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.