tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/anti-immigrant-attitudes-33095/articlesanti-immigrant attitudes – The Conversation2024-01-28T13:53:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2214872024-01-28T13:53:49Z2024-01-28T13:53:49ZHow art can challenge election-time rhetoric about immigrants<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-art-can-challenge-election-time-rhetoric-about-immigrants" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The coming year is expected to be one of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/4/the-year-of-elections-is-2024-democracys-biggest-test-ever">unprecedented election activity</a> worldwide. And as politicians gear up for the polls, immigrants are being pushed into the spotlight. </p>
<p>In the United States, Donald Trump has vowed to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/17/trump-muslim-ban-gaza-refugees">expand his Muslim ban and bar Palestinian refugees from Gaza</a> if he is re-elected. </p>
<p>In Germany, anti-immigration rhetoric has been on the rise ahead of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/21/whats-behind-mass-protests-against-germanys-far-right-afd-party">regional elections</a> later this year. Protests erupted recently after reports of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-remigration-debate-fuels-push-to-ban-far-right-afd/a-67965896">a mass-deportation plan by far-right political parties</a>. This would see the expulsion of asylum seekers, permitted residents, as well as citizens who are viewed as not integrating into society.</p>
<p>Foreshadowing an election in fall, a government bill in the United Kingdom enabling deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is linked to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jan/18/rishi-sunak-press-conference-rwanda-bill-conservatives-labour-fujitsu-post-office-horizon-uk-politics-latest?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-65a956cf8f082472faf423f4#block-65a956cf8f082472faf423f4">inaccurate public perceptions</a> of immigration dominated by illegal entry into the country. </p>
<p>This situation challenges artists alongside journalists and media makers to represent the complexity of immigration realities with respect and accuracy. </p>
<h2>Immigration and electioneering</h2>
<p>Though not scheduled until October 2025, a Canadian election in 2024 could be added to the long list of countries going to the polls this year, alongside the U.S., Mexico, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Ghana, South Africa, as well as elections in the European Union parliament. </p>
<p>Anxieties over immigration and housing availability are <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-dramatic-shift-in-canadian-public-opinion-about-immigration-levels-219193">rising in public discourse</a>. British Columbia Premier David Eby, who is expected to face the electorate for the first time as leader in 2024, has already expressed immigration concerns. “The anxiety I have is that the numbers are such that we can’t support these folks,” <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-91-the-early-edition/clip/16033140-is-canadian-dream-dead?share=true">Eby told the CBC</a> in a recent interview. </p>
<p>In 2016, I began a long-range art project called <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml/rml-about/">Reading the Migration Library (RML)</a> at a similar time when election-related anti-immigration rhetoric was reaching a fever pitch in the U.S. </p>
<p>Trump’s campaign for the presidency pushed hard on immigration including promises to fortify the southern border with an impenetrable wall. Researching the responses of artists to human rights abuses at the time, I learned from human rights workers in San Diego, Tijuana, New Mexico, Texas, and Juarez of the direct link between border fortification and an <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/americas">increasing death rate</a> of asylum seekers.</p>
<p>Also fresh in my mind at the time was the impact that a journalistic image had on public discourse during the Canadian 2015 election. That year the photo of two-year-old Syrian boy <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/08/31/642952840/an-aunts-memoir-remembering-the-drowned-syrian-boy-on-the-beach">Alan Kurdi</a>’s lifeless body on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea deflated anti-immigration election rhetoric and resulted in Liberal <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/syria-migrants-canada-drowned-migrants-leaders-respond-1.3213878">campaign promises</a> to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted into Canada. </p>
<p>There was much <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659016672716">critical reflection</a> on the <a href="https://www.fmreview.org/sites/default/files/FMRdownloads/en/ethics/ethics.pdf">ethical challenge</a> presented by photos that pictured refugees in states of extreme vulnerability. </p>
<h2>Reading the Migration Library</h2>
<p>Since then, RML worked as a form of scholarly research-creation aimed at diversifying representations of migration and immigration from the perspective of individuals and their families or communities. RML invites artists, writers and community groups to produce artworks and short texts that explore displacement, diaspora or migration from the perspective of those with lived experience. </p>
<p>Some describe how the asylum process is experienced by detainees (<a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/rml-notas-sobre-un-recorrido/"><em>Notes on a Tour: the El Paso Processing Center</em></a>). Others lament the internal and external displacement experienced by Ghanaians (<a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/on-loss-two-poems-from-ghana/"><em>On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana</em></a>, <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/walking-on-water/"><em>Walking on Water</em></a>, <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/we-are-moulting-birds/"><em>We are Moulting Birds</em></a>), to memoirs about the impact of the British Home Children schemes (<a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/charlie-henry-workman-1897-1976-the-unspoken/"><em>The Unspoken</em></a> and <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/henry-frederick-terry-1907-1980-i-remember/"><em>I Remember</em></a>). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ghana-based poet Epifania Amoo-Adare reads from the publication <em>On Loss: Two Poems from Ghana</em></span></figcaption>
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<p>In the current phase of the project, <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/artists-authors/deanne-achong/">Deanne Achong</a> and I are co-hosting artists who will address aspects of diaspora and mobility, including travel on Indigenous territories. Achong’s RML publication, <a href="https://lightfactorypublications.ca/rml-books/workin-for-the-yankee-dollar/"><em>Workin’ for the Yankee Dollar</em></a>, uses creatively altered family photos to represent the impact of a cultural and military invasion of Trinidad by the United States in the 1940s. </p>
<p>These included the appropriation and exportation of Lord Invader’s (Rupert Grant) Calypso song, Rum and Coca-Cola. In the RML project artists are challenged to publicly present creative responses to often hidden impacts of migration.</p>
<h2>Representing migrant stories</h2>
<p>I have learned from RML participants that people with immigration experience face demands to demonstrate their legitimacy to the country repeatedly through identity checks, immigration hearings and questioning over their place of origin. </p>
<p>Often, they are viewed by immigration and border officials with suspicion and essentially made to prove their innocence. It is an understatement to say that they carry an unfair burden of identification. At the same time, they are expected to demonstrate immediate and enthusiastic allegiance to the adopted country and culture. </p>
<p>The expectation for refugees to demonstrate gratitude for asylum, and for immigrants to show positive appreciation for their new country, is particularly problematic during times like elections when anti-immigration discourse threatens their safety and trust in the new country. </p>
<p>For Guatemalan artist Francisco-Fernando Granados, the evidentiary burden of his family’s long refugee adjudication is one that he chooses to refuse in art. In the <a href="https://publicationstudio.biz/books/who-claims-abstraction/">manifesto-like statement</a> “Propositions on minor abstraction” that accompanies the exhibit, <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/galleries/teck-gallery/who-claims-abstraction-.html"><em>who claims abstraction?</em></a>, Granados wonders “how experiences of displacement and other unspeakable moments can be presented in a critical manner, without being stereotyped or universalized.”</p>
<p>For Granados abstract art is a creative solution that challenges viewers to recognize his right, despite refugee history, to create a public image. <em>who claims abstraction?</em> is made up of a pair of digitally-drawn murals showing ribbons of colour in skin and landscape tones. A selection of abstract art by other queer and BIPOC artists from Simon Fraser University’s collection is also on view to expand Granados’s statement.</p>
<p>Elections by their nature put national and government identity under scrutiny. Politicians often unfairly displace that scrutiny by shifting onto those who are least able to defend themselves, the poor, homeless and of course, immigrants.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-premier-david-eby-trumpets-transformative-housing-initiatives-as-he-looks-back-on-2023-1.7067997">In Eby’s 2023 year-end interview</a> his “huge level of anxiety for the [population] growth that we are seeing in British Columbia” referred to foreign workers in service delivery, skilled immigrants, as well as international students. The diversity of these roles reflects overlapping government responsibilities and complex cultural conditions. </p>
<p>Election times threaten to narrow the meaning of immigration to the detriment of public safety, human rights and democracy. In these times, artists’ reflections on migration are a vital way to publicly assert the reality and diversity of what it means to be an immigrant today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lois Klassen receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. As the artist-host of "Reading the Migration Library" Klassen receives funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and British Columbia Arts Council.</span></em></p>2024 is expected to be a year of elections around the world, and as often happens, anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise. Art can play a critical role in challenging that rhetoric.Lois Klassen, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Critical Media Art Studio (cMAS), Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149282023-11-05T13:01:57Z2023-11-05T13:01:57ZUnpacking Elon Musk’s convoluted U.S.-Mexico border visit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557510/original/file-20231103-17-agxdj5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C67%2C680%2C438&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elon Musk and Texas congressman Tony Gonzales stand in front of a group of South American migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/TonyGonzales4TX/status/1708142923626209519">(Twitter/Tony Gonzales)</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/unpacking-elon-musks-convoluted-us-mexico-border-visit" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In late September, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, set the internet ablaze with his visit to the Texas-Mexico border to provide what he called an “<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/why-did-elon-musk-visit-texas-mexico-border-and-what-did-he-say-about-the-migrants/articleshow/104034433.cms?from=mdr">unfiltered</a>” perspective on the border crisis as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/migrants-cross-into-texas-undeterred-by-razor-wire-or-new-asylum-rules-2023-09-28/">thousands of migrants</a>, mostly from Venezuela, crossed the Rio Grande River.</p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707565081750290910?s=20">In a video at Eagle Pass, Texas</a>, Musk calls for a “greatly expanded legal immigration system” that would welcome “hard-working and honest” people and “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1707525800830828619?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1707525800830828619%7Ctwgr%5E3df67ff84fb408e2c51eceefcad89b5db37b30d0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailysignal.com%2F2023%2F09%2F29%2Felon-musk-visits-eagle-pass-livestreams-real-story-of-whats-happening-at-southern-border%2F">not let anyone in the country who is breaking the law</a>.”</p>
<p>Many were quick to highlight the absurdity of the world’s richest person, who is himself an immigrant, standing before a group of other immigrants calling for stricter policies. </p>
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<h2>Pro-immigrant but anti-asylum?</h2>
<p>Musk’s position on immigration appears convoluted. On the one hand, he says he is “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707525800830828619?s=20">extremely pro-immigrant</a>,” given he is an immigrant to the United States himself. This also makes sense from the perspective of his businesses, which rely on <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z5px/twitter-employees-on-visas-cant-just-quit">highly skilled migrant workers</a>.</p>
<p>While Musk said he supports legal immigration, he said the U.S. should “not be allowing people in the country if they are breaking the law.” A day before his visit to the border, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707146779894951982?s=20">tweeted</a> support for a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-trump-wall-us-mexico-border-2023-9">Trump-style wall</a> to securitize the border. He implied that asylum seekers were entering without evidence to support their claims and they could “literally Google to know exactly what to say” to border officers.</p>
<p>Musk’s peddling of right wing anti-refugee rhetoric isn’t surprising, but the misinformation shared in Musk’s self-proclaimed “unfiltered” video may inadvertently bolster border militarization, increased repatriations and the criminalization of vulnerable asylum seekers. </p>
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<p>For example, during Musk’s border visit, congressman Tony Gonzales shares an anecdote about an asylum seeker he saw that had teardrop tattoos on their face. Musk calls this person a “serial murderer and proud of it” and made the leap that America has become the place people “go to escape the law.” </p>
<p>This kind of language plays into tropes that paint immigrants as dangerous and criminal. However, research has demonstrated that immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes. <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/u-s-citizens-most-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-immigrants/">Research from 2022</a> found U.S. citizens are more than two times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than undocumented immigrants. </p>
<p>In the video, Gonzales claimed there has been zero repatriation. However, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-border-doesnt-need-elon-musks-citizen-journalism">3.6 million people who have crossed into the U.S. illegally have been repatriated</a> since Biden took office. Soon after Musk’s visit, Biden announced that the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-resume-direct-deportation-flights-venezuelan-migrants-rcna119107">U.S. was resuming direct repatriation flights for Venezuelans</a> who unlawfully cross the border and have no legal basis to stay. </p>
<h2>An open border for all of Earth?</h2>
<p>The most troubling and sensationalist claim that Musk makes is that the U.S. southern border is an “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707565081750290910?s=20">open border for all of earth…an open border to 8 billion</a>.” Not only is this statement far from the truth, it plays into tropes that immigrants and refugees from the Global South are invading western countries. </p>
<p>It’s a dramatic misconception of the realities of global migration and displacement. The vast majority of refugees are hosted by countries in the Global South. </p>
<p>For example, displacement from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-venezuela-refugee-crisis-us-border-policies/?fbclid=IwAR0qEfobBJ98gamFou7F0KpdQMo0XvcXivdfeccOs5NGC6-22oxyYbNnplI">Venezuela is now the largest refugee crisis</a> in the world, outpacing refugees from Ukraine and Syria. Of the <a href="https://www.r4v.info/es/refugiadosymigrantes">7.7 million displaced</a>, 85 per cent have moved to neighbouring Latin American countries. Only around <a href="https://www.r4v.info/es/refugiadosymigrantes">700,000 are in the U.S. under temporary protection status</a>, which is only nine per cent of the total displaced population. </p>
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<p>The claim that the U.S. border is open “for all of earth” is plainly wrong, and gives the U.S. credit for what has been a Latin American-led humanitarian response to the Venezuelan crisis. </p>
<p>Musk has been criticized for meddling in international affairs, most recently the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/21/23415242/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine-dod-twitter-david-sacks-russia">Ukraine war</a>. He has <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1576969255031296000?">tweeted a peace proposal</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/19/elon-musk-ukraine-starlink/">provided</a> then <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/07/ukraine-rips-musk-disrupting-sneak-attack-russian-navy.html">shut off Starlink’s satellite</a> network over Crimea and <a href="https://twitter.com/panoparker/status/1318157559266762752">seemingly supported</a> a U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.</p>
<p>And we are seeing the implications for his misinformation at the border impact the lives of people seeking asylum in the U.S. being portrayed as “serial murderers” and “breaking the law.” As Musk wades into yet another political issue, it is crucial for the public to get their information from credible news sources and research, not billionaires on Twitter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Su does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Elon Musk’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border played into false tropes that paint asylum seekers as dangerous criminals.Yvonne Su, Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695972022-03-23T15:43:12Z2022-03-23T15:43:12ZSwedish gangsta rap exposes a dark side of the country some would rather ignore<p>“Sweden’s most wanted”, raps the controversial artist Yasin in his track 20 Talet. The rapper’s lyrics are without filter, direct, raw, born within a marginalised and often criminal environment, depicting a side of Sweden that might be unrecognisable to many. When people think of Sweden they are likely to think of social equality and prosperity, not poverty and crime. They are likely to think of the upbeat danceable grooves of ABBA not the hard-edged beats of Yasin.</p>
<p>However, there has been a growing scene of gangsta rap led by the likes of Yasin. Coming from multi-ethnic Stockholm suburb Rinkeby, the Swedish-Somali rapper is representative of a wave of Swedish rap that exposes the harsh reality of being a minority-ethnic Swede or immigrant growing up in the marginalised suburbs of the seemingly so egalitarian Scandinavian country.</p>
<p>Along with gangsta rappers such as Jaffar Byn, 1.Cuz, 23, and Dree Low, Yasin paints a tough picture flecked with criminality and gang violence. Their music often talks about the difficulties of surviving in Swedish society financially and socially, but more recently also the mental and emotional toll that doing so takes. These songs expose a reality that many do not want to think about, especially in Sweden, a nation that prides itself on the provision of a high quality of life and which pays attention to human rights and individual freedom. As such, certain factions of Swedish society are using these songs to bolster anti-immigrant sentiments and to draw lines around who is Swedish and so who can belong.</p>
<h2>Sweden today</h2>
<p>Over the past 30 years, Swedish hip-hop has emerged and taken over the nation’s charts. It has given artists, who often come from multi-ethnic and segregated areas, the means to <a href="https://open.lnu.se/index.php/PFS/article/view/976">express their opinions about society</a> and reflect on what is happening around them. </p>
<p>Sweden has developed into a multicultural society – but the notion of what Swedishness is has remained mired in the past. Even though minorities groups are increasing in size and are only expected to <a href="https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/pong/tables-and-graphs/yearly-statistics--the-whole-country/summary-of-population-statistics/">get bigger</a>, Swedishness (and belonging to it) still has a strong link with being <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2010.547835">white</a>.</p>
<p>In Swedish hip-hop’s early days in the 1990s, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Latin_Kings_(hip_hop_group)">The Latin Kings</a> described the structural inequalities, violence and segregation in such disadvantaged neighbourhoods in a similar way to today’s rappers. But they did so from an observational perspective and with a touch of hope for the future. Today’s rappers, on the other hand, are more embedded in the violence of their surroundings and tend to have a more nihilistic opinion of their future. </p>
<p>Take the track Adressen by 23. He wants his mum to know it’s not her fault that he has been affected by the criminal environment and is stigmatised for the neighbourhood he comes from: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s about numbers, digits<br>
I know some Ricos, know some money Mitches<br>
Ah, but it’s no movie, ey, it’s real life<br>
Born to lose, now I realise<br>
That for my zip code, that bloodshed and bullet holes<br>
Never been a runner so I have to be a boss there<br>
Yeah, they like pointing fingers
<em>[Translated from Swedish]</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The recent wave of gangsta rap has been the result of worsening dynamics in society. Many neighbourhoods such as Rinkeby, which are predominantly multi-ethnic, have been categorised as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/25/rinkeby-stockholm-riot-lower-crime-rate-than-uk#:%7E:text=Rinkeby%20is%20the%20best.%E2%80%9D,the%20UK%20as%20a%20whole.">socially and economically “vulnerable”</a>, suffering with structural inequalities, lack of investment and above-average unemployment, which has lead to high poverty and crime numbers. </p>
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<p>These poverty and crime statistics are regularly echoed in media and <a href="https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/stort-glapp-rader-mellan-politiker-och-utsatta-omraden">political discourses</a>, which has led to further stigmatisation of these neighbourhoods and the minority ethnic people who live there. Gangsta rap’s violent lyrics about these neighbourhoods are also used to bolster nationalistic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Together they are used to create a narrative that promotes the idea that these places are unlike much of Sweden and the people who live there, including these rappers, are not like Swedes.</p>
<h2>Between belonging and non-belonging</h2>
<p>Not all hip-hop is wrong in the eyes of most Swedes. But the contemporary gangsta rap style has put people on some edge because they associate it with <a href="https://www.svtplay.se/video/32574515/sverige-mots/sverige-mots-sasong-3-23-nov-20-00-1?info=visa">shootings and gang criminality</a>. An increase in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/fatal-shootings-have-risen-in-sweden-despite-fall-across-europe-report-finds">violent and criminal incidents in Sweden</a> in recent years is associated by some with the image portrayed by Sweden’s gangsta rappers and their environment. </p>
