The Refugee Kafuffle

[Calradianın bilgesi]

an argument against refugee hotspots
http://www.ferguspeace.com/2017/11/europes-road-to-manus-island.html

The fact is that once you’re containing migrants in inhospitable conditions in a poor country, it’s a lot easier to wash your hands of the matter than it is to take the difficult steps needed to make sure the people there are treated acceptably. So for all that nobody is planning a Manus-style siege, there’s plenty to worry about in European leaders’ plans. French President Emmanuel Macron has talked of creating ‘hotspot’ processing centres in Libya so that fewer people take “crazy risks” in attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Germany’s interior ministry last year floated the idea of refugee processing in north Africa, for similar reasons. The EU is helping to train the Libyan coastguard to stop migrant boats heading for Europe, and ploughing money into border security measures in African countries on the route to Libya.

All of these are measures which might save some lives in the Mediterranean, but which will certainly have the effect of quarantining the chaos and suffering away from the attention of European publics. Those are precisely the conditions in which Australia has allowed its offshore detention centres to reach the point that a former army doctor described conditions in the Nauru camp as “worse than Afghanistan”. Libya has no functioning government, and its coastguard reportedly demands ransoms from people it ‘rescues’ on a regular basis. If the EU succeeds in opening processing centres in the country and containing more migrants there, the scope for deterioration, from an already horrific status quo, is if anything even greater than what Australia has overseen.

 

[Calradianın bilgesi]

Turkey suspends the refugee deal with the EU because Greece doesn't extradite soldiers involved in the coup who fled to Greece.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-suspends-refugee-readmission-deal-with-greece-132955
Unlikely to have much effect on most EU countries because Balkans are now well walled-off, but potentially might affect Greece.

 

[Captured Joe]

So, Greece is ****ed (again) now?

 

[Beny]

Isn't it always? Ever since Alexander really.

 

[Almalexia]

Megali Idea NOW

 

[Anthropoid]

I wonder if there are ANY really good, properly structured, impartial surveys of Euro residents that track public attitudes toward the refugee kafuffle? Maybe one of you all know?

 

[Vissy]

I'd imagine that there is, but you would have to be connected to relevant scientific fields like sociology to even know which authors to trust and which not to.

 

[kurczak]

It's just polling public opinion, not quantum physics.

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/results-special-eurobarometer-integration-immigrants-european-union_en

Page 57 of the full report down in the link.

• Immigration is more of a problem - 38%
• Equally a problem and opportunity - 37%
• More of an opportunity - 20%
• Neither - 8%
• Don't know - 3%

There you go

 

[Vissy]

It's just polling public opinion, not quantum physics.

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/results-special-eurobarometer-integration-immigrants-european-union_en

Page 57 of the full report down in the link.

• Immigration is more of a problem - 38%
• Equally a problem and opportunity - 37%
• More of an opportunity - 20%
• Neither - 8%
• Don't know - 3%

There you go

Lol. Those numbers are meaningless on their own. Hell, just read the first ****ing page of the news article you linked.

 

[Bromden]

No good surveys can exist about the topic, as I wasn't ever asked to fill one out.

 

[kurczak]

Lol. Those numbers are meaningless on their own. Hell, just read the first ****ing page of the news article you linked.

Please try to contain your neurosis. It's ok, you don't need to prove to anyone you're not a racist.

 

[Vissy]

Lol. Those numbers are meaningless on their own. Hell, just read the first ****ing page of the news article you linked.

Please try to contain your neurosis. It's ok, you don't need to prove to anyone you're not a racist.

What do you mean? None of that has anything to do with what I just said.

 

[Anthropoid]

It's just polling public opinion, not quantum physics.

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/results-special-eurobarometer-integration-immigrants-european-union_en

Page 57 of the full report down in the link.

• Immigration is more of a problem - 38%
• Equally a problem and opportunity - 37%
• More of an opportunity - 20%
• Neither - 8%
• Don't know - 3%

There you go

I did say "I wonder if there are ANY really good, properly structured, impartial surveys  . . ." and I would automatically discount any entity that received funding or backing from the European commission from that "impartial" category; the study itself might have decent design but it seems pretty obvious the European Commission has a very strong and one-sided agenda with respect to the Refugee Kafuffle, no?

I would also discount any entity with any hint of any political affiliation of any sort, or any ideological slant of any sort. I know in this day and age, with Universities being what they are, I'm fantasizing.

Even the "best" "nonpartisan" research entities around generally have some ties (whether historical or current) with some entity which someone somewhere at sometime will argue has an agenda.
https://psmag.com/news/think-tanks-are-nonpartisan-think-again-39850

THINK TANKS ARE NONPARTISAN? THINK AGAIN
Once seen as non-ideological “universities without students,” the American think tank has, in many cases, become a partisan stalking horse that devalues the sector’s scholarship.
EMILY BADGERFEB 17, 2012
One of the strangest institutions in Washington — and perhaps the hardest to comprehend from the outside — is the think tank, that quasi-academic, sort-of-political organization that offers, as its primary output, ideas. Universally, think tanks claim to be nonpartisan, and as tax-exempt nonprofits, this is a basic requirement in the tax code. But most people in Washington know the ideological leanings of think tanks that may obscure this fact in their titles: There’s the Cato Institute (libertarian), the Heritage Foundation (conservative), the Brookings Institution (moderate liberal) and the Center for American Progress (progressive).

