Suchergebnisse

Discourses about migration are used to talk about the state's relationship both with those both outside and inside its borders. In the UK, the topic of migration has been used by politicians, public figures and commentators alike to discuss broad-ranging ideas about the nation, the Other, race, citizenship, class-dynamics and the border. As Crawley et al. note, in recent years, news-media coverage of migration has become increasingly negative, whilst a recent report by the United Nations University noted the prevalence across Europe of xenophobic news coverage related to migration. In recent years, discussions in the news-media about migration has not only reflected public opinion but shaped it. There is a growing consensus that this has a similar impact on policy-making. The way in which the news-media frames its coverage about migration therefore has consequences not only for how migration – and migrants – are seen by society, but also for the way in which society and government responds to the idea of migration. The first part of this paper discusses (a) what 'xenophobic' media coverage of migration means (b) the impact of discriminatory coverage and the under-inclusion of migrant voices and (c) the relationship between media framings of migration and policy-making. If these relationships were not already sufficiently complex, contemporary developments in media, technology and information dissemination present additional challenges to (a) representations of migration in the media (b) migrants' narrative access to media coverage and (c) policy-shaping and making. The United Nations University report on media and migration suggests that improved media coverage of migration by new and old media alike has the potential to improve both public opinion and better inform policy-making. The second part of this paper therefore considers how new media presents challenges and opportunities for migrants, media institutions and policy-makers. 1. Crawley et al. 2016 2. Desmares, 2017 In the final part of the paper, we ...

Barry Manson was born in Skowhegan, Maine in 1947. He grew up in Rumford and worked in his father's grocery store from third grade to high school. Manson shares his story of being an out gay man since the age of 12 and the uncomfortable environment of living in a closed-minded community in Northeast Maine. He briefly attended college in Tampa, Florida then Ricker College in Houlton. While living in Connecticut, he began hitchhiking to New York City on a regular basis to enjoy the city's theater scene and night life. He moved to New York where his love for theater and partying kept him out until 3 a.m. He returned to Maine in 1969 where he became active in gay rights organizing in his local community of Lewiston and Portland, including being part of the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance which became Equality Maine. He supported his community during the height of the gay civil rights movement, the AIDS epidemic, and during lesbian feminist activism. He discusses the Maine gay bar scene in depth, commenting on bars that no longer exist, such as Roland's Tavern, the Oasis, Creamos, Cybil's, and more. Since 1983 he has lived in a farmhouse in Waterboro where he gardens and keeps bees. Citation Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries. For more information about the Querying the Past: Maine LGBTQ Oral History Project, please contact Dr. Wendy Chapkis. ; https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/1014/thumbnail.jpg

When considering the ethnographic field, language use has been of continued anthropological concern. Traditional approaches to the field have associated language use with concepts such as place, territory and ethnicity and have tended to bound them within a single site. However, in conditions of increasing globalised mobility, approaches to both fieldwork and language use within the field are changing. Using existing scholarship on minority-language communities in Europe alongside original fieldwork with Somali migrants in Glasgow, this article considers the dynamics of that relationship within the contexts of single-sited, multi-sited and online fields. It finds that, for an inquiry focused on both language use and mobility, established modes of thinking about the field are a methodologically restrictive practice on 'being there'. Instead, the authors argue for rethinking the field as a 'spoken' one where, with language at the fore, emphasis is placed on 'being there'.