<p>Yasin, with his Somali roots, connections to <a href="https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/krim/yasin-om-succen-och-att-lamna-det-kriminella-livet/">local gang Shottaz and criminal convictions</a>, is easily judged beforehand by the public, who can’t separate his current art from his past activities. Yasin expressed this on the cover of his latest album, Del Två (Part Two), which shows Yasin’s Swedish passport stamped with “<em>Dömd på förhand</em>”, meaning “convicted in advance”. Yasin knows that he is not recognised as Swedish, which makes finding belonging very difficult and maybe even not worthwhile. </p>
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<p>Hip-hop artist Timbuktu is an outspoken advocate for minorities to be accepted as Swedish, legally and symbolically. In 2013 he got invited to the parliament, where <a href="https://www.svt.se/kultur/musik/har-far-timbuktu-priset-i-riksdagen">he spoke</a> and he held his passport up in the air, showing that he is Swedish. More recently on the talk show <a href="https://www.tv4play.se/program/efter-fem/klippet-som-r%C3%B6r-jason-timbuktu-till-t%C3%A5rar-min-sj%C3%A4l-har-samlat-damm/13356979">Efter Fem</a> (After Five), he argued that people like him with an immigrant background should not need to ask for permission to be part of the Swedish story – they are and have been for a while. </p>
<p>The current trend for gangsta rap exposes a rather destructive side of Sweden. Yes, it exposes criminality and poverty but it also exposes a society that is resistant to change, or simply not changing fast enough. It highlights just how important it is that cultural conversation move along and how desperately the idea that Swedishness is synonymous with whiteness needs to change. No matter what ethnicity, cultural background, or neighbourhood you live in, anyone should be able to belong in Sweden.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sjors Joosten receives funding from Stockholm University. He is employed by the university as PhD-candidate. </span></em></p>“Sweden’s most wanted”, raps the controversial artist Yasin in his track 20 Talet. The rapper’s lyrics are without filter, direct, raw, born within a marginalised and often criminal environment, depicting…Sjors Joosten, PhD candidate, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432392020-07-24T14:43:04Z2020-07-24T14:43:04ZCanadian court correctly finds the U.S. is unsafe for refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349367/original/file-20200724-25-1xu6wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3750%2C2238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this August 2017 photo, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers greet migrants as they enter into Canada at an unofficial border crossing at the end of Roxham Road in Champlain, N.Y., on the Québec border. A federal court has invalidated Canada's Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week, Canada’s Federal Court ruled that the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/mandate/policies-operational-instructions-agreements/agreements/safe-third-country-agreement/final-text.html">Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA)</a> is unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Under the agreement, refugee claimants entering Canada at land ports-of-entry can be returned directly to the United States without being allowed to make a refugee claim in Canada. The agreement was a quid pro quo for concessions offered to the U.S. after 9/11, including a <a href="https://www.legislationline.org/documents/id/7543">“smart border” accord</a>, enhanced information-sharing and joint border enforcement.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.ca/news/legal-challenge-safe-third-country-agreement-launched">Advocates for refugees</a> have long argued that the STCA violates international refugee law and Canadian constitutional law. Differences between the refugee determination systems in Canada and the U.S., as well as differences in the rights enjoyed by refugee claimants in both countries, mean that some people who would be recognized as refugees in Canada would be denied protection south of the border.</p>
<p>In other words, the U.S. is not “safe” for at least some refugees.</p>
<h2>Trump’s election worsened situation</h2>
<p><a href="https://today.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Report-Impact-of-Trump-Executive-Orders-on-Asylum-Seekers.pdf">These arguments</a> took on an especially urgent tone after Donald Trump’s election as American president in November 2016. </p>
<p>The Trump administration has implemented many racist, xenophobic and anti-refugee policies to dissuade people from seeking asylum in the U.S. For example: Harsh <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2018/10/usa-treatment-of-asylum-seekers-southern-border/">detention practices</a> (including detention of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/child-detention-centers-immigration-attorney-interview/592540/">young children</a>), <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/11/us-family-separation-harming-children-families">family separation</a>, restrictions on the refugee definition (such as excluding people facing <a href="https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/news/attorney-general-sessions-attempts-close-door-women-refugees">gender-based violence</a>), <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-militarization-of-the-southern-border-is-a-long-standing-american-tradition/">militarization of the border</a> and of course attempting to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/immigration/border-wall-progress/">build a wall</a> along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A tall portion of metal wall stands as construction workers work at its base, with a bulldozer and tractors in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349368/original/file-20200724-19-np8jqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this September 2019 photo, government contractors erect a section of the border wall along the Colorado River in Yuma, Ariz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Matt York)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This prompted a growing chorus of voices — from <a href="https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Lettre-Letter.pdf">law professors</a> to <a href="https://www.amnesty.ca/blog/call-canada-end-safe-third-country-agreement">human rights organizations</a> and <a href="https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-statement-safe-third-country-agreement">political parties</a> — to call on Canada to suspend or withdraw from the STCA.</p>
<p>Their arguments are persuasive. How can a country be considered safe for refugees if it locks up refugee kids in cages or refuses refugee protection to women facing gender-based violence?</p>
<h2>Closing the loophole</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, these voices have been ignored. Instead, worried about critiques from the right about weakness on border control, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contemplated trying to get the U.S. <a href="https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/03/17/news/blair-mulling-ways-close-loophole-safe-third-country-agreement">to extend</a> the agreement to the entire border — not just official land ports of entry. </p>
<p>The U.S., however, has little incentive to expand the agreement, which would block even more asylum-seekers from leaving the United States for Canada, and there has been little movement on this front.</p>
<p>This inaction left the matter to the courts. Lawyers for refugee and human rights organizations, as well as refugee claimants, went to Federal Court, arguing that the STCA is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/safe-third-country-1.5346557">unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<p>Federal Court Justice Ann Marie McDonald agreed with them.</p>
<p><a href="https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/482757/index.do">Her decision</a> focused narrowly on what happens to refugee claimants who are turned away under the STCA. </p>
<p>And what happens is atrocious. Refugee claimants are handed over to American officials who detain them for weeks. Conditions of detention are inhumane. Solitary confinement is common. Access to lawyers is restricted, which makes it harder to secure refugee protection.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men are seen walking in an outdoor, caged walkway with their arms behind their backs and dressed in correctional facility garb." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349370/original/file-20200724-15-5boya9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this September 2019 photo, asylum-seekers walk with their hands clasped behind their backs along a line painted on a walkway inside a correctional centre Winnfield, La.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Worse still, these are intentional policies aimed at making the experience of seeking asylum in the U.S. so traumatic that others will be discouraged from making the same journey. </p>
<p>As Justice McDonald held: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The evidence clearly demonstrates that those returned to the U.S. by Canadian officials are detained as a penalty …. penalization of the simple act of making a refugee claim is not in keeping with the spirit or the intention of the STCA or the foundational conventions upon which it was built.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No safety for refugees</h2>
<p>In other words, U.S. immigration detention practices violate international refugee law and undermine the basic premise of the STCA that both countries are safe for refugees.</p>
<p>So there we have it. A Canadian court has determined that American detention practices are “grossly disproportionate” and “shock the conscience,” and that Canada cannot be complicit by sending refugee claimants to the U.S. to face these practices without violating constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of the person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of migrants, including a man holding a small baby, are seen standing together in a darkened room. One teenaged girl looks directly at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349373/original/file-20200724-35-131c82k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detained migrants huddle together in a storage room at the back of a hotel where they tried to hide from Mexican immigration agents conducting a raid, in Veracruz, Mexico, in June 2019. Under increasing U.S. pressure to reduce the flow of Central Americans through Mexican territory, Mexico stepped up enforcement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The question now is what comes next.</p>
<p>The Federal Court suspended its declaration of constitutional invalidity for six months to allow Canadian Parliament to respond.</p>
<p>The government could appeal the decision. If that happens, the STCA will be tangled up in the courts for years — during which time more asylum-seekers like Nedira Mustefa, one of the applicants in the case, will find themselves in solitary confinement in U.S. detention centres. Mustefa told the court she felt “scared, alone and confused,” with no sense of when she would be released, during her time in American detention.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the Canadian government can send a clear signal that it cares about constitutional and international law, heed Justice McDonald’s findings and take steps to immediately suspend the STCA.</p>
<p>The detention practices that she focuses on in her decision are only one among many ways in which the U.S. has attacked refugee rights. These attacks are mounting. The Trump administration recently <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/11/875419571/trump-administration-proposes-rules-to-sharply-restrict-asylum-claims">proposed reforms</a> that would gut what remains of the American asylum system. Every day that the STCA remains in effect, Canada continues to be complicit in these attacks.</p>
<p>Enough is enough. The STCA must be suspended.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Rehaag is the Director of York University's Centre for Refugee Studies and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has undertaken paid consulting work with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and has served as an unpaid expert witness in constitutional litigation involving refugee issues and human rights in Canada. He is a member of refugee rights organizations such as the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and the Refugee Lawyers Association, as well as several academic organizations such as Canadian Association of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration. He currently holds research funding from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and from the Law Foundation of Ontario.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharry Aiken is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, Queen's University. She is a recipient of research and conference funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is a co-researcher with the Canadian Partnership for International Justice, former president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, and past co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Centre for International Justice. </span></em></p>The Canadian government should send a clear signal that it cares about constitutional and international law, heed a Federal Court ruling and take steps to immediately suspend the STCA.Sean Rehaag, Director, Centre for Refugee Studies & Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, CanadaSharry Aiken, Associate Professor of Law, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251242020-01-05T16:49:54Z2020-01-05T16:49:54ZCommunities can combat racism, hate and extremism with education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303609/original/file-20191125-84217-1m9n87y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C80%2C4466%2C2512&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Countering extremist anti-immigrant and racist attitudes and recruiting in Manitoba requires new approaches. Here, on the right, Hazel Ismail, with No One Is Illegal, calls for Winnipeg to become a sanctuary city, Feb. 3, 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Late one afternoon this past summer, after leaving my Winnipeg office, I came across a poster that read: “When the house of cards comes crashing down, we’ll be ready. Will you join us?” In the background of this poster, the bridge that connects St. Boniface <a href="https://www.theforks.com/blog/253/niizhoziibean-honouring-our-indigenous-heritage">at the Forks</a> was visible, while in the foreground, a masked soldier stood ominously with an assault rifle.</p>
<p>I thought that the poster might be from a theatre company for the Fringe Festival, and in the age of terror, I thought this production to be a novel one. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305021/original/file-20191203-67028-1izm95t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Forks, Winnipeg, is where the Red River and Assiniboine River meet, and is an ancient and contemporary meeting place of significance for Indigenous commmunities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Robert Linsdell/Flickr)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unbeknownst to me, it was a recruitment poster <a href="https://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/base-white-nationalist-separatist-cascadian-region">for The Base, a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group</a>. Within days, the <em>Winnipeg Free Press</em> had published an investigative piece that highlighted a chilling interview with a local Winnipeg member. The piece also said research shows “<a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/homegrown-hate-547510902.html">the presence of far-right extremists and members of hate groups in the ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces is a problem</a>.”</p>
<p>Through both my own research in peace and conflict studies, and in my experiences listening to Winnipeg educators in a forum last winter, I believe that to confront and combat extremism, Manitoba needs new ways of engaging with young people that are sensitive to Manitoba’s social-political context. </p>
<p>We need to create opportunities where young people can share and critically reflect on their experiences with teachers and caring adults in schools and in their communities at large.</p>
<p>Such efforts might be built upon Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Education_the_practice_of_freedom.html?id=SoYlAQAAIAAJ"><em>Education: the Practice of Freedom</em></a>, in which he wrote: “To be human is to engage in relationships with others.” The role of human beings is <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-brazil-reader-second-edition">not simply to be in the world but to engage with the world</a>.</p>
<h2>Young people targeted by extremists</h2>
<p>As a researcher, I am curious to identify the social factors that cause extremism, which often leads to violence. Over the past decade, I have explored factors shaping extremism and how various social groups compete and collaborate to <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498557764/Community-Focused-Counter-Radicalization-and-Counter-Terrorism-Projects-Experiences-and-Lessons-Learned">transform extremism and hate</a>. </p>
<p>In my PhD research, I analyzed qualitative data gained from interviews with 49 community leaders in Winnipeg. These leaders identified inter-group animosity, as related to racism and inequality, as <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498562065/Grassroots-Approaches-to-Community-Based-Peacebuilding-Initiatives-Theory-and-Praxis-on-the-Front-Lines">top social conflict issues in the city</a>.</p>
<p>The causes of extremism globally reveals a trend: <a href="http://sherpa-recherche.com/wp-content/uploads/Youth-and-violent-extremism-on-social-media.pdf">young people in schools and universities</a> are often <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260382">targeted by extremist recruiters</a> who deploy a narrative of hate to motivate them. </p>
<h2>Manitoba context</h2>
<p>The poster and the subsequent news analysis about The Base recruiting in Winnipeg <a href="https://www.mantuabooks.com/catalog/Delectable_Lie.html">reinforced the reality that</a> Manitoba is not an <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/pie/index.php/pie/article/view/879/516">exemplary model of multiculturalism</a> but a place that must seriously grapple with racism. </p>
<p>The Base’s call to take up arms comes on the heels of a number of disturbing and grim events in Winnipeg.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305258/original/file-20191204-70122-1pirgmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tina Duck, centre, attends a vigil for her daughter Tina Fontaine at the Oodena Circle at The Forks in Winnipeg, Aug. 19, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Trevor Hagan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last winter, three years after people gathered for a vigil at The Forks for teenager Tina Fontaine, many were <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/raymond-cormier-trial-verdict-tina-fontaine-1.4542319">outraged when the man accused of killing her was aquitted</a>. Many highlighted how the trial revealed both <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tina-fontaine-colten-boushie-justice-denied-1.4549469">racism in Canadian courts</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tina-fontaine-system-failed-1.4548314">deep failures</a> of other institutions. </p>
<p>Last year, signs stating “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4623611/its-okay-to-be-white-signs-posted-at-university-of-manitoba-faxed-to-native-studies-office/">It’s okay to be white</a>” popped up at a number of educational institutions. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-saying-its-okay-to-be-white-106929">The trouble with saying 'it's okay to be white'</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4722012/lord-selkirk-school-division-closed-following-online-threats/">A whole Winnipeg school division closed due to online threats</a>, a scenario eerily echoed <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/former-student-posted-threats-school-violence-arrested-vita-1.5379883">recently during a school lockdown</a> in Vita, Man., about 100 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg. </p>
<p>In 2016, the province saw high-profile terror activities in Aaron Driver’s allegiance to ISIS and his eventual demise. Driver was killed in Strathroy, Ont., in an RCMP altercation <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/aaron-driver-troubled-childhood-isis-supporter-1.3716222">after he detonated a device in a taxi</a>, but had lived in Winnipeg. </p>
<h2>Dialogue with educators</h2>
<p>I reached out to educators to hear about their experiences dealing with extremism in their classrooms. In a facilitated dialogue last February, I spoke with 12 educators from the Lord Selkirk and Louis Riel school divisions, and the University of Winnipeg Faculty of Education. Three things stood out from this dialogue. </p>
<p>Participants agreed that racism and anti-immigrant extremism <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/opinion-winnipeg-racism-1.5359578">were on the rise</a> and manifesting in different forms, and said they were often uncomfortable addressing the matter in classrooms. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302285/original/file-20191118-66953-12ts72e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Video footage shows Aaron Driver, at an RCMP press conference, on Aug. 11, 2016 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, a student wore a T-shirt with the “It’s okay to be white” slogan for couple of days until one educator intervened. Another educator shared her experience of interacting with Driver in an adult education class. Educators are left to themselves to deal with such situations. </p>
<p>Second, while the existing curriculum contains subjects like global issues and citizenship, it is seldom possible to discuss domestic hot-button matters such as race, religion and sex in the classroom because the educators aren’t obligated to do so and some of them are not comfortable discussing such topics in class.</p>
<p>Third, educators explained that multi-stakeholder support is needed to intervene comprehensively to counter extremism, because young people only spend part of the day in classrooms. </p>
<h2>New approaches</h2>
<p>The Manitoba <a href="https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/kto4.html">social studies curriculum</a> explains the concept of citizenship as “knowledgeable and engaged citizens” and is therefore an essential subject for kindergarten to Grade 12 students in age-appropriate ways. </p>
<p>There is also a strong focus on human rights, equality and responsibilities of citizens, as well as on anti-bias and anti-racism approaches and Aboriginal perspectives throughout the social studies curriculum. But racism is not covered as a subject or as content exclusively. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302301/original/file-20191118-66932-x17ka5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author Kawser Ahmed visits a Grade 12 class at J.H. Burns Collegiate School in Winnipeg to discuss the dangers of radicalization and the importance of education.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kawser Ahmed)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, Grade 11 Canadian history aims to teach students how to critically reflect on <a href="https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/history_gr11/document.pdf">discrimination in a Canadian context</a>. It emphasizes <a href="https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/history_gr11/document.pdf">knowledge of the numbered treaties, the Indian Act and residential schools</a>. It discusses content about “restrictions to Asian immigration,” the Chinese head tax and the impact of the American Civil War on Black immigration to Canada as well as Black loyalists — and how Canada admitted only a small number of refugee Jews between 1933 to 1939. But it doesn’t ensure comprehensive coverage of particular forms of racism in Canada. </p>
