Everyday Erinyes #386

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 2:31 pm Politics

Sep 032023

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

With Labor Day upon us, and after a summer during which we have seen a fair number of strikes, perhaps it’s time to look at history and to realize that what seems like a lot of strikes to us only seems so because for the last forty-plus years conservatives have worked hard to cripple labor, especally labor unions. The NLRB’s new ruling, which will help to disempower union busters. will help turn that around. But we re still a long way from the “Look for theUnion label” days.
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Waves of strikes rippling across the US seem big, but the total number of Americans walking off the job remains historically low

Striking members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in New York City in 1958.
AP Photo

Judith Stepan-Norris, University of California, Irvine and Jasmine Kerrissey, UMass Amherst

More than 323,000 workers – including nurses, actors, screenwriters, hotel cleaners and restaurant servers – walked off their jobs during the first eight months of 2023. Hundreds of thousands of the employees of delivery giant UPS would have gone on strike, too, had they not reached a last-minute agreement. And nearly 150,000 autoworkers may go on a strike of historic proportions in mid-September if the United Autoworkers Union and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – the company that includes Chrysler – don’t agree on a new contract soon.

This crescendo of labor actions follows a relative lull in U.S. strikes and a decline in union membership that began in the 1970s. Today’s strikes may seem unprecedented, especially if you’re under 50. While this wave constitutes a significant change following decades of unions’ losing ground, it’s far from unprecedented.

We’re sociologists who study the history of U.S. labor movements. In our new book, “Union Booms and Busts,” we explore the reasons for swings in the share of working Americans in unions between 1900 and 2015.

We see the rising number of strikes today as a sign that the balance of power between workers and employers, which has been tilted toward employers for nearly a half-century, is beginning to shift.

Workers at a rally carrying strike signs. — Maryam Rouillard puts her fist in the air on Aug. 8, 2023, while taking part in a one-day strike by Los Angeles municipal workers to protest contract negotiations.
Apu Gomes/Getty Images

Millions on strike

The number of U.S. workers who go on strike in a given year varies greatly but generally follows broader trends. After World War II ended, through 1981, between 1 million and 4 million Americans went on strike annually. By 1990, that number had plummeted. In some years, it fell below 100,000.

Workers by that point were clearly on the defensive for several reasons.

One dramatic turning point was the showdown between President Ronald Reagan and the country’s air traffic controllers, which culminated in a 1981 strike by their union – the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. Like many public workers, air traffic controllers did not have the right to strike, but they called one anyway because of safety concerns and other reasons. Reagan depicted the union as disloyal and ordered that all of PATCO’s striking members be fired. The government turned to supervisors and military controllers as their replacements and decertified the union.

That episode sent a strong message to employers that permanently replacing striking workers in certain situations would be tolerated.

There were also many court rulings and new laws that favored big business over labor rights. These included the passage of so-called right-to-work laws that provide union representation to nonunion members in union workplaces – without requiring the payment of union dues. Many conservative states, like South Dakota and Mississippi, have these laws on the books, along with states with more liberal voters – such as Wisconsin.

As union membership plunged from 34.2% of the labor force in 1945 to around 10% in 2010, workers became less likely to go on strike.

Wages kept up with productivity gains when unions were stronger than they are today. Wages increased 91.3% as productivity grew by 96.7% between 1948 and 1973. That changed once union membership began to tumble. Wages stagnated from 1973 to 2013, rising only 9.2% even as productivity grew by 74.4%.

Prime conditions

In general, strikes grow more common when economic conditions change in ways that empower workers. That’s especially true with the tight labor markets and high inflation seen in the U.S. in recent years.

When there are fewer candidates available for every open job and prices are rising, workers become bolder in their demands for higher wages and benefits.

Political and legal factors can play a role, too.

In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal enhanced unions’ ability to organize. During World War II, unions agreed to a no-strike pledge – although some workers continued to go on strike.

The number of U.S. workers who went on strike peaked in 1946, a year after the war ended. Conditions were ripe for labor actions at that point for several reasons. The economy was no longer so dedicated to supplying the military, pro-union New Deal legislation was still intact and wartime strike restrictions were lifted.

In contrast, Reagan’s crushing of the PATCO strike gave employers a green light to permanently replace striking workers in situations in which doing that was legal.

Likewise, as we describe in our book, employers can take many steps to discourage strikes. But labor organizers can sometimes overcome management’s resistance with creative strategies.

New economic equations

Between 1983 and 2022, the share of U.S. workers who belonged to unions fell by half, from 20.1% to 10.1%. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t reverse that decline, but it did change the balance of power between employers and workers in other ways.

The “great resignation,” a surge in the number of workers quitting their jobs during the pandemic, now seems to be over, or at least cooling down. The number of unemployed people for every job opening reached 4.9 in April 2020, plummeted to 0.5 in December 2021, and has remained low ever since.

Meanwhile, many workers have become more dissatisfied with their wages. The strikes by teachers that ramped up in 2018 responded to that frustration. U.S. inflation, which soared to 8% in 2022, has eroded workers’ purchasing power while company profits and economic inequality have continued to soar.

Technological breakthroughs that leave workers behind are also contributing to today’s strikes, as they did in other periods.

We’ve studied the role technology played in the printers’ strikes of the 1890s following the introduction of the linotype machine, which reduced the need for skilled workers, and the longshoremen strike of 1971, which was spurred by a drastic workforce reduction brought about by the introduction of shipping containers to transport cargo.

Those are among countless precedents for what’s happening now with actors and screenwriters. Their strikes hinge on the financial implications of streaming in film and television and artificial intelligence in the production of movies and shows.

Working conditions, including health and safety concerns and time off, have also been at the root of many recent strikes.

Health care workers, for example, are going on strike over safe staffing levels. In 2022, rail workers voted to strike over sick days and time off, they but were blocked from walking off the job by a U.S. Senate vote and President Joe Biden’s signature.

