EuropeNow – Page 135

Governing the Migration Crisis

By Jennifer Elrick, Oliver Schmidtke, and Nicole Shea

We have seen two opposing trends across Europe: On the one hand, civil society has demonstrated a great degree of compassion with the plight of refugees, organizing local welcome committees and, in the Canadian case, even putting pressure on the government to accept more refugees from Syria as a fundamental humanitarian commitment of the country. On the other hand, the populist Right has exploited the influx of so many refugees for their political mobilization.

Fiction

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

One Thursday in late August, ten men gather in front of Berlin’s Town Hall. According to news reports, they’ve decided to stop eating. Three days later they decide to stop drinking too. Their skin is black. They speak English, French, Italian, as well as other languages that no one here understands. What do these men want? They are asking for work. They want to support themselves by working.

Research

Notions of Solidarity in Europe’s Migration Crisis: The Case of Germany’s Media Discourse

By Stefan Wallaschek

At the beginning of October 2013, a boat shipwrecked at the coast of Lampedusa and caused the death of approximately 350 asylum seekers. During his visit to Lampedusa shortly after it, the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, demanded solidarity from the EU member states.

Fiction

The Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen

Translated by Gaye Kynoch

The days and weeks in Lisbon, the clear, higher, harder light out here by the coast, the slightly forsaken haziness of the city, a forgotten region of outermost Europe, the sound of the street-cleaning trucks advancing slowly through the streets behind Praça do Rossio in the last hour before daybreak, like big beetles snorting hoarsely in the dust of the strangely quiet city…

Visual Art

Paradise Inn

By Marinos Tsagkarakis

This photo series aims to highlight the consequences of a massive and uncontrolled tourist development.

Commentary

What Germany Can Teach America About History

By Morten Høi Jensen

The “white whine” has since reverberated across the country with increasing clamor, from the orifices of white nationalists to the offices of the White House.

Nonfiction

A Fact of Survival

By Mina Hamedi

I saw him walking, black hair in knots and a bottle with the cap open held by his side. Leaning over the top, he brought his bottle, took a sip and stared at us.

Commentary

Lviv in Wartime

By John Lindner

I see only the two small feet of a child, who had just been previously feigning sleep, walk across the stage below a hovering curtain. They are met at the wings by a pair of adult shoes when the lights turn on for intermission.

Academic

Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe by Richard Ivan Jobs

Reviewed by Bethany Hicks

While travel over Cold War borders became difficult, youth travel encouraged a new generational identity in the postwar era.