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Resilience in the Context of Poverty: The Experiences of Low-Income Urban Filipino Parents

December 21, 2016
By 19693

What factors make parents resilient to the effects of poverty in urban Manila? Rosanne Jocson, a 2008–2010 Sylff fellow of Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan when she received her SRA grant, investigates protective factors that buffer the negative effects of poverty and adverse living conditions on low-income urban Filipino mothers and fathers.

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A snapshot from a low-income neighborhood in Metro Manila.

In the Philippines, little systematic research has been done to study the effects of economic strain on parents and children and the factors that buffer its negative effects. This is a cause for concern, given that poor and low-income families constitute more than half of the household population in the Philippines.[1] In Metro Manila, the urban capital, about 1.8 million households are considered poor and another 8.7 million households are low-income.[1] Poor and low-income families confront several stressors in their psychosocial and physical environment, such as residence in makeshift dwellings, inadequate sanitation and drainage, limited access to clean water, overcrowding, and other threats to physical health.[2] In fact, reports show that Metro Manila has the largest number and percentage of children experiencing shelter and water deprivation.[3] Residents in informal settlements also face stigma, housing insecurity, and eviction threats, along with violence and dangers due to crime, drug use, and neighborhood gangs.[2] How do parents and children manage risk and function well despite these difficult conditions? Broadly, my research seeks to identify the factors that contribute to their resilience and positive development.

What Is Resilience?

In physics, resilience is the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape after it has been pulled, stretched, or bent in some form. Applying this characteristic to people, resilience is typically viewed as “toughness,” or the ability to “bounce back” from difficulty. In the field of psychology, resilience is defined as the achievement of relatively positive outcomes despite risk or adversity.[4,5]

An important feature of resilience is that it is a process of overcoming the negative effects of risk exposure and not a static, individual trait.[4, 6] This is important to note because framing resilience as a trait that lies within the person could lead to some form of blame on the individual if it is not achieved. As such, the main question regarding resilience is, “What factors make some people succeed despite experiencing risk or adversity?” These factors are known as “protective factors.”

Broadly speaking, protective factors are resources that buffer the negative effect of adverse conditions on an individual’s functioning.[4,6,7] These could be family-level factors, such as support, cohesion, and quality of communication among family members. They could also be resources outside the family, such as friends, mentors, and other supportive relationships in the neighborhood and community. Finally, they may also include individual-level factors, such as resourcefulness, intelligence, optimism, self-regulation, and spirituality.

Taking these together, resilience is not just an individual achievement. Rather, it is a process that is achieved through protective factors that are derived from people and resources in the individual’s context.

Investigating Resilience among Low-Income Filipino Parents

Given my research interest in poverty in the Philippine context, I used an SRA grant to investigate the individual-, family-, and community-level factors that promote resilience among Filipino parents living in low-income neighborhoods in Manila. I was specifically interested in the roles of religiosity and spirituality, family-oriented values and behaviors, and community cohesion in buffering the effects of poverty-related risks on Filipino mothers and fathers.

The author with her research team at the host institution, Ateneo de Manila University.

My focus on these three factors is based on their cultural relevance in the local context. First, the Philippines has the third largest Catholic population in the world,[8] and as such, religiosity and spirituality, especially beliefs and practices that are rooted in the Catholic faith, are deeply entrenched in Philippine society. Second, Filipinos are often described as having a strong adherence to family-oriented values emphasizing cohesiveness among immediate family members and extended relatives, respect for elders and parental authority, and mutual obligations.[9,10] Third, Filipino family-oriented values extend to people in local communities and neighborhoods, with close neighbors typically treated as extended family.[11]

I visited Manila from January to July 2016 to work on this research project. I was hosted by the Ateneo de Manila University Psychology Department and worked with mentors, colleagues, and students who provided invaluable support throughout the entire research process. I had the pleasure of working with a team of local graduate students in psychology, who assisted me in the translation and adaptation of survey measures, pilot testing, and data collection in three local communities. The research team worked closely with community leaders and coordinators from the recruitment sites to ensure smooth data collection with the 200 parents who participated in this study. This process highlighted the importance of establishing partnerships and strengthening ties with communities and local institutions for the success of a research project.

The research team with the barangay chairman (the highest elected community leader) and other community coordinators of one of the research sites.

The main objectives of my dissertation are to (a) examine the ways in which poverty-related risks influence parents’ psychological well-being and parenting behaviors, (b) identify culturally relevant individual, familial, and community-level protective factors against poverty-related risks, and (c) investigate similarities and differences between Filipino mothers and fathers.

Initial analyses showed, after controlling for family income, that several poverty-related risks were associated with higher levels of psychological distress among mothers and fathers. These include neighborhood disorder, lack of access to water and electricity, food insecurity, and exposure to community violence. Many poverty-related risks were also associated with lower levels of warmth, after controlling for family income. These include lack of neighborhood resources, neighborhood disorder, and lack of access to water.

Further analyses showed that certain individual- and family-level factors had protective relations with parenting behaviors. For example, mothers’ spirituality was associated with higher levels of warmth and parent-adolescent communication quality. Maternal and paternal efficacy was also associated with higher levels of communication quality. Both mothers’ and fathers’ family-oriented behaviors were likewise associated with higher levels of communication quality and monitoring. These initial results highlight the importance of considering contextual risks when studying the impact of economic disadvantage on Filipino families and emphasize the roles of spirituality of mothers, as well as efficacy and family-oriented behaviors of both mothers and fathers, in enhancing their functioning.

Toward a More Global Perspective in Poverty Studies

The SRA grant has been instrumental in my goal to contribute international perspectives to the study of poverty and resilience. The need to adopt a more global perspective in this field is compelling, given the severe underrepresentation of developing countries in psychological research. As the nature and experience of poverty differ widely across contexts, it would be unwarranted to generalize findings derived from Western developed regions to the much larger population of children and families living in low- and middle-income countries. In the Philippines, for example, it is important to identify and highlight assets that are culturally and contextually relevant. These findings could then be incorporated to intervention projects, such as in the design and evaluation of parenting and child development programs for low-income Filipino families. Along with larger-scale efforts toward reducing poverty and inequality, such initiatives could help facilitate healthy family functioning and child development even in disadvantaged contexts.

References

1.Albert, Jose Ramon G. and Martin Joseph M. Raymundo (2015). Why inequality matters in poverty reduction and why the middle class needs policy attention. Philippine Institute for Development Studies Discussion Paper Series, 55, 1–42. Retrieved from http://dirp3.pids.gov.ph/websitecms/CDN/PUBLICATIONS/pidsdps1555.pdf

2.Racelis, Mary and Angela Desiree M. Aguirre (2002). Child rights for urban poor children in child friendly Philippine cities: Views from the community. Environment and Urbanization, 14 (2), 97–113.

3.Philippine Institute for Development Studies (2010). Global study on child poverty and disparities: The case of the Philippines. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Philippines_GlobalStudy(1).pdf

4.Rutter, Michael (2012). Resilience as a dynamic concept. Development and Psychopathology, 24, 335–344.  

5.Luthar, Suniya S., Dante Cicchetti, and Bronwyn Becker, (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543–562.  

6.Masten, Ann S. (2014). Global perspectives on resilience in children and youth. Child Development, 85, 6–20.

7.Sameroff, Arnold, Leslie Morrison Gutman, and Stephen C. Peck (2003). Adaptation among youth facing multiple risks: Prospective research findings. In S.S. Luthar (ed.), Resilience and Vulnerability: Adaptation in the Context of Childhood Adversities (pp. 364–391). New York: Cambridge University Press.

8.Pew Research Center (2011). Table: Christian Population in Numbers by Country. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/table-christian-population-in-numbers-by-country/

9.Alampay, Liane Pena (2014). Parenting in the Philippines. In H. Selin (ed.), Parenting across Cultures: Childrearing, Motherhood and Fatherhood in Non-Western Cultures (pp. 105–121). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

10.Medina, Belen T. G. (2001). The Filipino Family, 2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

11.Nadal, Kevin L. (2004). Pilipino American identity development model. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 32, 45–62.

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Verbs and the History of Bantu Languages Near the Serengeti

November 10, 2016
By 19668

It is said that there are more than 6,000 languages spoken today in the world. The majority of them are so-called minority languages and are endangered. Timothy Roth, a 2014 Sylff fellow of the University of Helsinki, conducted fieldwork in Tanzania to examine four Mara Bantu languages—so-called minority languages—using an SRA award. His article, explaining the findings from his fieldwork, highlights the importance of “minority” languages.

***

Mara Region, Tanzania

The Mara Region of Tanzania is home to over 20 different language varieties in an area the size of the US state of Delaware.^ⅰMara is situated between Lake Victoria to the west and Serengeti National Park to the east, with the nation of Kenya just to the north. As one might assume, the sheer density of languages and dialects in the region is quite remarkable. Although there are several Nilotic languages in the region, most of the varieties belong to the Bantu language family.

The area around Lake Victoria is extremely important for reconstructing the history of the Bantu peoples, specifically concerning the general routes taken across sub-Saharan Africa during what is called the “Bantu migration.” There is consensus among scholars that the Bantu migration took place several thousand years ago from what is now Cameroon.ⁱⁱ What is in dispute among historians (and researchers from other disciplines) is the direction(s) in which the early Bantu communities moved. One major hypothesis places early Bantu communities to the west of Lake Victoria as the result of a primary migration from Cameroon. Some of these early Bantu communities would have soon spread to the east side of the lake. This hypothesis happens to correspond well with the paleoecological and archaeological evidence.ⁱⁱⁱ

Acacia savanna inside Serengeti National Park, about 90 km from Musoma.