Time and again, when the conditions have been right, U.S. workers have gone on strike and won. Sometimes more strikes have followed, in waves that can transform workers’ lives. But it’s too early to know how big this wave will become.

Judith Stepan-Norris, Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Irvine and Jasmine Kerrissey, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Labor Center, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s not hard to see why Americans who regard life itself as a zero-sum game would be distrustful of unions (and unwilling to pay dues). What’s less easy to see is how so many Americans – citizens of a country founded on the common good – regard life as a zero-sum game. Sure, they’ve been suckered into that belief, and conservatives are certainly doing their best to make it true, because people’s belief in it benefits only the wealthy. But we didnt always think that way. Today’s authors tend to answer that question. However, the bigger question of how do we get back to sanity remains.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #385

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:19 pm Politics

Aug 272023

I feel as though I have been waiting all my life for someone – a scholar – a scientist – to say what this article says. All my life all I have heard from both educated and uneducated people, whether in an artistic or a scientific context, is “anthropomorphism,” as if that were a cuss word. Yes, non-human animals are not human, by definition. But the fact that we have to word it that way itself screams “but humans are animals.” And since we are – and since all living things on this planet are related – why sould we keep denying that so many of them show human traits?
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Memes about animal resistance are everywhere — here’s why you shouldn’t laugh off rebellious orcas and sea otters too quickly

It’s tempting to envision orcas attacking yachts as the forward troops in an animal uprising.
Jackson Roberts/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, University of California, San Diego

Memes galore centered on the “orca revolution” have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast.

One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “Eat the rich,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts.

A surfboard-snatching sea otter in Santa Cruz, California has also claimed the media spotlight. Headlines dub her an “adorable outlaw” “at large.”

black and white image of otter wearing beret next to text 'Accept our existence or expect resistance ... an otter world is possible – Otter 841' — Memes position the otter as a renegade revolutionary, modeled on Ché Guevara.
thesurfingotter via Instagram

Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, “Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible.”

My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude. At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems.

A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialogue. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars’ insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can’t be political actors.

So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance.

Nonhuman animal protest is everywhere

Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I’d answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes.

The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals’ unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals’ tireless revolt.

Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite, scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths.

Until the end, hooked tuna resist, gasping and writhing fiercely on ships’ decks. Hooks, nets and snares would not be necessary if fish allowed themselves to be passively harvested.

If they consented to repeated impregnation, female pigs and cows wouldn’t need to be tethered to “rape racks” to prevent them from struggling to get away.

If they didn’t mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides, dairy cows wouldn’t need to be blinded with hoods so they don’t bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn’t bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects “anthropodenial” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion.

The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals’ actions as purely mechanical, like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals’ will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that “even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control.”

Creaturely escape artists

Despite humans’ colossal efforts to repress them, nonhuman animals still manage to escape from slaughterhouses. They also break out of zoos, circuses, aquatic parks, stables and biomedical laboratories. Tilikum, a captive orca at Sea World, famously killed his trainer – an act at least one marine mammal behaviorist characterized as intentional.

Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves. Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank’s walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death. Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries.

Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals’ yearning for freedom and their aversion to inequity.

As for the marine stars of summer 2023’s memes, fishing gear can entangle and harm orcas. Sea otters were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur. Marine habitats have been degraded by human activities including overfishing, oil spills, plastic, chemical and sonic pollution, and climate change. It’s easy to imagine they might be responding to human actions, including bodily harm and interference with their turf.

What is solidarity with nonhuman animals?

Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals.

Legal scholars support nonhuman animals’ resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness.

Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants, horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices.

Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals’ autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm.

Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity.

Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political “counter-conduct,” a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control.

Creating roadside memorials for nonhuman animals killed by motor vehicles encourages people to see them as beings whose lives and deaths matter, rather than mere “roadkill.”

Political scientists recognize that human and nonhuman animals’ struggles against oppression are intertwined. At different moments, the same strategies leveraged against nonhuman animals have cast segments of the human species as “less than human” in order to exploit them.

The category of the human is ever-shifting and ominously exclusive. I argue that no one is safe as long as there is a classification of “animality.” It confers susceptibility to extravagant forms of violence, legally and ethically condoned.

Otter 841 is the wild sea otter off Santa Cruz, California, who some observers suspect has had it with surfers in her turf.

Might an ‘otter world’ be possible?

I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it’s happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable.

Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles – for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects. Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: “While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it”.

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, Associate Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, this article is a breath of fresh air. Of course the answer to my question above is that we deny human traits in animals so we won’t have to feel guilty about failing to respect them. And that is not only wrong, but shortsighed and stupid. If every non-human animal were to disappear overnight – so would we. For starters, we would starve. And that goes for vegans as much as for omnivores. Without pollinators, much of our fruit woud disappear, including at least some fruits we consider to be vegetables. We might be able to grow some grains – but there would be a lot less to bake without eggs and milk. And that’s assuming the soil could be maintained. Humans would be the only source of manure+, and there’d be no earthworms. Clothing would also suffer. No wool, mohair, cashmere, alpaca, angora, or silk. If the disapperance were to be retroactive, there’d also be no fossil fuels – which pretty much means no synthetic fabrics and of course no plastics. And then there’s language. No one could be insulted as being beastly or waspish. No one would be free as a bird, or fat as a pig. Some colors would never be seen again – red dye, for instance, comes from an insect. And this is but a tiny fraction of what would be lost. Sure, we wouldn’t have malaria or CoViD – but at what a price!