<p>The province’s <a href="https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/abedu/framework/k-12_ab_lang.pdf">Kindergarten to Grade 12 Aboriginal Languages and Cultures Manitoba Curriculum Framework of Outcomes</a> discusses teaching Indigenous language learning alongside teaching about residential schools in grades 9-12 and treaties in grades 5-8. But teaching Indigenous languages isn’t mandatory, and is only done in some school contexts. The document encourages that “specific learning outcomes can … be integrated
with other subject areas by other educators, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal” but the extent to which that may happen is unclear.</p>
<p>In Grade 6, social studies learning outcomes include <a href="https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/foundation_gr6/gr6_fulldoc.pdf">the reserve system and its impacts</a>, treaties and Aboriginal rights in Canada from 1867 to the present. </p>
<h2>Schools can’t do it alone</h2>
<p>Our educators are uniquely positioned to prepare young people as they transition from school to university. But let’s understand that they can’t do it alone. </p>
<p>My search continues to explore ways to convince educators and broader communities to understand that as a society we are facing demands for new ways of forming relationships with young people, and new ways of teaching. </p>
<p>One idea is to bring the discussion on extremism and radicalization into classrooms — this is something I have started doing from time to time in partnership with teachers.</p>
<p>Communities are on the front line of activism and provide legitimate responses to conceptual dilemmas that often dog young people. A renewed relationship with teachers, adults and community leaders at large is needed based on trust and confidence.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Currently, Kawser Ahmed receives funding from SSHRC for his post-doctoral research. </span></em></p>Manitoba faces pressing facing demands for new ways of forming relationships with young people to counter hate.Kawser Ahmed, Instructor and SSHRC Post-Doctoral fellow at the Political Science department, University of WinnipegLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269142019-11-17T13:13:04Z2019-11-17T13:13:04ZDon Cherry’s xenophobia forces Canada to grapple with tough questions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301999/original/file-20191115-66921-9g34qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1890%2C1377&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Don Cherry, seen here in 2014 as Rogers unveiled its team for the network's NHL coverage, has rasied difficult questions for Canadians.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s the age <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/03/15/opinion-michael-cohen-maga-and-brexit-are-products-same-political-delusion/QauAQVw6kJHDQdKpodCttO/story.html">of Brexit, of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” project</a> and the rise of European populism, all of it following decades of free-trade agreements fuelled by globalization, transnational corporate expansion and more open borders.</p>
<p>As a result, some Canadians seem to struggle with questions central to the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/files/digital-edition/1377607680/127%20Digital%20Edition.pdf">nationalism and globalization debate</a>: Who counts as one of “us?” What defines “us?” Where did the idea of<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-see-the-world-as-us-versus-them/"> “us versus them” come from?</a></p>
<p>Don Cherry does not struggle with these questions.</p>
<p>But with Cherry’s recent offensive comments about immigrants and Remembrance Day, it’s possible he forced Canadians to think about these issues of “them” and “us.” And now that he’s been fired from <em>Coach’s Corner</em>, do we need to find a new, and better, public personality who can grapple respectfully with the questions that apparently still vex some Canadians?</p>
<p>Across four decades on the iconic <a href="https://utorontopress.com/us/hockey-night-in-canada-1"><em>Hockey Night in Canada</em></a> television broadcast, Cherry made his feelings clear about what he believes constitutes a “real” Canadian, how moral Canadians should behave and what we should expect of those he doesn’t consider one of “us” but enjoy, as he put it, “our milk and honey.” </p>
<p>It’s not much of a surprise that the 85-year-old Cherry used his hockey pulpit to launch into an attack against <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCarkyvvFNI">“you people that come here”</a> and baselessly accused immigrants of disrespecting Canadian veterans by not wearing poppies.</p>
<h2>A long list of slurs</h2>
<p>After all, there have been <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/don-cherry-s-history-of-controversial-comments-1.4680505">countless examples</a> of Cherry publicly expressing <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/ijcs.52.107">hyper-masculine</a>, culturally insensitive and overtly xenophobic views about Indigenous Peoples, immigrants, women, the LGTBQ+ community, francophone Canadians, Europeans, Perrier-drinkers, non-Christians, environmentalists, academics, the media, left-leaning politicians, “pinkos,” visor-wearing hockey players and, of course, <a href="https://cyclingmagazine.ca/sections/news/don-cherry-blasts-bike-riding-pinkos/">bicycle riders</a>. But it was Cherry’s anti-immigrant poppy rant that finally led to his firing by corporate communications giant Rogers. </p>
<p>Support for Cherry ranged from moderate (<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/he-s-not-a-wordsmith-don-cherry-impersonator-defends-broadcaster-after-firing-1.4681553">“great message, poor choice of words”</a>) to a fervent <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DonCherryIsRight?src=hashtag_click">(“he’s right!”)</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=190%2C5%2C2732%2C2497&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301998/original/file-20191115-66973-shxmmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don Cherry supporters stand outside Rogers head office in Toronto after he was fired for making offensive remarks about immigrants and Remembrance Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others felt Cherry’s dismissal was warranted: a “last straw,” a decision made 30 years too late, an old man out of step with the changing times. There’s been speculation that Rogers’ <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2019/11/13/advertiser-pressure-was-likely-a-factor-in-don-cherrys-firing-say-experts.html">advertising partners demanded action</a> — particularly in light of the network’s “United Through Sport” motto and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-north-the-toronto-raptors-playoff-success-represents-a-shift-in-canadian-identity-117962">fervent multi-ethnic support</a> displayed during the Toronto Raptors 2019 NBA championship run.</p>
<p>Prior to Rogers’ <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-rogers-announce-landmark-12-year-deal/c-693152">$5.2 billion purchase of the NHL’s media rights in 2013</a>, Cherry’s <em>Coach’s Corner</em> segments were the exclusive property of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Not only did Cherry avoid dismissal in more than 30 years answering to CBC executives, he was one of the public broadcaster’s <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/cherrys-salary-makes-him-a-big-fat-target-for-cbc-cuts/article4099764/">highest-paid employees</a>, despite only appearing on television for seven minutes each Saturday during the hockey season (and every other night during the playoffs).</p>
<p>If the publicly funded CBC had still been deciding Cherry’s television fate, would he have kept his job? Would a <a href="https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/vision/mandate">public broadcaster</a> dedicated to building a modern Canada, to creating space for the exchange of cultural ideas, to contributing to the development of a national sense of identity, continued to provide Cherry a hockey platform to express deeply conservative and negatively nationalistic views while demeaning those who dare to disagree? It did for many years.</p>
<h2>Necessary discussions</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jcs.44.2.194">In 2010, I wrote an academic paper that considered how Cherry</a> unintentionally and unwittingly provoked the kind of democratically necessary discussions the CBC is expected to foster in the most Canadian of ways: through hockey analysis. </p>
<p>Using the famous essay <a href="https://www.uky.edu/%7Eeushe2/Pajares/moral.html">“The Moral Equivalent of War”</a> by philosopher William James, I considered Cherry’s positive and negative contributions to Canadian democracy. </p>
<p>James, a pacifist, argued that war’s indisputable contributions to the development of community and character required replacement with less devastating human practices. In turn, I argued that Cherry played a crucial role in triggering discussions about many important yet divisive (and subsequently avoided) topics including gender norms, French-English relations, fairness and justice, immigration and tolerance, Indigenous Peoples’ rights and responsibilities and the evolution of Canada.</p>
<p>But as James concluded, we must find better ways — or moral equivalents — to initiate this necessary process. While Cherry started debates, he was disinterested in either learning or arguing, opting instead to angrily tell us what is right or wrong.</p>
<p>Cherry’s final act on <em>Coach’s Corner</em> reflects the powerful and conflicted cultural role he played — suddenly some Canadians were defensive about whether they wore poppies, for example. We discussed his remarks with our children. And those who felt targeted by Cherry’s comments voiced their ideas <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/11/15/don-cherrys-words-you-people-are-a-dog-whistle-to-the-prejudiced.html">about what it meant to be Canadian.</a></p>
<h2>Pointed, hurtful rant</h2>
<p>It’s hard to imagine the CBC in 2019, despite years of tolerance, allowing Cherry to continue on <em>Coach’s Corner</em> after such a pointed and hurtful anti-immigration rant (particularly since Cherry chose not to filter his rage through the prism of hockey which possibly protected him from greater censure over the years). </p>
<p>But now that Cherry will no longer be a Saturday night staple, we’ll learn if moral equivalents can emerge. </p>
<p>Who will generate reflection and discussion, intentionally or unintentionally, about the important and unavoidable conflicts and tensions that embroil Canada in 2019? </p>
<p>Will someone step into Cherry’s void and challenge people to confront “us and them” issues too often ignored? </p>
<p>Let’s see if Canadians can collectively pick it up from here, and have respectful and inclusive discussions about what it means today to be a Canadian in an increasingly multicultural country, and how we can do better in terms of how we treat and regard newcomers.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Elcombe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can Canadians pick up Don Cherry’s discussion from here, and have respectful and inclusive discussions about how we can do better in terms of how we treat and regard newcomers?Tim Elcombe, Associate professor - Kinesiology & Physical Education; Fellow - Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1233072019-10-07T12:38:01Z2019-10-07T12:38:01ZLatin America shuts out desperate Venezuelans but Colombia’s border remains open – for now<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-venezuelas-crisis-7-essential-reads-89018">Economic collapse</a>, government <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuela-is-now-a-dictatorship-96960">repression</a>, violence and U.S. sanctions are <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuelas-power-struggle-reaches-a-tense-stalemate-as-human-suffering-deepens-114545">making life unbearable</a> for ever more Venezuelans. Now, echoing anti-migrant rhetoric used worldwide, politicians and officials in neighboring countries have begun to portray Venezuelan migrants as a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/venezuelans-face-barriers-xenophobia-south-america-190809183548040.html">national security threat</a>.</p>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://r4v.info/es/documents/download/70639">3.5 million</a> people have fled Venezuela for Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and other Latin American nations since late 2015, when Venezuela’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-venezuelas-economic-collapse-80597">crisis began</a>. Their continued arrival has overwhelmed towns and social service providers across the region. </p>
<p>Invoking security concerns, <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/la-visa-que-complica-el-ingreso-de-los-venezolanos-ecuador-articulo-877787">Ecuador</a> on Aug. 26 began requiring Venezuelans seeking entry to present a clean criminal record in addition to a passport and a visa. All three of those documents are nearly impossible for ordinary people to get given Venezuela’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuela-power-struggle-plunges-nation-into-turmoil-3-essential-reads-110419">political upheaval</a>. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-venezuela-immigration/chile-offers-democratic-responsibility-visa-to-venezuelan-migrants-idUSKCN1TN0MN">Chile</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/venezuelans-rush-enter-peru-rules-imposed-190615065449364.html">Peru</a> passed similarly restrictive entry requirements earlier this year.</p>
<p>In Brazil, officials last year <a href="https://theconversation.com/refugees-from-venezuela-are-fleeing-to-latin-american-cities-not-refugee-camps-103040">blamed Venezuelans for increased violence along the border</a>. As a candidate in Chile’s 2018 presidential race, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-immigration/chiles-presidential-hopefuls-bet-on-anti-immigrant-sentiment-idUSKBN1591CF">accused foreigners</a> of “importing problems like delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.” And a prominent Peruvian mayoral candidate recently claimed Venezuelans were <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-migration-peru-politics/peruvian-politician-stokes-fears-of-venezuelan-immigrants-idUSKCN1L828V">stealing local jobs</a>. </p>
<p>In contrast, Colombia – which hosts <a href="https://r4v.info/es/documents/download/70639">1.4 million migrants</a>, 40% of the region’s displaced Venezuelans – has emerged as a leader in welcoming Venezuelans. The Colombian government has issued <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/legal-pathways-venezuelan-migrants-latin-america">special permits</a> allowing some <a href="https://r4v.info/es/documents/download/70639">676,093 Venezuelans</a> to work and benefit from government social services for up to two years. The capital <a href="https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Conpes/Econ%C3%B3micos/3950.pdf">is working</a> with local governments to improve Venezueleans’ access to health care, education and jobs. And the administration recently granted <a href="https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombia-grants-citizenship-to-24000-babies-born-to-venezuelan-mothers/2019/08/05/390f6042-a8b3-11e9-8733-48c87235f396_story.html">citizenship to children</a> born in Colombia to Venezuelan parents. </p>
<p>Thanks in part to Colombia’s welcoming response, the country has avoided the kind of xenophobic backlash seen elsewhere in the region. </p>
<p>But, as my <a href="https://brown.academia.edu/CyrilBennouna">field work in Colombia</a> indicates, the hospitality at the Colombia-Venezuela border is fragile.</p>
<h2>Solidarity and national interest</h2>
<p>Colombia has its own serious domestic concerns to deal with. </p>
<p>The 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrillas that ended Colombia’s 52-year armed conflict is <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/07/24/death-by-bad-implementation-the-duque-administration-and-colombias-peace-deals/">advancing slowly</a>, with the government failing to deliver on some of its promises and dissident rebels recently calling for a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/30/call-to-re-arm-farc-threatens-colombias-peace-process-mumps-iran-failure-to-launch-boris-prorogue/">return to the battlefield</a>.</p>
<p>Nearly <a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia">6 million Colombians are still displaced internally</a> from the war. And unemployment stands <a href="https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/colombia/unemployment-rate">at over 10%</a>. </p>
<p>In Colombia, I sometimes heard the country’s pro-migrant policies toward Venezuelans explained as a sort of neighborly solidarity, following from the two countries’ <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/14/heres-why-colombia-opened-its-arms-to-venezuelan-migrants-until-now/">long shared history</a>. During the final years of Colombia’s armed conflict, Venezuela <a href="http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=UNHCR&f=indID%3AType-Ref">hosted over 200,000 Colombian forced migrants</a>.</p>
<p>But Colombia’s hospitality toward Venezuelan migrants is also pragmatic. </p>
<p>The government sees the potential economic gains of so many new workers. Colombia’s National Planning Department <a href="https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Conpes/Econ%C3%B3micos/3950.pdf">estimates</a> Venezuelans could contribute up to a 0.5 percentage-point gain in the Colombian economy by 2021, even taking into account the costs of hosting newcomers. </p>
<p>And, as I learned from interviews with government officials, researchers and aid workers, the administration of Colombian president Ivan Duque also realizes that it cannot effectively seal its 1,381-mile border with Venezuela. </p>
<p>Much of this border is controlled by criminal organizations and the remaining guerrilla forces, such as the <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/venezuela-organized-crime-news/eln-in-venezuela/">National Liberation Army</a>. Armed groups like these <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/organized-crime-wins-in-colombia-venezuela-border-closure/">profit</a> tremendously from border closures. People and goods must then pass through their illicit routes – for a hefty fee. </p>
<p>Driving migrants into the hands of armed groups risks fueling <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/08/colombia/venezuela-attacks-civilians-border-area">forced recruitment</a> and <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/fleeing-venezuelans-business-opportunity-organized-crime/">human trafficking</a>.</p>
<h2>Xenophobia becomes a security threat</h2>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022343318811432">A recent global study</a> confirms that refugees are regularly the victims of such violence. And crime data from Colombia suggest that there is <a href="http://ideaspaz.org/media/website/migracion-final.pdf">no statistical relationship between Venezuelan arrivals and crime rates</a>. </p>
<p>Yet in several South American countries allegations of crime by an individual Venezuelan have provoked violent backlashes against the entire group. </p>
<p>After a local businessman was beaten and robbed in Brazil in 2018, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/02/brazil-army-venezuela-border-migrant-crisis-attacks">a mob attacked an encampment of Venezuelans</a>, prompting the Brazilian government to deploy soldiers. Over 1,000 migrants fled back to Venezuela. In Ecuador, the stabbing of a woman in January triggered <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-21/mobs-attack-venezuelan-migrants-as-ecuador-pledges-tougher-rules">a violent anti-Venezuelan riot</a>.</p>
<p>Migration-related violence typically occurs when countries <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343318804592">lack the capacity or will to respond to newcomers effectively</a>, studies show. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/41fe3ab92.html%20//">According to the United Nations Refugee Agency</a>, to promote public safety and migrant protections, countries that host refugees must legally recognize their rights and develop strategies to house, care for and integrate this vulnerable population. Then, these host governments must be able to follow through. </p>
<p>Without sufficient resources and planning, migration may overwhelm locals and spark resentment against migrants. Seizing on voter fear and exasperation, opportunistic politicians can stoke the kind of anti-migrant sentiment now flaring up in Latin America. </p>
<p>This may spell trouble ahead for Colombia. </p>
<h2>A crisis of funding</h2>
<p>In April, Colombia’s president <a href="https://id.presidencia.gov.co/Paginas/prensa/2019/190414-Declaracion-Presidente-Ivan-Duque-Plan-Impacto-mitigar-efectos-generados-crisis-migratoria-cierre-frontera-Venezuela.aspx">announced</a> a US$200 million plan to support border areas, including payments for local hospitals and incentives for businesses to hire migrants.</p>
<p>But the international humanitarian community leading the aid effort in Colombia has <a href="https://r4v.info/en/documents/download/71546">requested</a> $315,467,200 more from donor countries to fund health, nutrition, education and other programming. By October, humanitarian organizations had received just 43% of that amount. </p>
<p>The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/appeals-aid-venezuelan-refugees-190818195121800.html">described the effort to aid Venezuelans in Latin America</a> as “one of the most underfunded humanitarian appeals in the world.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Venezuela’s crisis <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/12/10/how-many-more-migrants-and-refugees-can-we-expect-out-of-venezuela/">shows no signs of ending</a>, and some Colombians are growing impatient. <a href="https://issuu.com/damg22/docs/gallup_2019_3">A Gallup poll</a> found that approval for Colombia’s open arms policy toward Venezuelans dropped from 61% in February to 41% in June.</p>
<p>A few Colombian politicians are beginning to echo the language used to justify border restrictions in Ecuador, Peru and Chile. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/326002-venezolanos-xenofobia-campana-elecciones-colombia%20//">Venezuelans, yes, but not like this. Control migration</a>,” declare billboards erected by a Colombian candidate running for local office in a border region.</p>
<p>One Colombian congressman recently <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/gobierno-seguira-actuando-con-criterio-humanitario-en-la-frontera-canciller-colombiano-articulo-876327">called for the closure of the Venezuelan border</a>, saying migrants <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/15/695100627/venezuelas-health-crisis-spills-over-to-neighboring-countries">threaten safety and public health</a> and drain resources. </p>
<p>His calls haven’t gotten much traction. A number of political parties <a href="https://migravenezuela.com/web/articulo/pacto-politico-contra-la-xenofobia-en-elecciones-2019-/1015">have even signed a pact agreeing not to use xenophobic campaign messaging</a> in the lead-up to Colombia’s Oct. 27 regional elections. </p>