Many of the languages in Mara are endangered to varying degrees and are linguistically underdescribed. There are many language endangerment issues here in terms of the need for language documentation, legitimacy, and the dynamic effects that language development and mother-tongue education can have on the communities themselves. There is an innate value to minority languages whereby language and cultural preservation result in a “mental” or “intellectual” wealth that belongs to humanity.^iv

Hale says, “At this point in the history of linguistics, at least, each language offering testimony for linguistic theory brings something important, and heretofore not known or not yet integrated into the theory. In many cases, data from a ‘new’ language forces changes in the developing theory, and in some cases, linguistic diversity sets an entirely new agenda.”^v

Thus, any additional linguistic understanding of the Mara languages could have ramifications not only for Bantu migration hypotheses but also for the advancement of current linguistic theory.

My research concerns four of these Mara Bantu languages: Ikoma, Nata, Isenye, and Ngoreme. These languages are closely related and form a subgroup called Western Serengeti. I am working on multiple languages rather than just one because the density of Bantu languages in the Mara region provides a unique opportunity to compare closely related languages. My research is focused on verbs, specifically the grammatical markers that encode tense, aspect, modality, and evidentiality (TAME). In Bantu languages—and many other languages around the world—differences in pitch can change the meaning of words and can also apply to these grammatical TAME markers; this concept is called “grammatical tone” and is a crucial part of any analysis of the verbal system. I am comparing the function and meaning of the TAME markers in Western Serengeti in order to understand how they developed and what that reveals about the history of these languages. As far as methodology is concerned, a focus on function and meaning (and not just forms) makes it necessary to combine any elicitation with the collection of natural texts.

View of Lake Victoria from Makoko, just outside of Musoma.

For the first phase of my research, I went to Musoma, Tanzania, in October 2014 as a Sylff fellow and collected initial data from each of the languages. This initial data mostly consisted of elicitation from lists of words and sentences but also included audio recordings of stories and conversations. Because the TAME systems were underdescribed, I needed to cast a wide net to see what I would find. (Bantu languages are known for having intricate TAME systems.^vi) The first phase was certainly a success, as I was able to figure out the general pattern of how the present-day TAME systems are organized. Surprisingly, I found that the systems are organized primarily around aspect (perfective versus imperfective) and not tense. This type of organization is more like some of the non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages of West Africa.^vii

These surprising facets of the initial research made the second phase that much more important, as I had many remaining questions as a result. For example:

• If the systems are organized around aspect, how do speakers choose a particular aspect to communicate past, present, or future? Is it merely whether the event is viewed as complete or incomplete?

• Do the semantics of the verbs themselves (lexical aspect) influence the selection of certain grammatical aspects? Are there any restrictions on which verbs can take which grammatical aspects?

• Quite a bit of overlap exists in some of the aspects that cover (what would be) the immediate past and present. Does modality play any role in distinguishing between these?

Ikoma language informants working on text transcription.

With the SRA grant, I traveled again to Tanzania in June 2016 for the second phase of fieldwork. I worked on my research for two weeks at the SIL International Uganda-Tanzania Branch regional headquarters in Musoma. I brought in two mother-tongue speakers per language group as language informants for two to four days each and used Swahili to talk with them about their language(s) and conduct the research. Part of the research included transcription of previous audio data as well as word-for-word translation into Swahili. Additional research elements included further elicitation and recording (for lexical aspect and grammatical tone).

With the research that the SRA grant allowed me to undertake, not only did I gain some answers regarding the first two questions above, but the major finding came in relation to the third question: in three of the languages—Ikoma, Nata, and Isenye—the morpheme -Vká- combines inceptive aspect with what is called witness/non-witness evidentiality. Although not modality per se as initially expected, evidentiality is the “grammatical marking of information source.”^viii In Ikoma, Nata, and Isenye the inceptive is used if the report comes from a witness to the event, while the perfective is used if the report comes from a non-witness to the event. Evidentiality has not been described for many African languages and is definitely an emerging area for research.

In addition, evidentiality has a clear relationship with episodic memory, or “the memory of past events that have been personally experienced and is thus based on sensory information.”^ix

Tense and aspect also have clear relationships with storytelling and, more generally, how events are conceptualized by speakers. Using the cognitive linguistic concept of construal, for instance, tense and aspect can be explored in terms of how speakers perceive themselves and time in relation to events. The construals “ᴛɪᴍᴇ is a ᴘᴀᴛʜ” and “ᴛɪᴍᴇ is a sᴛʀᴇᴀᴍ” form the backbone for these relationships. In a ᴘᴀᴛʜ construal, the speaker views himself as moving while time remains unmoving. In a sᴛʀᴇᴀᴍ construal, however, time is moving and either the speaker or the event are seen as moving along with it.^xRemember that the systems in the Western Serengeti varieties are organized primarily around aspect without nearly as many tense distinctions as other Bantu languages. Aspect “denotes a particular temporal phase of the narrated event as the focal frame for viewing the event.”^xi Think of different aspects in this sense as different video cameras set up around an event with one capturing the beginning, one the end, one the whole thing, and so forth. In Ngoreme, for example, there are at least four ways of communicating the “present tense” as shown immediately below. The underlined portions of the italicized Ngoreme verbs are the parts of the words that make their meanings different.

Ngoreme (Roth fieldnotes 2014, 2016)
a. Progressive
    nkohíka bhaaní
b. Perfective
    mbahíkire c. Imperfective
    mbarahíka
d. Inceptive
    bhaakáhika
“They [the tourists] (arrive, are arriving) [at the top of the mountain].”

If we begin to think about aspect in relation to the many verb forms involved in constructing a narrative, we can see how there are a multitude of choices available for the speakers of these languages to frame the story, and the events within that story. In analyzing narrative discourse, there is some scaffolding available to the speaker with some aspects used for foreground material (sequence of events) and others for background (e.g., flashbacks).^xii But in Western Serengeti these choices can also be affected by formal versus informal register considerations (e.g., Biblical text versus a folktale or story told over lunch).^xiii In Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, Herman says that there is an “inextricable interconnection between narrating and perspective taking” and, further, that “storytelling acts are grounded in the perceptual-conceptual abilities of embodied human minds.”^xiv Why then do speakers make the choices they do, and what does that tell us about the human mind and cognition? I hope that my research may help to widen our understanding of what is possible in terms of cognition and memory, storytelling, and the conceptualization of events.

Not only does my research play a role in these types of questions, but it also has implications across several academic disciplines in addition to linguistics (e.g., history, sociology, and archaeology). Specifically, I hope my investigation will, in coming from a linguistic perspective, build on the research of Jan Bender Shetler who has written two integral sociohistorical works on the ethnic groups in Mara, Telling Our Own Stories and Imagining Serengeti. The former is mostly a collection and analysis of oral histories from several ethnic groups in Mara, including origin stories. The latter focuses on spaces and landscape memory and draws on multidisciplinary evidence (including archaeology) to support the argument that the Western Serengeti peoples have deep historical roots in the Serengeti land itself. Comparative tense/aspect research here should shed further light on where these groups originally came from, how they are related to one another and to other Bantu languages in Tanzania, historical movements, and possible contact with Nilotic and Cushitic peoples. Like fingerprints, the somewhat unique set of similarities and differences in the tense/aspect paradigms may in this way allow for an advancement in our understanding of the sociohistory of these ethnic groups.

Finally, as I mentioned briefly above, my research also has a part to play regarding the innate value of minority languages. Even though minority languages in Tanzania are often treated as lesser, by doing linguistic research in these languages we are able to treat what is inherently valuable as worthy of study and with proper respect. My research and subsequent dissertation allow for additional features of these languages to not only be documented but also be shared with the academic community worldwide. This material includes recorded stories and conversations, transcriptions of those recordings, and their Swahili and English translations. This fits right in with the ethos of the Helsinki Area and Language Studies (HALS) initiative at the University of Helsinki, not to mention the language development work that SIL is doing in the area: developing orthographies, providing literacy programs, translation, and increasing language vitality in the process.

ⁱHill, Dustin, Anna-Lena Lindfors, Louise Nagler, Mark Woodward, and Richard Yalonde. 2007. A sociolinguistic survey of the Bantu languages in Mara Region, Tanzania. Unpublished ms. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: SIL.
ⁱⁱPakendorf, B., K. Bostoen, and C. de Filippo. 2011. Molecular perspectives on the Bantu expansion: A synthesis. Language Dynamics and Change 1: pp. 50–88.
ⁱⁱⁱNurse, Derek. 1999. Towards a Historical Classification of East African Bantu Languages.”In Hombert, Jean-Marie and Larry M. Hyman (eds.), Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, pp. 1–41. Stanford: CSLI. p. 9.
^iv Hale, Ken. 1998. “On endangered languages and the importance of linguistic diversity.” In Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered languages: Current issues and future prospects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
^vIbid. p. 194.
^vi Botne, Robert and Tiffany L. Kershner. 2008. Tense and aspect in cognitive space: On the organization of tense/aspect systems in Bantu languages and beyond. Cognitive Linguistics 19 (2): pp. 145–218. p. 146. The E is left out here because African languages are not known for having evidentiality (see Aikhenvald 2004: p. 291).
^vii Nurse, Derek. 2008. Tense and aspect in Bantu. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 281.
^viii Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 392.
^ixDahl, Ӧsten. 2011. The structure of human memory and tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality (TAME). Abstract. Website: http://www.mpi.nl/events/mpi-colloquium-series/mpi-colloquium-series-2011/osten-dahl-february-15
^xBotne and Kershner 2008: pp. 147–50.
^xiIbid. p. 171.
^xiiNicolle, Steve. 2015. Comparative Study of Eastern Bantu Narrative Texts. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2015_003. Website: http://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/61479. pp. 36ff.
^xiiiIbid. p. 45.
^xiv Herman, David. 2013. Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press. p. 169.