This research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, project reference ES/R00451X/1. ; This article analyses the relationship between the accommodation of Dispersed asylum seekers and urban gentrification in the UK. We argue that alongside other racialised and classed minorities, asylum seekers are vulnerable to spatial strategies associated with gentrification such as neighbourhood 'dumping', containment and 'territorial stigmatisation', the highly coercive quality of the UK government's Dispersal Scheme means that any relationship between asylum and gentrification must be treated as deliberate, the result of the multiscalar interests which have a stake both in Dispersal and urban 'development'. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Glasgow, the recipient of the largest asylum seeking population annually in the UK, we find that asylum accommodation processes and gentrification have developed a symbiotic dynamic, whereby the 'failure' of mid twentieth-century urban 'regeneration' provided means and motive for Dispersal, and Dispersal provided sufficient resources to fuel further rounds of urban 'regeneration'. We also find that recent changes to the Dispersal contract, from a dynamic in which resources were associated with housing availability, to one in which they are associated with maximum housing capacity, have created conditions for alternative forms of gentrification, in which strategies such as rent gap suppression are seen as having potential to yield more capital than infrastructural development. Finally, we argue that the respective spatial politics of both Dispersal and gentrification must be understood as mutually-interested, coercive technologies, which work together to contain and exploit racialised and bordered urban minorities. We call for urgent further research into how the asylum border is embedded in contemporary urban spatial economies. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

This article analyses the relationship between the accommodation of Dispersed asylum seekers and urban gentrification in the UK. We argue that alongside other racialised and classed minorities, asylum seekers are vulnerable to spatial strategies associated with gentrification such as neighbourhood 'dumping', containment and 'territorial stigmatisation', the highly coercive quality of the UK government's Dispersal Scheme means that any relationship between asylum and gentrification must be treated as deliberate, the result of the multiscalar interests which have a stake both in Dispersal and urban 'development'. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Glasgow, the recipient of the largest asylum seeking population annually in the UK, we find that asylum accommodation processes and gentrification have developed a symbiotic dynamic, whereby the 'failure' of mid twentieth-century urban 'regeneration' provided means and motive for Dispersal, and Dispersal provided sufficient resources to fuel further rounds of urban 'regeneration'. We also find that recent changes to the Dispersal contract, from a dynamic in which resources were associated with housing availability, to one in which they are associated with maximum housing capacity, have created conditions for alternative forms of gentrification, in which strategies such as rent gap suppression are seen as having potential to yield more capital than infrastructural development. Finally, we argue that the respective spatial politics of both Dispersal and gentrification must be understood as mutually-interested, coercive technologies, which work together to contain and exploit racialised and bordered urban minorities. We call for urgent further research into how the asylum border is embedded in contemporary urban spatial economies.

Labour market conditions in the UK create significant barriers for refugees seeking employment. These include: ethnic and racialised penalties, barriers related to immigration controls, barriers related to employers' perceptions of these controls and the effects of the 'hostile environment'. As a result, refugees are more likely to be unemployed or under-employed than a British citizen. GLIMER Stakeholders reported the same trends in Scotland. Access to the labour market for displaced migrants in Scotland is governed by the UK's devolved settlement. Though the Scottish Government is unable to intervene in labour market issues related to immigration status, it has scope to intervene in educational aspects of employability support (such as skills development, some academic training and English Language provision). As a result of its 'from day one' integration policy, these services are available to both asylum seekers and refugees, a distinction from other parts of the UK. GLIMER Research identifies three key areas impacting labour market access for refugees in Scotland: (1) employability training and skills development (2) enterprise and entrepreneurship and (3) employer training and engagement. Provision for employability training and skills development is the most comprehensively developed of these areas, spanning the third, public and Further Education sectors. However, stakeholders in the third sector reported limited resources, which resulted in insufficient provision for demand. i. Stakeholders reported that there were additional barriers for refugee women wishing to access employability services, but a total absence of specialised services for refugee women. ii. Resettlement teams in remote and rural areas reported difficulties in accessing organisations with refugee employability specialisms, the large majority of which are based in Glasgow. Enterprise and entrepreneurship is an emerging area of policy interest in Scotland. However, GLIMER Research urges caution against viewing the use of enterprise ...

ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) provision for asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland is distinctive within the UK. The Scottish Government waives ESOL fees for asylum seekers, meaning that ESOL provision is not formally restricted according to immigration status. The ESOL environment in Scotland is currently characterised by complexity. ESOL providers include: colleges, local authorities, ALEOs, the third sector and community organisations. ESOL courses are both accredited and non-accredited, run across a range of competencies, for speakers of other languages of all immigration statuses. Funding for ESOL is channelled through a variety of routes, including through the Scottish Funding Council, the Vulnerable Person's Resettlement Scheme (VPRS), local authority Community Learning and Development funds and NGO funders. Funding routes can be variable, but each contains specific requirements for ESOL provision and shapes (a) how courses are delivered and (b) who can attend. Recent changes to the funding pathways for Scottish Funding Council resources has (a) redirected the responsibility for funding distribution from Community Planning Partnerships to colleges and (b) sought to increase oversight for resources by emphasising accredited learning. GLIMER research suggests that these changes may negatively impact learning opportunities and experiences for displaced migrants. Though ESOL delivery receives some direction from the Scottish Government's ESOL Strategy, current governance infrastructures are both strongly localised and subject to centralising forces. Localised approaches are influenced by the immigration pathways of their learners, the dynamics between college and community provision and the local environment. Experiences of ESOL provision in the urban site of Glasgow differs significantly from that in remote and rural areas participating in the Resettlement Scheme. There is currently a disconnect between Scottish Funding Council ESOL resourcing and the requirements of local areas ...

Integration is a concept with a long history that goes to the heart of how we understand the kinds of social relations that characterise modern societies, from rural to urban, from kinship to community. This dynamic has been recast in thinking about the integration of new groups, voluntary and involuntary migrations, and the UK as well as most European countries presently occupied with coming to terms with how this renews and/or unsettles established social and political configurations. Here integration starts to become a debate that describes not only processes of change that occur among groups, but what a principled position on that change should resemble

Abstract:In 2003, the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO ICH Convention) formalized provision for forms of heritage not solely rooted in the material world. This expanded the scope and accessibility of cultural heritage rights for communities and groups. To much commentary and critique, the United Kingdom (UK) infamously decided not to ratify the UNESCO ICH Convention. This article examines the implications of the UK's decision not to ratify the Convention for the cultural heritage and human rights of an asylum-seeking group in Glasgow, Scotland, namely, the Glasgow Bajuni campaigners, members of a minority Somali clan. Based on participatory ethnographic fieldwork with the group and analysis of their asylum cases, this article makes two observations: first, that the UK's absence from the Convention establishes a precedent in which other state actors (that is, immigration authorities) are emboldened to advance skepticism over matters involving intangible cultural heritage and, second, that despite this, limitations in current provisions in the UNESCO ICH Convention would provide the group with little additional protection than they currently have. Developing these observations, we critique current UK approaches to intangible cultural heritage as complicit in the maintenance of hierarchies and the border. Finally, we consider the extent to which the current provisions of the UNESCO ICH Convention might be improved to include migrant and asylum-seeking groups.

The underlying research funding for this article comes from the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe, with support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 693443. ; This article will explore the extent to which a focus on the 'local' can tell us something meaningful about recent developments in the governance of displaced migrants and refugees. Taking a multi-sited approach spanning cases in the south and north of Europe, we consider how the challenge of housing and accommodation in particular, a core sector of migrant reception and integration, can shed light on the ways local and city level approaches may negotiate, and sometimes diverge from, national level policy and rhetoric. While it can be said that despite variation, local authorities are by definition ultimately 'always subordinate' (Emilsson, Comparative Migration Studies, 3: 1-17, 2015: 4), they can also show evidence of 'decoupling' across geographies of policy delivery (Pope and Meyer, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 3: 280–305, 2016: 290). This article traces how possible local variations in different European cases are patterned by ground-level politics, local strategic networks, and pre-existing economic resources in a manner that is empirically detailed through the study of housing. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

This article will explore the extent to which a focus on the 'local' can tell us something meaningful about recent developments in the governance of displaced migrants and refugees. Taking a multi-sited approach spanning cases in the south and north of Europe, we consider how the challenge of housing and accommodation in particular, a core sector of migrant reception and integration, can shed light on the ways local and city level approaches may negotiate, and sometimes diverge from, national level policy and rhetoric. While it can be said that despite variation, local authorities are by definition ultimately 'always subordinate' (Emilsson, Comparative Migration Studies, 3: 1-17, 2015: 4), they can also show evidence of 'decoupling' across geographies of policy delivery (Pope and Meyer, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 3: 280–305, 2016: 290). This article traces how possible local variations in different European cases are patterned by ground-level politics, local strategic networks, and pre-existing economic resources in a manner that is empirically detailed through the study of housing.