<p>But without substantially more foreign assistance to manage the Venezuelan migrant crisis, Colombia’s arms may only stay open so long.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123307/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cyril Bennouna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Citing national security, Ecuador, Peru and Chile have all made it harder for Venezuelan migrants to enter the country, and xenophobia is rising across the region – even in more welcoming Colombia.Cyril Bennouna, Fellow, Center on Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies; Fellow, Graduate Program in Development, Brown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231452019-09-10T10:24:42Z2019-09-10T10:24:42ZSouth Africa: a new narrative could tackle anti-migrant crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291508/original/file-20190909-109943-1ru3qzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> Firefighters outside a burning building after violence and looting against foreign nationals in Pretoria, South Africa in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>African migrants have once again been <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-02-city-in-lockdown-as-looters-target-migrant-rich-areas-across-johannesburg-and-east-rand/">targeted</a> for looting, violence and displacement in South Africa. Not only are the events reminiscent of 2008, 2015 and 2017: the narratives explaining them and the measures suggested to deal with them are more or less the same.</p>
<p>In 2008, when public attention to attacks on African migrants became global for the first time, then president Thabo Mbeki declared that South Africans were <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/mbekis-xenophobia-denialism-flies-in-face-of-evidence-8874406">not xenophobic</a>. In 2015 his successor Jacob Zuma <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Zuma-denies-xenophobia-in-AU-discussion-20150614">echoed similar sentiments</a>. The explanation was that criminal elements were hiding behind xenophobia to disguise their actions. </p>
<p>Criminality, rather than xenophobia, was therefore their preferred description. Meanwhile civil society, opposition parties and other African governments insisted that the attacks on foreign nationals were xenophobic and needed to be called such. </p>
<p>We see in these debates a mad rush to impose a limit on what should be said, and what should not. This is done as a strategy to set the agenda. In this race to contain the phenomenon is a desire for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02564718.2016.1235377">singularity</a> which has beset our societies. Criminality, xenophobia and Afrophobia appear in these narratives as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2016.1167751">incompatible</a>. The suggestion is that the problem has a single name and hence should subscribe to a single remedial framework. </p>
<h2>Same problem, same response</h2>
<p>Faced with the same problem, South Africa is turning to the familiar toolkit to explain and deal with a recurrent problem. A wave of looting and destruction of property by South African citizens is currently taking place in Johannesburg. Although it’s targeting foreign nationals, it is also claiming South African <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/xenophobic-attacks-death-toll-south-africans-killed-who/">victims</a>. </p>
<p>As of 9 September 2019, 12 people were confirmed dead and 639 had been arrested. The minister of police, the Gauteng province’s premier, the governing African National Congress (ANC) and former president Thabo Mbeki have condemned what they call criminality. Opposition parties, the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Democratic Alliance, are among the voices blaming xenophobia for the events. The debates are even more robust on social media sites where accusations and counter-accusations of criminality, xenophobia and Afrophobia are <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23saynotoxenophobicattacks">traded</a>.</p>
<p>These discourses are replicas of previous explanations of similar events in 2008, 2015, 2017 and, more recently, April 2019. Should this not be the time to try something else? Evaluating how we have defined the problem and redefining it anew, for instance, may be the start of a more fruitful search for answers. </p>
<p>Certainly, the answers are not to be found here and now. But pointing out the reasons why prevailing explanations fail is necessary. Solutions to a problem emanate from the way we describe the problem. </p>
<h2>Is it criminality?</h2>
<p>Those who blame the problem on criminality tend to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2016.1167751">underline the criminal actions</a> while downplaying the profile of victims. By making the victims invisible, authors of the criminality narrative create the impression that these acts could happen to anyone. To bolster this view, they point to South African citizens who have been caught up during the attacks.</p>
<p>For those who promote the criminality narrative, the problem is local. The criminal justice system is the answer to such a problem. By underlining criminal acts at the expense of the identities of intended targets of crime, African migrants’ experiences of marginality in South Africa are silenced.</p>
<p>Senior state officials go a step further by harbouring traces of xenophobia in their speeches. The victims of crime, whose profile the state is at pains to make insignificant, are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2016.1167751">projected as criminals</a>. Ministers, the police and traditional leaders are among those who speak of “criminal elements” targeting their victims on account of the latter’s criminal activities. This usually ends with an appeal to the said “criminal elements” not to take the law into their own hands, and the arrests of some perpetrators.</p>
<p>In the end, the criminality narrative pits one set of criminals against another. The burden of violence is placed on victims who should report crime and trust South Africa’s overwhelmed criminal justice system to come to the rescue, and on a few perpetrators who find themselves arrested and charged. </p>
<p>Because of South Africa’s high crime rate, these cases disappear in the pool of other crimes.</p>
<h2>Is it xenophobia or Afrophobia?</h2>
<p>Those who prefer to place the problem at the door of xenophobia, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2011.560470">Afrophobia</a> and self-hate place the profile of victims above the violent performances. The looting, maiming, killing and destruction of property are emptied of their criminal content. They are filled with the spectre of phobia. In this narrative lie accusations that <a href="https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4668">South Africans have lost ubuntu</a>, a notion deployed to erroneously construct Africans as irredeemably linked together.</p>
<p>Furthermore, South Africans are accused of regarding themselves as <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/103/4/607/3215/The-South-African-Ideology-The-Myth-of">exceptionally not of Africa</a>. Apartheid history is evoked to account for this <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/56982">pride, ignorance and attendant hatred for other Africans</a>. Last, but not least, South Africans are reminded that Africa <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-c13b7cdaa">supported</a> the struggle against apartheid at both cost and risk.</p>
<p>Going by this narrative, the problem is international and therefore cannot be left to South Africa’s criminal justice system. This explains why attacks targeting foreign nationals often invite reprisals from other African countries. By privileging the identities of intended targets of attacks at the expense of acts enacted upon them, adherents of this narrative downplay the history and politics surrounding South African citizens’ experiences of marginality. </p>
<p>This narrative does not account for the fact that attacks on African migrants, by ordinary South African citizens, do not happen every day. Surely if the expression of fear or hatred of something manifests through violent attacks, then the episodes of calm should prod us to look elsewhere for answers.</p>
<h2>Looking elsewhere</h2>
<p>The invitation to reevaluate our understanding of the problem does not render existing narratives irrelevant. What we must resist is the trap of singularity.<br>
What we call “criminality” or “xenophobia” claim victims from the same pool of vulnerable people and play out in the same neglected physical spaces. Government, police, immigration officials and ordinary South Africans contribute to the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2435.00145">normalisation of criminal and xenophobic attitudes</a> among South African citizens and migrants. </p>
<p>In these spaces, “criminality” and “xenophobia” can and often do flip into “racism”, “tribalism”, “sexism”, and so on. They are responses to larger structural problems which engender and exploit socio-cultural differences for political and economic gain. Our interest is barely aroused by these everyday events because they are not constant and they have merged with our institutional, political and economic lives. </p>
<p>What is infrequent, and horrifies us, are the repeated appearances of “criminality” and “xenophobia” conjoined as one event. Then we revert to the usual debates and the attendant marches, speeches and petitions against violence. </p>
<p>The narrative needs to change from criminality or xenophobia or Afrophobia to the everyday, structural, conditions which make socio-cultural differences amenable to easy exploitation by those who wield power. It is possible that we do not have the proper name for our problems: this may be mitigating against solving them. </p>
<p>We need new conversations grounded in the everyday experiences of those who always find themselves perpetrators and/or victims of “xenophobic crimes”, away from the violent eruptions. This will allow our material responses to be informed by a more accurate awareness of what is going on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cuthbeth Tagwirei does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Faced with the same problem, South Africa is turning to the familiar toolkit to explain a recurrent problem.Cuthbeth Tagwirei, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1138252019-03-19T19:14:30Z2019-03-19T19:14:30ZWhite nationalism, born in the USA, is now a global terror threat<p>The recent massacre of <a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-attacks-are-a-stark-warning-of-toxic-political-environment-that-allows-hate-to-flourish-113662">50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques</a> in Christchurch, New Zealand is the latest confirmation that white supremacy is a <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-22/white-supremacy-isnt-just-national-problem-its-global">danger to democratic societies across the globe</a>.</p>
<p>Despite President Donald Trump’s suggestion that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-response-to-new-zealand-massacre-highlights-his-combative-history-with-muslims/2019/03/18/bca24248-4996-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html">white nationalist terrorism is not a major problem</a>, recent data from the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22991&LangID=E">United Nations</a>, <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/podcasts/big-brains/rise-white-power-movement-kathleen-belew">University of Chicago</a> and other sources show the <a href="http://www.internationalhatestudies.com/blog/">opposite</a>. </p>
<p>As more people <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00313220802204046">embrace a xenophobic and anti-immigrant worldview</a>, it is fueling hostility and violence toward those deemed “outsiders” – whether because of their religion, skin color or national origin. </p>
<h2>Transnational violence</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supremacists-anti-semitic-and-anti-immigrant-sentiments-often-intersect">Most of the Western world</a> – from Switzerland and Germany to the United States, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/swedens-liberal-reputation-tarnished-as-race-attacks-rise">Scandinavia</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-mosque-shootings-must-end-new-zealands-innocence-about-right-wing-terrorism-113655">New Zealand</a> – has witnessed a <a href="https://www.tikkun.org/the-evolution-of-identity-politics-an-interview-with-eric-ward">potent nationalist strain</a> infecting society in recent years.</p>
<p>Driven by fear over the loss of white primacy, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/white-nationalist">white nationalists</a> believe that white identity should be the organizing principle of Western society.</p>
<p>“Every people in the world can have their own country except white people,” the <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/new-zealand-racism-america/">American Freedom Party’s William Daniel Johnson</a> told the Chicago Sun Times after the New Zealand attack. “We should have white ethno-states.” </p>
<p>In researching our upcoming book on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13600860054872?journalCode=cirl20">extremism</a> – our joint area of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248957128_A_timeline_of_the_racialist_movement_in_the_United_States_A_teaching_tool">academic expertise</a> – we found that hate crimes have risen alongside the global spread of white nationalism. Racist attacks on <a href="http://hatecrime.osce.org/2017-data">refugees, immigrants, Muslims and Jews</a> are increasing worldwide at an alarming rate.</p>
<p>Scholars studying the internationalization of hate crimes call this dangerous phenomenon “<a href="https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/abstract/9781526137579/9781526137579.xml">violent transnationalism</a>.”</p>
<p>In Europe, white violence appears to have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/perspectives-on-migrants-distorted-by-politics-of-prejudice-65550">triggered</a> by the sudden increase, in 2015, of refugees fleeing war in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. </p>
<p>Ultra-nationalists across the continent – including <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-viktor-orban-degraded-hungarys-weak-democracy-109046">politicians</a> at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fate-of-europe-will-depend-on-the-winner-of-the-french-presidential-election-76566">highest rungs of power</a> – used the influx as <a href="https://dailystormer.name/tag/syrian-refugees/">evidence</a> of the imminent “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/">cultural genocide</a>” of white people.</p>
<h2>White nationalism is a US export</h2>
<p>This disturbing international trend, in its modern incarnation, was born in the United States. </p>
<p>Since the 1970s, a small, vocal cadre of American white supremacists have sought to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cyber_Racism.html?id=co1NmAEACAAJ">export their ideology of hate</a>. Avowed racists like <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/08/10/david-duke-showers-praise-on-fox-news-star-laura-ingraham-after-her-racist-rant-about-immigrants/">Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke</a>, Aryan Nations founder <a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=aryan_nations_1">Richard Butler</a> and extremist author <a href="https://nationalvanguard.org/2018/09/our-cause-by-dr-william-l-pierce/">William Pierce</a> believe the white race is <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-the-pittsburgh-massacre-fits-into-americas-long-history-of-anti-semitism">under attack worldwide</a> by a cultural invasion of immigrants and people of color. </p>
<p>The United States is diversifying, but it remains <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217">77 percent white</a>. White supremacists, however, have long contended that the country’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/26/14340542/white-fear-trump-psychology-minority-majority">demographic changes</a> will <a href="https://archive.org/details/CPM_DSCI_Archives_Wickstrom">lead to an extermination of the white race and culture</a>. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-demography-of-the-alt-right">alt-right</a>” – an umbrella term describing modern online white supremacist movement – uses the same language. And it has expanded this 20th-century xenophobic worldview to portray refugees, Muslims and progressives as a threat, too.</p>
<p>Alt-right leaders like Richard Spencer, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jared-taylor">extremist Jared Taylor</a> and the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer editor <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/the-making-of-an-american-nazi/544119/">Andrew Anglin</a> also <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cyber_Racism.html?id=co1NmAEACAAJ">use social media</a> to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-internet-has-become-a-fertile-landscape-for-extremism-2017-8">share their ideology and recruit members</a> across borders.</p>
<iframe src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=17FXNMK5pvo0Jx99CPuf1dg7bn6sfNvbl2hCGqUtmIdo&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650" width="100%" height="650" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>They have found <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2001.00467.x">a global audience</a> of white supremacists who, in turn, have also <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/84/2/759/2235330&hl=en&sa=T&oi=gsb&ct=res&cd=0&d=12178608111472026617&ei=r8yPXPLEC467ywSGqY-gAQ&scisig=AAGBfm2RkVOl4hcscwktIFzqkgxyVzEk7w">used the internet</a> to share their ideas, encourage violence and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/03/19/704690054/facebook-admits-mosque-shooting-video-was-viewed-at-least-4-000-times">broadcast their hate crimes worldwide</a>.</p>
<p>“The hatred that led to violence in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville is finding new adherents around the world,” <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/03/15/new-zealand-christchurch-mosque-shootings-linked-u-s-racism/3175272002/">Jonathan Greenblatt</a> of the Anti-Defamation League, a civil liberties watchdog, told USA Today after the New Zealand attack. </p>
<p>“Indeed, it appears that this attack was not just focused on New Zealand; it was intended to have a global impact.” </p>
<h2>Rising racist violence</h2>
<p>We know the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter’s hatred of Muslims was inspired by American white nationalism – he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/15/facebook-youtube-twitter-amplified-video-christchurch-mosque-shooting/?utm_term=.7f1a54fde757">said so on Twitter</a>.</p>
<p>His online “manifesto” includes references to cultural conflicts that the author believed would eventually lead the United States to separate along ethnic, political and racial lines. </p>
<p>The alleged attacker also wrote that <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/donald-trumps-startling-global-agenda-taking-white-supremacy-worldwide/">he supports President Donald Trump</a> “as a symbol of renewed white identity.”</p>
<p>Trump and other right-wing politicians like French <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/world/europe/for-marine-le-pen-migration-is-a-ready-made-issue.html">presidential candidate Marine Le Pen</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/03/geert-wilders-netherlands/518415/">Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders</a> have <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-the-great-regression-76293">blamed</a> the very real problems of modern life – growing economic instability, rising inequality and <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-america-first-strategy-for-nafta-talks-wont-benefit-us-workers-81597">industrial decay</a> – on immigrants and people of color. </p>
<p>That narrative has added further hostility into the existing undercurrent of intolerance in increasingly multicultural societies like the United States. </p>
<p>Hate crimes against Muslims, immigrants and people of color have been <a href="https://ovc.ncjrs.gov/ncvrw2018/info_flyers/fact_sheets/2018NCVRW_HateCrime_508_QC.pdf%20-%20https://www.voanews.com/a/hate-crimes-in-major-us-cities-rise-for-fifth-year-in-a-row-data-show/4767616.html">on the rise in the U.S. since 2014</a>. </p>
<p>In 2015, the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2019/year-hate-rage-against-change">Southern Poverty Law Center documented 892 hate crimes</a>. The next year, it counted 917 hate crimes. In 2017 – the year Trump took office stoking nationalist sentiment with promises <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html">to build walls, deport Mexicans and ban Muslims</a> – the U.S. saw 954 white supremacist attacks. </p>
<p>One of them was a violent clash between counterprotesters and white nationalists over the removal of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-charlottesville-how-we-define-tolerance-becomes-a-key-question-83793">confederate statue in Charlottesville</a>, Virginia. The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, which killed one person and injured dozens, amplified the ideas of modern white nationalists <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-cannot-deny-the-violence-of-white-supremacy-any-more-86139">nationally and worldwide</a>.</p>
<p>Last year, white nationalists killed at least 50 people in the United States. Their victims included <a href="https://theconversation.com/terror-isnt-always-a-weapon-of-the-weak-it-can-also-support-the-powerful-82626">11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/us/kroger-shooting-charges-louisville.html">two elderly black shoppers in a Kroger parking lot</a> in Kentucky and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/03/us/tallahassee-shooting-yoga-studio/index.html">two women practicing yoga in Florida</a>.</p>
<p>The years 2015, 2016 and 2018 were the United States’ deadliest years for <a href="https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018">extremist violence since 1970</a>, according to the Anti-Defamation League.</p>
<p>All perpetrators of deadly <a href="https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources/resource-knowledge-base/adl-heat-map">extremist violence in the U.S. in 2018</a> had links to white nationalist groups. That made 2018 “a particularly active year for right-wing extremist murders,” the Anti-Defamation League says.</p>
<p>Nationalist terror is a danger to the domestic security of the United States and, evidence shows, a global terror threat that endangers the very nature of global democratic society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The recent massacre at a New Zealand mosque is a traceable, direct outgrowth of an American white nationalist movement that insists immigrants and people of color are a threat to ‘white civilization.’Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of DaytonPaul J. Becker, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054742018-11-02T17:39:06Z2018-11-02T17:39:06ZRepublican ads feature MS-13, hoping fear will motivate voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243512/original/file-20181101-83661-18uujyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screenshot from Republican John Rose's campaign ad 'Build the Wall,' which equates all immigration with the Salvadoran gang MS-13.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=b27ect2Yu80"> John Rose For Tennessee via YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Campaign advertisements appearing for this year’s midterm elections include a stream of Republican campaign ads linking immigration to crime. </p>
<p>One-quarter of Republican ads running nationwide this election season denounce immigrant violence, <a href="http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases/issues-090618/">according to the Wesleyan Media Project</a>, and advocate for President Donald Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policies, which include <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-zero-tolerance-immigration-policy-still-violating-fundamental-human-rights-laws-98615">separating immigrant children from their parents</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/09/20/trump-official-announces-controversial-new-limits-on-refugees/">slashing the number of refugee admissions</a>.</p>
<p>The GOP ads echo the rhetoric of Trump, who on Wednesday tweeted an inflammatory <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/01/democrats-let-him-into-our-country-trumps-new-ad-links-opponents-illegal-immigrant-killer-its-far-worse-than-infamous-willie-horton-ad-say-critics/">anti-immigration ad</a> that attacks Democrats as soft on crime. </p>
