Iraqi Refugees: The Hidden Crisis

"These refugees wouldn't have existed if we hadn't invaded their country," said Maureen White, the co-chair of the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee. She was referring to the two million Iraqi refugees who fled their country in search for shelter in Syria and Jordan.



Tonight, White gave the Mount Holyoke community a public lecture titled Iraqi Refugees: The Hidden Crisis. She made the point that it was time for the U.S. to accept its obligations toward the war victims of Iraq. White noted that most European countries, with the exception of Germany, Sweden and Denmark, have ignored the intensifying situation with the Iraqi refugees. These countries believe the crisis should be solved by the ones directly responsible for the war in Iraq. That would be the U.K. and the U.S.

In Iraq, the International Rescue Committee works to upgrade water services, renovate schools and improve public health institutions. It has launched humanitarian programs in Syria and Jordan where the majority of Iraqi refugees are now living. The committee has been also supporting organizations that provide "outreach services and aim to bring together and improve relations between the overwhelmed host community and Iraqi refugees."

Although the IRC is fully devoted to mitigate the humanitarian crisis with the Iraqi refugees, White acknowledged that the committee faces many challenges. "Even if you want to help them, they are afraid to come out. It is a tiny number of people that we are reaching," said White.

Role of remittances in the immigrants' lives

First, there are the complicated immigration documents. Then, there is the purchase of the cheapest airfare ticket. Finally comes the fulfillment of the American dream with a pinch of nostalgia. This popular view of the immigrant's life, however, often ignores immigrants' reality in the long run.

The "Shifting Places: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Migration" panel took place last week in Shattuck Hall and discussed the role of remittances in an immigrant's life. The panel participants included Ana Croegaert, visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Luis Jimenez, visiting Assistant Professor of Politics, and Lynda Pickbourn, Ph. D. candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts. Although the three researchers took approaches on migration from different disciplines, they left the audience thinking about the same thing-the power of sending money and ideas back to a home country.

"Money, how to manage it and how to get more of it was a common topic," said Croegaert about the family affairs of the Bosnian immigrants she interviewed. Croegaert graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1997 and has been working on a research project entitled "Balancing Debts: The Bosnia-Chicago Migration Circuit After Yugoslavia." Through her fieldwork interviews with Bosnian immigrants residing in Chicago she learned about the symbolic significance of the "kucha," a Bosnian word for home. She found out that Bosnian immigrants helped their parents maintain the kucha back in their home country. But at the same time, they were also building a new kucha in Chicago where their children would grow. After all, the kucha is, as Croegaert put it, "a site for identity creation." As a result, Bosnian immigrants invested in more than one household by regularly sending remittances home. This is how, Croegaert explains, the immigrants got introduced to the U.S. "debt-driven industry." Often times, this debt and real estate mortgages led to mounting pressures in the immigrants' family affairs. Continue reading

Souvenirs--cultural appropriation or treasured memories?

When I visit a new country, I make a note for myself to enter at least one museum, taste at least one traditional dish and purchase at least one authentic souvenir. After all, what can be a better keeper than an African mask, a traditional wooden handicraft or a tribal bamboo necklace? Many things, actually.

Exotic souvenirs and primitive art have long attracted both tourists and collectors. For some reason, it seems people are attracted to the thought of capturing the authentic and taming it by incorporating it in their modern, 21st-century lifestyles. But rarely do we see this practice as a cultural appropriation.

For most of us the purpose of souvenirs is to evoke memories. Even the meaning of the actual word souvenir in French corresponds to the act of remembering. It is fascinating how a mere look at a physical object that is associated with a given experience can make a person travel back in time and space and relive that moment. "The marvel of souvenir buildings is that the identical miniature sparks in each of us extravagantly different webs of remembrance," writes cognitive scientist Donald Norman in The Design of Everyday Things. But souvenirs in the form of native art are not simply carriers of sentimental value--they are the cultural products of indigenous people. Continue reading