Category Archives: Immigration Issues

Being Normal and being Car Bombed

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Immigration Issues, Lebanon, Shi'a, Syria


Poster in Tripoli, Lebanon; photography by Estella Carpi

Unearthing a misconceived “normalization” of violence in Beirut. The October car bomb in relation to generalized insecurity.

The 19th October 2012 car bomb in Beirut’s Ashrafiyye, within the Eastern district of the Lebanese capital, shed light on the re-articulation of the relations between the State, allegedly “inexistent” in the Lebanese context, and its society that lives in the constant effort to subjectively reformulate their citizenship, in the lack of a commonly shared nationhood.

New outbursts of violence seem to give a reason to the state to promote its technology of control, as Michel Foucault would put it. This complex re-articulation of relations has come to the fore with the October 26 White March from Martyrs Square (Beirut Downtown) to Sassine Square (Ashrafiyye, where the explosion was one week before). The “White March”, in which no political flag but the national Lebanese was waved, wanted to be considered as an act of social refusal of further violence and national solidarity, in addition to their political contestation of both the 14 and 8 March coalitions, which have politically and socially polarized the country into two sections after Hariri’s murder in February 2005. The White March mainly had the implicit aim of contesting the taken for granted watershed between what is “normal” and what is not in Lebanese parameters.

Social fear, as well as the perception of risk in Beirut, has specific historical explanations. Lebanese society seems to be doomed to live in a not-war-not-peace state, as Jeffrey Sluka used to define Northern Ireland during the clashes between Protestants and Catholics. Such an unstable state has engendered a social attitude towards violence that has been named by political scientists and journalists as “normalization”, which, in light of the Lebanese reaction to the last explosion, begs for a re-conceptualization. Continue reading Being Normal and being Car Bombed →

Harvard Arab Weekend

"Arab Spring", Conferences and Talks, Immigration Issues, Islamic Economics



It is our honor, on behalf of the Harvard Arab Alumni Association, the various MENA clubs across campus, and the Arab student body, to welcome you all to the 6th Harvard Arab Weekend, taking place at Harvard University from the 8th through the 11th of November, 2012.

As the largest pan-Arab conference in North America, the Harvard Arab Weekend has prided itself on showcasing a mosaic of perspectives and insights on the most pressing issues in the Arab world. Last year, the Harvard Arab Weekend was commended by the White House as “The Premier Arab World Conference” in North America. This year, we strive to uphold our venerable tradition of engaging discourses and informative debates.

At this critical moment of modern Arab history, and in the midst of the many challenges created by the unprecedented transformations in the Arab world, Arabs, from the Gulf to the Ocean, are posing critical questions about their past, present, and future. While the entire Arab landscape is undergoing a process of re-creation, Arabs look ahead at the future, wondering whether they will be able to sustain what they have achieved after more than a century of struggle. This year’s edition of the Harvard Arab Weekend specifically aspires to tackle these challenges and discuss how Arabs can sustain the “Spring” and avoid reverting back to authoritarianism or falling into chaos. Continue reading Harvard Arab Weekend →

Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Immigration Issues, Lebanon, Syria, Terrorism Issue


Image from Museum of Resistance in Lebanon; photograph by Estella Carpi

Syrian refugees in Lebanon: when the Apollonian cannot expect anything from the Dionysian

by Estella Carpi

While based in Lebanon, I personally find no way of getting out of the emotional whirlwind of suffering that the Syrian revolution, the merciless state repression and the subsequent armament of the revolutionaries have been giving rise to for 18 months. Without aiming at prematurely assessing the size of the emergency response to the “Syrian humanitarian crisis”, I would like to discuss here the Lebanese phenomenological approach to the current events by using the Syrian refugees’ lens.

Although used to regarding Syria as a model of stability and harmony, and as a place where people allegedly identify through the imposed order, the Lebanese suddenly find themselves taking care of the Syrian Leviathan. If Lebanon has always embodied the Dionysian, with its several war scars, social open wounds and its incontrollable emotionalities, Syria has always represented the rational, organized and balance-keeper Apollonian to the outsider’s eye. Continue reading Syrian Refugees in Lebanon →

Islam and America: A Moroccan View

Books You Should Read, Ethics, Immigration Issues, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America



[Webshaykh’s note: The Moroccan American scholar Anouar Majid, Founding Director of the Center for Global Humanities and Associate Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of New England, has recently published a book well worth reading. Following on his earlier analysis of the evolving relations between America and the Islamic world, this is a personal foray that calls for building a future of mutual respect without prejudice. Below is a brief excerpt, but I heartily endorse reading the entire book, Islam and America.]

I know for a fact that Muslims and Americans can engage in meaningful discussions that can lead to progress, if such discussions are anchored in some knowledge of history. I witnessed such debates in Rabat, Morocco’s capital. in 2005, after I had given a lecture to a packed hall of Moroccan and American students, as well as a couple of officers from the US embassy, on the meaning of American freedom. At that time, the US government was trying hard to reach Muslims, but Muslim skepticism and fear were aggravated by US military actions in the region and by the aspersions cast on their religion in the media. Still, the topic of freedom generated such a lively debate that it planted the idea for this project in my consciousness.

