comments on the subjects of immigration and integration:

'The most striking aspect of inward migration to Ireland has been the speed with which it has taken place, largely since 1 May, 2004, following the expansion of the European Union. There are currently about 550,000 non-Irish nationals living in Ireland.

'Another striking feature is the fact that the census for 2006 recorded that 29% of immigrants, about 140,000 people, came essentially from the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, most of them in the previous two years.

'Since the census was taken, more have people have arrived as evidenced by the number of PPS numbers issued by the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

'It is important to stress that these people are using rights under the EU Treaties in the same way that Irish people have used the same rights to seek employment in other EU countries.

'In the context of this debate, I think it is important to stress that there is no suggestion that those people who have come here are in any way more involved in criminality than anybody else. One way of seeking to prevent people in this category from becoming involved in anti social behaviour is to encourage them to become involved with their local communities.

'My Office has made funding available to major sporting bodies, the GAA, FAI and Basketball Ireland to assist them in promoting increased participation by non nationals in their games. My Office also made funding available to local authorities to assist them in their efforts.

An example of the way in which local authorities used this funding was to promote voter registration among migrants in order to further improve the participation of migrants in the forthcoming local and European elections.

My Office, together with the Iris O'Brien Foundation, is providing financial support for the extension of the Fáilte Isteach project, started in Summerhill, Co Meath, by Mary Nally of Third Age... I am happy to support this project, bringing together as it does older people and migrants, enabling both to learn from each other about different cultures, languages and traditions...

'I want to say very clearly that it is important that we avoid repeating the mistakes made by others in this area. In the current economic climate, there may be those tempted to scapegoat migrant workers as in some way contributing to our decline in employment. This would be wrong.

'The people who have come here to work and live have made and continue to make a valuable contribution. They pay their taxes here, many have established families here and they are enduring the same economic challenges as everybody else...

One of the areas of concern has been that of road safety. Since March, 2006, the Road Safety Authority has been running an ongoing foreign language road safety campaign. The campaign focuses on legal and road safety advice when driving in Ireland. Areas covered are licence, tax and insurance, the National Car Test, speed limits, penalties for breach of speed limits, seatbelt regulations and drink driving laws. A leaflet and poster entitled Road Safety and the Law have been produced and have been translated into 8 foreign languages- Russian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Chinese. The leaflets and posters are distributed through the minority ethnic press, ethnic shops, advice centres, ports and airports as well as An Garda Síochána and local authorities. The new Rules of the Road have so far been produced in Russian, Polish and Mandarin Chinese.

In addition, Garda road safety awareness programmes are conducted in schools, 3rd level colleges, workplaces and other facilities, with the aim of educating road users, including persons from minority ethnic backgrounds of the obligations of all road users.

Staff of the Garda Racial and Intercultural Office, established in 2000, have responsibility for coordinating, monitoring and advising on all aspects of policing in the area of ethnic and cultural diversity. The remit of the Office was recently expanded to cover other areas of diversity and it has begun a consultation process with other diverse communities such as the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and various organizations representing people with disabilities.

There are currently over 600 trained Ethnic Liaison Officers nationally. These Gardaí liaise with ethnic minority communities, the Traveller Community and inform and assure them of Garda services and protection.

The Garda Pulse system has been adapted to include a modus operandi for recording incidents of racism. All such incidents are captured on the system and are monitored by the Racial and Intercultural Office on a weekly basis.

In addition, there are regular meetings with members of ethnic minority communities as part of the Garda Síochána’s commitment under the National Action Plan against Racism.

Turning to the prisons, all foreign nationals are facilitated in contacting consular representatives and are entitled to receive a visit from their consul at any reasonable time. Cloverhill Remand Prison, which holds the highest proportion of foreign nationals in our system, translates prisoner induction/information leaflets into a number of languages – at present Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French and Latvian. Other institutions with a high proportion of foreign national prisoners follow a similar practice. Any special dietary requirements of prisoners are catered for in all institutions. A module on Intercultural Awareness and Racism is now part of prison officer training.

In the Courts, the Courts Service has produced a wide range of leaflets in various languages available both in hard copy and on its website. The leaflets are available in Irish, English, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Mandarin Chinese. These leaflets cover a range of procedures including Bail, Family Law and the Small Claims Procedure.'