I’m with Isfahani-Hammond here. A world with true freedom may be unimaginable now, but that’s no reason not to try to imagine it, and try to work toward it.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #384

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 3:10 pm Politics

Aug 202023

So today is – or was – depending on when you get here – the first hurricane to land on California in living memory – and when I say living memory, I mean the people who were alive in California at the time of the Spanish conquest. And probably much longer – but we don’t have records on that. As a native of California myself, I didn’t feel that I could ignore this. But it’s an issue much bigger than California – after all, New York didn’t get hurricanes either – until it did. Climate change is bringing tropical storms out of tropical areas nd into the temperate zone. I don’t think it’s wise to wait until the first hurricane hits Alaska to read up on, and discuss, the subject.
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Hurricane Hilary triggers Southern California’s first tropical storm warning ever, with heavy rain and flash flooding forecast

Hurricane Hilary was a powerful Category 4 storm as it headed for Baja California on Aug. 18, 2023.
NOAA NESDIS

Nicholas Grondin, University of Tampa

Hurricane Hilary headed for Mexico’s Baja peninsula on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023, and was forecast to speed into Southern California at or near tropical storm strength on Sunday. For the first time ever, the National Hurricane Center issued a tropical storm warning for large parts of Southern California and warned of a “potentially historic amount of rainfall” and “dangerous to locally catastrophic flooding.”

Hurricane scientist Nick Grondin explains how the storm, with help from El Niño and a heat dome over much of the country, could bring flash flooding, wind damage and mudslides to the U.S. Southwest.

How rare are tropical storms in the Southwest?

California has only had one confirmed tropical storm landfall in the past. It was in September 1939 and called the Long Beach Tropical Storm. It caused about US$2 million dollars in damage in the Los Angeles area – that would be about $44 million today. A hurricane in 1858 came close but didn’t make landfall, though its winds did significant damage to San Diego.

What the Southwest does see fairly regularly are the remnants of tropical cyclones, storms that continue on after a tropical cyclone loses its surface circulation. These remnant storms are more common in the region than people might think.

Just last year, Hurricane Kay took a similar track to the one Hurricane Hilary is on and brought significant rainfall to Southern California and Arizona. Famously, Hurricane Nora in 1997 made landfall in Mexico’s Baja California and kept moving north, bringing tropical storm-force winds to California and widespread flooding that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, particularly to fruit trees and agriculture.

A map shows rainfall forecast across much of Southern California and into Arizona and Nevada. — The National Hurricane Center’s three-day rainfall forecast issued Aug. 19, 2023, shows rainfall totals that are well above what some areas typically receive in a year.
National Hurricane Center

A study led by atmospheric scientist Elizabeth Ritchie in 2011 found that, on average, about 3.1 remnant systems from tropical cyclones affected the U.S. Southwest each year from 1992 to 2005. That’s a short record, but it gives you an idea of the frequency.

Typically, the remnants of tropical cyclones don’t go beyond California, Nevada and Arizona, though it wouldn’t be unprecedented. In this case, forecasters expect the effects to extend far north. The National Hurricane Center on Aug. 18 projected at least a moderate risk of flooding across large parts of Southern California, southern Nevada and far-western Arizona, and a high risk of flooding for regions east of San Diego.

What’s making this storm so unusual?

One influence is the El Niño climate pattern this year, which is showing signs of strengthening in the Pacific. Another, which might be less intuitive, is the heat dome over much of the U.S.

During El Niño, the tropical Pacific is warmer than normal, and both the eastern and central Pacific tend to be more active with storms, as we saw in 2015 and 1997. Generally, hurricanes need at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) to maintain their intensity. Normally, the waters off Southern California are much cooler. But with the high initial intensity of Hurricane Hilary over warm water to the south, and the fact that the storm is moving fast, forecasters think it might be able to survive the cooler water.

The influence of the heat dome is interesting. Meteorology researcher Kimberly Wood published a fantastic thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, describing the large-scale pattern around similar storms that have affected the southwestern United States. A common thread with these storms is the presence of a ridge, or high-pressure system, in the central U.S. When you have a high-pressure system like the heat dome covering much of the country, air is pushed down and warms significantly. Air around this ridge is moving clockwise. Meanwhile, a low-pressure system is over the Pacific Ocean with winds rotating counterclockwise. The result is that these winds are likely to accelerate Hilary northward into California.

Despite the rarity of tropical cyclones reaching California, numerical weather prediction models since the storm’s formation have generally shown Hilary likely to accelerate along the west coast of Baja California and push into Southern California.

What are the risks?

The threat of tropical storm-force winds led the National Hurricane Center to its first-ever tropical storm watch for Southern California on Aug. 18. However, water is almost always the primary concern with tropical storms. In California, that can mean flash flooding from extreme rainfall enhanced by mountains.

When a tropical storm plows up on a mountain, that can lead to more lifting, more condensation aloft and more rainfall than might otherwise be expected. It happened with Hurricane Lane in Hawaii in 2018 and can also happen in other tropical cyclone-prone locations with significant orographic, or mountain, effects, such as the west coast of Mexico.

That can mean dangerous flash flooding from the runoff. It can also have a secondary hazard – mudslides, including in areas recovering from wildfires.

In dry areas, heavy downpours can also trigger flash flooding. Forecasts on Aug. 18 showed Death Valley likely to get about 4 inches of rain over a three-day period from the storm – that’s about twice its average for an entire year. Death Valley National Park warned of flash flooding Aug. 19-22 and closed its visitor centers and campgrounds.

As Hurricane Hilary heads toward landfall in Baja California, forecasters are expecting dangerous flooding, storm surge and wind damage in Mexico before the storm reaches Southern California.

Keep in mind this is still an evolving situation. Forecasts can change, and all it takes is one band of rain setting up in the right spot to cause significant flooding. Those in the path of Hilary should refer to their local weather offices for additional information. This would include local National Weather Service offices in the United States and Servicio Meteorológico Nacional in Mexico.

This article was updated Aug. 19, 2023, with the National Hurricane Center upgrading the tropical storm watch to a tropical storm warning.

