Global Currents

On Friday, December 6th, the iSchool Students of Color hosted their first public event with the showing of a short film titled Illegal Rose and an accompanying panel discussion. Panelists included Deborah Riley Draper, the Director of the film; Aldo Vasquez, from the Chicago Public Library; and Lauren Aronson, Associate Professor and Founder of the Immigration Law Clinic at UIUC.

Illegal Rose follows the story of a young girl named Sylvie who runs away from the ICE Detention Center and is accidentally kidnapped by a retired nurse on the Fourth of July. Set in the backdrop of the present-day politically-charged United States, the creation of the film was inspired by Langston Hughes’ short story “Thank you, ma’am” and looks at how love, respect, and kindness can transcend age, race, and legal status.

The first half of the discussion was productive and dynamic, as each of the three speakers provided varying viewpoints.

Draper began by talking about why she felt the story needed to be told; she talked about wanting to share the idea of being human and being kind, even when you don’t know the other person or their story. She talked about the choice to use the word “Illegal” in the film title, especially as it is tied to Rose, the character who is an American citizen.

Draper and Vasquez then continued together discussing the importance of art, as Draper suggested the role of artists is to use art as a tool to communicate and create safe spaces where anyone can get involved, and Vasquez talked about how public libraries can create a safe space and help the community create dialogue about sensitive and controversial topics.

Aronson provided a more statistics-based commentary, as she shared some of her experiences working with immigrants and refugees. She told the audience 73,000 unaccompanied minors came to the US in 2019, and nearly 50% of immigrants overstaying their visas are Caucasian. Aronson cautioned the audience to be aware and make educated decisions in both their actions and words; in response to one student’s comments, she insisted detention camps be compared to internment camps rather than concentration camps, as they are spaces where populations are controlled, not exterminated. She reminded the audience to be cautious of their statements, and be aware of the consequences hyperbolic language may incite.

While Draper and Vasquez talked about the importance of art as a starting block to build action, Aronson spoke about how art can develop empathy, and how this empathy can be used to understand why immigrants and refugees are coming, what they’re feeling, and what they’re going through. The whole event was an interesting experience, as it housed a great number of opinions and viewpoints, but the overall take away from the event was the idea that art has a place within discourse and can be used as a tool to bring awareness, to educate, and fight injustice.

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More information about the film can be found through IMDB here. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10229526/

To follow current events pertaining to immigration in the U.S., follow the proceedings and publications of organizations such as the National Immigrant Justice Center. https://www.immigrantjustice.org/

On Friday December 6th, the “Refugees, Migrants, Citizens: Political Socialization across Borders” Symposium was sponsored by the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES), European Union Center (EUC), Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies (CEAPS), Center for Global Studies (CGS), Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Women & Gender in Global Perspectives Program, and Departments of Political Science, Sociology, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The Symposium consisted of four panel presentations, each with 3-4 presenters and a different subtopic relating to immigrants, migrants, and refugees.

The first panel titled “Paradigms Lost? Political Socialization Research in a World of Mobilities” focused on varying aspects of political socialization and reconceptualizing citizenship. The second panel titled “Migration, Citizenship, Activism” continued with the trend of political socialization but transitioned into discussions of the diaspora and biosociality. The third panel titled “Human Rights and Border Regimes” illustrated viewpoints specific to ideas and policy relating to border control and citizenship. The fourth panel titled “Space, Time, Memory” provided analyses of migrants over time, as seen through the case studies of Cuba and Estonia.

You can find the complete schedule with the full list of panelists here. https://calendars.illinois.edu/detail/7?eventId=33362884 

The presentations varied geographically, with some panelists focusing on the United States and others looking at other regions around the world. Professor Lauren Aronson’s presentation (situated within the third panel) evolved from her work as an immigration law attorney within the United States and was exemplary of the issues dealt with at the event. An Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Aronson founded the Immigration Law Clinic this year where students learn about the law by diving right in and working with the law, and she notes her teaching style relates more to working with facts and reality in court (and often passion and anger) rather than theory in classrooms.