<p>Republican Geoff Diehl, who is hoping to unseat Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, has run ads attacking his opponent’s liberal stance on immigration. They make the unsubstantiated claim that undocumented immigrants “<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/25/without-proof-geoff-diehl-asserts-over-people-every-year-killed-undocumented-immigrants/4VZ9m2imXTZ3EPc3NHiMLK/story.html">kill over 7,000 people a year</a>.”</p>
<h2>MS-13 in the spotlight</h2>
<p>The street gang <a href="https://theconversation.com/ms-13-is-a-street-gang-not-a-drug-cartel-and-the-difference-matters-92702">MS-13</a> plays a starring role in many of the GOP’s ads. </p>
<p>“Gangs like MS-13 exploit our broken immigration system and commit terrible crimes, horrific crimes,” says an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ6750iXSxw&feature=youtu.be">attack ad</a> against Nevada Rep. Jacky Rosen, adding that the Democrat voted against “getting tough” on immigration.</p>
<p>I’ve spent the last seven years researching MS-13, and my <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520297098">2018 book</a> about this Salvadoran street gang examines the way conservative politicians leverage its brutal image to serve their electoral and policy agendas.</p>
<p>Because its membership is primarily Latino, MS-13 helps Republicans make a crucial link between immigration and violence in voters’ minds, my research shows. </p>
<p>That association is factually unfounded.</p>
<p>Numerous studies show that immigrants actually commit crime at a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.02c9f3931732">lower rate than native-born Americans</a>. Large cities with substantial immigrant populations <a href="https://theconversation.com/immigration-and-crime-what-does-the-research-say-72176">have lower crime rates</a>, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243673/original/file-20181102-83654-ilv6m1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Central American migrants now traveling through Mexico are fleeing extreme violence to seek asylum in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Migrant-Caravan-US-Border/1bb2429a746540859611a94580a8f3a8/6/0">AP Photo/Gregory Bull</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Inflammatory anti-immigration ads</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, the current GOP ads paint Democrats as soft on crime, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/29/nancy-pelosi-hit-with-gop-ad-democrats-midterm-mes/">allies of the Latino street gang MS-13</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-nm0vQwO5c&feature=youtu.be">“complicit” with murderers</a>. </p>
<p>Republican John Rose, who hopes to represent Tennessee’s 6th district, opens a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b27ect2Yu80">TV ad</a> with the question: “Mexican Drug lords, MS-13 gang members, sex-traffickers … Do they run our border? Or do we?” </p>
<p>After a series of garish images – a knife cutting open a bag of heroin, threatening silhouettes, another knife – viewers see Rose and Trump, smiling shoulder to shoulder as the narrator commends White House policies from “build the wall” to “zero tolerance.” </p>
<p>MS-13 began in Los Angeles in the 1990s and later expanded into Central American cities, where it has undermined governance and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ms-13-is-a-street-gang-not-a-drug-cartel-and-the-difference-matters-92702">terrorized local populations</a>. </p>
<p>In the United States, however, it is not the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/27/opinion/trump-ms13-immigration.html">largest</a> of the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/violent-crime/gangs">33,000 criminal organizations operating in the the country</a>. Its membership – an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 people nationwide – is five times lower than the 18th Street, Gangster Disciples and other American gangs. </p>
<p>MS-13 has committed brutal, high-profile murders in Boston, Long Island, Virginia and beyond. While it has been <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/ms-13-immigration-facts-what-trump-administration-gets-wrong">highly, sensationally violent in those communities</a>, the gang is not the most dangerous criminal group in the United States. Evidence suggests there is very little coordination, if any, among MS-13 cells nationwide. Its violence is also typically, though not solely, directed against <a href="https://theconversation.com/ms-13-is-a-street-gang-not-a-drug-cartel-and-the-difference-matters-92702">other gang members</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://cis.org/">Center for Immigration Studies</a>, a right-wing organization known for its <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-immigration-studies">anti-immigrant ideology</a>, alleges that MS-13 commits about <a href="https://cis.org/Report/MS13-Resurgence-Immigration-Enforcement-Needed-Take-Back-Our-Streets">35 murders a year</a> – a fraction of murders <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2012-10-03-ct-met-street-gang-bloodshed-20121003-story.html">attributed to other U.S. gangs</a>. The U.S. had <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-murders-dropped-in-2017/2018/09/24/d9befda6-bffa-11e8-90c9-23f963eea204_story.html?utm_term=.d10523af6269">17,284 homicides</a> in 2017.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243675/original/file-20181102-83641-1kvaq50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Trump administration stokes Americans’ fears about gangs like MS-13 to make false claims linking immigration to crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/58e476e0c13b4ac9af9fd04d57df65a8/206/0">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But MS-13 has a penchant for gruesome, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520297098">headline-grabbing killings</a> and elaborate tattoos, which earn it outsized media attention. It also recruits heavily among vulnerable undocumented immigrant youth, tapping into Americans’ <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-white-strategy/485612/">anxiety about rising crime and shifting demographics</a> in the United States. </p>
<h2>Record low crime</h2>
<p>Republicans know this. As they battle <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/01/662794792/heres-why-democrats-are-confident-they-ll-win-the-house">to retain control of the House and possibly the Senate</a>, they see electoral advantage in inflaming those fears. </p>
<p>Trump, who during his 2016 presidential campaign repeatedly blamed the “open border policies of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/transcript-trump-immigration-speech.html">the Obama administration</a>” for crimes committed by immigrant gang members, has focused intensively on MS-13 as president. </p>
<p>After vicious incidents of MS-13 violence – the 2017 double murder of two teenage girls in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ms-13-has-turned-us-into-blood-stained-killing-fields-2017-7">Suffolk County, New York, for instance</a>, and the stabbing of a man in Montgomery County, Maryland – Trump responded with hyperbolic, sweeping statements about immigrants and crime, warning that U.S. cities have become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/opinion/sunday/trump-gangs-soccer-education.html">“blood-stained killing fields</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243674/original/file-20181102-83654-1lsqz2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called MS-13 ‘one of the gravest threats to American safety’ and made it a law enforcement priority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sessions-Gang-Violence/8a827fc5a1434d42950e3fd6123cb526/47/0">AP Photo/Stephan Savoia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Violent crime in the U.S. is actually the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/20/17882172/murder-crime-us-2018">lowest it has been in 30 years</a>, including in most large cities where gangs operate – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/violent-crime-murder-chicago-increase-.html">Chicago</a> being one notable exception.</p>
<p>But Trump’s hyperfocus on MS-13 has helped to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/immigration-children-sessions-miller.html">drive Republican voter fear</a> over immigration to an <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/237389/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=TOPIC&g_campaign=item_&g_content=Immigration%2520Surges%2520to%2520Top%2520of%2520Most%2520Important%2520Problem%2520List">all-time high</a>.</p>
<p>That has empowered GOP candidates to leverage Americans’ <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/15/17979224/2018-midterm-elections-candidates-issues-health-care-immigration">anti-immigration concerns</a> to try to win elections.</p>
<p>Conservative pundits have also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/29/media/pittsburgh-suspect-invasion/index.html">echoed the president’s anti-immigrant language</a>, suggesting that that MS-13 has infiltrated the <a href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/10/22/donald-trump-says-terrorists-ms-13-infiltrated-illegal-immigrant-caravan">migrant caravan</a> and that Central Americans are “<a href="http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mekxrYxEvEA">attacking the United States’ sovereignty</a>.”</p>
<p>Election Day will show whether fear-mongering with MS-13 will help Republicans keep control of the House and Senate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony W. Fontes is author of Mortal Doubt: Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City.</span></em></p>MS-13 is not the biggest or most violent gang in the US. But its grisly murders and Latino membership inflame Americans’ anxiety about immigration. GOP campaign ads stoke those fears to attack Democrats.Anthony W. Fontes, Assistant Professor of Human Security, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1030402018-09-25T22:18:58Z2018-09-25T22:18:58ZRefugees from Venezuela are fleeing to Latin American cities, not refugee camps<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/refugiados-de-venezuela-huyen-a-ciudades-latinoamericanas-no-a-campos-de-refugiados-103968">Leer en español</a></em>.</p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/venezuela-has-lost-2-3-million-people-and-it-could-get-even-worse">2.3 million Venezuelans</a> – roughly 7 percent of the entire population – have fled the country’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-08-09/how-avoid-venezuelan-civil-war">political and economic crisis</a> since 2014, the largest human displacement in Latin America’s history.</p>
<p>Earlier this year as many as <a href="http://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/unhcr%20venezuela%20situation%202018%20supplementary%20appeal.pdf">5,000 Venezuelans</a> crossed the border every day, most of them <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45304086">seeking safety in poor cities and towns</a> in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.</p>
<p>Impromptu refugee camps are springing up in towns across South America, fueling anxieties that tent cities may become <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/08/30/feature/millions-of-venezuelans-are-fleeing-to-latin-american-cities-the-region-may-never-be-the-same/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c7623bd3d61c">permanent ghettos</a>.</p>
<p>Latin America is not the only region where cities are struggling to cope with mass migration – populations that would previously have landed in rural refugee camps. </p>
<h2>Migrants prefer cities to camps</h2>
<p>Urban refugees are a growing phenomenon.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.worldrefugeecouncil.org/publications/refugees-and-city-twenty-first-century-front-line">a recent World Refugee Council report</a>, which I co-authored, hundreds of cities worldwide are overwhelmed by an influx of people fleeing conflict in Syria, Myanmar, Sudan and beyond. </p>
<p>Ever since the mass global displacement of the World War II – and particularly after Nigeria’s <a href="http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol16-issue2/F01624557.pdf">1967 Biafra civil war</a> – international aid organizations have primarily housed refugees in rural camps, where they are provided food, shelter, legal processing, education and medical care.</p>
<p>If given the option, however, refugees typically <a href="http://www.worldurbancampaign.org/more-half-world%E2%80%99s-refugees-live-urban-areas-here%E2%80%99s-what-means-cities">prefer to resettle in cities</a>. There, they stand a better chance at rebuilding their lives. </p>
<p>But when too many refugees arrive at once, they can create a <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/the-refugee-crisis-is-a-city-crisis/544083/">host of challenges</a> for city officials. Refugees often arrive with little more than the clothing on their backs urgently needing housing, food, education and skills training.</p>
<p>Yet neither the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html">United Nation’s 1951 Convention on Refugees</a> nor its <a href="http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3ae4.html">1967 supplementary protocol</a> even references urban refugees, much less defines the specific roles and responsibilities of city officials in dealing with migrants.</p>
<p>Though the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/5894558d4.pdf">current strategic plan</a> of the UN’s refugee agency acknowledges that more refugees are moving to cities, it offers few recommendations for helping cities better serve them.</p>
<p>Today, about 17.5 million people – about <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/06/19/why-most-refugees-do-not-live-in-camps">70 percent of all refugees worldwide</a>, live in urban areas, <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html">according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees</a>. </p>
<h2>Political barriers to integrating refugees</h2>
<p>The UN’s refugee agency issued its <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/41626fb64.pdf">first official policy statement on urban refugees</a> in 1997. Concerned that increasing municipal migrant services might pull refugees away from remote camps and into cities, it <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/4ab356ab6.pdf">promoted a model of “self-reliance”</a> to keep them at bay.</p>
<p>In practice, that means urban refugees and other migrants mostly fend for themselves. Some can afford to rent apartments. Others stay with family and friends. Many end up homeless and destitute. </p>
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<p>Their undocumented status makes self-reliance difficult. Millions of refugees and asylum-seekers <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-refugees-urban-factbox-idUSKBN13Y237">living in cities across Thailand, Jordan and Kenya</a> are denied work permits, pushing them into poorly paid, black market jobs. Few can access formal education or health services. </p>
<p>Some cities have taken a more active approach to refugee and migrant services – though not always successfully.</p>
<p>In Calais, France, thousands of Middle Eastern and North African migrants and refugees were directed to a camp located on a former landfill, where they were served by local charities and aid organizations. </p>
<p>But the “Calais Jungle,” as the squalid camp was known, lacked proper sanitation, and disease spread quickly. More than <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/calais-jungle-evacuation-camp-underway-refugees-france-uncertainty-a7377106.html">6,400 residents were evacuated in 2016</a>.</p>
<p>The patchwork response to new arrivals – and the high visibility of migrants who are “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5874268/">campified</a>” on the streets – is fueling public discontent from residents who view refugees as a drain on already scarce city resources. </p>
<h2>Cities take the lead</h2>
<p>Politics is one reason that the UN has been slow to address the urban refugee crisis. It has faced immense pressure from member countries to continue <a href="https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/40451/36444">building and administering rural camps</a> rather than help refugees integrate and resettle in cities.</p>
<p>Right-wing politicians everywhere from <a href="https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2017/10/06/treating-refugees-as-a-threat-to-security-is-counterproductive">Uganda</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31247914_Distinguishing_Means_and_Ends_The_Counterintuitive_Effects_of_UNHCR's_Community_Development_Approach_in_Nepal">Nepal</a> to the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/us-policy-syrian-refugees/409822/">United States</a> and <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/06/fluxo-de-venezuelanos-na-colombia-alimenta-xenofobia-e-trafico-de-drogas.shtml">Colombia</a> portray displaced people as a national security threat. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.100resilientcities.org/global-migration-discussion-cities-want/">things may be starting to change</a>.</p>
<p>In 2015, following a <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-the-eu-really-solved-its-refugee-crisis-80435">rush of refugees</a> from the Mideast and North Africa, a network of foundations and 50 <a href="http://www.eurocities.eu/eurocities/about_us">European cities</a> – including Barcelona, Frankfurt and Rotterdam – established “<a href="https://solidaritycities.eu/">Solidarity Cities</a>.” They are working together to deliver housing and other immediate services to new arrivals and, over time, integrate them into city life. </p>
<p>Last year, the International Organization for Migration and the umbrella group United Cities and Local Governments organized 150 cities around the globe to sign a <a href="https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/press_release/file/Mechelen-Declaration-final.pdf">declaration</a> on the rights of urban refugees. </p>
<p>Asserting that refugees can “bring significant social, economic and cultural contributions to urban development,” they called on international organizations and national governments to politically and financially support cities in caring for migrant populations. </p>
<p>In the U.S., many cities have responded to President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-shows-trump-will-face-legal-challenges-to-detaining-immigrants-72247">immigration crackdown</a> by publicly declaring themselves “<a href="https://www.welcomingamerica.org/programs/member-municipalities">welcoming cities</a>” for refugees and asylum-seekers.</p>
<p>Another <a href="https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Counties-and-States">500 American cities</a> – including <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-rahm-emanuel-sanctuary-city-ruling-20180419-story.html">Chicago</a>, Los Angeles and New York have gone further – establishing themselves as “sanctuaries” where undocumented migrants and refugees may seek protection from federal immigration authorities.</p>
<h2>Backlash in Brazil</h2>
<p>So far, Venezuelan migrants have experienced no such welcome in South America. </p>
<p>In Brazil, which has received <a href="https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-45251779">roughly 56,000 Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers since 2015</a>, cities have proven grievously <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuelan-refugees-inflame-brazils-already-simmering-migrant-crisis-89008">unprepared to receive them</a>. </p>
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<p>Only a few hundred Venezuelans have sought asylum in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city. Yet this <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137432568_7">wealthy metropolis</a> of 21 million is struggling to provide them with basic services like employment, food and other amenities.</p>
<p>In smaller Brazilian border towns, the influx is overwhelming. Officials have appealed to the military and <a href="https://www.caritas.org/where-caritas-work/latin-america/brazil/">international aid groups</a> to set up emergency migrant shelters. </p>
<p>Boa Vista, which lies 125 miles from Venezuela, normally has 266,000 residents. Venezuelans have swelled its population by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/world/americas/venezuela-brazil-migrants.html">10 percent</a>. </p>
<p>According to Roraima state authorities, check-ups at public clinics increased 6,500 percent last year as Venezuelans made use of Brazil’s public health system. Many asylum-seekers arrive needing treatment for <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-venezuela-colombia-20180513-story.html">dehydration, malnutrition and disease</a>.</p>
<p>Crime is also up in Roraima, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/06/brazil-shuts-border-venezuelan-migrants">132 percent since 2015</a>, an increase officials have attributed to migrants.</p>
<p>Anti-migrant sentiment on the Brazilian frontier is <a href="https://diplomatique.org.br/a-xenofobia-na-fronteira/">growing</a>. </p>
<p>Local officials in some border cities now require passports and special permits to access government services. Others have set up separate <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/30/towns-brazil-have-become-refugee-camps-tide-desperate-venezuelans/">migrant-only bathrooms</a>. </p>
<p>An angry mob of Brazilians chased <a href="https://g1.globo.com/rr/roraima/noticia/moradores-ateiam-fogo-em-objetos-e-expulsam-venezuelanos-de-predio-em-cidade-no-interior-de-rr.ghtml">50 Venezuelans out of nearby Mucajai</a> in March. </p>
<p>In August, Roraima state <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/08/apos-15-horas-fechada-fronteira-com-a-venezuela-e-reaberta-em-roraima.shtml">closed its border with Venezuela</a>, though Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered it reopened 15 hours later. </p>
<p>That month, a Venezuelan migrant accused of robbery <a href="https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-45242682">was killed in the Brazilian city of Paracaima</a>. Another Venezuelan was <a href="https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/venezuelano-assassinado-com-tiros-facadas-no-sul-de-roraima-23031361">stabbed and shot to death in Rorainópolis</a>, a town in Roraima state. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/19/brazil-sends-troops-venezuela-border-residents-drive-migrants/">Brazilian military was even deployed</a> to the border to keep the peace. </p>
<h2>Cities have a comparative advantage</h2>
<p>Despite these challenges, I see cities as comparatively well positioned to assist refugees. </p>
<p>City officials operate in the practical realm: They collect garbage, provide drinking water, manage public health care, create housing and builds roads – precisely the kinds of services migrants need.</p>
<p>But poorer cities like those in South America will need both national and international economic support to meet the needs of their newest residents. </p>
<p>Cities cannot change national laws to make refugees more welcome. But with a little help – and a lot less hindrance – they can better provide the basic protection that migrants need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As co-founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group, Robert Muggah receives funding from a range a international foundations and bilateral partners. Supporters include the Omidyar Foundation, Open Society Foundation and Canadian government. Robert Muggah is also a fellow at the Chicago Council for Global Affairs and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, affiliated with the World Economic Forum and is faculty at Singularity University.</span></em></p>Up to 5,000 refugees flee hunger and chaos in Venezuela each day – a migrant crisis rivaling Syria’s. Most arrive to poor South American border cities that are dangerously unprepared for the influx.Robert Muggah, Associate Lecturer, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1010532018-08-13T12:45:26Z2018-08-13T12:45:26ZHow fears about jobs drive anti-migrant sentiment in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231142/original/file-20180808-191044-r6rcv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thousands marched to demand an end to xenophobic violence in South Africa recently. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the major problems facing South Africa is anti-immigrant violence. The seriousness of this problem was highlighted in a recent <a href="http://hcwg.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Report-Hate-Bias-Crimes-Monitoring-Form-Project-SCREEN.pdf">report on hate crime</a> in the country. </p>