Nicholas Grondin, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Tampa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, no matter how far one lives from a coast, it’s time to start thinking about what to do in the event of a hurricane. If you’re separated from the coast by a tall mountain range, you may have a little extra time – but I doubt whether California’s coastal range (which we always belittlingly referred to as “the foothills”) are going to stop a storm. And the Mississippi River would appear to give any hurricane a straight route northwards. Anyone outside the US, I’m not knowledgeable enough to address.

Beau of the Fifth Column, who lives in Florida, has made many a video advising people there, and through the south and even the northeast, how to prepare. They include about everything you would think of and some things that you wouldn’t. He just made his first one for California. It includes tips on how to read the weather maps – excellent advice for a newbie – but I didn’t hear him mention having a plan for your pets in case evacuation becomes necessary. Well, maybe from fires, Californians will be aware of that.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #383

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 4:48 pm Politics

Aug 132023

Originalism. It’s become associated with people like Scalia, and Alito, and the Federalist Society – and, accordingly, with racism, misogyny, and plutocratic capitalism. Not that all the Founders thought that way – and even fewer would have thought that way had it occurred to them to examine that thinking. Just as they didn’t live in ancient Athens, or pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon England – or the Aztec Empire – or the Ottoman Empire – you get the point, I’m sure – they also did not live in the 21st century. What might they have done differently if they had, or if they could have foreseeen it? Might we benefit from the thought experiment of trying to design a more perfect union as if we had no constitution in place and no precedents of any kind, just us and our principles (and technology)? That’s the question the author of this article and his colleagues continue to address.
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Re-imagining democracy for the 21st century, possibly without the trappings of the 18th century

If people were dropped into a new situation tomorrow, how would they choose to govern themselves?
Just_Super/iStock / Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

Bruce Schneier, Harvard Kennedy School

Imagine that we’ve all – all of us, all of society – landed on some alien planet, and we have to form a government: clean slate. We don’t have any legacy systems from the U.S. or any other country. We don’t have any special or unique interests to perturb our thinking.

How would we govern ourselves?

It’s unlikely that we would use the systems we have today. The modern representative democracy was the best form of government that mid-18th-century technology could conceive of. The 21st century is a different place scientifically, technically and socially.

For example, the mid-18th-century democracies were designed under the assumption that both travel and communications were hard. Does it still make sense for all of us living in the same place to organize every few years and choose one of us to go to a big room far away and create laws in our name?

Representative districts are organized around geography, because that’s the only way that made sense 200-plus years ago. But we don’t have to do it that way. We can organize representation by age: one representative for the 31-year-olds, another for the 32-year-olds, and so on. We can organize representation randomly: by birthday, perhaps. We can organize any way we want.

U.S. citizens currently elect people for terms ranging from two to six years. Is 10 years better? Is 10 days better? Again, we have more technology and therefor more options.

Indeed, as a technologist who studies complex systems and their security, I believe the very idea of representative government is a hack to get around the technological limitations of the past. Voting at scale is easier now than it was 200 year ago. Certainly we don’t want to all have to vote on every amendment to every bill, but what’s the optimal balance between votes made in our name and ballot measures that we all vote on?

Rethinking the options

In December 2022, I organized a workshop to discuss these and other questions. I brought together 50 people from around the world: political scientists, economists, law professors, AI experts, activists, government officials, historians, science fiction writers and more. We spent two days talking about these ideas. Several themes emerged from the event.

Misinformation and propaganda were themes, of course – and the inability to engage in rational policy discussions when people can’t agree on the facts.

Another theme was the harms of creating a political system whose primary goals are economic. Given the ability to start over, would anyone create a system of government that optimizes the near-term financial interest of the wealthiest few? Or whose laws benefit corporations at the expense of people?

Another theme was capitalism, and how it is or isn’t intertwined with democracy. And while the modern market economy made a lot of sense in the industrial age, it’s starting to fray in the information age. What comes after capitalism, and how does it affect how we govern ourselves?

An overhead view shows a busy road between buildings. — Artificial intelligence may be good at smoothing traffic flow – but is it good at governing?
Busà Photography, Moment via Wikimedia Commons

A role for artificial intelligence?

Many participants examined the effects of technology, especially artificial intelligence. We looked at whether – and when – we might be comfortable ceding power to an AI. Sometimes it’s easy. I’m happy for an AI to figure out the optimal timing of traffic lights to ensure the smoothest flow of cars through the city. When will we be able to say the same thing about setting interest rates? Or designing tax policies?

How would we feel about an AI device in our pocket that voted in our name, thousands of times per day, based on preferences that it inferred from our actions? If an AI system could determine optimal policy solutions that balanced every voter’s preferences, would it still make sense to have representatives? Maybe we should vote directly for ideas and goals instead, and leave the details to the computers. On the other hand, technological solutionism regularly fails.

Choosing representatives

Scale was another theme. The size of modern governments reflects the technology at the time of their founding. European countries and the early American states are a particular size because that’s what was governable in the 18th and 19th centuries. Larger governments – the U.S. as a whole, the European Union – reflect a world in which travel and communications are easier. The problems we have today are primarily either local, at the scale of cities and towns, or global – even if they are currently regulated at state, regional or national levels. This mismatch is especially acute when we try to tackle global problems. In the future, do we really have a need for political units the size of France or Virginia? Or is it a mixture of scales that we really need, one that moves effectively between the local and the global?

As to other forms of democracy, we discussed one from history and another made possible by today’s technology.

Sortition is a system of choosing political officials randomly to deliberate on a particular issue. We use it today when we pick juries, but both the ancient Greeks and some cities in Renaissance Italy used it to select major political officials. Today, several countries – largely in Europe – are using sortition for some policy decisions. We might randomly choose a few hundred people, representative of the population, to spend a few weeks being briefed by experts and debating the problem – and then decide on environmental regulations, or a budget, or pretty much anything.

