Immigration
At Any Cost—The War in Sudan and Europe’s Flawed Migration Policies
The current conflict in Sudan reveals the deep flaws in EU border regimes.
Understanding Race and Migrant Domestic Labor in Lebanon
The dire financial and political crises in Lebanon have made migrant domestic workers even more vulnerable to abuses of the kafala system of sponsorship. Kassamali explains the history of this labor system in Lebanon and the intersecting roles of race, class, nationality and gender in the hierarchies it produces.
Who is “Indian” in the Gulf? Race, Labor and Citizenship
How do race and racism operate in the Gulf? Neha Vora and Amélie Le Renard closely examine how the term “Indian,” as it is used in the United Arab Emirates, refers to much more than national origin. They trace the role of colonialism, capitalism and the state in creating “Indian” as a racialized category in contrast to an imagined pure Gulf Arab identity. Attempts to police the boundaries between citizens and non-citizens obscures the Gulf’s truly multicultural and multiracial history and present.
Understanding Race and Migrant Domestic Labor in Lebanon
The dire financial and political crises in Lebanon have made migrant domestic workers even more vulnerable to abuses of the kafala system of sponsorship. Kassamali explains the history of this labor system in Lebanon and the intersecting roles of race, class, nationality and gender in the hierarchies it produces.
Who is “Indian” in the Gulf? Race, Labor and Citizenship
How do race and racism operate in the Gulf? Neha Vora and Amélie Le Renard closely examine how the term “Indian,” as it is used in the United Arab Emirates, refers to much more than national origin. They trace the role of colonialism, capitalism and the state in creating “Indian” as a racialized category in contrast to an imagined pure Gulf Arab identity. Attempts to police the boundaries between citizens and non-citizens obscures the Gulf’s truly multicultural and multiracial history and present.
The Fog of the Forever War with a Laugh Track in “United States of Al”
As President Joe Biden’s administration struggles to meet its self-imposed deadline of September 11, 2021 to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, Hollywood is offering its own painless, bloodless version of an end to America’s longest war. In this review of the CBS sitcom “United States of Al,” the authors Wazhmah Osman, Helena Zeweri and Seelai Karzai critique the show’s representation of Afghans and the US war and explain why the show’s missteps matter.
The Muslim Ban and Trump’s War on Immigration
Within one week of taking office, President Donald Trump made good on his campaign promise to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Clothed in the language of national security, Executive Order 13769, issued on January 27,...The Muslim Ban and Trump’s War on Immigration
Trump’s war on immigration from the Middle East, enacted through multiple executive orders and proclamations since January 2017, is collectively known as the Muslim ban. Eventually approved by the Supreme Court, it hit the Yemeni community particularly hard with overwhelming costs and other hurdles to family reunification. Louise Cainkar explains the evolution of the Muslim ban, its unconscionable effects and what is being done to contest it. This article is from the forthcoming issue of Middle East Report, “Exit Empire – Imagining New Paths for US Policy.”
Border Regimes and the New Global Apartheid
Catherine Besteman analyzes the new form of global intervention that is taking shape in the rise of militarized borders, interdictions at sea, detention centers, indefinite custody and the generalized criminalization of mobility around the world. The Global North—the United States, Canada, the European Union (EU), Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, the Gulf states and East Asia—is investing in militarized border regimes that reach far beyond particular territories to manage the movement of people from the Global South.
State Department Taking Passports Away from Yemeni-Americans
Over the past year, dozens of Yemeni-Americans visiting their ancestral homeland have had their US passports summarily revoked or confiscated by the embassy in Sanaa without any clear legal basis, effectively stranding them outside the United States. Last month, a coalition of US civil rights groups submitted a report on this practice to the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) pursuant to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Justice for Rasmea Odeh
This past winter, I was privileged to participate in several events in Chicago organized by Rasmea Yousef Odeh, associate director of the Arab American Action Network and leader of that group’s Arab Women’s Committee. The events brought together anywhere from 60-100 disenfranchised women, all recent immigrants, from nearly every Arabic-speaking country. The attendees were there to learn English, share meals and stories, and discuss personal struggles, in everything from marriage and parenting to navigating the US educational and medical industries and the US immigration system. The women also talked about fending off racism.
Do Immigrants Have First Amendment Rights?
“War on Terrorism Hits LA,” the headline of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner screamed on January 27, 1987. The Los Angeles Eight, as the seven Palestinians and a Kenyan came to be known, are still fighting deportation today. Dangerous security risks? The Immigration and Naturalization Service said so. International terrorists? The INS still argues that the Eight were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These charges were partly based on secret evidence, including photos showing the Eight distributing a “subversive” magazine published in Damascus entitled Democratic Palestine.
Memories of Birth
I never knew that cold could burn. It was a wild wind and my fingers were numb and clumsy. I fumbled with the sheet of paper, turning the page over and over. It was little more than tatters now, covered in smeared ink. My mother wrote all the instructions for me on this page and I held it in the palm of my hand since the day I had left home. Now it seemed the words had dissolved in the ship’s mist and the heat of my skin. I stood on the pavement, still feeling the pulse of the waves in my legs. I stared at the shell-curves of her Arabic letters, intricate as nautilus chambers.
I had forgotten how to read Arabic.
New North African Immigration to Spain
In June 1998 the Spanish government began constructing several 12-foot high fences to halt African immigrants from illegally entering Europe by way of Spain’s North African enclave territory in Melilla. Running along the ten-kilometer border separating Morocco from Melilla, these fences were scheduled for completion by January 1999. They are to be patrolled by members of the Spanish civil guard and monitored by the latest in surveillance technology: cameras, sensors and armed guards stationed in lookout towers. These rigorous new border controls are required by the European Union’s adoption of stricter measures to regulate the inflow of individuals from non-EU nations.
Spain and the EC
Nearly every day, off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, wealthy windsurfers unfold their multicolored sails and plunge into the waters. As often as the wind invites acrobatic risk taking on the crest of the waves, it turns the Straits into a graveyard for hundreds of Moroccan migrants. More than 200 drowned from January to October 1992 alone. Their journeys occur under conditions of extraordinary risk and with minimal chances of success. Many are captured the moment they set foot on Spanish soil, or even while still at sea. During the first ten months of 1992, 2,000 undocumented immigrants were detained on the coasts of Cadiz. In 1991, 2,500 were captured in Andalusia alone. [1] This risk they evidently prefer to the desperate poverty that motivated their flight.
Naff, Becoming American
Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience, (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985).
Alixa Naff gives us a rare and detailed look into the virtually unknown and now largely forgotten world of the early Arabic-speaking immigrants who made their way to America in the last decades of the 19th century. They hailed from the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Palestine, but mostly from Mount Lebanon and environs. The majority were Christians (Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox); a significant minority were Muslims and Druze. They called themselves “Syrians.”