Curran also spoke extensively on the issues of people smuggling and human trafficking, and on the state of current legislation in these regards.

Next Thursday evening, 7 May, sees a public lecture and reception at Dublin's Alliance Française, 'A Sikh Face in Ireland: Photography and Life History.

Over the past year and a half, Glenn Jordan and Satwinder Singh have been travelling across Ireland, photographing and documenting the life stories of members of the Sikh community. This research project represents the first systematic exploration of the Sikh presence on the island of Ireland – providing both a profile of the present and a social and cultural history of Sikh immigration. More generally, it is a portrayal of the lived experience and narratives of people who are often perceived as ‘Other’ in mainstream Euro-American society – especially since 9/11.

The key themes addressed in the project involve issues of culture, experience and identity. ‘Being a Sikh’ is not a homogeneous experience: thus the study accounts for the various symbolic manifestations and sub-sects of Sikhism, highlighting generational and gender-based differences of experience among the Sikh community in Ireland.

Glenn Jordan is Reader in Cultural Studies, Cardiff Centre for Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan, and Director of the Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff, a community-based archive, gallery and educational space. He is an experienced ethnographer with a longstanding background of documentary photographic work with immigrant communities. He has published widely on race, identity, visual culture and immigrants and minorities in Wales.

Glen Jordan has been an active partner with FOMACS since its inception. Some of his previous projects are here and here. There is a selection of his Sikh portraits here.

Satwinder Singh is an active member in the Irish Sikh Council and the Gurdwara in Dublin. He is an MPhil student in the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, DIT. His research engages with the Dublin Gurdwara as a political, social, communal and spiritual site.

This event forms part of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice public lecture series: ‘Negotiated Identities, Histories and Public Cultures’.

The lecture is at 6pm at the Alliance, 1 Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Please RSVP to Maeve Burke at FOMACS: maeve.burke.fomacs@dit.ie.

The following interview with Glen Jordan, by Colin Murphy, was published in the Sunday Tribune, 18/11/2007, on the occasion of his exhibition 'Mothers and Daughters: Portraits from Multi Ethnic Wales' in Dublin.

I was interested in revolutions, " says Glen Jordan, with a chuckle. "The revolution was happening in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, so that was where I wanted to go."

Instead, he went to Cardiff, Wales.

That's a long story. He tells it.

There is a radicalised youth in California, his father descended from East Texan slaves, his mother descended from Cherokee Indians.

Aged nine, he starts a lone protest against the daily pledge of allegiance. In high school, he leads a school boycott that succeeds in getting black history and literature on the syllabus. There is a liberal arts degree, black power activism, anti-Vietnam war activism, and a mentoring with a leading black anthropologist. Then there is illness, nearly causing him to drop out of his studies. So he doesn't get to go to Angola, despite his Portuguese classes.

He goes to Cardiff, to do research on the Butetown docklands community, multiethnic long before anyone had conceived of the term.

He's an anthropologist. They go places, ask questions, and then go home and write about them. If they're good, they get jobs in nice places like Harvard and Princeton. But Jordan doesn't go home. And he doesn't really write about the people. "Mostly I facilitate them writing about themselves."

He helps set up the Butetown History and Arts Centre (www. bhac. org), and settles down to a life mixing academia with community activism. He turns down a job in Princeton. "I wouldn't want to work at any place where I couldn't do exhibitions, where I couldn't build a community archive." Then he gets into photography. He shoots big, beautiful portraits and hangs them at eye level in public spaces "so you as a viewer encounter it directly. . . You walk among the images."

You can walk amongst his images at the moment, on the ground floor of the Civic Offices on Wood Quay in Dublin.

These are some of a series of portraits of mothers and daughters, Asians, Africans, Polish, Greeks, Iranians, Irishf but Welsh also.

At the opening of an exhibition in Dublin, Jordan was approached by some Irish Sikhs. "I know nothing about Sikhs, " he says, but that didn't bother them. His next project is photographing them. "I'm interested in people who wear Sikh turbans and Nike jumpers. How they negotiate culture in complex ways."

Jordan calls it "humanist photography. Because we're all human beings, we're more alike than we're different. I'm interested in helping to enable people, " says the white-bearded, gravely voiced old-timer. Princeton doesn't know what they're missing.

Driving north over Easter, I took a road sto