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Training for the Best and Brightest Students on Leadership and Character Building in Rwanda

July 28, 2016
By 19603

Chika Ezeanya, a Sylff fellow from Howard University in the United States, initiated and implemented a two-day “Workshop on Character Building and Preparing Young Rwandans for Leadership towards Societal Advancement” in May 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda, with the support of an SLI grant. The following article is her reflection on the workshop. The successful workshop greatly contributed to nurturing leadership in young Rwandans who will be leaders of the community, the country, and the world in the near future.

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Motivation behind the Workshop

The organizer, Ms. Chika Ezeanya, presents with passion at the workshop on character building and leadership development in Kigali, Rwanda.

On May 25 and 26, 2016, the University of Rwanda College of Business and Economics gathered 30 of its brightest 300-level male and female students (according to GPA) at Nobleza Hotel in Kicukiro for a two-day intensive workshop on leadership and character building for societal advancement. The workshop was supported by a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant.

The motivation behind the workshop is that the burden of national advancement rests on the shoulders of young people below the age of 25, who comprise 67% of Rwanda’s population. The main objective of the leadership training was to introduce young Rwandans with leadership potential to the need for building character toward effective leadership. The overall aim is to prepare these promising young people to become well-developed individuals and citizens and ensure that Rwanda as a nation is able to leverage its human resources to meet its economic growth and social advancement goals at all levels.

What Lacks in Rwanda

Education has been established as a veritable tool for training young people so that they will be equipped to hold leadership positions across sectors as older adults. Not many young Rwandans, however, are able to complete secondary education. According to the World Bank, Rwanda’s secondary school gross enrollment rate stood at 33% in 2013. Even for the few Rwandans who are able to study up to the university level, the curricula are lacking in leadership training modules. Training on leadership therefore needs to be given to selected Western-educated and not-so-educated young people with leadership potential in Rwanda.

Rwandan students at the workshop.

The leadership training endeavored to instruct young Rwandans with leadership potential on the concept of effective leadership and its role in ensuring economic growth and social advancement at all administrative levels. It is hoped that beneficiaries will be more capable of effectively discharging their present duties as youth leaders, in addition to being prepared for higher leadership responsibilities as older adults in Rwanda.

Since the genocide, the government of Rwanda has placed emphasis on preventing a reoccurrence and has instituted several strategies for ensuring economic growth and social cohesion. Much has been achieved through numerous successful education policies, poverty alleviation programs, and agricultural and rural development projects. But these strategies lack adequate programs aimed at training the minds of young Rwandans on the need to imbibe certain character and behavioral traits necessary for effective leadership, which can firmly place the country on the path to economic growth and social advancement.

At the Workshop

Two international facilitators from the United States and Nigeria were present at the workshop to introduce certain concepts to participants and to assist them in individually and collectively thinking and working through the concepts over the course of two days. One local facilitator was also available.

Topics discussed during the workshop included “Character building as a prerequisite for societal advancement” and “Purpose-driven living, values, and principles: establishing a connection,” presented by Olumide Omojuyigbe from Nigeria, and “From self-leadership to leading others” and “Ethics and leadership,” presented by Edozie Esiobu. Meanwhile, Dr. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu presented three courses including “Aligning personal goals with community development goals” and “Trust and economic development—a nexus.”

Also present during the workshop were three representatives from Sylff who traveled all the way from Tokyo, Japan, to show support for the workshop. Mari Suzuki, who is Sylff director for leadership development, gave a speech on the vision of Sylff and the importance of workshops of this nature to the organization. Keita Sugai, a Sylff program officer, gave the closing speech and also presented certificates of participation to all participants. Ms. Aya Oyamada, also a program officer, was at hand to ensure the success of the event. The three representatives also met with Professor Nelson Ijumba, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and Research, who was acting on behalf of the Vice Chancellor Professor Phil Cotton, and with the Principal of the College of Business and Economics, Professor Satya Murty. During the meeting, areas for further collaboration between the University of Rwanda and Sylff were explored.

Feedback from the Participants

The audience participated actively in the question-and-answer segments as well as in the breakout sessions, where they were divided into groups and given questions to tackle related to the topics of the day. In an anonymous questionnaire at the end of the training sessions, student participants indicated their happiness and satisfaction with the workshop, citing the knowledge they had gained, and expressed their hope of forming an association across the University of Rwanda to promote the truths they had learned from the workshop. Most participants noted that they were being trained on character building for the first time ever and stated that they left the training on the final day with a transformed mindset.

A group photo of Mr. Edozie Esiobu, one of the speakers, Mr. Keita Sugai, Program Officer for Leadership Development for the Tokyo Foundation, and all participants, taken after the workshop.

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The Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic

May 16, 2016
By null

Věra Honusková and Martin Faix, Sylff fellows from Charles University in Prague, initiated and implemented a conference titled “Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic” in November 2015 with the support of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) grant. The following article is their reflection on the conference. Having been written in December 2015, it does not take into account events that have transpired since that time. Although the nature of the problem is such that it is greatly affected by ongoing events, the article is nonetheless valuable as it deals with the fundamental aspects of the issue.

* * *

Background

In an unprecedented migration crisis, we are currently facing the largest inflow of people into Europe in many decades. Hundreds of thousands of people are arriving on the shores of Greece and other states, many of whom are trying to reach Germany or Sweden. Europe is acting relatively slowly, and its proposals are not always welcomed by all.

The Czech Republic is neither a state on the external border of the European Union nor a transit or destination country for high numbers of migrants and refugees. The country is small, with only 10 million people, and relatively homogenous. There are approximately 450,000 foreigners in the Czech Republic, including several thousand refugees. The number of international protection (asylum) seekers has been very small thus far—only several hundred people yearly. The numbers are increasing now—still slowly, but the massive influx will impact the country without fail.

Within the EU, the Czech Republic often finds itself in the opposition. The EU, for instance, proposed a plan to “redistribute” migrants and refugees from those countries that have received too many (on the basis of EU asylum laws, mainly Dublin Regulation III) to other countries. The Czech Republic was one of four countries to oppose the plan.

Shifting Attitudes in Czech Society

This negative attitude toward the migrant and refugee issue is not only a matter of the Czech government’s position in the EU. The migrant—and especially refugee—issue has grown into a highly controversial one discussed at all levels of society.

Symptomatic of the debate is a surprising lack of awareness and understanding of the legal underpinnings of the current migrant issue, such as international and European legal obligations of the Czech Republic. This has resulted in resolutely foreigner-unfriendly positions on the issue, which have gained popular support and which, in the long run, have the potential to lead to a xenophobic atmosphere in Czech society. Such tendencies can be seen in the statements of political decision-makers, such as members of government, the office of the president, and parliament, and representatives of political parties. Moreover, they are widely shared by the public.

The language used in the speeches of politicians, in debates in the media, and on social networks has directly corresponded with the rise in xenophobic and anti-democratic sentiments. Heated debates arose in spring 2015, and people marched with model gallows for “traitors”—those who do not oppose refugees—at demonstrations held in June.

Law as a Corrective of the Views of Society

As academics and lawyers, we felt obliged to raise our voice and to speak about the obligations that the Czech Republic holds toward those in need of protection. While the law does not require states to accept all refugees, it still prescribes certain responsibilities toward them.

Furthermore, we live in the cradle of human rights. As such, we must stay human and strive to find solutions to help those in need. Perhaps they should live in countries neighboring their own, or perhaps in Europe, if only temporarily. But we need to talk about all this, about the role of international and European law in the refugee and migrant issue, about the question of a humanitarian approach to the issue, about how the negative attitude of policymakers toward refugees and migrants influences society. We believed that laying out the legal basis for the current debate may help to cultivate the debate, to calm the passions, and to help those in responsible positions to come up with a vision and possible solutions.

We therefore decided to work with the idea of a conference, and we sincerely thank the Tokyo Foundation for believing in our proposal.

The Conference

The conference “The Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic” took place on November 12, 2015, on the premises of the Charles University Faculty of Law. There were more than 150 participants, including those from politics, the media, government ministries, and NGOs, as well as students. Among the speakers at the conference were three international speakers who are well-known specialists on refugee law and are also involved in public debate on the issue. There were guests from the judiciary and from the Office of the Czech Ombudsperson, as well as speakers from academia representing different views.

The program of the conference consisted of three parts. The first part focused on legal and institutional foundations and introduced the legal basis for the debate with an overview of current hot topics. The second was aimed at giving a wider perspective by presenting the philosophical and sociological aspects of the issue and the human rights view. The third part sought possible legal answers to the mass influx of migrants and refugees, attempting to show the perspectives of EU law and the law in the Czech Republic.

The speakers presented many interesting facts, arguments, and possible solutions. They had different opinions, some very much in favor of human rights and others more traditional. But they all presented their views with arguments, and the debate was highly sophisticated. The conference provided a solid basis for understanding the role of law in the current situation, and some possible solutions were also discussed.