<p>These kinds of hate crime discourage long-term integration of international migrants. It also hampers the country’s ability to attract migrants with the skills it needs to drive development and economic growth. </p>
<p>Anti-immigrant violence also sours the country’s relationship with the rest of the continent. For example, relations between South Africa and Nigeria, one of the region’s largest economies, have deteriorated because of recent <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/ramaphosa-tries-to-fix-sa-nigeria-relations-as-xenophobia-claims-emerge-15973772">attacks on Nigerians</a>. </p>
<p>Since the early 1990s, state officials, legislators and policymakers in South Africa have debated the <a href="http://samponline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Acrobat66.pdf">causes of anti-immigrant violence</a>. There are many different opinions on what causes such hostility. Some politicians, including former president Jacob Zuma, even suggested that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/28/south-africa-is-not-a-xenophobic-nation-a-letter-from-jacob-zuma">problem doesn’t exist</a>. </p>
<p>A new <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/general/attacking-foreigners-in-sa">study</a> by the Human Sciences Research Council canvased the views of ordinary South Africans on what lies behind anti-immigrant sentiments, including violence. Knowing how the public views this important question is vital to understanding which mechanisms would be most acceptable to prevent xenophobic violence. </p>
<p>Overall, 71% of the respondents said that the threat posed by immigrants from outside South Africa was the main reason for the violence. A third of people in the survey attributed violence against immigrants to the fact that foreigners would take jobs away from South Africans and that they were involved in unfair business practices attributed.</p>
<p>Only a small minority (5%) described violence against foreigners as irrational, illogical or unknowable. An even smaller portion (2%) rejected the premise of the question and said that attacks against foreigners were “just the work of criminals”.</p>
<h2>The survey and findings</h2>
<p>Using public opinion data, the study looked at which explanations for anti-immigrant violence are most popular among the country’s adults. </p>
<p>Public opinion data from the <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas">South African Social Attitudes Survey 2017</a> was used for the study. The repeated cross-sectional survey series is specially designed to be nationally representative of all persons aged 16 years and older in the country. Survey teams visited households in all nine provinces and the sample size was 3,098. </p>
<p>Respondents were asked: “There are many opinions about why people take violent action against foreigners living in South Africa. Please tell me the main reason why you think this happens”. This open-ended question allowed people to answer in their own words, thus encouraging them to give an unbiased answer.</p>
<p>Almost every respondent was able to offer an explanation for why people attack foreigners. About a third (30%) of the general public said that the violence was caused by foreigners stealing jobs from hardworking South Africans. Other economic causes cited were the alleged unfair business practices of foreign-owned small businesses and that immigrants used up resources (such as housing).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230759/original/file-20180806-191035-11rrgvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The criminal threat posed by international immigrants was the second most frequently mentioned cause of anti-immigrant violence. Almost a third (30%) said that communities were responding to the criminal activities of the migrants. Many people attributed the violence to foreigners’ involvement in drug trafficking. </p>
<p>About 5% of the respondents identified other threats they claimed foreigners posed as the main reason for the attacks. These included the sexual exploitation of women as well as a general sense that immigrants wanted to “take over the country”. </p>
<p>Looking at the minority that named a non-threat explanation for attacks on foreigners living in South Africa, the study found that few identified individual prejudice or misinformation about international migrants as primary reasons for the violence. </p>
<p>Remarkably, the most frequently mentioned non-threat explanation for violence was jealousy. About 10% of the respondents said that envy of the success or ingenuity of foreigners was the main driver of this kind of hate crime. People who responded in this way tended to tell fieldworkers that South Africans were lazy when compared to migrants. </p>
<h2>Combating xenophobic violence</h2>
<p>From the responses, it’s apparent that most of the reasons provided by the general population are about the alleged harmful conduct of international migrants. There is, however, no evidence to support the belief that South Africa’s migrant community is a major cause of crime or <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/do-immigrants-steal-jobs-south-africa-what-data-tell-us/">unemployment</a> in the country. Indeed, as former president Zuma has <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1630JW">acknowledged</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(many in the migrant community) contribute to the economy of the country positively. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Government and anti-xenophobia activists need to encourage ordinary people to think like this, and to view hate crimes against foreigners differently. Public support will help anti-xenophobia advocates end these kinds of hate crime. Only when South Africans are able to understand the root causes of anti-immigrant violence can the problem be overcome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Gordon receives funding from DST- NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development and is an employee of the Human Sciences Research Council. </span></em></p>A survey shows 70% of South Africans feel immigrants pose a threat to the country.Steven Gordon, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Human Sciences Research CouncilLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/975012018-07-11T11:14:15Z2018-07-11T11:14:15ZHow cities help immigrants feel at home: 4 charts<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/como-las-ciudades-pueden-ayudar-a-los-inmigrantes-a-sentirse-en-casa-4-graficos-99898"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>As anti-immigrant sentiment erupts in Western democracies from <a href="https://theconversation.com/influx-of-immigrants-shines-light-on-the-darker-side-of-europe-41128">Germany</a> to the <a href="http://time.com/4473972/donald-trump-mexico-meeting-insult/">United States</a>, some cities are still finding ways to make immigrants feel at home. </p>
<p>I conducted hundreds of interviews with immigrants in New York, Paris and Barcelona intermittently for over a decade to understand how each city integrates – or excludes – its migrants. </p>
<p>My new book, “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23440">A Place to Call Home</a>,” explains why some cities and their residents do better at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jun/25/tourists-go-home-refugees-welcome-why-barcelona-chose-migrants-over-visitors">incorporating</a> foreign-born newcomers in the local economy, culture and politics.</p>
<h2>A feeling of belonging</h2>
<p>On the surface, immigration in these three cities looks quite different. </p>
<p>Over <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork,US/PST045216">one-third of all New Yorkers</a> were born abroad, the majority of them in <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/nny2013/chapter2.pdf#page=3">Latin America and the Caribbean</a>. </p>
<p>In Paris, where 20 percent of the population is <a href="https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2874034?sommaire=2874056&geo=UU2010-00851">foreign-born</a>, most immigrants and their children come from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and other former <a href="https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/france/immigrants-foreigners/countries-birth-immigrants/">French colonies in North Africa</a>. </p>
<p>Much of Barcelona’s immigrant population, around <a href="http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/bcnacciointercultural/sites/default/files/ficheros/La%20poblaci%C3%B3%20estrangera%20a%20Barcelona%202017.pdf">17.8 percent of its total population</a>, is <a href="http://www.bcn.cat/novaciutadania/pdf/pla_immigracio/pla_immigracio_en.pdf">Latin American</a> or Moroccan. </p>
<p>Despite their diverse origins, the immigrants I spoke with consistently cited the same elements as being critical to their sense of urban belonging, helping them to feel “at home” while working, socializing and raising a family in the city.</p>
<p>New York and Barcelona, it turns out, foster this sense of belonging more than Paris does. </p>
<p>Nearly 70 percent of the first-generation Latino immigrants I interviewed in New York City feel that they are part of the community. Just under half of first-generation Moroccans in Barcelona felt that way. But only 19 percent of North Africans in Paris feel like part of the community.</p>
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<h2>Lots of jobs</h2>
<p>In part, interviewees told me, that’s because New York and Barcelona both have ample jobs open to immigrants in both the formal and informal sectors. </p>
<p>Immigrants are vital to New York City’s economy. According to the <a href="https://osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt7-2016.pdf">New York state comptroller’s office</a>, immigrants account for 43 percent of the city’s workforce and nearly one-third of its economic output.</p>
<p>Immigrants have a strong presence in the service sector and construction. Additionally, according to a 2016 comptroller’s <a href="https://osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt7-2016.pdf">report</a>, “Many industries, such as technology, finance and information, draw on a worldwide talent pool of immigrants to maintain their competitiveness.” </p>
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<p>Barcelona, too, has depended on <a href="http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-3.htm">immigrant labor</a> to grow its economy. Until Europe’s 2007 economic crisis, when <a href="http://treballiaferssocials.gencat.cat/web/.content/03ambits_tematics/05immigracio/dades_immigracio/informe_integracio/2015/EN_Informe-integracio-immigracio-2015.pdf">high unemployment</a> slowed immigration and compelled many foreign-born workers to <a href="https://migrationcluster.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk821/files/2017-07/giovanni_immigration_jobs_and_employment.pdf">return</a> to their countries of origin, immigrants were an important part of the labor force. </p>
<p>Employers in both cities are also generally accepting of undocumented status. Some 560,000 undocumented people live in New York City, according to a March 2018 <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/immigrants/downloads/pdf/moia_annual_report_2018_final.pdf">report by the city</a>, which is 6.3 percent of the city’s total population. Undocumented immigrants in New York have a high labor-force participation rate – <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/immigrants/downloads/pdf/moia_annual_report_2018_final.pdf">77 percent</a> for people ages 16 and above. </p>
<h2>Events and services for immigrants</h2>
<p>Both Barcelona and New York also hold regular cultural events celebrating immigrants.</p>
<p>Brooklyn’s <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/09/04/millions-gather-for-annual-west-indian-day-parade-in-brooklyn/">West Indian Day Parade</a>, organized by Caribbean immigrant populations and funded <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/05/nyregion/a-tradition-remade-in-brooklyn-west-indians-prepare-a-lavish-and-popular-pageant.html">partly by corporate donations</a>, draws millions of revelers each year. </p>
<p>In Manhattan, the act of closing down some main avenues to host the Saint Patrick’s, Puerto Rican, Dominican or Mexican Day parades is an important sign of solidarity with foreign-born residents and their descendants.</p>
<p>Many local nonprofit organizations and government agencies in New York and Barcelona exist to serve immigrants’ specific needs. </p>
<p>In Barcelona, the <a href="http://www.bcn.cat/novaciutadania/arees/en/saier/immigracio.html">Service Center for Immigrants, Emigrants and Refugees</a> is a government service that provides free resources for immigrants on how to obtain legal status and eventually obtain Spanish nationality. It also provides educational, employment and housing services in <a href="http://www.bcn.cat/novaciutadania/arees/en/saier/saier.html">seven different languages</a>.</p>
<p>In New York, many different immigration organizations advocate for immigrant rights and provide numerous resources and programs throughout the city. They also aim to elect immigrants into political office and community leadership positions to improve immigrants’ public representation.</p>
<h2>Let immigrants be</h2>
<p>Immigrants also told me that people in New York and Barcelona just let foreign-born residents be themselves, allowing them to maintain their own identity while creating a new home. </p>
<p>From the point of view of immigrants, then, it’s the ratio between being specifically catered to and treated the same as anyone else that determines how welcome they feel. </p>
<p>The key to inclusion, in other words, seems to be to help immigrant integration without forcing it. </p>
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<p>No city is perfect at this. In New York, Barcelona and Paris alike, I found that many immigrants were stuck in low-skilled jobs, working in restaurant kitchens, taxis and construction sites – no matter what they did back home. </p>
<p>All the immigrants I spoke with struggle to find affordable, quality housing in these expensive metropolises. Anti-immigrant politicians publicly decry them as “threats” to the nation. </p>
<p>And immigrants of color in these predominantly white countries reported being racially profiled by both police and residents, though that appears to happen much less often in New York City. </p>
<h2>What Paris gets wrong</h2>
<p>In my interviews, the first- and second-generation immigrants who most often reported that they struggled to feel at home were the ones who lived in Paris and its <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/11/the-othered-paris/543597/">metropolitan region</a>.</p>
<p>France has long embraced the idea of itself as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-french-myth-of-secularism-36227">homogeneous secular republic</a>. This notion endured even as the country <a href="http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol2_2/seljuq.htm">colonized</a> Muslim North African countries like Algeria and Tunisia in the 19th and early 20th centuries and recruited workers from those countries.</p>
<p>The secular ideal makes it difficult for French society to address the ways that immigrants may in fact be <a href="https://www.american.edu/ucm/news/20180702-tale-of-three-cities.cfm">different</a> than native-born French.</p>
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<p>France’s national census cannot ask about racial or ethnic identity, for example. So policies designed to help minorities – such as affirmative action – are not only almost impossible there but also frowned upon as discriminatory.</p>
<p>Racial discrimination and racist comments are not uncommon in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44039566">Paris</a>. But France’s steadfast belief that it is a “color-blind” society means there is little <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/race-policy-in-france/">interest in talking about racism</a>. </p>
<p>Muslim immigrants living in Paris also told me that they felt Parisians expected them to assimilate – to abandon their home culture and become entirely and immediately “French.” </p>
<p>Support for <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289529129_Urban_Citizenship_in_New_York_Paris_and_Barcelona_Immigrant_Organizations_and_the_Right_to_Inhabit_the_City">ethnic and race-based organizations</a> of the sort that proliferate in Barcelona and New York, is also seen as anti-French. As a result, immigrants in Paris typically practice their religion and cultural traditions in private. That isolates them from their neighbors and prevents most native-born French from learning about these newcomers. </p>
<p>This external pressure to conform quickly to the national culture makes immigrants feel less at home – and, based on my research, less likely to actually assimilate over time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97501/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ernesto Castañeda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A sociologist interviewed hundreds of immigrants in New York, Barcelona and Paris. Here’s what they say those cities get right — and do wrong — when integrating foreign-born residents.Ernesto Castañeda, Assistant Professor of Sociology, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/899462018-01-10T20:40:58Z2018-01-10T20:40:58ZMLK’s vision of love as a moral imperative still matters<p>More than 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States remains divided <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009771">by issues of race and racism</a>, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/12/key-findings-on-the-rise-in-income-inequality-within-americas-racial-and-ethnic-groups/">economic inequality</a> as well as <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/16/report-finds-significant-racial-ethnic-disparities/">unequal access to justice</a>. These issues are stopping the country from developing into the kind of society that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for during his years as a civil rights activist. </p>
<p>As a result King’s words and work are still relevant. I <a href="http://www.aag.org/galleries/about-aag-files/Critical_Pedagogy_Inwood.pdf">study the civil rights movement</a> and the <a href="https://142.207.145.31/index.php/acme/article/view/906">field of peace geographies</a>. Peace geographies thinks about how different groups of people approach and work toward building the kind of peaceful society King worked to create. Americans faced similar crises related to the broader civil rights struggles in the 1960s. </p>
<p>So, what can the past tell us about healing the nation? Specifically, how can we address divisions along race, class and political lines? </p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr.’s understanding of the role of love in engaging individuals and communities in conflict is crucial today. For King, love was not sentimental. It demanded that individuals tell their oppressors what they were doing was wrong. </p>
<h2>King’s vision</h2>
<p>King spent his public career working toward ending segregation and fighting racial discrimination. For many people the pinnacle of this work occurred in Washington, D.C., when he delivered his famous “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/17/i-have-a-dream-speech-text_n_809993.html">I Have a Dream” speech</a>. </p>
<p>Less well-known and often ignored is his later work on behalf of <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91626373">poor people</a>. In fact, when King was assassinated in Memphis he was in the midst of building toward a national march on Washington, D.C., that would have brought together tens of thousands of economically disenfranchised people to advocate for policies that would reduce poverty. This effort – known as the <a href="http://epn.sagepub.com/content/45/9/2120.short">“Poor People’s Campaign</a>” – aimed to dramatically shift national priorities to address the health and welfare of working people. </p>
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<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at interfaith civil rights rally, San Francisco’s Cow Palace, June 30, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Conklin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Scholars such as <a href="https://geography.utk.edu/about-us/faculty/dr-derek-alderman/">Derek Alderman</a>, <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/geography/people/profiles/paul-kingsbury.html">Paul Kingsbury</a> and <a href="https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/about/directory/dwyer-owen-j.html">Owen Dwyer</a> how King’s work can be applied in today’s context. They argue that calling attention to the civil rights movement, can “change the way students understand themselves in relation to the larger project of civil rights.” And in understanding the civil rights movement, students and the broader public can see its contemporary significance. </p>
<h2>Idea of love</h2>
<p>King focused on the role of love as key to building healthy communities and the ways in which love can and should be at the center of our social interactions. </p>
<p>King’s final book, <a href="http://www.thekinglegacy.org/books/where-do-we-go-here-chaos-or-community">“Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?</a>” published in the year before his assassination, provides his most expansive vision of an inclusive, diverse and economically equitable U.S. nation. For King, love is a key part of creating communities that work for everyone and not just the few at the expense of the many. </p>
<p>Love was not a mushy or easily dismissed emotion, but was central to the kind of community he envisioned. King made distinctions between three forms of love which are key to the human experience: “eros,” “philia” and most importantly “agape.” </p>
<p>For King, eros is a form of love that is most closely associated with desire, while philia is often the love that is experienced between very good friends or family. These visions are different from agape. </p>
<p>Agape, which was at the center of the movement he was building, was the moral imperative to engage with one’s oppressor in a way that showed the oppressor the ways their actions dehumanize and detract from society. <a href="https://dailymlk.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/in-speaking-of-love-at-this-point-we-are-not-referring-to-some-sentimental-emotion/">He said,</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In speaking of love we are not referring to some sentimental emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense[…] When we speak of loving those who oppose us […] we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word Agape. Agape means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King further defined agape when he argued at the University of California at Berkeley that the concept of agape “stands at the center of the movement we are to carry on in the Southland.” It was a love that demanded that one stand up for oneself and tells those who oppress that what they were doing was wrong. </p>
<h2>Why this matters now</h2>
<p>In the face of violence directed at minority communities and of deepening political divisions in the country, King’s words and philosophy are perhaps more critical for us today than at any point in the recent past. </p>
<p>As King noted, all persons exist in an interrelated community and all are dependent on each other. By connecting love to community, King argued there were opportunities to build a more just and economically sustainable society which respected difference. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Making_a_Way_Out_of_No_Way.html?id=YmX_pHPFcIcC">As he said</a>, </p>
<p>“Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… Therefore if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavages of a broken community.” </p>
