Here is a documentary, and subsequent interview with the filmmaker and one of the fellow passengers, screened on Spanish television, about the quest of countless Africans to arrive (after risking life and limb on the high seas) on Spanish soil. Dominique Mollard went undercover for a period of years in order to tell and reveal the more human face behind the almost-daily reports of illegal immigration into Spain.
It is well worth watching, even if you don´t understand Spanish.
From the rtve web site:
11-11-2008 Documental único, obra del francés Dominique Mollard, quien, tras 26 meses de trabajo, logró embarcarse en un cayuco para retratar como nunca antes se había hecho -el combate a vida o muerte- al que se enfrentan miles de africanos que buscan una vida mejor más allá de nuestras costas. Pepa Bueno, entrevista al propio Mollard y a una de las pasajeras del cayuco.
And
the video.
Labels: africa, Europe, illegal immigration
http://www.elpais.com/vineta/?d_date=20080620&autor=Romeu&anchor=elpporopivin&xref=20080620elpepivin_2&type=Tes&k=Romeu
Romeu
EDICIóN IMPRESA - 20 - 06 - 2008
Woman says: It is incongruent that it is more punishable to be innocent and an immigrant, than to be a delinquent but EU citizen.
Man replies: Europe and I, we are like this Señora.
Labels: Europe, immigration
Véase también
http://www.directivadelaverguenza.org/Appeal to the Members of the European Parliament
On the 18th of June 2008, a proposal for a directive concerning the detention and deportation of immigrants will be submitted to the European Parliament.
Since 1990, the policies of European governments with respect to immigration and asylum have resulted in a continuous reduction of the guarantees and fundamental protections of the people they affect. Europe is becoming a locked-down fortress and uses disproportionate means to prevent access to its territory and to deport unauthorised migrants.
The project before the European Parliament, if it were to be adopted, would represent yet another regression.
In foreseeing detention that could be extended up to 18 months for people whose only offence is to want to live in Europe, it holds to an inhuman logic : generalizing a policy of confinement for aliens could become the normal way of treating migrant populations.
In establishing a five-year ban from Europe for all people who are expelled, this project stigmatises the illegal immigrants and transforms them into delinquents who must be deported.
The proposed directive which will be presented to the Parliament is the first in this domain to be submitted to a procedure of co-decision with the Council of Ministers. The Parliament therefore has the possibility to once and for all put an end to this policy which goes against the human values at the heart of the European project and which give it its meaning.
Today, the Members of the European Parliament have an historical responsibility : act as to not let Europe fall back to the dark era of segregation between nationals and undesirables through the systematisation of detention camps and forced repatriation.
We call on the Members of the European Parliament to assume their responsibility and reject this project.
More information / Plus d'informationWhy we are against this directive :
English -
French -
Spanish -
Italian10 réponses à 10 idées fausses sur ce projet de directive :
FrenchText amended by the COREPER - April 2008 :
English -
FrenchReport of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs :
English -
French -
Spanish -
ItalianInitial proposal of the European Commission (text amended by the report above) :
English -
French -
Spanish -
ItalianLabels: Europe, immigration, policy
Europaeum Review (latest)
Europaeum Review
The next Europaeum Review on The Medival (sic) Roots of Europe has been published this month, examining in part the relationship of the EU and Empire (see editorial). Articles include Disunion: the true hallmark of the history of Europe?, by Professor Jean-Philippe Genet, Professor of Medieval History, University of Paris I-Sorbonne; Is Europe turning into a neo-medieval Empire? by Professor Jan Zielonka, Professor of European Politics and Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow at the European Studies Centre, Oxford; What is the story for our European Project? Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Honorary Chair of the European Studies Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford; and Can we save the European adventure? by Dr Curt Gasteyger, Director, Association for the Promotion and Study of International Security, and Honorary Professor, HEI, Geneva.comment: the above is more a sort of newsflash. for those unfamiliar with the Europaeum, here a brief extract from their "Vision" page:As the pace of European integration accelerates, decision-makers, opinion-formers, politicians and citizens in European countries increasingly need to 'think European', to transcend national perspectives and empathise with a European mix of national and international cultures.