Impact of the Project

Several speakers mentioned the possibility of temporary protection. The idea seems very worthy of debate; it shows us that there are more approaches that we could take toward the current mass influx. As was also mentioned in the conference, we need to fight the smugglers, help people stay in countries near their countries of origin, and help solve the situation in their home countries by diplomatic means. But we can also offer homes to refugees, even if temporarily. One of the reasons for xenophobic reactions is the fear that an indefinite number of refugees and migrants will come into Europe and stay there for good. The law has a response to such situations as well, which those who are afraid may find acceptable.

The audience of the conference took active part in the debate. Many people told us or wrote us later that they found the conference to be very meaningful, and we daresay that it fulfilled its aims. Attendees had the opportunity to get an overall legal picture of the issues that are currently being debated. But those who were there are not the only ones to benefit from the conference; video recordings of the proceedings are available on the Prague faculty’s website for streaming.

*The report of the same conference by the Tokyo Foundation is available at https://www.sylff.org/16764.

Věra Honusková received a two-year Sylff fellowship in 2007–8 at Charles University. The fellowship enabled her to conduct research abroad and use it to finish her PhD thesis on the interpretation of the definition of a refugee. She is now a senior lecturer in public international law at the Faculty of Law, Charles University. Her areas of interest include migration, refugee law, and human rights. She is also a member of the Odysseus Network.

Martin Faix received a Sylff fellowship in 2009 at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, while conducting PhD studies in public international law. He is a senior lecturer in public international law at Palacký University in Olomouc and at Charles University. His areas of interest include human rights, international organizations, and use of force.

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Deliberative Polling® as a Means of Improving Public Knowledge

April 27, 2016
By 19648

Otgontuya Dorjkhuu, who received a Sylff fellowship in 2009 at National Academy of Governance, served as a moderator in Mongolia’s first deliberative poll. Drawing on this experience and on the results of deliberative polls conducted in six countries including Mongolia, Otgontuya discusses why the concept of Deliberative Polling® is crucial and how citizen participation plays a key role in public policy.

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Deliberative Polling® is a novel concept for most people, even though experiments have been conducted in many countries around the world, including the United States, Britain, other countries in the European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Ghana. A broad range of issues are discussed in a DP event, such as the economy, education, health, the environment, elections, and political reform. This method of polling is especially suitable for issues about which the public may have little knowledge or information or where the public may have failed to confront the trade-offs applying to public policy. It is a social science experiment and a form of public education in the broadest sense (Center for Deliberative Democracy, December 2003).

Mongolia’s First Deliberative Poll

Mongolia’s first deliberative poll was held on December 12–13, 2015, under the title of “Citizens’ Participation: Tomorrow’s City.”

On December 12–13, 2015, a scientific random sample of residents of Ulaanbaatar¹ gathered for two days of deliberation about major infrastructure projects proposed in the capital city’s master plan. The program consisted of small group discussions and plenary sessions exploring arguments for and against 14 large projects that would require borrowing, during which questions were posed to experts. All of the deliberative events were broadcast live on three television channels in Mongolia.

The 317 individuals who completed the two days of deliberation can be compared in both their attitudes and their demographics with the remaining 1,185 who took the initial survey. No significant differences were seen between the two groups in gender, education, age, employment status, marital status, or income (CDD, January 2016).

The three project proposals that received the highest ratings after deliberation share an environmental focus on clean energy, energy efficiency, and waste disposal. The top proposal, “improved heating for schools and kindergartens,” had a mean rating of 0.94 out of 1. It consisted of upgrading the insulation and technology used in public school heating systems. The runner-up proposal, “protection of Tuul and Selbe rivers,” featured preliminary efforts to improve water flow and rehabilitate the rivers. Although support for the project went down somewhat after deliberation, its rating was still the second highest at 0.93. The rating for the third most popular proposal, “an eco park with two waste recycling facilities,” was largely unchanged after deliberation at 0.92.

These results are consistent with the public’s strong environmental priorities expressed in other questions in the survey (CDD, January 2016). Both before and after deliberation, participants were highly focused on policy goals aimed at reducing air, water, and land pollution. Air pollution is the biggest issue for all citizens of Ulaanbaatar city, especially in winter.

Evaluating the Process

Evaluation is one of the most important aspects of the Deliberative Polling process. For comparison, I selected six countries in different regions (Asia, Africa, and North America) where deliberative polls had been conducted.

Participants in all of these countries rated the process highly. On average, 91.6% approved of “the overall process” in the six selected countries. Evaluations of the small group discussions and plenary sessions were similarly high, with anywhere from 86.7% to 93.0% of participants giving positive responses to all of the questions. An average of 91.3% felt that their group moderator “provided the opportunity for everyone to participate in the discussion,” while 90.3% thought that their group moderator “sometimes tried to influence the group with his or her own views.”

Participants in Mongolia, Britain, California (United States), and Ghana felt that they had learned a lot about people who were very different from them. Mongolian, British, and Ghanaian participants rated the process more highly than those of the other three countries .

Table 1. Evaluations of the Deliberative Polling Process by Country

Evaluations	Mongolia	Japan	South Korea	Britain	California	Ghana
The overall process	94.3%	85.6%	92.2%	99%	89%	90%
Participating in the small group discussions	95.0%	87.4%	94.8%	95%
Meeting and talking to delegates outside of the group discussions	93.4%		79.0%	94%
The large group plenary sessions	95.0%	78.6%	84.2%	89%
My group moderator provided the opportunity for everyone to participate in the discussion.	98.1%	82.4%		90%	91%	95%
The members of my group participated relatively equally in the discussions.	97.5%	61.0%		73%
My group moderator sometimes tried to influence the group with his or her own views.	90.9%	82.8%		95%	93%	90%
I learned a lot about people very different from me—about what they and their lives are like.	95.6%			91%	88%	99%

Notes: Figures in the table are collected from the reports on Deliberative Polling conducted in each country. With regard to the first four items in the list, respondents were asked to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 (where 0 is “a waste of time,” 10 is “extremely valuable,” and 5 is exactly in the middle) how valuable each component was in helping them clarify their positions on the issues. For the latter four items, they were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

Knowledge Gains

The knowledge index can be used as an indicator to explain changes in opinion on policy goals. In most of the cases that I reviewed, the percentage of those who correctly answered questions rose significantly after deliberation. For instance, in the case of Mongolia, correct responses regarding the percentage of households in Ulaanbaatar city that live in apartments increased by 12 points from 47% before deliberation to 59% after (CDD, January 2016).

In Japan, the overall knowledge gains were substantial and statistically significant; an average knowledge gain of 7.4% was seen in the six questions that were asked. Participants who correctly answered what percentage of Japan’s electricity generation comes from nuclear power (about 30%) increased 13.7 points from 47.4% to 61.1% (CDD, September 2012).

In Ghana, only 21.6% of participants knew prior to deliberation that the percentage of the Tamale population with daily access to potable water was about 40%. After deliberation, the percentage rose significantly to 37.6%, an increase of 16 points (CDD and West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab, December 2015).

Among the California participants, correct responses to the eight questions asked increased substantially by 18 points overall (CDD, October 2011). The knowledge index clearly showed relevant and substantial knowledge gains among the participants.

The Moderator’s Role

The members of Group 10, which was moderated by Otgontuya Dorjkhuu (back row far right) with the mayor of Ulaanbaatar city and Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University seated at front row center.

Deliberative Polling is an attempt to use public opinion research in a new, constructive, and nonpolitical manner, and moderators play a key role in the process. They ensure fruitful and civil exchange between participants and let all points of view emerge. With their help and support the participants can find their voices, discover their views, and develop their own opinions (CDD, December 2003). In the Ulaanbaatar event, the 317 deliberators were randomly assigned to 20 small groups led by trained moderators². The moderators helped deliberators go through discussions of all projects according to the agenda presented in the briefing materials. The two-day process alternated between small group discussions and plenary sessions until all 14 projects were discussed.

The project proposals were rated³ on the same scale before and after deliberation. Citizen opinions both before and after indicated that all of the proposals were thought to be desirable.

In Conclusion

Deliberative Polling is a useful approach to increase citizens’ participation and voice in the policy making process. Following the deliberation in Ulaanbaatar, the participants changed their views in many statistically significant ways, had greater knowledge, and together identified specific policy solutions that could help address the country’s priority issues.

As a moderator for Mongolia’s first deliberative poll, I found that participants were very enthusiastic and exchanged their views without reservation. My observations from the event leads me to believe that, given an opportunity like this to participate in discussions on critical issues, people would be willing to express their opinions anytime on any topic. According to reports on Deliberative Polling events that have been conducted in other countries, the overall knowledge gains after deliberation were substantial and statistically significant.

Finally, it can be concluded that Deliberative Polling not only is a form of public consultation but can also serve as a means of improving public knowledge.

References

Center for Deliberative Democracy (December 2003). What is Deliberative Polling®? Retrieved December 13, 2015, from http://cdd.stanford.edu/what-is-deliberative-polling/
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2016). Mongolia's First Deliberative Poll: Initial Findings From "Tomorrow's City."
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2012). First Deliberative Polling in Korea: Issue of Korean Unification, Seoul, South Korea.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (January 2010). Final Report: Power 2010—Countdown to a New Politics.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (October 2011). What's Next California? A California Statewide Deliberative Poll for California's Future.
Ulaanbaatar City. Retrieved December 13, 2015, from ulaanbaatar.mn
Center for Deliberative Democracy and West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab (December 2015). Deliberative Polling in Ghana: First Deliberative Poll in Tamale, Ghana.
National Statistical Office of Mongolia (2015). Statistical Yearbook 2014.
Center for Deliberative Democracy (September 2012). The National Deliberative Poll in Japan, August 4–5, 2012 on Energy and Environmental Policy Options.