Aronson discussed how she self-identifies as an advocate for immigrants and refugees through the act of storytelling, and she chose to fill her presentation time by telling two stories of refugees, the first of which is detailed below.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided that private and societal violence, like that which comes from domestic and gang violence, are no longer grounds for asylum in the United States. In an attempt to oppose this opinion, Aronson’s first story focused on an individual who migrated to the US at the age of fourteen after experiencing physical and emotional child abuse and sexual assault, and being forced to work for a local gang where he had to view various acts of violence against others, including shootings and rape. But despite the great number of injustices he faced, according to this new rule by Sessions, his suffering, and the violence he has endured, are not justifiable reasons for seeking asylum within the United States.

Aronson closed by reminding us that immigrants and refugees do not come to this country to take our jobs, or take advantage of our economy. Rather, all they seek to take advantage of is the safety that American citizens maintain in their everyday lives; they seek a government that protects them, not one that turns against them, and overall, the first thing they seek is survival.

On Wednesday December 4th, Professor Ann-Perry Witmer gave an enlightening talk titled “Global Attitudes of Rural Technical Inferiority as a Cause for Migration to Cities in the Non-Industrialized World.”

Professor Witmer began first by emphasizing several differences between the global and the rural. She brought forward several global attitudes that affect this topic.

Global Attitudes towards the Global

• The idea of the “Globalization Project”, meaning, the integration among people, industry, and government.
  • This idea is problematic because it assumes that there are only two types of people — those that produce and those that consume. This relates to goods and capital, but also includes services, data, and technology.

• The notion of a “Global City” as a node for the flow of knowledge, money, and “stuff”.
  • The Global City as it is discussed focuses on the prominence of population centers and the rapid growth we are seeing in globalized centers in places like Dakar, Senegal and Sacaba, Bolivia.

• The definition of “poverty” (as it is discussed in the 21st century)
  • Within the Global North, poverty is considered to be a state where an individual does not have the material possessions or income they need. But the problem with this understanding stems from the idea that wealth only comes from monetary value. This continues to be problematic when westerners assume money is the great equalizer, and that the depositing of money into impoverished areas will solve all of its foundational problems.

The role of engineers in alleviating poverty is an interesting one as young engineers are moving away from pursuing engineering for the chance to gain six figure salaries, and moving towards a desire to combine engineering with humanitarianism. With this shift in thinking, young engineers are becoming more cognizant of three things in their work environment: their professional and ethical responsibilities, their understanding of the consequences that can arise from technology, and their understanding of how people use machines.

Global Attitudes towards the Rural

Place-based Knowledge & Eco-Diversity

Witmer made the claim that the development of knowledge and technology is based on place and identity, and referenced Knowing Your Place:  Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy by Creed and Ching — suggesting that academics often ignore the importance of place when thinking about how human identity is shaped and how this shaping leads to the perpetuation of urban cultural hegemony.

Technology & Technological Inferiority

Witmer discussed at length the idea that westerners often discard local information because they assume it is inferior to other more “modern” practices. In the Global North, we often think about technology for innovation, and we neglect to understand how people living in rural settings may think about technology as it relates to functionality or the systematization of social activities. Rural populations around the world take part in “innovative self-sufficiency” — an occurrence that involves the process of problem-solving rather than innovative thinking.

As the divide between technology for innovation and technology for self-sufficiency grows, there continues to be a growth in the migration from rural to urban spaces. Young people around the world are choosing to migrate from their rural hometowns to urban cities because they want to be close to modernity and have more of an infrastructure that includes power, transportation, and water, and development organizations are responding to this. A great number of development programs are focusing on cities because they think they can have more of an impact there, and rural areas are being left further and further behind as young people forgo indigenous knowledge and strive instead for efficiency.