And that’s just four of the 400 think tanks that have grown up in town, by Tevi Troy’s count. Troy is a think tank scholar himself, from the Hudson Institute (“a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom”). In a thoughtful new article in the journal National Affairs, he argues that think tanks have proliferated to the point of devaluing the research and ideas that come out of them. Most damning, he suggests that these institutions — once thought of as “universities without students” — have become political, stripping them of the power to float new ideas that politicians would never put forward.

Outside of Washington, Troy’s criticism resonates for a reason that may disturb academic researchers: it is the work of think tanks, and not cloistered scholars at traditional universities, that really influences Washington policy. In his article, Troy unearths a telling 1988 quote from Ronald Reagan: “Today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think thanks,” the president said, pointing to one in particular, the American Enterprise Institute.

From the creation of AEI in 1938 (originally the American Enterprise Association), Troy traces a dizzying think tank “arms race.” Like some of the earliest think tanks, including Brookings (1916), the Hoover Institute (1919) and the RAND Corporation (1946), AEI was long in the business of informing but not advocating. The conservative Heritage Foundation was born in the early ’70s as a direct response to AEI’s hands-off approach. Heritage became extremely effective at not just pondering ideas but also pushing them, particularly in an era when conservative public intellectuals didn’t feel welcome in academia.

Liberals, startled by the effectiveness of Heritage, created their own counterpoint at the end of the Reagan era, the Progressive Policy Institute, which powered many of the ideas that came out of the Clinton administration. Conservatives in exile from the federal government in this era created yet more think tanks, just as liberals did again during the George W. Bush years with the Center for American Progress. Troy refers to many of these think tanks as “governments in waiting.”

“Lose an election,” he quips, “gain a think tank.”

This evolution implies that the actual parties and the “nonpartisan” think tanks have been moving closer and closer together.
. . .

 

[Calradianın bilgesi]

wow that's a huge devotion in pursuit of knowledge

tbh if hard data or mere survey results is what you're interested in, I wouldn't set that high standards for impartiality. 95% of the biases you could be suspicious of can be ruled out by checking their methodology. No claim can survive in face of a scepticism as extreme as yours.

 

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]

i wonder how many people who question how impartial a survey is simply do so because they disagree with the results

 

[kurczak]

i wonder how many people who question how impartial a survey is simply do so because they disagree with the results

Exactly

What do you mean? None of that has anything to do with what I just said.

So you're totally not getting jumpy at the idea that dismissive attitude towards refugees or any other kind of migration is actually fairly common and it's not just a couple of loudmouths from EDL etc?

Spoiler

THINK TANKS ARE NONPARTISAN? THINK AGAIN
Once seen as non-ideological “universities without students,” the American think tank has, in many cases, become a partisan stalking horse that devalues the sector’s scholarship.
EMILY BADGERFEB 17, 2012
One of the strangest institutions in Washington — and perhaps the hardest to comprehend from the outside — is the think tank, that quasi-academic, sort-of-political organization that offers, as its primary output, ideas. Universally, think tanks claim to be nonpartisan, and as tax-exempt nonprofits, this is a basic requirement in the tax code. But most people in Washington know the ideological leanings of think tanks that may obscure this fact in their titles: There’s the Cato Institute (libertarian), the Heritage Foundation (conservative), the Brookings Institution (moderate liberal) and the Center for American Progress (progressive).

And that’s just four of the 400 think tanks that have grown up in town, by Tevi Troy’s count. Troy is a think tank scholar himself, from the Hudson Institute (“a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom”). In a thoughtful new article in the journal National Affairs, he argues that think tanks have proliferated to the point of devaluing the research and ideas that come out of them. Most damning, he suggests that these institutions — once thought of as “universities without students” — have become political, stripping them of the power to float new ideas that politicians would never put forward.

Outside of Washington, Troy’s criticism resonates for a reason that may disturb academic researchers: it is the work of think tanks, and not cloistered scholars at traditional universities, that really influences Washington policy. In his article, Troy unearths a telling 1988 quote from Ronald Reagan: “Today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think thanks,” the president said, pointing to one in particular, the American Enterprise Institute.

From the creation of AEI in 1938 (originally the American Enterprise Association), Troy traces a dizzying think tank “arms race.” Like some of the earliest think tanks, including Brookings (1916), the Hoover Institute (1919) and the RAND Corporation (1946), AEI was long in the business of informing but not advocating. The conservative Heritage Foundation was born in the early ’70s as a direct response to AEI’s hands-off approach. Heritage became extremely effective at not just pondering ideas but also pushing them, particularly in an era when conservative public intellectuals didn’t feel welcome in academia.