¹Ulaanbaatar city had 1,363,000 residents as of 2014 (National Statistical Office of Mongolia, 2015).
²Before the event, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University delivered a day of training to all moderators. Moderators were trained not to give any hint of their own opinions. Their role was simply to facilitate an equal, mutually respectful discussion of the pros and cons of the various proposals.
³The final results provide a ranking of priorities from 0 (extremely undesirable) to 10 (extremely desirable), with 5 being exactly in the middle.

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Anti-immigrant Policies in Arizona and Their Impact on Mexican Families

March 23, 2016
By 19613

As media coverage of the 2016 US presidential election has shown, recent terrorist attacks and the ongoing influx of immigrants into Europe have caused an increase in xenophobia and related phenomena.

Eduardo Torre-Cantalapiedra, a Sylff fellow at El Colegio de México, used an SRA grant to research the impact on Mexican immigrants of the highly controversial anti-immigrant laws passed in Arizona in 2010. Can enforcing immigration laws decrease the number of undocumented immigrants? Should the living conditions of undocumented immigrants be ignored because their stay is illegal? This article reveals the true difficulties they face, as experienced by the immigrants themselves.

* * *

Introduction

In recent years, Arizona has passed some of the harshest anti-immigrant policies in the United States. The Republican Party has adhered strictly to its doctrine of “attrition through enforcement,” and Democrats have done little to stop them. This policy has caused serious damage to Mexican families and to the population in general in that state, (My own estimates based on the American Community Survey suggest that there were approximately 248,000 Mexican households in Arizona in 2010). The doctrine is based on the idea of making everyday life for undocumented migrants so difficult that they will be motivated to go back to their countries of origin. In response to Arizona's anti-immigrant policies and the hostile environment they have generated, Mexican families have developed a set of strategies to make the difficulties more bearable. Some families have also decided to migrate from Arizona to other parts of the United States.

Fieldwork Evidence

Sheriff Joe Arpaio in front of the federal courts in Phoenix.

The fieldwork I carried out in Phoenix, Arizona, has allowed me to make a diagnosis of the situation. I now have a clearer idea of the problems that these anti-immigration policies have caused for Mexican families and for the social environment in Arizona. The main results of my fieldwork will be incorporated into the central chapters of my dissertation. My basic finding is that these state policies have not achieved the goal of making immigrants "without papers" leave the state. However, they have meant the systematic violation of civil rights of the migrant families. The police have been one of the largest sources of abuses and violations. US District Judge G. Murray Snow issued a sweeping decision finding that that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his agency (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office) had relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Latinos during immigration sweeps and traffic stops (ACLU, 2015). Most of the people I interviewed told me they had been stopped while driving simply because of their skin color and physical appearance. Most had been subjected to heavy fines or had had their vehicles confiscated for a month. Several were subjected to deportation proceedings, even though they had never been convicted of any crime.

Undocumented migrant workers have also been pushed into the informal economy and have been forced to take increasingly precarious jobs. Manuel¹ preferred to work as a day laborer rather than work without papers because he was afraid of being accused of identity theft if he used another person’s social security number. José was fired from the restaurant where he worked when the chef started to use the E-Verify system. (Arizona has required that most employers use the E-Verify system to verify the migration status of employees since 2007.) Because of this same system he could not find a new job in another restaurant. He now spends his time cleaning yards and does not earn enough money to support his family. Ramón spent two years unemployed, occasionally working small jobs for friends and acquaintances to get by.

In addition, family members are often afraid to contact the police to report crimes—even when they witness felonies, of which in many cases they are also victims. Marta's car was stolen in front of her house, but she never ventured to report the crime to the police. Manuel, an undocumented immigrant, was too afraid to go to the police to report an attempted rape of his daughter (still a minor) for fear that the police would ask about his immigration status. He was finally able to report the incident to the police with the support of a family member who is a US citizen.

Mural showing a Latina student, Phoenix.

The entire state has been affected by the implementation of the anti-immigrant policies. Underutilization of labor, strengthening of racist and xenophobic groups, the breakdown of the social fabric and severe economic losses are just some of the major problems that these policies against undocumented immigrants have caused.

Young people have also been affected by anti-immigrant policies. One law decided that undocumented immigrants must pay out-of-state tuition for their education. Some of the students I interviewed told me they were finding it very difficult to continue their studies because the tuition had increased by 300%. Others had already given up their studies. Only when President Barack Obama approved a new policy that deferred action for certain undocumented young people who came to the United States as children did some of them decide to continue their studies.

Protest against anti-immigrant policies, Phoenix, April 23th 2015

Protest against anti-immigrant policies, Phoenix, April 23, 2015.

My study also documented the adaptation and mobility strategies that families have developed to deal with the anti-immigrant policies in Arizona. These strategies have included staying away form public spaces to avoid the risk of deportation, using members with some kind of legal status to attain certain benefits, seeking measures that allow them to circumvent the prohibitions on driving and working in the state, and others. María was so afraid of being deported and separated from her family that for many months she refused to leave her house except when it was absolutely necessary. Some families decided to emigrate from Arizona to other part of the United States. Some of those who had emigrated told me that enforcement of immigration laws by police in other states is different: they do not stop your car in the street simply because you look Latino. Interstate migration of foreign-born migrants is therefore not motivated only by social networks and economic issues. The varying immigration policies of different states provide another powerful incentive for some families to move.

New Policies

To reverse these adverse effects, changes on two levels are necessary. The first step must be to get rid of all laws based on the doctrine of “attrition through enforcement.” The economic boycott, international and domestic pressure, protests against the unconstitutionality of these laws, and other measures, have been partially effective in fighting these laws in the medium and long term. While many local migration initiatives have been repealed, many remain in force today and continue to damage Mexican migrant families in the state. Second, the continuing daily struggle of families against the anti-immigrant policies is essential. Although this struggle stands a good chance of reversing the current policy framework in the long run, it is also needed as a means of empowering migrant families through information about their rights and participation in social movements and organizations that fight for the civil rights of migrants, regardless of their legal status in the United States. We must not forget that “undocumented” status does not mean that migrants have no rights according to United States laws. Among other constitutional rights, for example, an immigrant has the right to due process when he or she is arrested. An immigrant can be indemnified if he or she is a victim of a crime. Undocumented migrant children (K-12 or less) have the right to attend school according to the Supreme Court.

The logo of the Comités de defensa del Barrio.

During my stay in Phoenix I had the opportunity to participate in activities organized by the Barrio Defense Committees (Comités de defensa del Barrio, or CDB for short). I was able to observe the important work being done by this and similar organizations in mitigating the adverse effects of the policies against migrants "without papers" and their families. CDBs are a genuinely grassroots movement that emerged in response to the attack against resident Mexican families represented by the 2010 Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, or Arizona SB 1070. The ongoing hard work of the CDB has allowed many Mexican families to move out of a position of isolated defense to take actions in defense of their rights along with other family units. As its members argue: Unity is strength ("la unión hace la fuerza").

In short, I am hopeful that the fieldwork I conducted with the support of Sylff Research Abroad will produce valuable information for policymaking in both Mexico and Arizona that will serve to defend the civil rights of Mexican families in Arizona and improve their living conditions, and to repair the broken social fabric by allowing closer links between Mexican and American families who live in the state.

References:
American Civil Liberties Union (March, 2015). Ortega Melendres, et al. V. Arpaio, et al. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/cases/ortega-melendres-et-al-v-arpaio-et-al

¹Names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the people interviewed.

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Helping to Develop Young Leaders in Community Resource Management

March 16, 2016
By null

Four Sylff fellows from Chiang Mai University, Thailand—Pradhana Chantaruphan, Olarn Ongla, Saiwimon Worapan, and Alongkorn Jitnuku—jointly organized a field study to raise students’ awareness of environmental sustainability through community resource management. This coauthored article describes highlights of the field study and explains how collaboration among Sylff fellows helped to facilitate students’ learning.

* * *

On April 4-5, 2015, four Sylff fellows from Thailand organized an interactive activity in Pa Ngue village, Tanuer sub-district, Mae On district, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand.“Potential development for young leadership through participation in community resource management” was a joint project organized by Chiang Mai University and Silpakorn University. The idea of the project was to encourage students to become more aware of their potential as effective agents of change in society. Learning through real experiences helps students to understand their real potentiality.

Chiang Mai University collaborates with Silpakorn University in Bangkok to provide opportunities for students from both universities to work with villagers as a part of their efforts in community engagement. For students, community engagement serves as a real-world learning opportunity. Besides participating in activities related to their own areas of study, students must serve the needs of the community to help develop wider society and themselves as well. Becoming involved with the community in this way provides useful practice, training, and learning for students and encourages them to develop into active, responsible citizens.

After the university’s Sylff fellows group meeting in 2014, the four authors of this article felt strongly that there was a need for greater community engagement. It was this shared belief that made us decide to undertake a project together. Through our discussion of the strengths of our group, we thought of tapping into the community networks we have established through our various research and projects. We divided our work into several categories. Pradhana Chantaruphantook responsibility for coordination between the two universities as a faculty member of Silpakorn University, while the fieldwork sites were selected by Olarn Ongla based on his experience of research in this village.

