As we see an increase in refugees entering Europe, there is nothing politicians love more than surf the wave of "the refugee problem". But as with so many problems, I like to ask if it really is a problem, or a potential resource.
The "problem" is what you do with a whole bunch of unemployed people with nowhere to stay? You have to build houses, produce food, clothing - all these things cost money to pay the people who produce all this. Do you even have enough people to do all this work? And when you're done, you have houses full of unemployed.
Or we can look at the problem from the other side. You run away from people who think that you don't deserve to live - I mean, they literally want to kill you. And you arrive in a country where you're confined to a specific area and not allowed to have any value in the work force.
Isn't the solution pretty obvious? Give them enough land and tools to grow most of their own food, build houses, etc. The refugees have skills, you know. So I'm just throwing that in there - try to see refugees as a resource, not as a problem. Because seeing them as a problem is what turned them into refugees in the first place. M'kay?
Showing posts with label refugee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refugee. Show all posts
2013-10-29
2012-04-09
Unemployed Vagabond: It is so bad at home...
Physical security. It's one of the basic needs of humans. But as Antarctic hikers and Mt Everest climbers prove, every individual have a different pereception of what is acceptable security. It is easy to understand that large numbers of people flee from war zones. Yet some insist on staying, even though their lives are in imminent danger.
| "Ah, Oklahoma!" the other man said, finally putting the pieces together. "Yes, Oklahoma City. It is a dangerous place?" I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. Cowboys? Indians? "Dangerous?" "Wasn't there a bombing" "A-? Oh, right. Yeah, well, there was one bombing." "But it was a very big bombing, yes? Many pople killed." "Sure, it was very big. But it was one bombing almost ten years ago." We were in occupied Palestine and this guy was worried about Oklahoma being dangerous? I supposed that was what happened if you knew nothing about a place except its bombings. |
by It is difficult to set a universally defined threshold as to when someone decides to just pick up and leave. I see three degrees of uncertainty associated with leaving, which is part of the formula deciding when to leave. They are:
While a country's economy greatly affects its people, Hans Rosling has shown some tremendous statistics about the difference between rich and poor within each country as possibly more important than the difference between countries. Local politics play as much a role, if not more, than international politics.
I conclude this article with Hans Rosling's 2007 statistics about poverty:
- Things are so bad for my physical health and/or mental health and/or economy (all three are interrelated anyway), that I can not imagine my current situation as sustainable, therefore I must leave and...
- ...I have found a new and better place to go to, all is set up.
- ...where I'm going I have a social network to take care of me while I attempt to get on my own feet.
- ...must face the unknown in a desparate hope that I find a way to support myself (and my family).
The lower the degree of uncertainty, the lower the threshold to move. Leaving at a third degree uncertainty is usually invoked only when you find your health in imminent danger and see absolutely no way that the current situation will improve on its own. And that's when you get the "unemployed vagabond".
The world operates with two distinct flavours of unemployed vagabonds - that is, people with no fixed income who travel and thus lack basic physical, mental and economic security. They are "War Refugees" and "Economic Refugees". The war refugee has been recognized for so long that the term "refugee" is usually perceived as refugees from a war zone specifically.
Economic Refugees have also been around for quite a while. The Great Transatlantic Migration from 1836 to 1916 was greatly an economic escape from Europe to The Promised Land of North America. Similarly, many Africans risk their lives trying to cross over to Europe, because a small chance of surviving, and still have no clue as to what awaits on the other side, is somehow better than the status quo.
More recently, during Iceland's economic crisis beginning 2008, many people got on the ferry to Norway in search for a new life. Greeks have found their way to the United Arab Emirates. Mexicans have been migrating to the USA for a long time. Now, Americans are finding their way to Ecuador. Irish find their way to Canada.
The list goes on and on. And it's about economy:
"I didn't leave Cuba for political reasons, I left for economic reasons"
"An economy run into the ground because of what?"
"Because of the government of Cuba"
"I see now that you're not as dumb as you sound"
The world operates with two distinct flavours of unemployed vagabonds - that is, people with no fixed income who travel and thus lack basic physical, mental and economic security. They are "War Refugees" and "Economic Refugees". The war refugee has been recognized for so long that the term "refugee" is usually perceived as refugees from a war zone specifically.
Economic Refugees have also been around for quite a while. The Great Transatlantic Migration from 1836 to 1916 was greatly an economic escape from Europe to The Promised Land of North America. Similarly, many Africans risk their lives trying to cross over to Europe, because a small chance of surviving, and still have no clue as to what awaits on the other side, is somehow better than the status quo.
More recently, during Iceland's economic crisis beginning 2008, many people got on the ferry to Norway in search for a new life. Greeks have found their way to the United Arab Emirates. Mexicans have been migrating to the USA for a long time. Now, Americans are finding their way to Ecuador. Irish find their way to Canada.
The list goes on and on. And it's about economy:
"I didn't leave Cuba for political reasons, I left for economic reasons"
"An economy run into the ground because of what?"
"Because of the government of Cuba"
"I see now that you're not as dumb as you sound"
While a country's economy greatly affects its people, Hans Rosling has shown some tremendous statistics about the difference between rich and poor within each country as possibly more important than the difference between countries. Local politics play as much a role, if not more, than international politics.
I conclude this article with Hans Rosling's 2007 statistics about poverty:
2012-04-04
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