During the aftermath of Typhoon Hagibis, we made flood and damage proxy maps, rapidly derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data using change detection approaches. The maps have large spatial coverage over the Tokyo, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Iwate, and Nagano prefectures of Japan. The maps are also largely in agreement with various validation sources including aerial imagery, optical imagery and news sources. Apart from visual maps, we provide flood and damage extents in various formats compatible with geographic information system (GIS) applications. The data may potentially be used for applications such as typhoon risk modelling, investigating spatial correlations of typhoon impacts, and comparing alternative flood or damage mapping techniques. ; Ministry of Education (MOE) ; National Research Foundation (NRF) ; Published version ; We sincerely thank Sentinel Asia and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for their tasking efforts and providing ALOS-2 data for rapid mapping. We acknowledge the European Union Copernicus and European Space Agency for timely tasking and processing Sentinel-1 data, and Amazon Web Services for their provision of the Public Dataset Program to enable the efficient download of Sentinel-1 data. This research is supported by the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore, and the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Research Centres of Excellence initiative, and by a Singapore NRF Investigatorship to E.M.H. (Proposal ID NRF2018NRF-NRFI001-21). Part of the work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This work comprises EOS contribution number 284.

Abstract
Sea level is rising as the World Ocean warms and ice caps and glaciers melt. Published estimates based on data from satellite altimeters, beginning in late 1992, suggest that the global mean sea level has been rising on the order of 3 mm yr−1. Local processes, including ocean currents and land motions due to a variety of causes, modulate the global signal spatially and temporally. These local signals can be much larger than the global signal, and especially so on annual or shorter time scales.
Even increases on the order of 10 cm in sea level can amplify the already devastating losses that occur when a hurricane-driven storm surge coincides with an astronomical high tide. To quantify the sensitivity of property risk to increasing sea level, changes in expected annual losses to property along the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts are calculated as follows. First, observed trends in sea level rise from tide gauges are extrapolated to the year 2030, and these changes are interpolated to all coastal locations. Then a 10 000-yr catalog of simulated hurricanes is used to define critical wind parameters for each event. These wind parameters then drive a parametric time-evolving storm surge model that accounts for bathymetry, coastal geometry, surface roughness, and the phase of the astronomical tide. The impact of the maximum storm surge height on a comprehensive inventory of commercial and residential property is then calculated, using engineering models that take into account the characteristics of the full range of construction types.
Average annual losses projected to the year 2030 are presented for regions and key states and are normalized by aggregate property value on a zip code by zip code basis. Comparisons to the results of a control run reflecting the risk today quantify the change in risk per dollar of property on a percentage basis. Increases in expected losses due to the effect of sea level rise alone vary by region, with increases of 20% or more being common. Further sensitivity tests quantify the impact on the risk of sea level rise plus additional factors, such as changes in hurricane frequency and intensity as a result of rising sea surface temperatures.

Migration and integration, especially the reception of refugees and displaced peoples, are widely shared social and political challenges across Europe. The purpose of GLIMER is to understand how the governance and local integration of migrants and Europe's refugees is developing, and in ways that can be utilised through best practice sharing and reporting. Inspired by the success of 'welcoming cities' in southern Italy, we will work with civil society groups, local authorities, citizens and refugee groups in order to support sustainable the meaningful integration of diverse communities. We will focus on cities in both Southern and Northern Europe and a key aspect of the project will be dedicated to investigating how the local governance of new arrivals can secure successful integration across a range of indicators. This research will be carried out in close collaboration with practitioners with the aim of co-producing knowledge that can be beneficial for a range of stakeholders including civil society groups and NGOs as well as municipalities.