In response to urban migration, and the focusing of development projects on these area, professional educators and engineers like Ann-Perry Witmer have been trying to educate young engineers about working in rural spaces. Witmer concluded by stating developers should strive to move past awareness and attestation towards assimilation. With awareness, you are made aware with superficial knowledge. With attestation, you are reacting in response to base-line personal experiences and often get too comfortable with your own knowledge. But with assimilation, you are able to lift away your own value-system and understand needs, expectations, and things outside your own mindset. Whereas awareness enables you to identify a problem and attestation provides you with further context and experience, assimilation cultivates an environment where barriers and preconceived notions can be lifted so that new perspectives can be understood.

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Reference: Ching, Barbara, and Gerald W. Creed. Knowing Your Place: Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy. New York, Routledge, 2013.

For more information relating to this talk, visit the libguide created for this event. It can be found here.

Human Rights Day is held on the 10th of December every year in commemoration of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948. The UDHR was the first document to make claim that everyone is inherently entitled to equal human rights regardless of their race, religion, sex, language, political opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.  

Every year, a different theme is chosen for Human Rights Day in hopes that this holiday can bring about awareness to various human rights issues. 

This year’s theme is “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights.” 

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This theme was chosen in response to the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was celebrated in mid-November, and will focus on the leadership roles young people maintain around the world. 

In conjunction with the theme “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights”, the UN is once again utilizing its hashtag #standup4humanrights. The four focuses of this year’s campaign are: 

Take a Stand Against Bullying

• This campaign focuses on the fact that ⅓ of all teens experience bullying, and suggests more can be done in the areas of in-person and online bullying.   

Take a Stand for Climate Justice

• This campaign urges us to acknowledge and respond to climate change, and pays homage to Greta Thunberg who led over 40 million people (from 163 countries) in the largest climate protest in history.  

Take a Stand for Everyone’s Voice to Be Heard

• This campaign tells us that only 2% of Members of Parliament (over 45,000 around the world) are under the age of thirty, and insists we pay more attention to who is being represented, and who is being left out of the political decision-making process. 

Stand Up for the Equal Rights of LGBTI People Everywhere

• This campaign draws attention to the reality that nearly ⅓ of the world’s countries still consider same-sex relationships to be a crime, and suggests that this thinking leads to widespread discrimination of LGBTI people. 

This Human Rights Day, stand up for equal rights to all, and consider what you can do to take a stand against bullying and climate change, and fight for equal representation and LGBTI rights. 

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Photos courtesy of the United Nations Human Rights Day Campaign Materials. 

For more information about Human Rights Day, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, visit the United Nations website located here. https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day

To learn more about this year’s theme and utilize UN Human Rights Day materials, go here. https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day/resources#2019campaignmaterials

In conjunction with Professor Andrea Melgarejo de Berry’s graduate level architecture studio class, the Center for Global Studies is proud to support an exhibition in Room 309 of the International and Area Studies (IAS) Library for the remainder of the academic year. The course, ARCH574 – Architecture & Urban Design, provides graduate students with a unique studio space where they can research and create various visual projects relating to global migration trends.

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About the course:

ARCHITECTURE  574 – GRADUATE DESIGN STUDIO_Fa19

Illinois School of Architecture – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Andrea Melgarejo de Berry

Teaching Assistant Professor

Email: melgare2@illinois.edu

Permanent Impermanence

Design for inclusive cities

Immigrants and refugees face a variety of challenges in their new urban communities such as language, access to services, employment, housing, and cultural barriers. Despite challenges, there are also opportunities they can bring to our cities and economy. By understanding the challenges and opportunities, this studio explores proposals to provide urban design solutions that promote belonging, dignity, and resilience for immigrants and refugees navigating the challenges of urban life in their host community. This studio proposes ways to adapt and accommodate a sudden growth of population that provide adequate housing, employment opportunities, and social connections to a new community maintaining their own identity.

