Migration & Refugees

Their Missing Daughters

By Ranjita Biswas
It is as if they have given up hope of ever seeing their girls again. They are an Adivasi family from a remote village in Assam state in India, nestled in the Himalayan foothills. The picturesque surroundings belie the hollowness they feel within.

U.S. Immigration Reforms Prioritise Labour over Families

By Carey L. Biron
A long-awaited legislative proposal to reform the United States’ immigration system is sparking frustration on both the left and right here, but is widely being seen as a centrist compromise bill that will now energise all sides as debate in Congress begins Friday.

World Bank, IMF Link Urbanisation with Development

By Carey L. Biron
Two of the world’s largest multilateral institutions have released new data linking greater urbanisation with higher levels of human development, and are announcing that they will place greater priority on issues of urbanisation in coming decades.

Give a Teenager a Camera, Watch the World Change

By Joan Erakit
Today's youth are hardly passive consumers of content – they create it, endlessly updating via social media and spreading information faster than one can say “go".

Greece Becomes Outpost in Turkey’s “Anti-Terror” Campaign

By Apostolis Fotiadis
Zeki Gorbuz, a Turkish asylum seeker in Greece, who was arrested on Feb. 12, remains detained today due to an international warrant that was transmitted by Turkish authorities to Greece just one day before his asylum interview. Turkish media were quick to report the arrest, describing Gorbuz as a radical leftist and regional leader of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLCP), which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government.

Tunisia Now Exporting “Jihadis”

By Giuliana Sgrena
Tunisian families have begun to dread knocks on their doors, or late-night phone calls, fearing that the messenger will bear the news that their son has been smuggled out of the country to join the “jihad” in Syria.

Europe’s Invisible Children

By Sabine Clappaert
Twenty-two-year-old Dario (not his real name) came to Belgium from Brazil in 2005. Just a teenager at the time, he told IPS he “came to escape the economic, social and political conditions in Brazil and to learn another language”.

Border Control by Another Name

By Claudia Ciobanu
Crossing the Belgian-German border in the heart of Europe should be a smooth experience, with no border controls, since the Schengen free movement area came into existence. Yet identity checks at this border and others inside Schengen are not uncommon, despite the contorted logic applied to prove their legality.

Refugees of Libyan War Protest at World Social Forum

By Alberto Pradilla
“We need a solution. The U.N. has created the problem, and they should do their work and fix it,” says Bright, a young Nigerian stuck in the Choucha refugee camp in Tunisia, a few kilometres from the Libyan border.

Q&A: Portugal Neglects Undocumented Immigrants with AIDS

By Mario Queiroz
In 1996, Luís Mendão was shocked to learn that he had contracted HIV/AIDS, and that the infection was advanced because of the late diagnosis. Racing against time, he began to put his affairs in order and to get ready to face his death.

U.S. Fourth Graders Fight to Bring Home Deported Classmate

By Judith Scherr
Rodrigo Javier Diaz Guzman was a fairly typical Berkeley, California kid. He loved playing baseball and video games, enjoyed school and got good grades, watched Ninjago on TV, and ate take-out burritos and Chinese food whenever he could.

Tug-of-War Over Nuclear Future

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Pushed and pulled in opposite directions, the future of Japan’s energy plans in the wake of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant two years ago is emerging as a fight between national economic advancement and what anti-nuke activists call “the lives of the people”.

Electricity for All but Those the Kariba Dam Displaced

By Baboki Kayawe
Indigenous people who were displaced from the Zambezi Valley almost six decades ago for the construction of the Kariba Dam say they have not benefited from the development they made way for.

Climate Change Now Seen as Security Threat Worldwide

By Jim Lobe
Defence establishments around the world increasingly see climate change as posing potentially serious threats to national and international security, according to a review of high-level statements by the world’s governments released here Thursday.

U.S. Looks to Overhaul Massive Immigration Detention System

By Carey L. Biron
Rights groups and government officials here have been testifying in a string of hearings, before both bodies of the U.S. Congress, on how to overhaul the United States’ huge immigration detention system, the scope of which has expanded massively in recent years in ways that some suggest impinge on civil and human rights.

Filipino Workers Urge Overhaul of U.S. Guest Worker Policies

By George Gao and Joe Hitchon
A spate of legal battles in the southern state of Louisiana has shed new light on the unfair recruitment and employment practices of Filipino guest workers at several companies in the United States.

‘Born in War, Grown up in War, Now Time for Rehabilitation’

By Raymond Baguma
Sungu Mizele, a Congolese national living in Yambio, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, earns a living selling the fruit and vegetables that she grows in her backyard, at the local town market. On average, she earns nine dollars a day. But on a good day, when she has fresh supplies, she can earn up to 31 dollars.

Foreigners Take Centre Stage in Election Race

By Kalinga Seneviratne
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s comments about foreigners taking Australian jobs in a speech made last week in Rooty Hill, the working-class heartland of Sydney’s western suburbs, has brought issues of immigration, asylum and race back into election campaigning.

European Commission Bankrolls Anti-Immigrant Policies

By Apostolis Fotiadis
As fighting rages on throughout Syria, civilian families desperate to escape are fleeing west to Greece.

Officials Turn Blind Eye to Abuse of Asylum Seekers

By Apostolis Fotiadis
Faraj Alhamauun, a Syrian national now residing in Istanbul, was detained while crossing Greece, in the hopes of heading north, last September.

Young Spaniards Exiled by Unemployment

By Inés Benítez
“They wanted to hire me, and that was something that hadn’t ever happened to me before,” says Marta Seror, a 25-year-old college graduate from Spain who is now working in an outsourcing company in Poland.
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