<p>King outlined a vision in which we are compelled to work toward making our communities inclusive. They reflect the broad values of equality and democracy. Through an engagement with one another as its foundation, agape provides opportunities to work toward common goals. </p>
<h2>Building a community today</h2>
<p>At a time when the nation feels so divided, there is a need to bring back King’s vision of agape-fueled community building and begin a difficult conversation about where we are as a nation and where we want to go. It would move us past simply seeing the other side as being wholly motivated by hate. </p>
<p>Engaging in a conversation through agape signals a willingness to restore broken communities and to approach difference with an open mind.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-fractured-nation-needs-to-remember-kings-message-of-love-68643">originally published</a> on Nov. 16, 2016.</em></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Joshua F.J. Inwood is a member of the American Association of Geographers</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua F.J. Inwood is a member of the American Association of Geographers.</span></em></p>Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of love was not sentimental. It demanded that individuals tell their oppressors what they were doing was wrong.Joshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824162017-08-31T00:07:06Z2017-08-31T00:07:06ZMassachusetts executed two Italian immigrants 90 years ago: Why the global fallout still matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183834/original/file-20170829-6715-o9z06n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C599%2C329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left), handcuffed to Nicola Sacco, 1923.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boston Public Library</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ninety years ago, on Aug. 23, 1927, two Italian immigrants were executed.</p>
<p>The deaths of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the Charlestown Prison in Massachusetts marked the end of a raucous seven-year legal and political battle that captivated people across the United States and the world.</p>
<p>According to many who lived through it, no other event since the outbreak of the Civil War had so starkly divided American opinion. Writer <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/868362521">Edmund Wilson believed</a> that it “revealed the whole anatomy of American life, with all its classes, professions, and points of view, and raised every fundamental question of our political and social system.” And arguably, no other event until the Vietnam War evoked as much anti-American sentiment on the global stage.</p>
<p>I wrote <a href="http://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300177855/sacco-vanzetti-affair">a book</a> about how and why the case of Sacco and Vanzetti evolved from an obscure local criminal trial to a national and international scandal. I refer to it in the book as the transition from a “case” to an “affair.” </p>
<p>What can it tell us about our politics today?</p>
<h2>The most famous prisoners in the world</h2>
<p>At first, Sacco and Vanzetti were two anonymous immigrants on trial for an act of banditry. Sacco was a skilled shoe factory worker and family man with two small children. Vanzetti was a fish monger. But local authorities charged them of being part of a stickup gang that on April 15, 1920 shot and killed a factory paymaster and his guard in Braintree, Massachusetts, stealing approximately US$15,700. One reporter sent to cover their trial wrote to his editor, using a derogatory term for Italians, that there was “no story…just a couple of wops in a jam.” </p>
<p>But fairly soon, it emerged that the two men were not anyone’s idea of typical bandits. Rather, they were active in Italian anarchist circles who believed that capitalism and states were oppressive and should be overthrown by revolution – and, if necessary, a violent one. At the time, most Americans lived in horror of anarchists and other “reds,” as left-wing radicals of all sorts were known, and anti-immigration sentiment (especially against Italians) was at its peak. Not surprisingly, their trial took on a decidedly political character.</p>
<p>The evidence against them was mostly circumstantial, relying heavily on what the authorities called “consciousness of guilt.” The prosecution made their political radicalism an issue, as if that helped prove them guilty of robbery and murder. And, given that opening, the defendants were not shy about expressing their radical ideas in court, which did not help them with the jury. Many people who came to Sacco and Vanzetti’s defense argued that they were innocent men being railroaded not for anything they did, but for who they were and what they believed in.</p>
<p>Sacco and Vanzetti forcefully protested their innocence from the moment they were arrested until the minute they were electrocuted. They gradually convinced large numbers of people. As their case dragged on, they gained the advocacy and support of public figures, legal experts, intellectuals, political leaders and ordinary people. Their supporters included law professor Felix Frankfurter, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, car magnate Henry Ford, British author H.G. Wells and even Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.</p>
<p>The judge in their case, Webster Thayer, was openly biased against them. Among other things, he had originally lobbied to be assigned the case to make sure that Sacco and Vanzetti “got what they deserved.” During the trial, Thayer braggingly asked a member of his social club if he had seen “what I did to those anarchistic bastards the other day?” </p>
<p>After Thayer sentenced them to death in April 1927 – but not before the pair made stirring speeches in the courtroom proclaiming their innocence – the case created a genuine diplomatic crisis for the United States. Heads of state in Europe and elsewhere appealed to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and Massachusetts Gov. Alvan Fuller to try to prevent the executions – in vain. Governments in Argentina, France, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere were forced to deal with <a href="http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/570205?imagelist=1">angry demonstrations</a>, major riots and attacks on American travelers, companies and embassies. </p>
<p>Why did Sacco and Vanzetti become, as the <a href="http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Research_11/In-Dedham-Jail-A-Visit-With-Sacco-and-Vanzetti-June-22-1927.shtml">New Republic</a> magazine put it, “the two most famous prisoners in the world”? </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184040/original/file-20170830-24267-1ms4vfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Demonstrators in London protest the conviction of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Save_Sacco_and_Vanzetti.jpg">Public domain</a></span>
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<p>It was partly because of the global and geopolitical context. In the wake of World War I, the United States became a global power for the first time. At the same time, Western European nations suffered crisis and decline, and became indebted to American banks and <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301356/the-deluge-by-adam-tooze/9780143127970/">reliant on American power</a>. In that decade, the United States also <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674030749">closed its doors</a> to immigrants who most desperately needed to migrate, especially those from poverty-stricken areas like Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Mexico.</p>
<p>There have been many debates over the years over whether Sacco and Vanzetti were indeed guilty of the crime for which they were punished. Numerous authors have forcefully argued both sides. But this debate, which is impossible to resolve decades after the fact, misses the point of why Sacco and Vanzetti attained, after their deaths, totemic status. </p>
<p>As I describe in my book, Sacco and Vanzetti came to be seen as symbols of an America that had turned its back on foreigners, abandoned its principles of justice, and failed to pay heed to what Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Their trial was so flawed, the politicization of their case so egregious, the executions so horrifying, that it was a travesty of justice irrespective of guilt or innocence.</p>
<h2>From Sacco-Vanzetti to the Trump era</h2>
<p>Ninety years after the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the affair presents us with many connections to the present. For many people in 1927 and after, the two men were victims of a deep-seated fear of immigrants. For others, they were criminals and terrorists who benefited from a worldwide campaign led by people who despised America and its institutions.</p>
<p>Today, the United States is engaged in a bitter struggle between these same two views, with the xenophobic forces currently in political power, especially in the White House. </p>
<p>But it is important to keep in mind that today’s America would be socially, culturally and demographically unrecognizable to Americans in 1927. The United States is a much more multicultural and diverse society nowadays than it was when Sacco and Vanzetti were alive. And it will become even more so. </p>
<p>At the same time, recent events have made life in America frightening for immigrants and minorities. The factors in American society that brought about the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti never completely went away. In the current, toxic political environment, those who care about equality and justice must remain vigilant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Moshik Temkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was widespread, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial starkly divided American opinion and stirred up a violent backlash around the world.Moshik Temkin, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/766862017-05-30T01:39:52Z2017-05-30T01:39:52ZThe US and Mexico: Education and understanding<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171146/original/file-20170526-6402-1eubcmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The University of California-Mexico Initiative Education Working Group created Project SOL, an online curriculum program that teaches students in their native language.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/30308/teacheredithissakhanian-helps-bryanlima">University of California, Riverside</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, officials from the U.S. and Mexico revitalized their commitment to fight cross-border smuggling of drugs, arms and money. U.S. officials recognized America’s demand for drugs as “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/18/politics/tillerson-mexico-drug-trade/">the magnet</a>” that feeds drug smuggling, and Mexico committed to tackle jointly the elements of the cartels’ business model.</p>
<p>While illegal immigration and drugs dominate much of the public discourse around U.S.-Mexico relations, the partnership between these countries is vital and dynamic in many other ways. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/growing-together-economic-ties-between-the-united-states-and-mexico">two neighbors</a> trade over US$1 million a minute, employ many millions in good jobs on both sides of the border, have over a million legal border crossings each day and have over 35 million citizens of shared heritage.</p>
<p>We have devoted years of our professional lives (in government, academic and social sectors) to developing and implementing strategies for improving our countries’ relationship. As such, we’ve been taken aback by the sharply critical U.S. rhetoric about Mexico in recent months and the anti-American sentiment that quickly rekindled in Mexico.</p>
<p>Our most recent work, however, shows that educational and research exchanges can bridge the widening divide, while also building workforces that can help the two nations thrive in the technological revolutions ahead.</p>
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<span class="caption">Attendees of the Anaheim Convention Center rally in 2016 show support for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/anaheim-california-may-25-2016-thousands-426989245?src=1lXnivognR_nJxudfQwQJg-1-2">Mike Ledray/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<h2>Academic exchanges as long-term bridges</h2>
<p>We have seen firsthand the impact of programs on young Mexicans who returned from U.S. stays with pride, enthusiasm and improved English. We’ve also witnessed how American students interacting with their counterparts in Mexico enhance the appreciation and respect for each others’ countries.</p>
<p>Yet, <a href="https://www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Insights/Project-Atlas/Explore-Data/United-States">student exchange numbers</a> are not encouraging. Mexico ranks 10th for the number of full-time students studying in the U.S., placing it far behind China and India, and also trailing Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Vietnam, and northern neighbor Canada. The story is worse in <a href="http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/US-Study-Abroad/Leading-Destinations/2013-15">the other direction</a>: Only 4,712 U.S. students were studying in Mexico in 2014-15, 12th among destinations for U.S. students.</p>
<p>There are many reasons for the low numbers, but here is the bottom line: Two such interconnected neighbors should be doing better.</p>
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<p>In 2013, we were a part of launching an initiative aimed at tackling this problem. The <a href="https://mx.usembassy.gov/education-culture/education/the-u-s-mexico-bilateral-forum-on-higher-education-innovation-and-research/">Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation and Research</a> (known by its Spanish acronym, FOBESII) gathers educators, private citizens, companies and officials from universities and government. Their aim is to expand long-term investments in education and research partnerships between the U.S. and Mexico.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://mex-eua.sre.gob.mx/images/stories/PDF/AchievementsUSMexicoBilateralForumonHigherEducationInnovationandResearchFOBESII.pdf">past four years</a>, FOBESII has fostered more than 115 new agreements between Mexican and U.S. universities.</p>
<p>Mexico’s federal government allocated an unprecedented $42.9 million for these programs during 2014-16. More than 100,000 Mexican students – many of them from low income families – came to the U.S. as full-time graduate students, as single-semester researchers or in summer programs designed to improve English proficiency. These experiences changed the way students (and their families) viewed <a href="https://comexusfulbright-garciarobles.tumblr.com/">their future potential</a> and, importantly these days, their opinion about the United States was greatly improved.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the U.S. public funds to support these exchanges were more limited than the investments made by Mexico. Private sector sponsors, however, have worked with the U.S. government to develop <a href="http://www.100kstrongamericas.org/">32 academic projects with Mexican universities</a>, ranging from engineering, physics, geology and health to environmental sciences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171037/original/file-20170525-23245-1nw93ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne visits students, who participated in the Fulbright-Garcia Robles program in the U.S., from The Technological University Retoño.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/USCGGuadalajara/photos/pcb.10153205193770129/10153205192465129/?type=3&theater">Consulate General of the United States Guadalajara</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Building things together</h2>
<p>While targeting such exchanges provides opportunities to young scholars and promotes cultural understanding, it can also produce better educated workforces.</p>
<p>Mexico and the United States literally and figuratively <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/growing_together_economic_ties_between_the_united_states_and_mexico.pdf">build things together</a>, with pieces crossing the border many times before a finished product emerges. American parts and products make up, on average, about <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/growing_together_economic_ties_between_the_united_states_and_mexico.pdf">40 percent of the value</a> of a finished manufactured product from Mexico. That’s much more than the U.S. contributes to other countries’ manufacturing and positively impacts U.S. jobs and profits.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://theoutline.com/post/1316/fourth-industrial-revolution-developing-economies">fourth industrial revolution</a>” is unfolding: digital technologies are leading to faster and more complex advances in practically all facets of life. Both countries are going to need better equipped labor forces to maintain this highly integrated production network and to compete with others in the world.</p>
<p><iframe id="lRaMG" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lRaMG/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Several ongoing initiatives within the framework of FOBESII will support the goal of better-equipped labor forces. The University of California has raised around $15 million to support <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-napolitano-mexico-20170323-story.html">programs linking their universities with Mexican institutions</a>. Universities in <a href="http://www.contex.utsystem.edu/">Texas</a> and <a href="https://global.arizona.edu/unam-ua">Arizona</a> have developed similar programs, focusing on research in energy, the environment and other common topics in science and technology. The U.S. <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/">National Science Foundation</a> and Mexico’s <a href="http://www.conacyt.mx/">National Council of Science and Technology</a> have created 12 more joint projects.</p>
<p>Michael M. Crow, President of Arizona State University, described the rationale behind <a href="https://mexico.asu.edu/">his school’s partnerships</a> this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We share a border and many common interests with Mexico. It’s natural that we seek stronger ties through education, research and innovation so we can help each other prepare for the challenges and the changing nature of the advanced workforce of the 21st century.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every year, we’ve seen many more students and universities who want to participate than the current funding allows.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171045/original/file-20170525-23241-far5e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2016, The University of Texas and Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology launched ConTex as a collaborative effort to foster scientific training and research between the U.S. and Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/university-texas-ut-against-blue-sky-221247628?src=Zs_09zwewWXn9z1ZcvH_ww-1-14">f11photo/shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Investing in the future of North America</h2>
<p>Historically, other neighbors in the world have made similar strategic decisions to invest in educational partnerships. The <a href="http://www.erasmusprogramme.com/">European Erasmus</a> program, for instance, has been supported by billions of dollars of funding since it was established in 1987. Over <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1110_en.htm">three million students</a> have studied in other countries at over 4,000 post-secondary institutions. Aside from the academic value of the program, it has contributed to crafting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2016.1210911">a more robust European vision</a> among the youth.</p>
<p>As with European cooperation, the comparatively modest U.S.-Mexico efforts are not about charity – or even just education. They concern the strategic interests of neighbors in the face of global competition, technological revolutions, and persistent prejudices that strain relations between neighbors.</p>
<p>Mexico and the United States will remain neighbors. Their shared challenges will not disappear, but shared opportunities could be missed. We should double down on overcoming our misunderstandings and solving concrete problems together. Learning and researching together will definitely help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76686/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Earl Anthony Wayne is affiliated with the Wilson Center, the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the American Foreign Service Association. He is an advisor to HSBC bank on countering illicit finance.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sergio M. Alcocer is affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), México Exponencial, the Mexican Council for International Affairs (COMEXI), the US National Academy of Engineering and the Mexican Academy of Engineering. </span></em></p>Despite hard work by both governments to overcome mistrust, more is needed to build mutual understanding between Americans and Mexicans. Educational partnerships may hold the answer.Earl Anthony Wayne, Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Hamilton CollegeSergio M. Alcocer, Research Professor, Institute of Engineering, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/747382017-03-21T01:03:32Z2017-03-21T01:03:32ZIn today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, echoes of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161439/original/image-20170319-6139-xlg6tn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Federico Barocci's 1598 painting 'Aeneas' Flight from Troy.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Aeneas%27_Flight_from_Troy_by_Federico_Barocci.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boatloads of refugees put ashore in Italy after a wearying journey at sea; the city they adored, Troy, now a smoking ruin after 10 years of a desperate war; many loved ones dead from the conflict, with others lost along the way, victims of violence, storms or age. </p>
<p>Put this way, the story of the “Aeneid,” Virgil’s epic masterpiece, has an inescapably contemporary ring. Today, in the wake of Middle Eastern wars, millions have fled the region, desperate for a new place to call home. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant politicians – Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Donald Trump, to name a few – have jumped on the confusion and chaos, only to see their own fortunes rise. </p>
<p>In some ways, it’s not possible to read the same great poem twice. Time and circumstance will always reconfigure its meaning. As the United States bars its gates to newcomers, the “Aeneid” – usually thought of as a tale of epic heroism – reads now as a parable of exile, immigration and the self-defeating disaster of irrational prejudice. </p>
<h2>‘All we ask is a modest resting place’</h2>
<p>Virgil’s epic poem, written between 29 and 19 B.C., is the story of a band of men, women and children who survived the Greek siege of Troy (in modern-day Turkey) – when “Fate compelled the worlds of Europe and Asia to clash in war.” Aeneas, a man “made a refugee by fate,” leads them on their journey to Italy, where they’ve been promised a home. </p>
<p>The first half of the poem describes the group’s wanderings across the Mediterranean, the losses they suffered along the way and the weariness that, at times, leads some of them – Aeneas included – to think of abandoning the journey.</p>
<p>“How many reefs, how many sea-miles more must we cross! Heart-weary as we are,” cry the Trojan women in a moment of despair. But Aeneas and the Trojans do eventually reach Italy: They land at the mouth of the Tiber River, immigrants looking to join the people of this foreign land.</p>
<p>Latinus, the king of this country, has been given a sign by the gods to welcome the newcomers:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Strangers will come, and come to be your sons
and their lifeblood will lift our name to the stars.
