Month: March 2017

Visualizing Two Centuries of Immigration in the United States

Metrocosm, started by Max Galka, is a collection of maps and other data visualization projects — trying to make sense of the world through numbers.  Last year, they made a map visualizing two centuries of immigration to the United States.

“From 1820 to 2013, 79 million people obtained lawful permanent resident status in the United States. The interactive map below visualizes all of them based on their prior country of residence. The brightness of a country corresponds to its total migration to the U.S. at the given time.”

Learn more about the data behind this map on the Metrocosm website or click here

 

But pattens are nothing without context.  In this video, The Daily Conversation provides some context behind these immigration patterns.

Global Bexley: “Where are you from? I’m from here.”

by Nikki Freeman

On February 16, the Global Mobility Project’s first community event, “Global Bexley: Making Home in Ohio” took place at the Bexley Public Library. OSU History professor Theodora Dragostinova facilitated a lively conversation among seven Bexley community members who all came from different parts of the world such as Great Britain, Uruguay, Iran, and the former Soviet Union.

Dr. Dragostinova, being from Bulgaria herself, opened the discussion with two major questions that guided the night’s conversation: How did you leave your home? And how did you decide to make a new home in Bexley? Each moved for different reasons which ranged from accepting new and exciting work opportunities to escaping political and religious persecution.

Making a new home in Bexley was not easy for everyone, and the panelists shared personal anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of everyday life. One woman (a Jew from the former Soviet Union) had to learn English for the first time as an adult so took night classes at a local high school. Another woman (a follower of the Bahá’í Faith from Iran) shared a funny story about trying to make an “American friendly” spaghetti dish when her son had a friend over for dinner.  These individual stories highlighted the personal struggle of adjusting to a new community.

Although the panel tried to avoid talking about politics, President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration was obviously on everyone’s mind.

I believe that conversations like this one are incredibly important in today’s political climate. We must bring neighbors face-to-face with each other and encourage people to share their experiences thereby illuminating how international diversity enriches both the local and national communities.

Questions of Refugee Deservedness

This article, written by one of our Grad Student Affiliates, was originally published in Anthropology News.  

by Kelly A. Yotebieng
Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology

The Anthropologist as an Ally

As anthropologists of forced migration, we are used to being kept on our toes as the nature, causes, consequences, and policies that enshroud forced migration are constantly fluctuating. When I returned to Cameroon for ethnographic fieldwork after over a decade living in the region as a humanitarian professional, I came with the intention of working with a large and growing population of Central African refugees. When I had last left Cameroon a year earlier in 2015, this population was growing rapidly, and garnering the attention of the world, or at least those of us who pay attention to forced migration in Africa. However, in the midst of my research over the summer of 2016, I found a Rwandan community silently struggling with the invocation of a Cessation Clause, built into the 1951 Geneva Convention, for all Rwandan refugees who arrived in asylum countries prior to 1998 and who had not been resettled. They feared this clause would cause the majority to lose their refugee status at the end of 2017. As many had hedged their bets on resettlement, they were at a loss of what to do next, after decades of waiting, and what now felt like rejection of the very foundation of their fears of returning home. Intrigued, I shifted my focus.

Continue reading…

Film Screening: The Pirogue

Director: Moussa Toure, Senegal/ France/Germany, 2012
Screening Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Wexner Center for the Arts
Cost: $8 general public; $6 Wexner Center members,
students, senior citizens; $3 children under 12
Followed by Associate Professor in History Ousman Kobo and Global Mobility Project team member Vera Brunner-Sung.
OSU EVENT
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A stunning screenshot from the film.  The solidarity of 31 Africans, fleeing to Spain in a canoe, is tested once they run into trouble.

Baye Laye is the captain of a fishing pirogue. Like many of his Senegalese compatriots, he sometimes dreams of new horizons, where he can earn a better living for his family. When he is offered to captain one of the many pirogues that head towards Europe via the Canary Islands, he reluctantly accepts the job, knowing full-well the dangers that lie ahead. Leading a group of 30 men who don’t all speak the same language, some of whom have never seen the sea, Baye Laye will confront many perils in order to reach the distant coasts of Europe.