Transitions Online_Society-Trapped by the EU-Turkey Border Crisis
Tens of thousands of people are now spread out across a no-man’s land along the border with Greece.
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Tens of thousands of people are now spread out across a no-man’s land along the border with Greece.
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Библиотека Конгресса США считается крупнейшим научным учреждением за пределами России, хранящим кириллические материалы. На протяжении десятков лет ее сотрудники целенаправленно приобретали личные архивы эмигрантов и их организаций, позволяющие проследить историю русской диаспоры в Америке с момента ее зарождения до наших дней. Коллекции, переданные в библиотеку Борисом Львовичем Бразолем (1885–1963), а именно бумаги возглавляемого им Общества имени А. С. Пушкина в Америке и его персональный архив, — самые крупные собрания, сложившиеся в период между двумя мировыми войнами, во время формирования русской общины в Новом Свете.
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The purpose of this article is to review the main measures taken at the european political decision-making level in order to combat the SARS CoV2 pandemic.Starting from the first official notification issued by the World Health Organization, the article will briefly review the main lines of action developed by the European Commission and how they reflect the application of principle of solidarity between EU Member States.Last but not least, the article will try to outline the main measures that need to be taken by the European Union institutions in order to restart the economy and mitigate the effects of this pandemic.
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After World War II, Western European countries needed guest workers and a significant number of Turkish citizens has migrated to these countries. After a while, Turkish citizens started to be permanent, as they became to found their own families. However, some problems occurred, the most important ones were the integration in the country where they were and children’s education problems. These immigrant children’s education problem was the result of their insufficiency in their mother tongue. Immigrant children who have not yet acquire their mother tongue skills cannot learn a second language efficiently. The last few years a return migration has been observed. The main reason for this return migration are children returning with their family, returning for marriage, for education, for a better life style and escape. This qualitative research aims to describe the views of Turkish immigrant students, who were born in France and Belgium and returned to Turkey, towards Turkish language.
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A Wicked Old Woman is the first novel published, in 1987, by Ravinder Randhawa, a first-generation immigrant writer of South Asian descent, residing in Britain. In it, she recounts the wanderings of the female protagonist called Kulwant among her friends and family members in London. This fragmented account of her past and present focuses on her desire for identification and struggle in a life lived in between cultures, that of the metropolis and that of her ancestral land on the Indian subcontinent. As the life-stories of Randhawa’s characters unfold, London itself is seen being transformed into a multiracial and multicultural location, becoming the site where fictional hybridization takes place. Hybridity and liminality are experienced in multiple ways in the diasporic space where new identities are formed. While raising the issues of authenticity and colonial stereotypes, Randhawa represents identity as an unfolding process rather than a static given. Her topics also include arranged marriages, mixed marriages, abusive relationships, as well as healing as a communal activity, and the possibilities of accommodation of a diasporic community by the mainstream society.
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According to archaeological data, the Albanian-Sarmatian period is characterized by a weak population of the territory of Dagestan. In the mountainous part of the region there is an almost complete population decline to the turn of the era, which began in the early Iron Age and is associated with a recorded cooling in the mountains in that period. In the 3rd century AD, there was an active growth in the number of settlements, the emergence of a hierarchy of settlements, including early urban centers, which reflected the cardinal socio-economic transformations in society. Since that time, the Iranian-speaking nomads began their mass migration to the Caspian Dagestan, which was due to the climatic factor and political events in the region. Population growth and density in the 3rd—5th centuries AD and the reverse settlement of the mountain zone, obviously, was a consequence of the socio-economic development of society against the background of climate improvement. The observed climatic changes were recorded according to the results of paleobotanical studies of the ancient peatland in Mountainous Dagestan, which showed the relationship of migration and demographic processes with the natural and climatic situation. The deterioration of the military and political situation in the Caspian plain in the 6th—8th centuries AD was the reason for the termination of the functioning of many settlements on the border of the plain and foothills and caused back migration to the mountains.
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The review of: Anna Magdalena Kosińska, Prawa kulturalne obywateli państw trzecich w prawie Unii Europejskiej; Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego Jana Pawła II, Lublin 2018; ISBN 978-83-8061-515-1
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Social mobility can be both horizontal and vertical. The latter is characterised by movement from a lower social class to a higher one, and with it a change in social status. Upward social mobility appears in different guises; it can pertain to education, occupation, cultural capital, income, etc. Until recently, the phenomenon of upward social mobility concerned a small number of emigrant Poles, with “migrants of success” composing only a small minority of a much larger number of Polish migrants in previous years. The accession of Poland to the European Union in 2004, and then to Schengen Zone in 2007, opened new opportunities. This article (based on my ethnological fieldwork) presents different ways that Poles who emigrated to Berlin between 1980 and 2016 managed to enact upward social mobility and the changing characteristics of this migration pattern.