</code></pre>
<p>In other words, the gods proclaim that the arrival of new blood will be a good thing for society – <a href="http://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/benefits-of-immigration-outweigh-costs.html">a view held by many today</a>.</p>
<p>After the Trojans arrive, they appeal to Latinus, describing their harrowing journey: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Escaping that flood
and sailing here over many barren seas,
now all we ask is a modest resting place
for our fathers’ gods, safe haven on your shores,
water and fresh air that’s free for all to breathe
</code></pre>
<p>Latinus recognizes that these are the newcomers foretold by the god and welcomes Aeneas “as ours.”</p>
<p>But Latinus’ open-door immigration policy soon meets resistance – a resistance that Virgil portrays as madness. Latinus pays a political price when his people, the Latins, turn against the immigrants, a development seen in many nations today, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-refugees-germany-lost-control-crisis-would-turn-back-time-a7320726.html">perhaps most notably in Angela Merkel’s Germany</a>. </p>
<h2>The thrall of racial hatred</h2>
<p>How does an ancient poet depict the onset of madness? </p>
<p>In the “Aeneid,” the agent is Juno, queen of the Olympian gods. She has always hated the Trojans as much as she cherishes the Latins. Juno means to stir up war between them, so she sends one of the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, to fill the mind of Latinus’ wife with thoughts of ethnic purity and sexual propriety.</p>
<p>These thoughts have consequences, because Latinus is now planning to marry their daughter to Aeneas – “a lying pirate,” as the queen starts to call him. Furthermore, she was supposed to marry a local prince named Turnus – his “blood kin,” as the queen reminds Latinus. </p>
<p>Turnus, too, succumbs to racial hatred. At first he’s entirely nonchalant about the arrival of Aeneas and the Trojans. But driven mad by Juno’s accomplice, he turns to violence to drive them out and keep the king’s daughter out of the hands of “that Phrygian eunuch” (a castrated man). </p>
<p>A pointless war ensues between the Trojan refugees and the Latins who had initially welcomed them into their land. </p>
<p>In one scene, Aeneas’ son accidentally kills a pet deer, and the locals, assuming malicious intent, form a vigilante group to exact revenge. What motivates this assumption is the more deeply rooted fear of the Latin population: Acceptance of these immigrants will result in the loss of their native Latin identity. </p>
<p>The tensions at play – sexual fears, fear of violence, hateful rhetoric – are unfortunately being repeated today, whether it’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/feb/20/what-statistics-say-about-immigration-and-sweden/">fear of immigrants’ rapes in Sweden</a> or <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/15/report-anti-muslim-groups-triple-us-amid-trump-hate-rhetoric/97914684/">the growth of anti-Muslim organizations</a> in the United States. </p>
<p>In Virgil’s telling, this fear can only be resolved by the act of a god. In the end, it is Jupiter, the king of the gods, who gives his divine guarantee that the Trojans will be assimilated: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Mingling in stock alone, the Trojans will subside.
And I will add the rites and the forms of worship,
And make them Latins all, who speak one Latin tongue.
</code></pre>
<p>But it’s easier for a god to imagine resolution than it is for mortals, and for Aeneas, resolution comes at a price. He kills Turnus at the end of the poem. But he loses something of his humanity in the process.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74738/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter E. Knox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the United States bars its gates to newcomers, the ‘Aeneid’ – a story of war, exile, racial hatred and irrational fears – is particularly resonant.Peter E. Knox, Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696862016-12-19T09:34:56Z2016-12-19T09:34:56ZWhy higher levels of education don’t necessarily mean higher levels of tolerance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150143/original/image-20161214-2478-1qymo7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s often said that a person’s tolerance rises with their education level. So on this basis, the higher a person’s educational attainment is, the more likely they are to <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4522414">accept racial or ethnic minorities</a>. </p>
<p>Studies often show that young people are also <a href="http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/03/10/sf.sov050.abstract">more welcoming in their attitudes to outsiders</a>. This is thought to be largely because they have higher levels of education than older age groups. </p>
<p>So, you would expect that society as a whole becomes ever more tolerant and enlightened as new, better educated generations steadily replace older, less educated ones. </p>
<p>But recent political events suggest that this line of reasoning is too simple. Because how is it possible that anti-immigrant sentiments – as expressed in the Brexit vote and the election of Trump – are so virulent when the education levels of Britons and Americans are at their highest ever?</p>
<p>In our own research, which is currently under review, we find that while younger people may have become increasingly tolerant of sexual fluidity and racial and cultural diversity, they are growing less positive about immigrants. </p>
<h2>Declining tolerance</h2>
<p>Education is said to make people more tolerant <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Tolerance_for_Nonconformity.html?id=OucWAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">by enhancing their knowledge and reasoning skills</a>. This helps people to see through prejudiced claims and dismiss irrational fears about those who are culturally different.</p>
<p>Schools and universities also enhance tolerance by <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5350812_Education_effects_on_authoritarian-libertarian_values_A_question_of_socialization1">emphasising it as a virtue</a>. The longer individuals stay in the education system, the more they are exposed to tolerance as a “core value” – and the more likely they are to internalise it.</p>
<p>On this basis, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fcXb_1i4XmwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=walter+mcmahan+wider+benefits+of+education&ots=rvuRrBo9t_&sig=ha7KSe_E1qjx4ByJfLa366lt3pk#v=onepage&q&f=false">some scholars</a> have argued that education brings many extra benefits for society and that we can never have enough of it. This is supported by previous research which has shown that people have become ever more accepting of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23499728_Is_Racial_Prejudice_Declining_in_Britain">racial minorities</a> and LGBT people – with young people generally showing the highest levels of tolerance. </p>
<p>And yet, intolerant notions across all age groups still persist. In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a steady growth in the number of people in Britain who believe that it is right for employers to discriminate against immigrants when recruiting new staff.</p>
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<p>And this trend has continued into more recent times – with <a href="http://natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/british-social-attitudes/">figures</a> showing a huge decline in the number of people who believe legal immigrants in Britain should have the same rights as British citizens.</p>
<p>The figures also show that in 2013 only a small minority of people still believed that legal immigrants should be treated equally.</p>
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<h2>Educational advantage?</h2>
<p>So it seems that the more educated British society has become, the lower the levels of acceptance towards immigrants. Strange as this may seem, the reason for this may also be in part down to an increased level of education across society.</p>
<p>This is because education does not only enhance knowledge and foster tolerance as a virtue but also gives people a competitive edge, and access to higher social positions. This makes people with the highest education levels feel more secure and less exposed to competition from other people “coming to take their jobs”. </p>
<p>But what the highly educated gain, the people with middling and low levels of education lose. The value of their qualifications is diminished when all others in society become more educated and “out-compete” them in the struggle for desirable jobs.</p>
<p>And this loss of status produces feelings of economic insecurity which may translate into more defensive and intolerant attitudes towards “out-groups”. </p>
<h2>Not a cure-all</h2>
<p>So while higher levels of education may be good for some individuals in terms of making them more tolerant, there may not be any benefits for society at large because of the “trade-off” the process of educational expansion creates. </p>
<p>It is this effect – sometimes referred to as <a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/innovation-education/37425694.pdf">the positional effect of education</a> – that may explain why a positive relationship between education and tolerance does not always occur in society as a whole. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150144/original/image-20161214-2496-vl6kay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Education isn’t necessarily a cure-all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another possibility is that other social forces have a stronger effect on attitudes towards immigrants than education. Along with the new wave of negativity towards migrants, the remarkable return of nationalism is something, for instance, that cannot be ignored. Mainstream parties have now adopted some of the nationalist rhetoric and proposed policies of populist anti-immigrant parties. </p>
<p>This has led to more <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249731538_Contagious_Parties_Anti-Immigration_Parties_and_Their_Impact_on_Other_Parties'_Immigration_Stances_in_Contemporary_Western_Europe">restrictive immigration regimes</a> in a number of Western countries and a discourse more generally of protecting and privileging the ethnic majority. </p>
<p>In such an environment, the taboo of expressing negative sentiments towards those who are culturally different – especially immigrants – has undoubtedly weakened. And this serves as a stark reminder that educational expansion is not the panacea to all of society’s problems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69686/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Germen Janmaat is affiliated to the ESRC funded LLAKES research center at UCL Institute of Education.</span></em></p>If education and tolerance go hand in hand, how is it possible that anti-immigrant sentiments are so virulent in educated populations?Jan Germen Janmaat, Reader in Comparative Social Science, Department of Lifelong and Comparative Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/678312016-11-09T19:43:13Z2016-11-09T19:43:13ZWhy the Trump effect could increase bullying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145282/original/image-20161109-19068-huljl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What has the 'Trump effect' been on children?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/juanfg/27649705816/in/photolist-J8iYeN-9gGtav-aB58qB-6kAdNB-6kEFcN-JtcoX3-6kEdMs-dvjV3V-DkBb6o-f5htfg-6kExbo-8ZaSQ5-qsbbUx-6kAnkV-4JGrmr-6kEjhE-6kEbKw-6kAshx-9pjoBx-G1xeDL-AN7Kzf-6kApxX-6kzXpi-GT4eJh-6kEy1C-6kDRm3-6kDSsN-6kApoF-6kDUvY-6kzKii-6kAq66-6kE2YA-6kzGwH-6kEeK1-5us3ED-6kzUbx-6kAgL4-6kDRHE-6kzWQP-6kEsk1-6kzXhX-6kDUJw-6kED9m-6kzYMV-6kAs7F-6kzS4H-6kEcFw-6kEck7-6kzSTX-6kEnjs">Juan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump has won the presidency, but not before launching one of the most ugly and fractious campaigns in American history. As the 2016 election season now comes to a close, there are signs that it has left scars behind, particularly in the schools of the United States. </p>
<p>The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, recently launched an information campaign to tie Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/10/trump_inspires_school_bullying.html">“inflammatory rhetoric”</a> to an increase in bullying in America’s schools. </p>
<p>At the same time, the nonprofit <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> released survey data from the <a href="http://www.tolerance.org/">“Teaching Tolerance”</a> project that gave details about the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160413/trump-effect-impact-presidential-campaign-our-nations-schools">toxic effects</a> Trump’s campaign rhetoric has had on teachers and students (and especially racial/ethnic minority students). </p>
<p>The SPLC report described immigrant students’ – especially Muslim and Latino immigrants – concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. Most respondents reported an increase in uncivil political discourse or anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attitudes. Teachers reported reluctance to discuss the election in their classrooms due to fear of escalating this phenomenon.</p>
<p>I am a professor of special education and a behavioral science researcher currently involved in studying the effects of bullying prevention in schools. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_learning_and_personality_developm.html?id=-WhHAAAAMAAJ">Social learning theory tells us</a> that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation and modeling. </p>
<p>The most powerful models are those we consider to have higher status: older or more able children, parents, school adults and public figures such as celebrities and political candidates like Trump. </p>
<h2>Bullying is pervasive</h2>
<p>No matter what their experiences or background in growing up, most adults can remember at least one or two occasions during childhood where <a href="http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northwest/pdf/REL_2011114_sum.pdf">they were picked on</a>, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J008v19n02_05">humiliated, intimidated</a>, or perhaps even beaten up. </p>
<p>Bullying incidents most often occur in school, <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov/news/media/facts/#listing">where there is limited adult supervision</a> and monitoring. In the 2016 election campaign, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160413/trump-effect-impact-presidential-campaign-our-nations-schools#students">teachers have reported</a> that students felt “emboldened” to “use slurs, engage in name-calling and make inflammatory statements toward each other.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145285/original/image-20161109-19062-6ys72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bullying is pervasive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/346159904?src=znWpW3zqqZsFMXunahdMnQ-3-98&id=346159904&size=medium_jpg">Girl image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In a short time period like an election cycle, we cannot scientifically prove a relationship between Donald Trump’s public behavior and a change in the way children behave. But it is important to consider what the effect of Trump’s rhetoric might be on teachers and schoolchildren. </p>
<p>An online survey conducted by The Southern Poverty Law Center’s <a href="http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/archives">Teaching Tolerance magazine</a> found that teachers have been hesitant to teach about the election largely out of fear of promoting more student conflict around the topic. In Portland, Oregon, a principal imposed a “gag order” on teachers and prohibited them from talking about the election. </p>
<p>But even if the teachers did not discuss the issues in the classroom, students were talking among themselves or on social media. In Massachusetts, an <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20160413/trump-effect-impact-presidential-campaign-our-nations-schools#students">elementary school social worker described</a> what was happening to her eight-year-old son, who was adopted from Korea. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“He came home from school and recounted a conversation he’d had with his friends on the playground. Many … come from immigrant families and/or are black or brown. He told me they know that if Donald Trumpet [sic] was elected that we would have to move to another continent to be safe and that there would be a big war. He is very nervous about being sent away with my husband who is also Korean American.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Is ‘Trump effect’ leading to bullying?</h2>
<p>There are many theories about how bullying develops. A simple explanation is that of modeling, first researched and explained as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_learning_and_personality_developm.html?id=-WhHAAAAMAAJ">Social Learning Theory</a> by psychologist <a href="https://psychology.stanford.edu/abandura">Albert Bandura</a>. </p>
<p>This theory suggests that children imitate the words and behaviors they hear. “Attractive” role models (such as parents or others in authority such as political candidates) may have a stronger modeling effect.</p>
<p>When children watch television or other media and listen to their parents or others in authority talk about political candidates such as Trump and his statements, they learn to use the same language in their daily discourse. Trump’s own behaviors that children can see through the media (television, Twitter) can also serve as a model. We can’t prove this as a cause, but certainly there is substantial evidence from the aforementioned reports to suggest a strong relationship.</p>
<p>We know from new research that the earlier portrait of a young person who bullies as someone who is insecure and has low self-esteem is somewhat misleading. The latest research indicates that teen bullies – both boys and girls – <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/center-for-adolescent-health/_includes/_pre-redesign/Bullying_HQP.pdf">tend to be confident</a>, with high self-esteem and may even have elevated social status among their peers. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145288/original/image-20161109-19068-dfxziz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A bully is not someone who is insecure, but someone confident.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/104313125?src=MQFKhtOtnQspgDUli9Nqew-1-8&id=104313125&size=vector_eps">Cartoon image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>The point is that schools are diverse places. Children are routinely placed in classrooms, common areas, the bus, etc. with diverse students. Those students can become the targets of bullying and harassment based on their race/ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation.</p>
<p>Even characteristics such as being smaller, overweight or wearing glasses can make a student a more vulnerable target. Trump’s seemingly endless – until now – misogynistic, racist, and <a href="http://www.stopableism.org/what.asp">“ableist”</a> (anti-disability) statements could provide the model for children to use in schools and elsewhere.</p>
<p>In his acceptance speech, he distanced himself from the nastiness of the campaign and avoided any mention of mass deportation of Muslims, torture of terrorism suspects or the building of a giant wall on the southern border.</p>
<h2>Stop bullying</h2>
<p>Requiring those who bully and harass to stop is of course complex and often difficult. But we can at least make sure our <a href="http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=sped_facpub">school personnel are supported</a> to learn and practice evidence-based strategies to prevent and respond to this type of behavior.</p>
<p>For example, schools could do regular surveys to find out more about the environment. But, at times, such as the 2016 election campaign, even such surveys may not be enough as new forms of bullying emerge.</p>
<p>So, to <a href="http://store.iirp.edu/dreaming-of-a-new-reality/">check bullying</a> both schools and families need to be actively involved in talking with children and modeling behavior that supports tolerance, respect and inclusion of all people. Families need to talk to their children so they can check them from bullying as well as being bullied. </p>
<p>Negative and toxic rhetoric will likely continue long after this election. But we need to work to ensure that our children inherit a world that is safe, civil and respectful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey R. Sprague receives funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice to study the impact of school climate and bullying prevention. He has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education to study the effects of school climate and behavioral supports for school-age students. </span></em></p>At this time, researchers cannot prove a direct relationship. But social learning theory shows that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation and modeling.Jeffrey R. Sprague, Professor of Special Education, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.