Site Selection: An Important Step

The story of Pa Ngue village illustrates how the process of forest management takes place in the community in response to external pressures that can include state policies and economic conditions. One thing that is peculiar to this village is the coexistence of different ethnic groups in the same area. These ethnic groups are the Karen and the so-called native or indigenous people. These consist of two groups: one group is a mixture of indigenous locals and Tai-lu from Mae-Sa-Puad village; the other is made up of indigenous people from the On-Klang sub-district. Together these ethnic groups search for ways to protect their local resources and develop strategies to deal with the state and bargain for autonomy. This is one of the things that make the village so attractive as a learning area for students. The students can see examples of conflict management among stakeholders and witness the development of ideas consistent with the historical and social circumstances. The Sylff fellows selected this area for the project based on these merits.

Project Design

Three activities over two days provided students with opportunities to work with villagers. On the first day, students and villagers cooperated with pupils from the local school to construct a check dam. On the second day, students surveyed the area where the community lives and shared with villagers in a discussion on resource management, leading to an exchange of ideas between villagers and students. This project was devoted to improving the environmental sustainability of the community and to promoting leadership among students at the same time.

Day 1: Check Dam Construction by Students, Villagers, and Local Pupils

The schedule started with an introduction of participants and the community. Villagers told participants about their history and spoke about community development and the management of community resources. Later in the afternoon, students got to put their skills into practice in a real-world setting, working alongside villagers and local students on a resource management project by constructing the dam.

Check dams are made of a variety of materials. Because they are typically used as temporary structures, they are often made of cheap and readily accessible materials, such as rocks, gravel, logs, hay bales, and sandbags. Villagers usually cannot receive financial assistance from the government to construct check dams. They have to depend on their own resources, including manpower. Check dams are also limited in duration. These factors make students’ help relevant to the need of the villagers.

Check dams are a highly effective way of reducing flow velocities in channels and waterways. Compared to larger dams, check dams are faster to build and more cost-effective, being smaller in scope. This means that building a check dam will not typically displace people or communities. Nor will it destroy natural resources if proper care is taken in designing the dam. Moreover, the dams themselves are simple to construct and do not rely on advanced technologies. This means they can be easily used in more rural and less “developed” communities.

After dinner students shared their thoughts on the work of the community, their feelings on working alongside the villagers, and their ideas about young leadership.

Day 2 : Surveying the Community Area

The first activities got underway early in the morning, with the students separated into two groups. The first group carried out a survey on villagers’ working lives. Most of the villagers are farmers, producing corn on contract for the Thai Royal Project. Farming on contract with the Thai Royal Project brings many benefits, including useful information, access to raw materials, and experts who can give farmers advice. The contracts also guarantee farmers an income, giving them security and stability. This binds the village economy tightly with local resources, and brought home to us how important it is for the villagers to be able to manage the areas they use and share resources among the community in a sustainable way.

The second group conducted a survey on water management. The geography of the village is mountainous, and ensuring a steady supply of water is no easy task. Villagers have constructed a water supply system by themselves.

The group walked into the forest to survey the headwater. The villagers told legends about ancestor worship and the animist beliefs that the members of community act out in rituals that pay respect to the local spirits. Nature is therefore something that protects the villagers and their way of life. These traditional beliefs also help to encourage the community to use the water and other resources of the forest with respect. Animists beliefs make it less likely that people will take advantage of one other and help to instill a spirit of coexistence in the community.

Group Discussions

After the students had explored the community, they compiled the data and knowledge they had gained from the course. They shared with friends in the group and passed on these findings to other friends in the separate group who carried out their surveys in a different area. At the same time they exchanged ideas with the villagers about activities in the area and doubts arising from their experiences in the field. In this way, the students were able to learn from one another, and this helped to evoke an atmosphere of enthusiasm. Through the course, participating students came to understand that community resources need to be appropriately managed and that activities of all kinds can act as a bridge to new knowledge, whether the activity involves learning from storytelling, taking part in the everyday activities of villagers, learning about resource management strategies, or taking part in discussions after the activities are over.

Significance and Impact of the Project

(1) Effects on the Community

The community will be strengthened in the management of resources already available. Participation in this activity helped to generate confidence and a sense of pride that will empower the community to put their tacit knowledge into use. The project also served as a reminder that the knowledge of the community has been handed down from generation to generation. Owing to the university’s support, helping communities in this way earns them greater bargaining power with the state. By strengthening academic networks, it also helps to give confidence to youth leadership in the village.

(2) Effects on Sylff Fellows

This project had a positive impact for the fellows from its very outset, involving as it did collaboration between fellows from three disciplines (anthropology, economics, and political science). The project served as a useful reminder of the importance of working with local communities in order to understand the social and cultural phenomena that led us to pursue these careers in the first place. In addition, a joint project of this nature reflects the interdisciplinary work and exchange of ideas between fellows with knowledge in three different fields, each with something to contribute to the project. Political science is relevant to the idea of resource management and the community’s bargaining power vis-à-vis the state, while anthropology covers concepts of culture and beliefs in collective consciousness and community benefit, and economics helps to understand the wealth accruing to the community through resource management. All of this has helped to expand fellows’ understanding and is an example of interdisciplinary work.

(3) Effects on Participating Students

Involving students from different universities and different fields, the project successfully enabled the exchange of knowledge between disciplines and interdisciplinary work among fellows. The project also raised students’ awareness of several important issues, including the struggle between state control and community autonomy and the efforts being made to protect shared resources despite ethnic differences. Witnessing the way that events unfold within the community was in itself a lesson in diversity. By exchanging this newly acquired knowledge with fellow students laid down a basis for applying these insights to other social phenomenon. It is to be hoped that this taste of hands-on learning outside the classroom will help to foster an open and constructive mindset among the young generation.

Pradhana ChantaruphanReceived a Sylff Fellowship in 2013 at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, while conducting her PhD studies in anthropology. She is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Archeology, at Silpakorn University in Bangkok.

Olarn OnglaReceived a Sylff Fellowship in 2013.Completed a master’s degree in Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration, Chiang Mai University.

Sasiwimon WorapanReceived a Sylff Fellowship in 2013. A master’s student in the economics program at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Areas of interest include business economics, international economics, and the uses of economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze problems. Her thesis is titled “Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth in ASEAN Countries.”

Alongkorn JitnukulReceived a Sylff Fellowship for the 2013-15 period. An MA student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.

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Internet Policymaking and the Case of Brazil’s Marco Civil

March 7, 2016
By 19622

Guy Hoskins, a Sylff fellow at York University, traveled to Brazil to study the implications of a new civil law on Internet freedoms with huge implications for privacy, freedom of expression, and network neutrality for Internet users around the world.

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When the revelations made by former US government contractor Edward Snowden emerged regarding his country’s practice of dragnet surveillance of global digital communications, the repercussions were manifold. Some of the consequences, such as diplomatic tensions and a heightened public awareness of data privacy issues, could have been foreseen. Others, however, were much less predictable. One such outlier was the passing into law in Brazil of a bill called the Marco Civil da Internet (the Civil Framework for the Internet) enshrining a substantive set of civil rights for the country’s more than 100 million Internet users, built upon the three pillars of privacy, freedom of expression, and network neutrality. Having been subject to abandoned votes on 29 separate occasions in the country’s lower chamber, the success of this partially crowdsourced, multi-stakeholder policy document was far from assured. The public and executive outrage generated by news of the National Security Agency’s practice of intercepting sensitive Brazilian communications proved to be the tipping point. President Dilma Rousseff signed the bill into law on April 24, 2014.¹

Within a global media environment marked by almost daily stories of government infiltration of digital communications, threats against the neutrality of the Internet by telecommunications companies seeking to impose a tiered system, and state and corporate suffocation of freedom of expression online, it is little wonder that a bill of online civil rights in one of the most populous countries on earth should attract the interest of the world. That story, at least for English-speaking audiences, has yet to be fully told. It is the purpose of my doctoral dissertation to address that shortfall. By undertaking a detailed analysis of the development of this world-first bill of rights for Internet users, my hope is that a viable framework can be developed for other countries to follow and to safeguard an Internet legislated according to civic logic. It is not enough to hold aloft the bill itself and point only to the provisions contained therein. In isolation they cannot provide a cogent and replicable model for the rest of the world if the means of their resolution are not properly chronicled and understood.

With an undergraduate degree in Latin American studies, fluency in Portuguese, and experience living and working in the region, I had always attempted to integrate developments in Latin America into my graduate research in communication studies. So when I first read reports about the Marco Civil at the outset of my doctoral studies, it was immediately clear that this would make an excellent object of study. I first traveled to Brazil in March 2014 on a preliminary fact-finding mission while the Marco Civil was still in development. I had the immense good fortune not only to establish a network of contacts among civil society organizations that were promoting the bill but also to be granted access to the Brazilian Congress on the evening of March 25, 2014, to bear witness to the historic successful vote.

Buoyed by these experiences, and with financial assistance from SRA, I planned a period of formal field research in Brazil to coincide with the one-year anniversary of that first vote in March 2015. My primary objective was to interview some of the main protagonists who had participated in the open contribution phase of the bill’s development initiated by the Ministry of Justice. These people represented some of the major stakeholders in the Brazilian Internet, including telecommunications corporations, government bureaucrats, members of Congress, civil society leaders, traditional media companies, and web service companies. In gathering firsthand testimony from these individuals, I sought to discover how different groups of social actors were guided by particular logics with regard to the future direction of the Internet—profit, state security, surveillance, civic engagement, innovation, etc.—and how these were tied to the social values of privacy, freedom of expression, and economic freedom that ultimately form the technical and legal operating environment of a national Internet.

Network neutrality has received much media and public attention in recent months as the subject of major regulatory decisions in the United States, India, and the European Union, as well as of course in Brazil. It was fascinating to observe how what might appear at first glance to be a rather arcane technical premise—that all the data that flows on the Internet must be treated equally without any attempt by network administrators to allow data from certain sources to travel faster than any other—was articulated and interpreted by the different stakeholders in the Marco Civil case.