In this studio, students…

-Explore solutions at an urban scale

-Expand the notion of architecture beyond basic shelter

-Care about human dignity and equality

-Test conceptual solutions

-Explore data analysis and representation of information

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Showcasing nearly thirty posters, and several display pieces, this exhibit highlights a number of crises migrants and immigrants face around the world. The posters relate to a variety of geographical places including France, Syria, Nepal, India, and the United States, and more. The exhibit will be up in Room 309 of the IAS Library until the second week of December. Go by and check it out!

World Digital Preservation Day will be celebrated on November 7th of this year. 

Generally speaking, Digitization involves the process of taking something from analog form (paper-based) to digital form. More specifically, in relation to information resources, digitization involves creating digital text by converting handwritten or typewritten text. Digital Preservation refers to the preserving of paper-based documents by converting them into digital form. Digital preservation is largely utilized within archives, where rare documents and manuscripts often need to be digitally copied before they disintegrate or break down to a point where they can no longer be read or studied, however, digital preservation is also used in numerous other areas where resources need to be more accessible, such as medical records, legal documents, business policies, or news-related materials. Digitization can relate to things both big and small — either companies digitizing their efforts, or family members converting their old slides or photos to digital form.

Digital Preservation is an industry that is often overlooked. But in a world where digital resources are beginning to take precedence over physical materials, the need for digitization grows. More and more resources today are available only in digital forms. Some news sources move to broadcast solely online, rather than in print; some authors publish only e-books, rather than insisting on printing physical copies; many products now provide instruction manuals only online, leaving out a disk or other mode of installation. So, if digitization is such a vital aspect of today’s world, why do we not place greater importance on the digital preservation industry? Some think the answer to this question is simple: awareness. While consumers interact with digital resources every day, they may not think about the work it takes for something to be digitized. In response to this, World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD) was created so that credit could be paid to digital preservationists, and awareness could be drawn to how the processes of digital preservation vary around the world. 

World Digital Preservation Day is held every year on the first Thursday of November in hopes to bring awareness to digitization and celebrate the progress digital preservers have made over the years. On their website, the Digital Preservation Coalition boasts the diversity and need of preservation in numerous sectors including industry, commerce, government, research, law, medicine, and media, to name a few. In 2018, World Digital Preservation Day culminated in the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony in Amsterdam. This event was hosted by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network and the Amsterdam Museum as part of an international conference for WDPD.

To see more about how World Digital Preservation Day was celebrated in 2018, you can visit the Coalition blog to read stories of digital preservation, “see what a digital preservation day looks like” on Instagram, and watch videos on YouTube YouTube on how digital preservationists around the world celebrate WDPD. 

To check out past events happening around the world for WDPD, visit https://dpconline.org/events/past-events.

Rapporteur: Lynne Rudasill, Global Studies Librarian, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

On October 23, 2019, Clifford Singer, Research and Emeritus Professor of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, and of Political Science presented the latest entry in the event series – Global Migrations – sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.  His topic related to the work he and his team of researchers have been doing on the Climate Action Game Experiment (CAGE).  The research community claims that climate change has already had an impact on migration.  According to the International Organization for Migration, by the mid-1990s up to 25 million individuals had been forced to leave their homes due to climate change-related factors and this number is expected to increase to as high as 200 million by 2050 if the effects of climate change are not mitigated.[1]  The goal of the CAGE team is to develop a data-calibrated probability distribution for the actual climate change outcomes, including how climate change alters anthropogenic effects, and suggest some scenarios for mitigating these effects.

The researchers, led by Singer, captured 200 years’ worth of demographic, economic, and climate data for a large number of countries to help develop a model of how these countries might react to climate change and its resultant effects.  The goal of the research is to develop estimations for the probability of future emissions scenarios that can be applied for human development.  The policy modifications were based on assumed scenarios and interactive negotiation exercises with a view to further develop game theory in the matter.

