[-empyre-] Welcome to February 2016: Across borders and networks: migrants, asylum seekers, or refugee? The Numbers Now and The Number Then

[Ricardo Dominguez]

Hola Tod at s and Babak,

I look forward to our dialogue about how the history of "kinopolitics" 
(the politics of movement)
will re-produce segmentation and segregation or integration and 
citizenship (Echoes of Rome)?
Or perhaps some other unexpected social formations will happen beyond 
these histories
(my anti-anti-utopain tendencies speaking here).

Of course the processes of integration vs. segregation does seem to 
depend on where the
movement and flows starts and to lesser degree where it ends.

If you look at numbers of recent flows of communities into the E.U. 
starting from World War II to the
present moment the numbers flowing are worth considering.

The movement of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees was over 15 
million between
1939 to 1945, while right now Syrians leaving the wars zones number 
around 4.1 million
since 2010. One can add a few million more flowing away from other 
conflict zones north
to the E.U. and these current numbers are not even close to reaching the 
numbers of migrants,
asylum seekers, or refugee that occurred during WWII:

https://newint.org/features/2016/01/01/global-refugee-crisis-the-facts/

(The link to an infographic that might be useful to consider.)

So the "crisis" is not about the "numbers"-but about the social 
imaginary anchored on to
the bodies that moving that are activating violent atavistic response 
(racist politics) that
neo-liberalism(ism) can profits from via private detention centers and 
prisons and
corporate controlled border gates.

So it is not about the numbers or the facts of crossing-but the where 
they coming
from that is the "crisis."

Ricardo


On 2/7/16 2:29 AM, Babak Fakhamzadeh wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi all,
>
> We've got quite a big topic on our hands, making it harder to single
> out a particular angle or narrative. Perhaps not an unreasonable
> starting point is the current refugee crisis in Europe. As Renate in
> the opening email hints at, Rome was at its peak when it actively
> incorporated the peoples, barbarians perhaps, on their frontiers,
> Caesar himself extending Roman citizenship to the Gauls and others.
>
> Europe has been a continent of immigrants, virtually all 'native'
> Europeans originally descending from immigrants coming in from the
> Eurasian plains(, with perhaps only the Basques being the exception).
> So, in many ways, the recent new arrivals coming in from the direction
> of the Middle East are just the latest in a long line of immigrants.
> Yet, the negative European backlash is strong. Perhaps driven by the
> recent and, also strong, undercurrent of xenophobia in many European
> countries, the 'otherness' of the Syrian arrivals is emphasised and
> their presence actively resisted.
>
> Now, I wonder, my question to us on the list, what are the
> consequences of the arrival of this sizeable group of immigrants going
> to be, for Europe, over the next 5 to, say, 10 years? Will the whole
> issue simply fizzle out and the immigrants simply be integrated? Will
> the EU fall apart? Will some countries secede from the Union? Will
> some countries turn into virtual police states?
> And, why?
>
> And, related, how are those countries that do take in larger number of
> immigrants going to deal with making sure their integration is not
> going to be botched in the same way that Germany, Holland and France
> botched the integration of specifically Turkish and Moroccan
> immigrants in the 1960s and onwards?
>
> Looking forward to the responses :)
>
> Babak
>
> --
> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com | http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
>
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