As I did with the topic of freedom in Rabat, I am using this book to survey American-Muslim relations within the old clash of religions before we ask ourselves –Muslims and non-Muslims alike –whether our beliefs and prejudices still make sense today. I wouldn’t be surprised if my readers –American and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Arab, or just simply religious and secular – found themselves uncomfortable at different points in the narrative. No nation, religion, or ethnicity gets a free pass, not because I want to be provocative, but because I am at a point in my life when, both intellectually and, even more importantly, emotionally, such rigid tribal divisions mean very little to me. The blind passions they engender are plunging our already fractured world into a deepening abyss. If gun lobbyists in the United States often claim that people – not guns – kill, then we must make sure that people carrying guns are not ideologically predisposed to shoot. I do respect the intensity of religion or nationalist convictions, but I also hope that such sentiments do not prevent us from engaging in serious conversations about our common future.

Excerpt from Anouar Majid, Islam and America: Building a Future without Prejudice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, p. 20).

Habari Ya Lamu, the Story of Lamu

Immigration Issues, Travel, Yemen


Lamu; Photograph by Daniel Martin Varisco

by Irena Knehtl, Yemen Post, April 15, 2012

One of the city-states founded by Yemeni Hadhrami Arabs was Lamu, an island off the present Kenyan coast, a world heritage site

Throughout its history Yemen has been a seafaring nation, famed for boat building and its mariners navigation skills. While the Yemeni sailors harnessed the monsoon winds to reach distant ports, inland its farmers harnessed water to develop life-sustaining agriculture adopting to a harsh and often formidable environment.

Archaeologists are still investigating these long gone civilizations that have played a major role in transforming global history. These ancient civilizations introduced deep-sea sailing vessels capable of long distance travel and trade. At this time writing, banking, shareholding were established and developed societies were formed for perhaps the first time over.

Linen, cotton, wool and metal were taken to China, where cargoes of silk, camphor, musk, spice were exchanged and Yemen acquired ceramics. Southern Arabia was on cross roads on the trade routes between China and India to the East, and the Red Sea and East Africa to the southwest providing merchants with a huge and lucrative markets. One of the city-states founded by Yemeni Hadhrami Arab travelers was located on the island just off the northern coast of present day Kenya called Lamu. Continue reading Habari Ya Lamu, the Story of Lamu →

What and who are not working in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Development, Immigration Issues, Yemen


a Yemeni worker; photo by Amira Nasser

Severe working conditions with no way out

Amira Nasser, Yemen Times, May 17, 2012

Despite the revolution which exploded last year in Yemen with demands for human rights and opportunities, thousands of Yemenis still work in slave-like conditions with little hope of escape.

Surviving in Yemen’s harsh economy with limited choices has forced countless Yemenis to take work that affords them little social mobility, and leaves them drowning in debt.

Tight circumstances

Waheeb Abdul-Wahab, a 13-year-old, works in a mechanic shop with his 7-year-old brother, Majed, from 7a.m. to 4p.m. daily. They each make YR 1000 , less than 5 US dollars, for a long day of strenuous labor.

“My brother and I give some of the money to my mother and we keep about YR 600 for ourselves.”

Waheeb added that he alone makes roughly YR 8000 to 9000 in profits for the shop owner on a daily basis, but he keeps only YR 1000 for himself.

He and his brother are an example of thousands of Yemeni children who are forced to work demanding jobs in order to sustain their families. Continue reading What and who are not working in Yemen →

Rift Valley Institute Courses

Conferences and Talks, Development, Ethiopia, Immigration Issues, Somalia, Travel


2012 Rift Valley Institute Field courses: applications open

The Institute’s annual field courses offer an intensive, graduate-level approach to the history, culture and political economy of three subregions: Sudan and South Sudan; the Horn of Africa; and the Great Lakes. The courses consist of a six-day dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars and panel discussions, led by international specialists and scholars and activists from the region. Dates and locations are as follows:

– Sudan and South Sudan Course, Rumbek, S. Sudan, 26 May-1 June

– Horn of Africa Course, near Mombasa, Kenya, 16-22 June

– Great Lakes Course, Bujumbura, Burundi, 7-13 July

Download the prospectus at the site and/or apply online here. For further information (or to request the application form as a Microsoft Word document), email courses@riftvalley.net. Applications will be considered in order of receipt.

Sailing to Yemen with human traffickers

Ethiopia, Immigration Issues, Somalia, Yemen


Journalist who took the human smuggling voyage from Djibouti to Yemen gives a first-hand account of migrant beatings.

by Glen Johnson, Al Jazeera, July 18, 2011

There were more than 30 people crammed on the back of the truck as the vehicle bumped through the desert in eastern Djibouti.

The passengers were men, women and children from Ethiopia and Somalia and myself. And all would be smuggled in boats from Djibouti to Yemen, as part of wider trafficking operations involving six countries – Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea – that apparently trafficks tens of thousands of people from the Horn of Africa to Arabian nations each year.

I had arrived in Djibouti on June 7 to research human trafficking. Having lived in Yemen for part of 2010, I was aware that the Africa-Arabia smuggling trade was one of the myriad challenges facing Yemen, yet one of the troubled nation’s least discussed. In Djibouti, I quickly established links with smugglers, some of whom agreed to let me accompany migrants from Ethiopia and refugees from Somalia by boat to Yemen.

The truck drove slowly through the desert. No one talked. A distant beam from a lighthouse swept across the night sky. The silhouettes of coarse thorn scrubs, bent back from the wind, stood under a yellow moon that was ill-defined from the dust and sand that swept up into the night.

Occasionally the truck would grind to a halt and men would get out swinging sticks wildly, telling the passengers to keep still. A woman spoke to a child – his hair a mass of coarse, black curls; his spindly legs sticking out the bottom of his trousers. Continue reading Sailing to Yemen with human traffickers →