Liquid democracy does away with elections altogether. Everyone has a vote, and they can keep the power to cast it themselves or assign it to another person as a proxy. There are no set elections; anyone can reassign their proxy at any time. And there’s no reason to make this assignment all or nothing. Perhaps proxies could specialize: one set of people focused on economic issues, another group on health and a third bunch on national defense. Then regular people could assign their votes to whichever of the proxies most closely matched their views on each individual matter – or step forward with their own views and begin collecting proxy support from other people.

A stone marked with regular indentations. — This item, called a kleroterion, was used to randomly select people for jury service in ancient Athens.
Marsyas via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Who gets a voice?

This all brings up another question: Who gets to participate? And, more generally, whose interests are taken into account? Early democracies were really nothing of the sort: They limited participation by gender, race and land ownership.

We should debate lowering the voting age, but even without voting we recognize that children too young to vote have rights – and, in some cases, so do other species. Should future generations get a “voice,” whatever that means? What about nonhumans or whole ecosystems?

Should everyone get the same voice? Right now in the U.S., the outsize effect of money in politics gives the wealthy disproportionate influence. Should we encode that explicitly? Maybe younger people should get a more powerful vote than everyone else. Or maybe older people should.

Those questions lead to ones about the limits of democracy. All democracies have boundaries limiting what the majority can decide. We all have rights: the things that cannot be taken away from us. We cannot vote to put someone in jail, for example.

But while we can’t vote a particular publication out of existence, we can to some degree regulate speech. In this hypothetical community, what are our rights as individuals? What are the rights of society that supersede those of individuals?

Reducing the risk of failure

Personally, I was most interested in how these systems fail. As a security technologist, I study how complex systems are subverted – hacked, in my parlance – for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. Think tax loopholes, or tricks to avoid government regulation. I want any government system to be resilient in the face of that kind of trickery.

Or, to put it another way, I want the interests of each individual to align with the interests of the group at every level. We’ve never had a system of government with that property before – even equal protection guarantees and First Amendment rights exist in a competitive framework that puts individuals’ interests in opposition to one another. But – in the age of such existential risks as climate and biotechnology and maybe AI – aligning interests is more important than ever.

Our workshop didn’t produce any answers; that wasn’t the point. Our current discourse is filled with suggestions on how to patch our political system. People regularly debate changes to the Electoral College, or the process of creating voting districts, or term limits. But those are incremental changes.

It’s hard to find people who are thinking more radically: looking beyond the horizon for what’s possible eventually. And while true innovation in politics is a lot harder than innovation in technology, especially without a violent revolution forcing change, it’s something that we as a species are going to have to get good at – one way or another.

Bruce Schneier, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, this is really radical – radical in the best, the original, sense – go all the way to the root because everything stems from it. I invite y’all to try it – empty your minds of present politics – how would you design the system? For instance, I know I would not want one suggestion – AI voting for me on a minute-by-minute basis, based on analysis of my actions. Because, for one thing, my actions are not always my best self. If it were going to vote on my behalf based on my principles, I might consider it. But then I’d hve to figure out how I wanted my principles to be determined by the AI. And then there’s the fact that I change my mind when I learn I am wrong. Not everyone does. And there are a number of radical thoughts here – for example, haveing representation, but having it be on a different basis than geography – for example, by birth year. Maybe you have ideas that are completely different from anything mentioned.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #382

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 2:45 pm Politics

Aug 062023

In the last couple of months, I think we were all shocked that the state of Alabama chose to defy the Supreme Court of the United States by redrawing the map of its Congressional Districts to be more, not less, racist. But just because we haven’t noticed it before doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. Each of the parts of this article refers us to a longer article, more dedicated to the events of that particular case and its repercussions. But you can certainly get an idea from the summaries. The third one in particular is noteworthy because it is predictive of where we may be going in the future – especially if we continue to lose bits and pieces of our democracy.
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Alabama is not the first state to defy a Supreme Court ruling: 3 essential reads on why that matters

Police officers patrolling the front of the Supreme Court building.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Howard Manly, The Conversation

In its 5-4 Allen v. Milligan decision on June 8, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state of Alabama to redraw its congressional voting districts and consider race as it made up the new districts. The court had found that the state’s political districts diluted the strength of Black voters by denying them the possibility of electing a second Black member to the state’s congressional delegation.

While the court did not specifically order the state to create a second majority-Black congressional district, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear how he viewed the long history of racist voter suppression in Alabama – and what factors should weigh prominently in the state’s new political map.

“States shouldn’t let race be the primary factor in deciding how to draw boundaries, but it should be a consideration,” Roberts wrote. “The line we have drawn is between consciousness and predominance.”

Alabama state officials submitted the state’s new boundaries by the Republican-controlled state legislature in late July.

But the new districts still include only one in which Black voters could reasonably elect a candidate of their own choosing, not two as voting rights advocates had argued – and as the Supreme Court appeared to endorse.

Over the years, The Conversation U.S. has published numerous stories exploring the consequences of not complying with court rulings and what resistance, including resistance to decisions involving race, does to the legitimacy of America’s legal system. Here are selections from those articles.

1. When the Supreme court loses Americans’ loyalty

As political scientists Joseph Daniel Ura of Texas A&M and Matthew Hall of Notre Dame wrote, the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education revealed “white Americans’ tenuous loyalty” to the authority of the federal judiciary.

In Brown, the court unanimously held that racial segregation in public education violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Rather than recognizing the court’s authoritative interpretation of the Constitution,” Ura and Hall explained, “many white Americans participated in an extended, violent campaign of resistance to the desegregation ruling.”

The result of such resistance is clear. “Eroding legitimacy means that government officials and ordinary people become increasingly unlikely to accept public policies with which they disagree,” they wrote.

2. Oklahoma resists ruling over tribal authority

In June 2020, the Supreme Court decided in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the Muscogee Creek reservation in Oklahoma is Indian Country.

