Migration

While Germans are generally well-known for their efficiency, the situation at the asylum registration center LaGeSo (Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales) in Berlin is anything but. 

With a backlog of more than 350,000 asylum applications, Germany is under pressure to speed up the asylum process. But efforts to quickly process Syrian refugees shortchange Afghanis and others.

Migrant workers in the Asean Region live and work under inhumane conditions. To improve this situation policies, the migration industry and the accountability of employers must all get a lot more attention.

Refugees in Southeast Asia live in legal limbo and are subject to harassment, arrest, and detention. Especially Rohingya refugees are in indefinite detention and have been forgotten by the international media.

In times of increased ASEAN economic integration the official rhetoric around migration is one of free labour markets, opportunities and exchange. However, there are indications that ASEAN's migration management is in fact a "politics of return".

What happens to refugees on their way to the European Union? Serbian novelist Vladimir Arsenijević has travelled the Balkan route and kept a diary of his journey.

Declaring Serbia a safe third country was the first of Hungarian repeated violations of human rights. Hungary turned the humanitarian crisis into a purely political issue. It seems that Europe too will choose to follow the politics of closed doors.

After successfully having put its candidate in the presidential seat in May 2015, national conservative party PiS has now managed to win an absolute majority in the parliament. Not a single left-wing party has made it through the elections. It remains to be seen how the electorate will feel represented by this shift to the right in parliament.

The Canadian candidates know that they can't without the support of the immigrant communities. Why do they have such a huge influence? About the Canadian phenomenon of the "visible minorites".

Xenophobia and efforts to turn public opinion against “social welfare migrants” are not a new invention. But the fact that every solution that comes from the EU is ignored – this is something new.