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The article concerns Croatian political emigration in the period 1945–1990. The author describes the construction of a political community as a form of opposition to the communist regime in Yugoslavia. The aforementioned group – understood here as a performative actor – made an effort to deconstruct the new ideology and political doctrine and to create a new community. These activities manifested in various forms of organization. In this article special attention is given to Hrvatska revija magazine, which was published in 1951–1966 in Argentina. Its main objective was to make the public aware of the socio-political situation in Croatia and to change public opinion. Croatian intellectuals analyzed topics that were forbidden or censored in their homeland; in particular, they willingly referred to Bleiburg and the figure of Alojzije Stepinac, whose reinterpretation became the foundation of a new political community.
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The Anthropocene is the human age. Its undeniable significance has been ascribed across disciplines from geology, to cultural studies, to fine art. Through reflective analysis, this paper explores the role and significance of creative practice, the found object, and the use of object-based adventures in teaching the Anthropocene. It also considers the role of virtual object-based learning in a digital age through a “Gallery of Late Humanity”, through the reflexive lens of a lecturer who teaches both environmental sciences and cultural geography. These methods successfully encouraged learning across and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of geography and fine art, providing creative re-imaginings, visualisations and understandings of the Anthropocene. These approaches illustrate how the quotidian materialities of home can be reconfigured as a field site for the late Anthropocene.
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The free movement of persons in the EU has been thought of as reflecting an ideal of supranational solidarity within the single market. However, over the past decade, it has become a source of political contention among European peoples. Much attention has been paid to Western European, anti-EU sentiment regarding Central Eastern European migration. Yet euroskeptic populism has recently risen within the eastern EU as well. Despite this phenomenon, less attention has been given to discursive views of the free movement of persons in the eastern expansion countries. This contribution takes issue with transactionalist and utilitarian approaches to identity formation. It argues that resilient national identity shapes the perception of national interests regarding the market-based citizenship promoted by the EU institutions. Through qualitative analysis of the high-circulation popular Polish press, this study finds that when viewed through national identity–based interest perceptions, the free movement of persons is not framed in terms of “actual” economic benefits or opportunities. Instead, it is framed as a dubious benefit of EU integration, in relation to many obligations of EU membership. In contrast, the press discourse examined here frames intra-Union migration as the continuing unfortunate necessity of emigration. Thus, national identity conceptions may influence the eastern EU press narrative, causing it to frame the free movement of persons negatively, in terms of perceived interests.
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This article is an introduction to the subject matter of the main points of interest for the Armenian lobbying groups in the United States of America. This ethnic community has become the second-largest group of Armenians living outside the Republic of Armenia and currently the most politically active. Not only do they affect their host country policy and economy of the homeland, but Armenian Americans aim to act on behalf of the whole global diaspora. In particular, they are lobbying for the recognition of the Armenian genocide and adopting specific policies towards Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The involvement of the Armenian minority in the United States of America goes beyond political and economic issues. Diaspora has managed to create academic centers at American universities researching Armenian culture, history, and language, as well as funding collections of Armenian art. In 2020 the construction of the Armenian Americans Museum will begin. The mission of the center will be to document the experience of Armenian migration. These initiatives are part of specific ethnic “soft power.” Armenian Americans lobbying groups have succeeded in passing Resolution 150 in the United States of America. Congress that recognizes as a genocide mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. This is the result of almost 50 years of diaspora operations, always blocked by the Turkish lobby. Although relatively few, compared to the entire United States of America population, the Armenian Americans community continues to pursue their goals successfully. In 2015, as part of the celebration of the anniversary of the Genocide, the Armenian diaspora established a series of charitable events and funded the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. Today, the largest number of American Armenians live on the West Coast of the United States of America, and Los Angeles has become the center of the diaspora. As a result of the actions of its social organizations, state schools have created classes for pupils speaking Armenian. Since 2010, the days of remembrance of Genocide have been officially celebrated in California. To identify the most critical factors, this article is based on various data from official United States of America government sources, monographs, and scientific articles, as well as press materials and geopolitics web portals.
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In the 1990s, a number of post-Communist states adopted diaspora laws that defined the target group ethno-culturally, thus seemingly confirming the continued relevance of Hans Kohn’s distinction between ethnic Eastern and civic Western nationalism. This article, however, posits that while Kohn’s dichotomy may be valid, its related implications are often not. The ethnic content of the diaspora laws, and the content of ethnic nationalism behind them, is much more nuanced, and not all ethnically tinted diaspora polices are discriminatory or otherwise contrary to international standards. Using the case of the 2001 Hungarian Status Law and the European organizations’ reaction to it, the first part of the article draws attention to the often neglected fact that international standards do not ban ethnically based policies altogether but allow for some distinctions in treatment based on ethno-cultural criteria. The second part of the article focuses on the case of Ukraine and further challenges the accuracy of the civic-ethnic dichotomy by showing how the politics of the Ukrainian diaspora law was driven not by a clash between civic and ethnic nationalism but by a more complex tension between different variants of ethnic nationalism, a neo-Soviet imperial vision, strategic bargaining, and changes in electoral fortunes for unrelated reasons. The Ukrainian case also shows how, in addition to international norm diffusion, another—and rather counterintuitive—path towards internationally compliant diaspora legislation may be the presence of substantial domestic divisions on the national issue, which forces the elites to compromise on a less ethnic law.