As an expert in federal Indian law at Wayne State University, Kirsten Matoy Carlson wrote that the ruling meant federal criminal laws applied to much of eastern Oklahoma as Indian Country and enabled the federal government – instead of the state of Oklahoma – to prosecute crimes committed by and against American Indians there.

Oklahoma state officials refused to comply and actively resisted implementation of the McGirt decision. They asked the Supreme Court to reverse it over 40 times.

The strategy paid off. The U.S. Supreme Court took up a similar case and in June 2022, decided to roll back some of its 2020 decision.

As Carlson wrote, “Conflicts between state and tribal governments are not new; states have long tried to assert power – often violently – over sovereign tribes.”

3. Court’s power may pose a danger to its legitimacy

Political scientist Richard L. Pacelle Jr. at University of Tennessee, Knoxville has examined how the power and authority of the court have waxed and waned over the centuries.

“That immense power has arguably made the court a leading player in enacting policy in the U.S,” Pacelle wrote. “It may also cause the loss of the court’s legitimacy, which can be defined as popular acceptance of a government, political regime or system of governance.”

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s noteworthy that all the resistance seems to come from people – and parties – who profess their dedication to “law and order” – yet when it comes to actually administering law by applying the strongest legal decisions, suddenly they disappear. Or at least their commitment to “law and order” does. Eventually we who actually do believe in law and order, as well as facts, reason, and logic, are going to have to address this dissonance. Ignoring it is obviously not working.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #381

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:54 pm Politics

Jul 302023

I’m sure I don’t need to preach to anyone here that we need to regulate guns. And I know that is not going to happen in my lifetime – at least, not to the extent it needs to be done. I think it is possible that at some point in the future, when enough children who have lived through seeing their classmates shattered into smithereens by guns reach voting age, that we may get some effective legislation. But that day is not today. In the meantime, we need to find workarounds. This article is about one such workaround which, while nowhere near a solution, may help to provide some mitigation.
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A 1-minute gun safety video helped preteen children be more careful around real guns – new research

A little training helped kids make safer choices when they stumbled across a gun.
M-Production/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Brad Bushman, The Ohio State University and Sophie L. Kjaervik, The Ohio State University

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Children who watched a 1-minute-long gun safety video were more cautious when they found a real handgun hidden in a drawer in our lab compared to children who watched a car safety video, according to our randomized clinical trial published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. We observed this difference even though children saw the gun safety video a week earlier at home and even after they had watched scenes from a violent movie in our lab.

We tested 226 children ages 8 to 12. By the flip of a coin, children watched either a gun safety video or car safety video alone at home. Both safety videos featured The Ohio State University Chief of Police in full uniform. Younger children tend to respect authority figures, especially those in uniform.

Then a week later, pairs of kids – who were friends or siblings, for example – came to our lab at Ohio State to participate in what we told them was a study about what children do for entertainment.

First, the child volunteers watched scenes from a PG-rated violent movie. After 20 minutes, they went to a playroom furnished with toys and games like Lego and checkers. The room also contained a file cabinet with two disabled 9 mm handguns hidden in the bottom drawer. We told the kids they could play with any of the toys and games in the room and then left them alone. A hidden camera videotaped the children’s behavior.

By the end of 20 minutes, 96% of the children had found the guns. Children are naturally curious, and adults often underestimate their ability to find guns hidden in the home.

Kids who saw the gun safety video (compared to the car safety video) were more likely to tell an adult (33.9% of kids vs. 10.6% of kids), less likely to touch a gun (39.3% vs. 67.3%) and held it for less time if they did touch it (42.0 seconds vs. 99.9 seconds). They were also less likely to pull the trigger (8.9% vs. 29.8%), and pulled the trigger fewer times if they did pull it (4.2 vs. 7.2).

Risk factors that raised the likelihood of engaging in unsafe behavior around the guns included being male, watching age-inappropriate PG-13 and R-rated movies, and interest in guns, as reported by parents.

We also identified several protective factors that made children less likely to engage in unsafe behavior around the guns. One was previous exposure to gun safety material in a course or video. Another was having guns in the home, which makes sense because surveys find that parents with guns are more likely to talk to their children about gun safety than parents without guns. Finally, having negative attitudes about guns, like believing they’re not cool or fun, made kids less likely to engage in unsafe behavior in our study.

Why it matters

In 2020 in the U.S., guns killed more people ages 1 through 19 than any other cause, including motor vehicle crashes, drug overdoses and poisoning. And the rate of gun-related deaths among U.S. children has been increasing for about a decade. Gun deaths among U.S. children under 18 increased from 1,732 in 2019 to 2,590 in 2021.

Gun safety videos might be a relatively simple but effective option to help decrease these gun-related deaths and injuries.

What still isn’t known

Participants in this study watched the safety video about a week before they came to our lab. Future longitudinal research is needed to establish how long the protective effects of firearm safety videos might last.

To see if our results apply in other situations, future research should also be conducted in a more naturalistic setting – like the home – and with children of a variety of ages and from geographical locations beyond Ohio.

What other research is being done

Other research on children and gun safety primarily focuses on access to guns and responsible, safe and secure gun storage. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that gun owners store their firearms unloaded, locked up and separate from ammunition.

This article has been updated to clarify the ages of those included in the statistics about gun-related deaths.