Traditional media companies, dominated in Brazil by the ubiquitous Globo Group, saw net neutrality as a means to ensure mass access to their commercial content. Web companies interpreted it as a safeguard for innovative new online services. Telecommunications companies opposed it on the grounds that it would stifle the potential for new business models. Civil society organizations generally viewed the legislation as essential to both consumers’ rights to digital services and citizens’ rights to freedom of knowledge. Identifying and charting these diverse interpretations of one element of the technical architecture of the Internet can allow us to better understand why these details are so fiercely contested and to appreciate the deeply social process that underpins these apparently neutral technological considerations.

Another essential facet of the Marco Civil process that I was able to appreciate much better after speaking with my interviewees was the way in which the object of the policymaking process—the Internet itself—had influenced how the various groups were able to “operationalize” their agendas or logics. The Brazilian government’s use of an online consultation forum opened the bill to large-scale public scrutiny and input. This made the legislative project much more democratically legitimate—a fact that helped considerably to overcome partisan opposition in Congress. Civil society groups took advantage of the same mechanism to raise public awareness of the substantive issues under discussion while the telecommunications companies, with no little irony, were the group most disadvantaged by the transparency and ready coalition-building facilitated by the Internet and continued to pursue their traditional tactics of backroom lobbying rather than exposing rational arguments to the oxygen of (online) publicity.

I am now in the early phases of data analysis as I translate, transcribe, and codify the hours of interview footage I gathered during my fieldwork in Brazil. As I work, I seek the insights that will allow me to portray as accurately as possible how, in spite of a concentration of forces applying logics of profit and control online, “another Internet is possible” (Franklin, 2013²)—one premised on safeguarding freedom of expression, data privacy, and network neutrality.

¹http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25467-brazils-internet-gets-groundbreaking-bill-of-rights.html
²Franklin, M.I. (2013) Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Chinese Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

February 25, 2016
By 19675

Ágnes Szunomár, a 2015 Sylff fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, summarizes her research on the recent trend of Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe. In her article, she describes how it differs from investments by other Asian and European countries.

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Introduction

Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is one of the most spectacular developments in recent international economics in terms of its rapid growth, geographical range, and takeovers of established Western brands. Chinese firms mainly invest in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where they search for markets and natural resources. They have also been active in the developed economies of Western Europe and the United States, however, that offer markets for Chinese products and assets that Chinese firms lack, such as advanced technologies, managerial knowledge, and distribution networks. Chinese firms are also increasingly investing in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). These investments are quite a new phenomenon and still constitute a small share of China’s total foreign direct investment (FDI) in Europe (10%), but since 2006 we have seen a growing influx of Chinese investments into the region, which is expected to increase further in the future (see the figure below).

The aim of my research was to analyse the motivations and location determinants of Chinese FDI in the largest recipient countries within the CEECs, with a special focus on the role and impact of host country macroeconomic and institutional factors.

Background

China’s rise is often compared to the postwar “Asian Miracle” of its neighbors. An analysis of the internationalization experiences of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese companies reveals several common features as well as some differences. One of the main common characteristics shared by all three is the creation and support of the so-called national champions, that is, domestically based companies that have become leading competitors in the global market. In fact, during their developmental period, both the Japanese and Korean governments gave strong state financial support to their companies in order to protect and promote them as well as to strengthen them for international competition. China has followed this example in subsidizing domestic industries and supporting their overseas activities, for example in the form of government funding for OFDI.

Although the CEECs differ in many respects, they do have some features in common as possible locations for East Asian investors. Their economies have been in the process of catching up over the last decades, defined mainly by European powers. FDI has played a key role in their restructuring. Investment from East Asian countries in the CEECs began as early as the 1990s (with a Japanese Suzuki factory in Hungary).

In the past decade most of these countries became increasingly interested in boosting trade and attracting investments from East Asian economies. The global economic and financial crisis of 2008 intensified these ambitions. The largest recipient countries of East Asian investments within the CEECs are Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Around 90% of foreign investments in the four countries are from Europe, with an average of only 7.4% of FDI from other countries, mainly from the USA, South Korea, Japan, and China.

Utility of the Research

Typically, the international literature examines the motivations of Chinese OFDI on a global basis, and most previous studies have focused on China's growing investments in the developing world. Studies dealing with the characteristics and motivations of Chinese FDI in Europe rarely deal with the Central and Eastern European region. Although significant research has been done on FDI flows to the CEEC region, most of these studies do not include Chinese investments. The literature is thus incomplete, and detailed description and analysis of this issue is lacking. The primary aim of this research was therefore to complement the literature.

Besides complementing the literature, my results also have an inherent message for CEEC corporate decision makers and policy makers. For the CEECs, the Chinese relationship is increasingly a priority, especially since the economic and financial crisis of 2008. Most countries in the region see a closer relationship with emerging economies such as China as a promising way of recovering from the recession. The further development of corporate or government strategies in this regard may be supported by the results of this research.

Methodology

Given the broad concept and geographical scope of Central and Eastern Europe, instead of focusing on the relations of all the region’s countries with the main East Asian investors, the research concentrates on a fair sample of CEEC countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. These countries were selected in consideration of their size, reflecting their proximity, growing business ties, and geographic location, as well as their political and economic relations with China. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia are the most developed and most important players in the CEEC region and are members of the Visegrad Group as well as the EU and the Schengen Area.

At the beginning of the research I reviewed theories and literature on FDI location determinants with a special focus on FDI determinants in the CEECs. The next step was to analyze the changing patterns and motivations of Chinese and other East Asian OFDI as I tried to find similarities and differences between the characteristics and motivations of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean FDI in the CEECs. In addition, I provided a detailed description of the impact of both macroeconomic and institutional factors based on case studies and interviews with East Asian firms established in the CEECs.

To continue this research in the near future I also prepared an online opinion survey on East Asian companies' investment patterns, which will be sent out to several Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean companies operating in the CEECs to collect more information on their activities, motivations, and strategies.

Research Results

My investigation into the motivations of Chinese OFDI in the CEECs shows that Chinese investors mostly search for markets (market-seeking investment). Investors are attracted by the relatively low labor costs, skilled workforce, and market potential. EU membership allows Chinese investors to avoid trade barriers, and the countries serve as an assembly base due to the relatively low labor costs (efficiency-seeking investment). However, in parallel with the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions in the region, strategic asset-seeking motives have become more important for Chinese companies in recent years. Chinese investments are also motivated by the search for brands, new technologies, or market niches that they can fill in European markets. For example, in early 2012 Liugong Machinerys acquired Huta Stalowa Wola’s construction equipment division and its distribution subsidiary, Dressta. Secondly, in 2013 China’s Tri Ring Group Corporation acquired Polish Fabryka Łożysk Tocznych (the biggest Chinese investment in Poland so far), a producer of bearings for the automotive sector.

Chinese investment has flowed mostly into manufacturing (assembly), but over time services has attracted more and more investment as well. For example Hungary and Poland are home to branches of the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as well as offices of some of the largest law offices in China (Yingke Law Firm and Dacheng Law Offices). Regarding the Chinese entry mode, there are examples of greenfield or quasi-greenfield investments (Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo), as well as mergers and acquisitions (Wanhua) and joint ventures (Orient Solar, BBCA).

Having examined the CEEC-East Asian economic ties, my conclusion is that while Japan and South Korea previously had larger roles, China has increasingly come to the fore in recent years. Analyzing the difference in motivations before and after the global economic and financial crisis suggests that although the crisis did not have a direct impact on East Asian investments in the CEECs, there was an indirect impact since it was in the aftermath of the crisis that the CEECs started to search for new opportunities to help them recover from the recession. For example, Hungary's “Opening to the East” policy was initiated after (and partly as a result of) the crisis, but the crisis also made Poland look eastward. China took these opportunities and has increased sectoral representation of Chinese firms in the CEECs in recent years.

The results of my research suggest that the characteristics, motivations, and location determinants of Chinese investments in the CEECs differ somewhat from Western as well as other East Asian investors’ motivations. While macroeconomic factors, such as labour costs, market size, and corporate taxes, had and continue to have a decisive role in selecting FDI locations for investors from other countries, Chinese firms seem to attach greater importance to institutional factors. Country-level institutional factors that impact Chinese companies’ location choice within the CEECs seem to be the size of the ethnic Chinese population, as well as investment, privatization and public procurement opportunities, but also good political relations between the host country and China. One example is Hisense’s explanation of the decision to invest in Hungary. Besides traditional economic factors, this decision was apparently motivated by the “good diplomatic, economic, trade, and educational relations with China, the sizable local Chinese population, Chinese trade and commercial networks, and associations already formed.” Another example is the Nuctech company, which established its subsidiary in Poland in 2004 and participated in public procurement.

My research also suggests that the CEEC region is not homogeneous and that there are differences in the economic relations between the CEEC countries and China. Moreover, the CEECs often view each other as competitors rather than working together to achieve shared goals (that is, to attract more Chinese investment). This is unfortunate, since according to the literature on the perceptions of the CEEC region among Chinese, many Chinese business investors consider the region to be a unified bloc.

Conclusion

To conclude, I found that:
(1) The role of Chinese investments within the CEE region increased significantly after the crisis, and investment from China will be increasingly important for the countries of the region in the future, as the Chinese share of total inward FDI in the CEECs increases.
(2) Chinese investments in the CEECs differ somewhat from other countries’ investments in the region in terms of motives, which in the Chinese case are driven by both political and economic factors.
(3) The level and warmth of political relations with the host country have an increasingly important influence on Chinese companies’ investments in the region. And (4) the CEE region tends to be seen more as a unified block than as a group of countries by the Chinese. Greater cooperation among the CEECs might therefore help to increase the chances for successful economic relations with China.

