Social Participation

After images of Budapest’s Keleti train station illustrating the need for a fast EU assistance programme for refugees: the governments of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia reaffirmed their vehement “no” to refugee quotas.

After Danish Jews fled to their neutral neighbours in 1943 and Sweden agreed to offer temporary refuge to some thirty thousand survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, a country deeply averse to foreigners transformed. So can Europe today. An article of the "Berlin Anthology".

Europe has always been a continent of refugees und migrations. The debate surrounding how to deal with these challenges has only just begun. An article of our "Berlin Anthology".

From my hotel room in Budapest at the weekend, I followed the images of Germany’s Willkommenskultur, the country’s policy and manner of welcoming refugees and migrants. They have now been granted permission to travel via Austria to Germany.

For four days now I have been in Budapest, a witness to a drama that I would have considered impossible in an EU capital not long ago.

Frau Meiser doesn't know much about her lodger. Herr Nazim is clean and is neat. He speaks pretty German and his wife is dead. An article of the "Berlin Anthology" about a secret love.

Malika and Fatima are waiting for me by the entrance to the women’s clinic at the Charité. The women are very quiet; I try to strike up a conversation. I ask them how they lived in Chechnya... An article of the "Berlin Anthology".

It does not help to turn the world around. It does not help to shake the Law as hard as one can. Justice refuses to function in a recognizable manner. An article of the "Berlin Anthology".

"We’d like to retain Hungary as Hungary", says Victor Orbán in January 2015. Xenophobia is significant in his country. How a multicultural and multi-ethnic society became a mono-ethnic and closed one.

Duniya Mohsini is a university lecturer. She has been teaching for the last 12 years and is much liked by her students. Currently, she is doing a Ph.D. course in literature at a university in Tajikistan. She has been a frequent contributor to Rah-e Madaniyat Daily.  

With a favourable ratio between the working age population, children and senior citizens India is at the onset of a "demographic bonus". Will the new government be able to utilise this advantage for sustainable economic growth?

Opening Speech of our 3-day-conference by Mekonnen Mesghena, Department Head Migration & Diversity of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The current crisis is not a crisis of confidence, nor is it purely financial in character. The current crisis is, above all, a device for domination, spoliation, and precarisation. What we witness today is the depredation and expropriation of common goods, of wealth, and of rights. What we need is a common social, fiscal, and budgetary policy.

Does the European Union (EU) safeguard the future of the welfare state in times of globalisation? Is the crisis intensifying the pressure to take action and could it even ultimately lead to more social policy integration – a European welfare state? 

Europe unilaterally imposes austerity measures without drawing a line to define minimum social standards. The result is that social achievements are being dismantled overnight. Now the call for a more socially oriented Europe has become louder. We have to make social security systems more European. 

Do the institutions of our democracy reflect the increasing diversity of our society? For the first time, a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity has investigated this question concerning the councils of major German cities. The summary presents the main results of the study.

During the ongoing housing protests in Israel, the Green Movement just released the first draft of a Green New Deal. Two chairpersons of the Green Movement link their economic plan with the currrent protests for social justice.

For the first few weeks of the social protests in Israel the press happily dismissed everything else – Palestinians, Iran, September, democracy barely reached back pages of the papers. The question at stake is, will the movement ultimately be forced by its own goals to confront and possibly re-interpret critical issues such in light of the newfound empowerment and social consciousness?

Muhammad Idrees Kamal, the Executive Director of Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development Peshawar, about his organization, its issues, and how the advocacy organization did charity collection and relief operations after the flood in Pakistan.

It is particularly difficult to attain higher social status in Germany. Why is that, how should we tackle the issue and how the german situation differs from the situation in North America? At a conference organised by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung several experts and politicians tried to find answers to these questions.