The team grouped countries into regions that included “Green New Deal Countries”, “No New Policy Countries”, “Negotiation Block with China Countries”, and “New Policy Countries” that represent extant negotiating blocks.  They calculated welfare damage impact based on the policy options and, in addition, developed insights on possible outcomes.  These include the posit that an immediate commitment to zero emissions by 2050 would be unlikely based on economic self interest of any block alone – something else would have to be of benefit.  In addition, from a purely altruistic view, flexibility in policy and resources is necessary to deal with an already acute situation.  Professor Singer also provided scenarios for two approaches to global climate change adaptation related to the political stability of the countries in question.  The choices are between improving public health and the environment and establishing the means by which to deal with an exponential increase in human migration.

Singer also discussed the issues of the increase in ambient temperature and the increase in concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, including the factors increasing atmospheric carbon.  There appears to be no realistic, lone political solution to a reduction in the global warming that is taking place.  It will be necessary to employ some type of geoengineering to deal with the problem.  The partial solution posited in this presentation was stratospheric Sulphur injection to reduce the extent of the rise in temperature.  The problem of reducing CO2 remains to be more fully explored in relationship to the lowered temperatures.

In conclusion, a flexible approach can be more credible and more beneficial to a green new deal region, without necessarily reducing overall global economic welfare.  In the nearer term, continuing the alleviation of the impacts of poverty and more systematic, humane approaches to displaced persons can be more cost effective than promising to go all of the way to zero net CO2 equivalent emissions between 2040 and 2050.

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[1] Brown, Oli (Prepared by) (2008). Migration and Climate Change, IOM Migration Research Series, No. 31, International Organization for Migration, Geneva.  Accessed at: https://www.ipcc.ch › apps › njlite › srex › njlite_download

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Slides from the presentation are available at: https://cgs.illinois.edu/files/2019/10/Singer-Cage.pdf

A guide to resources related to this presentation is available at: Climate Action Game Experiment

Global Media and Information Literacy Week is hosted every year by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Initiated in 2012, Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week seeks to “unite diverse actors committed to promoting MIL as a way to foster social inclusion and intercultural dialogue” (unesco.org).  This year’s Global MIL week will be held from October 24-31 and is titled “MIL Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered.” The feature conference was held on September 24-26 in Gothenburg, Sweden. 

Media and Information Literacy is vital to all individuals, regardless of their age, their economic status, or where they live. Living in a world that is continuously becoming more and more digitally-minded, MIL is vastly important around the world. Unlike traditional “information literacy”, media and information literacy focuses on the use of information through different media platforms. MIL is significant in today’s world because it enables the communication and connectivity of individuals to information, and to each other. The utilization of Global MIL Week encourages the creation of local events in order to promote MIL connections around the world between various disciplines and professions. 

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For more information, visit the UNESCO page titled Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2019

On Thursday October 17th, the Center for Global Studies hosted Dr. David D. Laitin, a co-founder of the Immigration Policy Lab, and James T. Watkins and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. CGS invited Dr. Laitin to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to give a presentation on his latest research project as part of the MillerComm Series in conjunction with the Center for Global Studies’ year-long series on Global Migrations. Dr. Laitin’s presentation was titled “Framing the Global Immigrant Challenge: Evidence from Elected Representatives’ Tweets.”

Dr. Laitin began by outlining several ideas. First, he suggested that the global migration crisis sees a steady flow of migrants coming from the Global South to the Global North, a phenomenon that continuously changes the culture and industry found in the North. Second, he highlighted the need to talk about migration and immigration, and the serious humanitarian challenge that the growing number of refugees and displaced peoples presents. He then posed several questions he believes to be pertinent to his overall project and the global migration crisis. They were:

• “Does the salience of the immigration issue divide left and right traditional parties?
• Do sentiments towards immigrants and refugees divide the left and right traditional parties?
• Do elected officials develop coherent doctrine consistent with their party’s comparative advantage or are tweets merely event driven?
• Are the tweets from the traditional parties responsive to the tweets of the nativist parties?
• Do left and right parties own different dimensions or topics in the immigration realm?”

