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Category Archives: Migration Blog

Migrant Workers in the Middle East

This website aims to raise awareness on the plight of migrant/expatriate workers in the Middle East.

Expatriate workers are a crucial part of the fabric of our society and economy, where they make up to 80% of the population in some states. While

many work in white-collar jobs or are successful businessmen and highly skilled professionals, the majority of foreigners working in the Gulf are involved in manual labour or work as domestics and drivers.

We all owe these individuals a debt of gratitude. Yet instead these individuals are undervalued, ignored, exploited and denied their most basic human rights. This is modern day slavery.

For this reason, Mideast Youth has created this project to raise awareness and to demand the rights of our fellow human beings.

Their first task is to break the silence surrounding the abuses of workers’ basic human rights. For too long, migrant workers have been an ‘invisible majority’ in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf states. They are rarely discussed in the media and receive little protection from the governments of host countries, many of whom have no clear policies for safeguarding their welfare.

Other than this website being a valuable, reliable, and informative network that brings people who support this cause together, they also aim to effectively lobby the governments to change employment laws and recognize the human rights of expatriate workers throughout the region.

http://www.migrant-rights.org


Quiet crossings, Kinship, and Intimacy in Lebanon and Northeast Syria

ed, Beirut 2010″ src=”https://2012.photoireland.org/mb/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Untitled-Beirut-2010.jpg” alt=”Two migrant workers in Beirut” width=”610″ />

Untitled, Beirut 2010, by George Awde

George Awde, an American-born artist of Lebanese descent, is a photographer and educator who works in the US and Beirut. He received his BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 2004, and in 2009 he received his MFA from Yale University in photography. His work has been exhibited internationally.

In this exhibition, Awde offers viewers painstakingly detailed photographs rich with quiet emotion that implicate the complex relationship between the body and labor migration in Lebanon.

The history of labor migration between Syria and Lebanon reaches back to the 1950s and 1960s, and is redolent with coercive tactics that marginalize laboring bodies within low skill service work. Rather than simply depicting this dichotomy between privileged and laboring classes, attempting to recuperate the nobility of laboring bodies, or relying on an often-exploitative strategy to feature the laboring bodies in the act or setting of their work, Awde’s exhibition highlights their quiet and oft unexceptional pathos. In doing so, he showcases the intimacy shared amongst these men to offer a poetic reflection on community.

http://georgeawde.com/

 


Migration Music Festival in Taiwan

The marriage of music and activism

Migration Music Festival in Taipei features a diverse program based on a multicultural blending of music that occur naturally through the migration and interaction of ethnic groups. The program includes mu

sic, film screenings, workshops and seminars whose foundation is to encourage respect and tolerance among all peoples. The international festival showcases folk and traditional music from diverse cultures where migration and exposure to cultural arts has fostered a rich offspring of honoring both diversity and commonalities.

“Festivals can be used for people to celebrate different ethnic identities in the world and they can also address the mistreatment of minorities in society,” said Jihong – the festival founder. “There are so many different cultures in the world and this is a good way to engage people from various backgrounds.”

“It is this kind of attitude that prompts people to get involved and volunteer in grassroots activities,” she said. And it is the same attitude that prompted Jihong to launch the first Migration Music Festival in 2001.

“Our aim is not just a party with music but to involve people to encourage more educational activities.”

The 2011 Migration Music Festival (MMF) organized lectures, concerts, documentary films, workshops, travelers’ tales and installation art shows at the Taipei Zhongshan Hall, Taipei Artist Village, and Chiayi Performing Arts Center.

Hopefully this year, in autumn, we will repeat the experience of migration music in Taiwan!

http://www.treesmusic.com/festival/2011mmf/index.htm


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