On The Map: Latest Migration Trends, Return of Diasporas and Regional Integration, Discussed this Week at the International Migration in the 21st Century Conferen

August 31, 2010

Latest Migration Trends, Return of Diasporas and Regional Integration, Discussed this Week at the International Migration in the 21st Century Conferen

Posted on Tuesday, 31-08-2010

Argentina - Migration experts from international organizations and academia, as well as government officials from MERCOSUR countries and other national and regional entities are coming together this week in the Argentine city of Iguazú for the International Migration in the 21st Century Conference.
Under the auspices of the Argentine Ministry of Interior Immigration Directorate, participants will exchange information and best practices on issues of common concern related to international migration.

"With human mobility and integration at the top of the migration agenda for receiving countries, it is vital for IOM to foster these regional gatherings where policy makers can discuss mutual concerns," says Juan Artola, IOM Regional Representative in Buenos Aires.

What were migrant countries of origin just a few decades ago today are destination countries, as in the case of Argentina. However the countries receiving migrants today are also seeing their nationals migrate in search of better economic opportunities. Countries that built and developed their economies using foreign labour are now closing the doors to foreign workers.

"Although today's world is very much interdependent, governments and policy makers are realizing that regionalization can be a viable option when faced with globalization. And paradoxically, the right to migrate is being discussed more and more these days," adds Artola.

Prompting discussion amongst governments can guide policy makers towards sound migration policies that would decrease the largely illicit and irregular migration with all the risks that it entails.

The two-day event includes four roundtables where participants will discuss migration issues affecting their societies, including: reaping the development potential of migration, migration as a fundamental human right, involving the diaspora in the development of their country of origin, brain drain and brain gain, regional integration of migrants, climate change and migration, and regional consultative processes.

Some of the participants include: Lorena Escudero, Minister of SENAMI (National Migrant Secretariat) of Ecuador; Costa Rica's Vice Minister of Public Security, Mario Zamora; Alvaro Calderon, Director of Colombia nos Une (a virtual platform created by IOM and Colombia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to reach out to the Colombian diaspora); Izaura Miranda, Director of Immigration of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice; and Martín Arias Duval, National Director of Migration of Argentina.

For more information, please contact:

Mariana Bocca
IOM Buenos Aires
Tel: +54 11 5219 2033/34/35
E-mail: mbocca@iom.int
http://www.iom.int

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You may also contact Annalee to schedule a screening at your school, university, artists' collective or gallery, community group, library, place of worship, private sector entity or government department. This can include a Panel Session which allows the issues raised by the film to be constructively discussed with the Director, invited Pannellists and the audience.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007
St. George, Barbados

(complete text)

I am the complex Creole
My context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreed
Of carnival, class and comess
Cognizant of Columbus
And the Commonwealth
That created these confused colonies
Correctly criticized for the callous treatment
Of the Amerindian
And the reconstitution
Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries later
My coronary artery crackles
When I think of the creatures
That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collide
There is more chaos than community
Some feel like foreigners
As though uncharacteristic
Of these now ex-colonies
Our natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wear
Like a crest on my chest
My credentials are that I am created equally
Credible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor country
I sing the canticles
And practice a yoga
I chant
I breathe
I made my jappa and wrote a creed
I owned a crucifix
And acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion of
Cinnamon, coffee and cumin
Cocoa, cotton and cane
It is with composure and compassion that
I conceive my compatriots as compatible
Whether Cuban or Guyanese,
Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatory
That is a consanguineous conscious community
Confidently confirming a conglomerate
Who speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex Creole
Confronting this crossroads of centuries
I cannot condone the corruption
Nor those who configure the conflict –
I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way
And commemorate the cobweb we have become
I come to you
Not as a comedian
Nor as a clown
I come to you as a coalition
Of combustible matter
A civilized collective
Sometimes caustic, but never counterfeit
I am a cordless creator of culture
Conveying my codes
To a community that isn’t convinced
Of the credit of cultural producers

And now I wear coronet
A continuous circular

In my cipher
I chuckle
I weep

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole chant

August 31, 2010

Latest Migration Trends, Return of Diasporas and Regional Integration, Discussed this Week at the International Migration in the 21st Century Conferen

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Creole Chant

(complete text)

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