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[Report] The Refugee Crisis in Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic

February 10, 2016
By null

Martin Faix and Věra Honusková, Sylff fellows from Charles University in Prague, organized a conference on the migrant and refugee crisis in Europe that was supported by an SLI grant. Tokyo Foundation director Mari Suzuki and program officer Keita Sugai attended the conference as observers. The following is a report by Keita Sugai.

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Introduction

The migrant and refugee crisis in Europe has the potential to precipitate social and geopolitical changes that could prompt the European Union to thoroughly reexamine its border policy from political, pragmatic, and humanitarian perspectives. Today, news of refugees fleeing from war-torn, failed states or oppressive dictatorships reaches readers around the world every day, and the issue has elicited both sympathy and hostility toward the migrants within the EU. While EU ministers voted for a plan to relocate 120,000 migrants and refugees in September 2015, central European countries, including Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, voted against the plan. The issue has been highly divisive.

In an attempt to gain a fuller understanding of this issue through objective, impartial discussion, Sylff fellows Martin Faix and Věra Honusková organized a one-day conference in Prague—supported by a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) grant—that focused on the legal dimensions of the debate. As an observer at the conference, I became acutely aware that the legal foundations of the refugee issue were often completely overlooked in the discussions intended to consider and articulate the plight of the refugees.

The SLI-funded conference on the “Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic” was held on November 12, 2015, at Charles University in Prague, from whose Faculty of Law both Faix and Honusková received their PhDs. The fellows have profound legal knowledge of refugee-related issues, with Honusková having substantial practical experience through her career at an NGO and in academia.

In this report, I will first provide background information and then summarize the main arguments for the legal foundations of this issue, along with other topics covered at the forum. I will also share my observations on how the two Sylff fellows succeeded in fulfilling the purposes of the conference.

Background Information

Věra Honusková

In my conversations with the fellows, I learned that the refugee issue has been politicized in their country and that attempts to stir up public sentiment have resulted in strong anti-refugee opinions and policies. When the number of refugees entering the EU increased dramatically in spring 2015, discussions oriented toward accepting them were difficult to initiate because the political environment was very negative. This was challenged by humanitarian groups on several occasions, and a groundswell of sympathy emerged when the photo of a Syrian boy found dead on the southern Turkish coastline caught worldwide attention. Arguments were made calling for a more flexible policy, and stakeholders became more willing to listen to different viewpoints.

Dr. Martin Faix

Faix and Honusková carefully timed the conference to coincide with this shifting mood. Their primary objective was to examine the legal foundations of the refugee issue, and waiting until November was quite fortuitous, as policy stakeholders became more interested in different perspectives and were in need of objective policymaking guidelines.

They were successful in laying out the legal foundations in the presence of diverse stakeholders: Speakers included academics from the Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary, and Austria; administrators from the Czech Ministry of the Interior and the Office of the Public Defender of Rights; and a judge from the Czech Constitutional Court. Their presentations stimulated intense debate, which, as planned, sometimes became very heated. Audience members included academics from domestic and other EU universities, Czech public officials and administrators, and media personnel. This diversity of participants enabled information to be conveyed from a broad spectrum of viewpoints and facilitated multifaceted discussions.

Legal Foundations

This report will not delve into the technical details of the debate, and I will only provide the essence of the legal foundations presented and discussed during the conference.

Schengen Agreement and Dublin Regulation

Legally speaking, the refugee crisis has seriously diluted the effectiveness of two important EU agreements signed by most member states. One is the Schengen Agreement, which abolished internal border controls to allow individuals to move freely within the Schengen Area. In response to the massive influx of migrants, however, some countries closed their borders to prevent their entry. These countries point to national security concerns. Many experts believe that the Schengen Agreement is no longer working and that it needs to be reconsidered.

The other is the Dublin Regulation, under which almost all migrants seeking asylum in the EU must apply to the first country of entrance—which then is responsible for reviewing the application. This convention is being questioned from the viewpoint of practicability, as it forces coastal states like Italy and Greece to be inundated with applications. Germany’s announcement in August 2015 that it will accept applications from Syrians who had neither applied for refugee status nor had their applications reviewed was seen as the moment that made states give up on the strict enforcement of the Dublin Regulation.

It is important to note, though, that the massive scale of the migration in 2015 was totally unforeseen by these two agreements. This is not to say that they are flawed but that emergency, intervention measures are needed.

Convention on Refugees

The 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is a UN multilateral treaty that contains a definition of a refugee, the rights of individuals granted asylum, and the responsibilities of nations granting asylum.

According to the definition that was amended in a 1967 protocol, a refugee is a person who is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable or unwilling to return owing to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Refugees are protected by the principle of “non-refoulement,” or forcible return, which the parties to the convention must observe. It is a safeguard to prevent refugees from being returned against their will to territories where their life or freedom could be threatened.

The speakers talked of the convention as something like a Magna Carta, serving as the basis of all other legal documents on the rights and entitled protections of refugees.

European Union Law

Article 67 of European Union law (Consolidated versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) states: “[The Union] shall ensure the absence of internal border controls for persons and shall frame a common policy on asylum, immigration and external border control, based on solidarity between Member States.” Article 77, meanwhile, states: “The Union shall develop a policy with a view to: (a) ensuring the absence of any controls on persons, whatever their nationality, when crossing internal borders; . . . [and] (c) the gradual introduction of an integrated management system for external borders.” And Article 78 states: “The Union shall develop a common policy on asylum, subsidiary protection and temporary protection with a view to offering appropriate status to any third-country national requiring international protection and ensuring compliance with the principle of non-refoulement.”

The provisions concerning asylum for refugees thus reaffirm the Refugee Convention’s protocol regarding the rights of refugees and responsibilities of member states. It is notable that EU law upholds a “common policy” on the protection of refugees. This is a strong argument for EU member states to undertake necessary measures collectively, especially if the Schengen and Dublin agreements are not fulfilling their originally envisioned common policy goals.

What emerged from the conference was a message that member states are required, under the Geneva Convention and EU law, to provide relief measures for refugees to some extent but that they can fulfill those requirements in a number of ways. There is a need to respond to the humanitarian crisis, but states do not necessarily have to allow all people who come to Europe’s shores to settle in the EU. The issue is made more legally complicated by the fact that many of those entering Europe are not refugees in the conventional sense. The most difficult and controversial aspects of the issue are how the legal foundations should be applied in enabling practical policy measures when political interests and orientations dictate a different response. EU member states were divided over their policy choices, as the actual number of migrants in 2015 far exceeded levels envisioned under the current policy framework.

Many of the EU members opposed to allowing the entry of refugees, including the Czech Republic, pointed to national security concerns. The tone of the debate was dominated by a sense of crisis, and political emotions ran high, fostering negative views toward the acceptance of refugees.

The conference highlighted the point, though, that EU member states cannot avoid their responsibilities. The fellows explained to me that many participating political and government officials, as well as the mass media, came away from the conference with a heightened interest in the legal dimensions of the issue. There is no doubt a need to keep political emotions in check and encourage more objective discussions; this conference could be the first step toward that goal.

The fellows were thus very careful about downplaying the influence of emotion and creating an environment conducive to objective, sober debate. For example, speakers were discouraged from using visual images of refugees, particularly of children, which could trigger a sympathetic, humanitarian response.

Other Issues

These discussions raised more fundamental questions about the nature and role of the European Union. The EU was established to consolidate certain functions of national governments and promote solidarity. Member states must act as one on a broad range of policy issues. The refugee crisis alone will not erode the EU’s spirit of solidarity, which is required in addressing the many challenges it faces, including financial crises, economic stagnation and unemployment, conflict with Russia over Ukraine, and Britain’s possible withdrawal. But a critical mistake in a key policy area could produce seeds of fragmentation. The fact that the conference addressed the refugee problem with reference to fundamental aspects of the EU was an excellent idea.

Another insight into the fundamental aspects of the refugee crisis was gained through the introduction of historical documents from about a hundred year ago, which showed that sovereign states did not have a key role in maintaining migrant controls. Culture was, in some ways, a bigger factor in human mobility, not only leading to a reexamination of the status quo but also prompting major changes. Adapting to changing circumstances enabled cultures to grow stronger, thereby facilitating their continued and sustainable development. Discussions of the refugee crisis thus shed new light on the fundamental role and historical significance of the EU process.

Conclusion

The Sylff Leadership Initiatives program is intended to support fellows wishing to address socially relevant issues. Honusková and Faix were well aware of the aims of SLI and had a shared interest in taking an objective look at the influx of migrants into Europe. Their efforts to promote thorough debate from a legal point of view—whose importance had often been overlooked—contributed to the success of the conference. Honusková and Faix are both experts on the legal aspects of the refugee issue; the two worked effectively as a team, with Honusková taking the lead in shaping the substance of the discussions, while Faix was mainly responsible for administrative matters.

There was no time to bask in the afterglow of their success, however. On November 13, 2015, only one day after the conference, terrorists launched coordinated attacks in Paris that killed over a hundred people. This tragedy has negatively impacted on efforts to protect and accept refugees, making it all the more imperative to promote levelheaded, legally grounded debate. I have invited Faix and Honusková to write about the conference and the refugee crisis in their own words in a forthcoming Voices article.