Dr. Laitin’s project involved a long process of data collection. First, he and his team identified elected officials from the countries of France, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. who were in office between 2013 and 2019. They then collected all the tweets from each elected official in each country from that time frame. They collected over 8 million tweets using Twitter’s streaming API. During the categorization process, the system was able to organize the tweets into four sections: those relating to immigration and its connections to economy, security, law, and culture. The results of these groupings suggested that these countries, the United States and Germany included[TDC1] , care most about what effect immigration has on security and law. Of the four categories, the influences of immigration on economics and culture were thought to be less significant; however, they are still significant enough to mention.

At the end of his presentation, Dr. Laitin made several overarching conclusions. First and foremost, he made the argument that elected officials are utilizing Twitter to react to daily events, rather than using Twitter as a tool to discuss long-term immigration trends. Second, he made the conclusion that neither left nor right traditional parties favor positive or negative tweets. On average, elected officials tweeted both positive and negative sentiments towards immigration, regardless of their party affiliation. However, the salience of far right parties was greater in response to immigration overall. Elected officials associated with far right politics tweeted more about issues relating to immigration than officials associated with more left parties.

Dr. Laitin’s observations on these topics included:

•       Political parties affiliated with the right are more inclined to tweet about issues of immigration and security, but less about immigration and culture;
•       Both sides of the political spectrum downplay the significance of immigration within discussions of economics and culture; and
•       Canada provides a unique outlier, as they give no favor to any one dimension or topic.

The API used by Dr. Laitin and his team is stil  l running in real-time, continuously collecting tweets from elected officials. Dr. Laitin and his team are planning to include more countries and languages in the future, and hopefully create a website or database so the tweets and their trends are more readily available to researchers and the public.

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To learn more about Dr. Laitin, you can visit his faculty page from Stanford University.

To research more about global migration issues and politics, visit the libguide titled “Framing the Global Immigrant Challenge: Evidence from Elected Representatives’ Tweets”.

World Mental Health Day is held on the 10th of October every year. First celebrated in 1992, World Mental Health Day was created by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in an attempt to bring awareness of mental health issues, and encourage advocacy against the social stigmas that encapsulate them. The day has been observed for the last 26 years to remind us that mental health affects all regions of the world, not just those we interact with. 

World Mental Health Day specializes in a specific topic each year. Previous topics include: 

• 1996 – Women and Mental Health
• 1997 – Children and Mental Health
• 1998 – Mental Health and Human Rights
• 1999 – Mental Health and Aging
• 2000 – Mental Health and Work (this program continued into 2001)
• 2002 – The Effects of Trauma and Violence on Children and Adolescents
• 2003 – Emotional and Behavioral Disorders of Children
• 2004 – The Relationship Between Physical and Mental Health: Co-Occurring Disorders
• 2005 – Mental and Physical Health Across the Lifespan
• 2006 – Building Awareness – Reducing Risk: Mental Illness and Suicide
• 2007 – Mental Health in a Changing World: The Impact of Culture and Diversity
• 2008 – Making Mental Health a Global Priority: Scaling up Services through Citizen Advocacy
• 2009 – Mental Health in Primary Care: Enhancing Treatment and Promoting Mental Health
• 2010 – Mental Health and Chronic Physical Illness
• 2011 – The Great Push: Investing in Mental Health
• 2012 – Depression: A Global Crisis
• 2013 – Mental Health and Older Adults
• 2014 – Living with Schizophrenia
• 2015 – Dignity in Mental Health
• 2016 – Psychological First Aid
• 2017 – Mental Health in the Workplace
• 2018 – Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World

This year’s World Mental Health Day will focus on suicide prevention. According to National Today, a website designated to bringing awareness to global holidays, you can observe World Mental Health Day in the following ways:

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For more information about this year’s World Mental Health Day, you can watch the YouTube video found here, or visit the World Health Organization’s page found here.

Other organizations that focus on mental health include:

Time to Change

World Federation for Mental Health

Mental Health Foundation

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

American Mental Wellness Association

Movement for Global Mental Health

Please visit these sites to find more resources and learn more about mental health.

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Photos courtesy of pexels.com (free usage photos).