Brad Bushman, Professor of Communication, The Ohio State University and Sophie L. Kjaervik, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, even with the education provided by one gun safety video, I find the results to be unnerving. But it does make it clear that kids in general are not receiving gun education of the kind that is needed in order to identify guns irresponsibly stored (and therefore the most likely ro be irresponsibly used.) It’s not a solution. But it could be a helpful workaround.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #380

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 1:59 pm Politics

Jul 232023

Ameican History has probably never been taught as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in our K-12 schools – it certainly has not been done in my lifetime, and I was in K-12 in a fairly rational time and in a fairly rational community (as college towns tend to be.) But no one alive today has ever seen such a travesty of American history as is being taught today in Florida. That is ironic, as you will see in this article; it was South Carolina and specifically Charleston which was in the “slaves” corner of the triangle trade. And some of the slaves received in Charleston escaped, or attempted to escape, to Florida, which then belonged to Spain. But now it is in Charleston where the Internatinal African-American Museum has been founded, one of its goals being to set the record straight.
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International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., pays new respect to the enslaved Africans who landed on its docks

One of the exhibits of notable Black people on display at International African American Museum.
courtesy of v2com/International African American Museum

Bernard Powers, College of Charleston

Before Congress ended the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, the Port of Charleston was the nation’s epicenter of human trafficking.

Almost half of the estimated 400,000 African people imported into what became the United States were brought to that Southern city, and a substantial number took their first steps on American soil at Gadsden’s Wharf on the Cooper River.

That location of once utter degradation is now the hallowed site of the International African American Museum. Pronounced “I Am” and opened in June 2023, the US$120 million project financed by state and local funds and private donations was 25 years in the making and is a memorial to not only those enslaved but also those whose lives as free Black Americans affected U.S. history and society through their fight for full citizenship rights.

As a historian and founding director of the College of Charleston’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, I served as the museum’s interim executive director and know firsthand how difficult the road has been to build a museum focused on African American history.

The museum’s mission is to honor the untold stories of the African American journey and, by virtue of its location and landscape design, pay reverence to the ground on which it sits.

America’s widespread historical illiteracy

Many Americans don’t know much about the nation or its history.

In the 2022 “Nation’s Report Card,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed ongoing deficiencies in eighth grade students’ knowledge of U.S. history and civics.

Only 20% of test-takers scored proficient or above in civics, and, for American history, only 13% achieved proficiency.

The adult population shows similar deficits.

A 2018 Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation survey shockingly revealed only 36% of people who were born in the U.S. knew enough basic American history and government to pass the citizenship test.

And conservative political candidates are working to prevent current students from learning key information about the country’s founding and development by mischaracterizing the teaching of slavery and civil rights as critical race theory.

A small advertisement with large black letters gives the details on the sale of 25 Black people. — An advertisement details the auction sale of 25 enslaved Black people at Ryan’s Mart in Charleston, S.C., on Sept. 25, 1852.
Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Though critical race theory is typically taught in graduate and law schools, at least 36 states had banned or tried to ban lessons on Black history from public K-12 classrooms.

In this highly politicized environment, efforts to restrict how race can be discussed in public schools have led to widespread calls from parents and politicians for the censorship of certain books on race.

These new restrictions have had an impact on public education, according to the National Council for History Education.

A 2022 survey of teachers conducted by the Rand Corp. showed the restrictions “influenced their choice of curriculum materials or instructional practices,” as many “chose to or were directed to omit the use of certain materials” deemed “controversial or potentially offensive.”

South Carolinians’ overlooked national impact

One of the first things visitors see at the museum is an African Ancestors Memorial Garden, which includes a graphic stone relief depicting captive Africans during the Middle Passage.

But the museum is not just a memorial site of enslavement.

Exhibits show how the lives of Black people and their resistance to enslavement helped shape state, national and international affairs.

For example, South Carolina’s 1739 Stono Rebellion, in which fugitive slaves attempted to escape to Spanish Florida, precipitated conflict between Spain and Great Britain.

An image of a black man is shown near docks on a river. — An exhibit detailing African people’s migration around the Atlantic.
courtesy of v2com/International African American Museum

Many Americans know about white abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 attack against the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which led to the Civil War.

But few know that Shields Green, a South Carolina fugitive slave, assisted in the planning and execution of the fateful attack.

Even fewer know of South Carolina’s role in the Civil Rights Movement.

Many know the name Rosa Parks, but it was Charleston’s educator and activist Septima Clark who inspired Parks and led the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern educational and voting rights initiatives.

In fact, King once called Clark “the mother of the movement” and considered her to be a “community teacher, an intuitive fighter for human rights and leader of her unlettered and disillusioned people.”

A monument to freedom

The museum’s educational goals are ambitious.

It is an interdisciplinary history museum, where educators plan to work with teachers and administrators around the world to make sure students in American schools – and everyone who lives in the U.S. today and in the future – learns about South Carolina’s significant role in U.S. history.

In my view, that collaboration will likely be challenging, given the efforts to sanitize the nation’s racial history and teachers’ apprehensions about teaching supposedly controversial subjects.

“This is a site of trauma,” Tonya Matthews, CEO and president of the museum, told CBS News. “But look who’s standing here now. That’s what makes it a site of joy, and triumph.”

Indeed, the International African American museum is, by design, a monument to freedom – and an honest engagement with America’s troubled racial past.

Bernard Powers, Professor of History Emeritus, College of Charleston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, literally the only way we can get even the smallest glimpse of the future is by looking at the (unvarnished) past in order to understand how this happening led to that happening, and so on. Anyone unable to do that will live in delusion. Disney may have built a “Fantasyland,” but DeSantis is the one who is actually living (and forcing Florida’s children to live) in a Fantasyland which is certain to eventually come crashing down around them. Anything you can do to help prevent that happening to the children will be most appreciated. I wouldn’t worry or bother about DeSantis. He’s old enough to know better. He’s welcome to FAFO.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #379

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:05 pm Politics

Jul 162023

I apologize for picking a topic which is presented in a podcast – but with MTG (and other) beginning to call for “deadly force” to “defend out borders,” darn it, it’s important. Let me quickly go over the material here which is being presented. First the podcast itself, which runs 38:37 including credits. then there is the accompanying column, which summarizes the three interviews with the three experts, but does not include all details.