Liberals, startled by the effectiveness of Heritage, created their own counterpoint at the end of the Reagan era, the Progressive Policy Institute, which powered many of the ideas that came out of the Clinton administration. Conservatives in exile from the federal government in this era created yet more think tanks, just as liberals did again during the George W. Bush years with the Center for American Progress. Troy refers to many of these think tanks as “governments in waiting.”

“Lose an election,” he quips, “gain a think tank.”

This evolution implies that the actual parties and the “nonpartisan” think tanks have been moving closer and closer together.
. . .

I didn't know that think-tanks were at some point supposed to be "neutral" or whatever. They are literally institutions for coming up with ideas and suggestions for public policy. How could they possibly be apolitical. But at any rate, EC is not a think tank, so...

I did say "I wonder if there are ANY really good, properly structured, impartial surveys  . . ." and I would automatically discount any entity that received funding or backing from the European commission from that "impartial" category; the study itself might have decent design but it seems pretty obvious the European Commission has a very strong and one-sided agenda with respect to the Refugee Kafuffle, no?

I would also discount any entity with any hint of any political affiliation of any sort, or any ideological slant of any sort. I know in this day and age, with Universities being what they are, I'm fantasizing.

I think you're watching too much Wag the Dog and other spin doctor movies. I can't believe I'm going to say it but people are usually not completely retarded and most of them can't be swayed just because the pollsters phrase it a little differently. At least not when it comes to an issue that's been pretty much no.1 topic in the media 24/7 for several years now and everybody and their uncle had infinity arguments with everybody and their uncle about it.

Any spin doctor and magic pollster is cordially welcome to make a poll in any Visegrad country that shows 90%, wait let's make it easy, 51% explicit support for migration from Muslim and/or African countries. Go ahead work your magic and phrase it any way you want.

The number that Eurobarometer gives for CZ - 50% problem, 30% mixed bag, 10% opportunity, 10% neither + don't know, is pretty much what any poll has shown since the whole thing started if they ask about any migration. We get a lot (ish) of immigration from Ukraine and people tend to be more ok with them. The numbers for immigration specifically from Muslim or African countries are, well, more lopsided. But Eurobarometer was asking about any migration from outside the EU, so it checks out.

 

[Anthropoid]

Hey this is completely off topic, but quick question:

I know several of you are bound to be native or at least fluent German speakers. Would:

Deutsche Freie Volksrepublik

be a valid (non gobbly goop) translation for

German Free People's Republic?

This is for an alternate history fiction . . .

 

[Vissy]

So you're totally not getting jumpy at the idea that dismissive attitude towards refugees or any other kind of migration is actually fairly common and it's not just a couple of loudmouths from EDL etc?

No, not at all. You've jumped to conclusions. Public opinion of immigrants is not good, and that has several reasons, some of which have to do with our failed integration policies here in the EU (and yes, we can do it much better) and some of which have to do with our postcolonial mindset that automatically, even via the word "immigrant" (notice how it's only used to refer to non-EU immigrants in common use) causes us to otherize immigrants and think of them as inherently different. There are severe challenges when it comes to integrating different cultures, and several competing ideologies and methodologies on how to accomplish that. Multiculturalism vs. Assimilation are the big words.

Personally, I land somewhere inbetween - not because I just love to tread the golden middle path, but because this time it's genuinely a better way forward. You've got to allow groups with strong group identities to retain some of that identity while also giving them chances for positive intragroup contacts with other minorities and the majority group in the area, and that means mixing immigrant populations with majority populations instead of shoving them all into their own segregated zones like what's happened in Paris, for example (which was done in the name of Multiculturalism too, go figure). Of course that's just one aspect of a good integration policy, the first thing you need to reinforce is your social services (especially your housing and social security net) because those are likely the first aspects of your country that immigrants will encounter once they're in, and a really poor first impression there could totally derail the process of integration.

I could go on about this forever, but I should probably stop before this turns into a wallpost.

 

[Temuzu]

Public opinion of immigrants is not good, and that has several reasons, some of which have to do with our failed integration policies here in the EU (and yes, we can do it much better) and some of which have to do with our postcolonial mindset that automatically, even via the word "immigrant" (notice how it's only used to refer to non-EU immigrants in common use) causes us to otherize immigrants and think of them as inherently different.

You make it sound like the poor public opinion on immigrants has nothing to do with the immigrants themselves, instead it's a failure on our part and only on our part. I'm sure you realize it's not so black and white. I also don't see why you need to drag needlessly complicated concepts like postcolonialism to explain the otherness, of course immigrants from anywhere in the world are different from us, if they weren't there would be no need for integration in the first place. You again make it sound like the fact that they are not like us is some fabrication meant to oppress them just for ****s and giggles.

You've got to allow groups with strong group identities to retain some of that identity

I'm not sure what you're getting at, why do you single out groups with strong group identities? Does that mean that groups with weak group identities ought to be mercilessly assimilated? What exactly are the criteria you're going with when determining the strength of a groups identity?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

needlessly complicated concepts like postcolonialism

People from within your own country are "different" from you. The current wave of immigrants have been demonised specifically in a way that cultural differences alone can't fully explain.