To meet that challenge, 10 leading European university institutions have jointly set up an association designed to serve as an 'international university without walls', in which future scholars and leaders of our new Europe will have an opportunity to share common learning and confront common concerns together, from a formative age and throughout their active lives.
The members:
University of Oxford
Universiteit Leiden
Universitá di Bologna
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva
Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Univerzita Karlova V Praze
Universidad Complutense, Madrid
Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Labels: Europe, higher education, universities
continuing w/ rilke and berger
this afternoon was great. i read the El Pais, a lovely article by
Rafael Argullol, p 17 of today´s edición. He writesa in reference to the 50th anniversary celebrations of the European Community/European Union. He writes that Rainer Maria Rilke is the writer who to him encompasses the notion of the European. Argullol writes:
Naturalmente, la lista de los escritores que podemos asociar a la idea de Europa es muy amplia pero hay uno que, por diversas razones, siempre me parece que es más merecedor que nadie en el momento de los homenajes no realizados. Se trata de Rainer Maria Rilke. Y entre las diversas razones hay una que justifica mi predilección. Este poeta nacido en Praga, que escribía en alemán y también en francés, y que jamás tuvo casa propia, desperdigó su vida en una cincuentena de domicilios situados en los más diferentes rincones del continente. Gracias a esa condición nómada, Rilke fue algo así como el habitante
par excellence de una Europa que, si bien todavía no existía como tal, tenía una vigorosa presencia en su imaginación.
Translated (by me):
Naturally, the list of authors we can associate with the idea of Europe is extensive, but there is one (author) who, for various reasons, always seems to me more deserving than anyone else when these homages are made. It is Rainer Maria Rilke. And of the varied reasons, there is one which justifies my predeliction. This poet born in Prague, who wrote in German and French, and even did not have his own house, led his life in fifty-odd houses located in the most different corners of the continent. Thanks to this nomadic condition, Rilke was (as a result) something like the quintessential inhabitant of a Europe that, even if it did not exist formally at the time, existed vigorously in his imagination.
Argullol continues later in the piece: "..., pues Rilke seguramente se dio por satisfecho con encontrar
su Toledo, aunque no fuera Toledo sino en Ronda. Bajo esta segunda perspectiva lo aconsejable es la búsqueda independientemente de que el hallazgo se produzca en un paisaje imprevisto."
It is that Rilke had travelled to Spain, with certain expectations vis-a-vis what the journey would be like. But those expectations were not met in the places he had envisioned that they would occur.
(Aye. Sometimes one gets to a point where translation seems inadequate, insufficient. Like an act akin to trying to explain a joke: never as funny, and the punchline is lost in the act of explaining. That is how I feel sometimes when trying to translate Eng-Spanish.) Anyhow, what the paragraph suggests to me very strongly is that sometimes you find what it is that you´re looking for (a sense of home, sometimes a sense of identity), not in the place that you had thought it would be. And sometimes, you do so in the/a place where you least expected that this "finding" would have occurred.
So, speaking of Rilke. One of my all-time favourite reads is the Duino Elegies. I must have read it at least three times already, and it remains beautiful.
----
But, about John Berger :)
I went out, and bought a copy of "and our faces, my heart, brief as photos". An excerpt follows:
My heart born naked
was swaddled in lullabies.
Later alone it wore
poems for clothes.
Like a shirt
I carried on my back
the poetry I had read.
So I lived for half a century
until wordlessly we met.
From my shirt on the back of the chair
I learn tonight
how many years
of learning by heart
I waited for you.
---
p32. (c) John Berger. originally published 1984. Bloomsbury edition (from which I quote) is 2005.
Labels: argullol, berger, Europe, rilke