The above is if you listen to the podcast on this page (or at all really.) But I tracked down the precise YouTube link to this particular podcast, and discovered, as I hoped, that it has CC. That means you can watch the captions as you listen, or alternatively you can click the three dots to the right of the “Save” button, select “show transcript” from the short dropdown menu, and quickly load the full transcript. It isn’t perfect – the name “Mend Mariwany” gets transcribed as “ment marijuani,” for instance, and I have no idea what he means by “and Medellin” except that it has to be French to be pronounced that way – but it is more detailed than the summary, by all means. I know, it’s annoying, but there really is a way to get the information, regardless of one’s abilities or preferences.

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Debunking migration myths: the real reasons people move, and why most migration happens in the global south – podcast

People in motion in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Alf Ribeiro/Shutterstock

Avery Anapol and Mend Mariwany

Around the world, borders between countries are getting tougher. Governments are making it more difficult to move, especially for certain groups of vulnerable people. This comes with a message, subtle or not: that people are moving to higher-income countries to take advantage of the welfare system, or the jobs of people already living there.

But evidence shows that much of what we think about migration – particularly those of us in Europe, North America and Australia – is wrong. Political narratives, often replicated in the media, shape the conversation and public attitudes toward migration.

As the researchers we speak to in this episode of The Conversation Weekly tell us, these narratives are not the full picture. Our interviewees explain what migration really looks like around the world, what drives people to uproot their lives and move, and how some countries in Africa are welcoming refugees.

Challenging the narrative

Heaven Crawley, a researcher at UN University Centre for Policy Research based in New York, has been interested in migration since the late 1980s. Then, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia caused what was often referred to as a refugee “crisis” in Europe.

Language like “crisis” has been a part of the discourse on migration for years. But Crawley thinks of this in a particular way: “It’s absolutely fair to say that there is a crisis associated with migration. It’s normally for the people who are actually moving, because they’re often in situations where there are huge inequalities in the right to move.”

Crawley shared that migration, while “intrinsic to our economies and the way we function”, is not actually the norm. Most people don’t migrate, and those who do mostly move within their country of origin.

She explained how, in Europe especially, perceptions of those who do migrate are often clouded by a narrative that people who move, legally, for work are “good” migrants. Conversely, people who move without visa permission or through clandestine means are viewed as “bad” migrants.

In reality, people moving for any reason is usually a force for good for the country they move to and the people they encounter, Crawley suggested. “People are coming to realise that actually, migration can be very positive in terms of their day-to-day lives, who they mix with, who their family are married to.”

When people decide to migrate, whether seeking economic opportunities or to escape violence or persecution, there are a number of factors influencing where they go. Valentina Di Iasio, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK, has researched what makes people choose one country over another.

Di Iasio and her colleague Jackie Wahba wanted to investigate the theory of the “welfare magnet”, that people choose to migrate to countries where the welfare state is more generous.

But looking specifically at asylum seekers, they found that the strongest “pull factor” attracting people to particular countries is social networks. In other words, it’s not about the economy or welfare state, it’s about “having the possibility to rely on a community that is already there and already established”.

Di Iasio also noted that many countries have policies preventing asylum seekers from working when they first arrive. But she said these policies often backfire, both for people arriving, and the host country’s overall economy: “If you ban asylum seekers from employment, this leads people … to become more dependent on public spending in the short term, and this is not good for anyone.”

Migration in the global south

It’s impossible to understand the global picture of migration if we only look at specific routes – for example, from India to the UK, or from Mexico to the US. According to Crawley, about one third of global migration happens within the global north (Europe, North America, Australia and parts of Asia), one third happens within the global south (South America, Africa and parts of Asia), and the remaining third is between the two.

With that in mind, we spoke to Christopher Changwe Nshimbi, a researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, about a region with frequent movement across borders. He studies the relationship between migration, development and regional integration (countries forming economic and trade relationships with each other) in Africa.

Nshimbi said that more open borders are beneficial to regional integration in Africa. They allow people to move where their skills are needed, and to send remittances (money) back home to family, often within the same region.

And yet, some countries are tightening their migration policies. Part of this, Nshimbi explained, is even influenced by attitudes in the global north. For example, development funding from the European Union is often tied to efforts to curb migration from Africa to the EU. Nshimbi said that when migrants are seen as a threat to high-income European countries: “The tendency seems to be to try and influence the movement … of Africans within the African continent.”

But he said this approach is misguided, and that funding development in low-income countries “doesn’t necessarily translate into people stopping migrating”. In some cases, this funding to stop migration has been used in a way that causes instability and violence – and ultimately, more migration.

Looking toward the future

Nshimbi is now researching how the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather patterns, are leading people to migrate. While this will present challenges for governments, Nshimbi said the history of migration on the continent gives him reason to be optimistic.

He said he wonders why European countries talk about refugee “crises” when countries in Africa regularly host many more refugees. Citing the example of Uganda, he said: “There are shining examples on the continent of countries that, though poor, host large numbers of refugees.”

Again referencing Uganda, Nshimbi said that some countries are used to hosting refugees, providing them with land and resources so they can participate in local economies until they move elsewhere: “A poor country, but they take care of them.”

Listen to the full episode of The Conversation Weekly to learn more about migration around the world, what factors drive people to move, and what some countries in Africa are doing to welcome refugees.

This episode was written and produced by Avery Anapol and Mend Mariwany, who is also the executive producer of The Conversation Weekly. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily email here.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

Avery Anapol, Commissioning Editor, Politics + Society and Mend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s sad but not really surprising to learn that virtually no one, anywhere in the world, has a government which unanimously grasps the value which migration provides to society – any society. And it is much easier to piggy-back on people’s perfectly normal fear of the unknown and turn that into bigotry than it is to actually research, learn, and turn that learning into education which produces welcoming attitudes and thereby helps everyone. Helping everyone attracts neither big donor money not votes.

The Furies and I will be back.

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