Guest Contributor

Dr. Simona Zavratnik, Sociologist, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana

#StayHome. A privilege not afforded to refugees and migrants on the route

How to maintain the physical distance of two meters or personal hygiene in a refugee camp made for 1,000 people but housing 7,000? What happens when you don’t have a home or your “home” is not compatible with the currently desired manner of living? How does the world we are living in look like if the principle #stayhome is extended beyond dominant society to marginalized social groups? And most importantly, what kinds of solidarity and help characterize the Corona crisis and whether they will be carried on beyond it? These are the issues to which a group of researchers and students devoted the blog #Ostanidoma: Migracije, Begunci in Covid-19 (#StayHome: Migrations, Refugees and Covid-19) – a platform for critical thoughts on social margins which primarily aims to draw attention to the vulnerability of people who cannot afford #lockdownbaking, #lockdownart or #lockdownfun because they simply do not have such an option. Apart from the local Slovenian perspective on those issues, we also analyse the issues of European borders and migrations in an attempt to encompass the global-local conglomeration of issues relating to vulnerable migrants on the route.

Guest Contributor

By Dr. Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi – Center for Migration, Gender, and Justice

“The European way of life is built around solidarity, peace of mind, and security,” – writes Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in her mission statement to Margaritis Shinas, Commission Vice-President for “Protecting Our European Way of Life.” Von der Leyen has assigned Shinas’s office a range of tasks in three main areas: skills, education, and integration; finding common ground on migration; and security union. Linking the protection of “our” European way of life to migration and security prompted backlash from Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and civil society – including myself.

Many MEPs slammed the title of the position as a “dog-whistle” of right-wing extremists and threatened to reject the position as is. Still, Shinas was approved for the office in October 2019. Shinas held that he does not share the view that the title of his office indicates an “us-versus-them culture.” The language and content of von der Leyen’s mission statement however suggests otherwise. 

Blog Editor’s Note

By Barbara Gornik, Science and Research Centre Koper

World Refugee Day has been designated by the United Nations to honour refugees around the world. This day is dedicated to raising awareness of the rights of refugees and the challenges they face as individuals who have been forced to flee their home countries to escape persecution. The issue is more important than it may seem at first sight; from the perspective of understanding the modern societies, it is nothing less than fundamental for it uncovers the underlying values of contemporary political communities, and clearly points to the principles that guide us as a society. The refugee debate is about the relationship we have to individuals as human beings as, to rephrase Arendt (1976), refugees are persons who have at some point in their life lost all other specific relationships – except that they were still human.

Blog Editor’s Note

By Barbara Gornik, Science and Research Centre Koper

Yes, we are. We publish books, whose readership is admittedly limited; we write scientific articles that are mainly read by a small circle of colleagues from the field; and indeed, we present papers at scientific conferences that are usually reserved for insiders in the academic world. We are undeniably dwellers of the ivory towers.  

The symbol of the ivory tower, as is commonly known, often associated with us, academics at universities, who are believed to be disconnected from the rest of the world in pursuing our careers. It is generally assumed that we we live separate from the reality of most people’s lives, in intellectual isolation from the real world. Undoubtedly such an opinion is not entirely wrong. In fact, we have to write numerous peer-reviewed articles to sustain our careers; we often publish in journals that are rarely read by laypeople and we continually use a scientific and highly specialized language that may not be well understood by the general public. The considerable amount of time we devote to particularized scientific production in order to succeed in our careers drives us further into the isolation of ivory towers and thus further away from active participation in life in society.

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