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The failure of the November uprising in 1831 and the resultant Great Polish Emigration not only caused the massive exodus of elites from the Polish Kingdom to western Europe and, consequently, the organization of pro-independence activities from their exile, but also highly influenced the discourse about the geographical shape and political nature of the (desired) future Polish state. The majority of this discourse was represented by memoranda and newspapers, yet there were also other relevant sources to promote the ideas of various factions. In my study I suggest that cartographical representations have also played an important role in both of the mentioned levels of discourse. This conclusion was made as a result of the analysis of Karta dawnej Polski, the only map of the former Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth in its pre-1772 borders created by émigrés. This project was led by Wojciech Chrzanowski and was under the patronage of the aristocratic faction led by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (known as Hôtel Lambert). By applying the methodological approach, which has been presented by John Brian Harley, and focusing on the historical and anthropological attributes of the map rather than solely on its empirical description, I conclude with the suggestion that this map communicated various narratives at both levels of discourse. The most evident was its military narrative, which has promoted the idea of an armed uprising as the only possible way to restore an independent Polish state. The second concerned the ideas cultivated by the representatives of Hôtel Lambert regarding the shape and nature of a future state. According to this opinion, Poland could become a political entity only if its pre-1772 borders were reinstated. Within the emigrational discourse, the idea of a restored state with pre-1772 borders was not a unique assumption. On the other hand, the Karta dawnej Polski might have been an important asset comparable to Russian cartographical projects (mainly the ―Three-verst map‖) which presented the territory of the Polish Kingdom under the rule of the Russian tsar as a cartographical and therefore objective (legal and legimitate) reality.
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Communities both shape and are shaped by their geographical contexts, the spaces of social, economic and environmental interaction in which they are found. These spaces are fluid and contingent, reflecting and influencing changes in the community that gives them significance. This is true also of ‘spaces of imagination’, the geographical context in which the myths and self-representations of the collective are formed and given meaning. The late formation of the German nation-state, and the exclusion of many ethnic Germans from its borders, resulted in a fractured German nationalism in which local (Heimat) identities played a prominent role. This was particularly true for so-called ‘Germans Abroad’ [Auslandsdeutschtum]; German minorities living outside of Germany, mainly in scattered settlements in Eastern Europe. Far from simply reflecting the nationalism of Germany, Germans Abroad embraced understandings of Germanness that reflected their local circumstances and histories. While Heimat communities were local in origin, migration from Europe to the Americas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed them into transatlantic communities. But what meaning did local identities have in a transnational context, and how did transnational ties of localness relate to Germans’ growing sense of German nationalism?
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The review of: Lee Congdon. Seeing Red: Hungarian Intellectuals in Exile and the Challenge of Communism. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001. 223 pp.
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The issue of migration has become a paramount political concern. In this context, one can look at the emerging challenges that liberal democracy faces today, especially in Europe. Similar cases of democratic turbulence can be observed in America. Non-democratic countries are in a different situation. They do not have to deal with resistance from public opinion in the same way. Migrations, therefore, impose new realignments in democratic politics and obscure some older political divisions and tensions. This article examines the key political paradigm shifts that drive and open up migration to democratically organized societies in Europe. It starts with the fact that Europe has become the largest refuge for migrants in the world. With migrants comprising 10.4% of its population, the proportion of migrants in Europe is three times higher than the world average of 3.5%. From 1990 to 2017 the figure increased from 6.8% to 10.4%. Every third migrant in the world lives in Europe. The impact of globalization on increasing economic migration is also presented. Since 2010, politics in Europe has abandoned the desirable model of multiculturalism and turned to the concept of inter-culturalism. In this short span of time, political parties that use anti-immigrant views have taken off. The article draws particular attention to the situation in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. The message from citizens is that migration is a serious and highly inflammatory political issue and that anti-immigrant sentiment in European societies has become politically radicalized. Political forces that advocate for more radical solutions have stepped into this space and exploited it. The ‘mainstream’ parties no longer underestimate or ignore the issue of illegal migration. It is increasingly entering the compulsory corpus of their programs.
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Since the end of the armed conflict on its territory, the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been going through a very complex post-conflict development of its civilian and security structures. Since 1995 Bosnia and Herzegowina had a political reform process that required implementation of the security sector reform as well. According to numerous authors, reform of defense system has been one of the best implemented in so-called „postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina“. One of the highpoints of the aforementioned reform was drafting and adoption of Security Strategy of BiH in 2006. The peculiarities of this document lies in the sociopolitical era during which it had been created, and it sets down the fundamental strategic directions and guidelines about the organization of the national security system of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Apart from defining aims and tasks in domain of national security, this document underlines local, regional and global security challenges that could endanger or inhibit independency, sovereignity or stability of BiH. Considering the fact that since the period Security Strategy of BiH was adopted, many security challenges appeared on global, regional and local level, it is indispensable to reconsider the necessity for Security Strategy update, so it could be effective and in accordance with the changed security environment. The present work aims to present the relation between the emerging security issues from national to global level and the current Security Strategy of BiH, as well as to emphasize those security issues that act as a key factor of redefinition of the current Security Strategy of BiH.
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