Like most teenagers, Ranim has yet to decide on a career, but the 17-year-old is certain of one thing: She must keep studying to make up for the time she spent out of school, fleeing the war in Syria to reach Austria’s capital.
Each week she and about one thousand other refugees and asylum seekers attend a free, council-run college set up by Vienna’s authorities to help young refugees learn German, get counseling, gain a basic education and integrate into society.
“As a refugee we need to know the language. At the same time, we need to keep learning the basic subjects in school like mathematics and English,” said Ranim, who two years ago became one of Vienna’s nearly 1.9 million residents.
“They created this college to give us more chances,” said Ranim, who declined to give her full name for privacy reasons.
As more people move around the world — spurred by conflict, climate extremes and poverty — the cities and countries that host new arrivals are trying to figure out what kind of welcome to offer.
Investing in the new arrivals, to prepare them to integrate into a new country, can cut the need to support them long term — but can sometimes also provoke resentment from local people who might not be offered similar services.
In Vienna, the left-leaning capital of the only western European country with a far-right-wing party in government, finding the correct balance can be particularly delicate.
REFUGEE INFLOW
In 2015, Austria took in asylum seekers equivalent to more than 1 percent of its population, most of them escaping conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
With about 93,250 refugees already living in Austria and tens of thousands of asylum applications in the system, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Vienna’s city councilors have said that helping refugees become part of their new country is crucial.
“We felt there was a political obligation to support refugees from day one so that they have better prospects and better chances for a job,” said Philipp Lindner, a spokesman for Vienna’s education and integration department.
However, Vienna’s welcome for refugees is in some ways in direct opposition to the views of the national government.
In December last year, Austria’s anti-immigration Freedom Party and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives struck a coalition deal to share power.
Both of Austria’s ruling parties have pledged to cut benefits for refugees and have warned that Muslim “parallel societies” are emerging in cities such as Vienna.
The Youth College for refugees is part of a wider council-led scheme to help them assimilate, Lindner said, adding that it includes sessions on how to access healthcare, education, housing and other services, as well as courses on sexual health, rights and cultural values.
Maria Steindl, who has managed the college since its inception in 2016, said that without this free education, young migrants “would be on the streets. They would not have jobs.”
“We are building a base so they can make their next steps,” she said.
URBAN REFUGEES
Today, about 60 percent of refugees worldwide live in cities, the UN agency has said.
That trend constitutes a significant shift from the traditional response, adopted by the UN a half-century ago, of sheltering displaced people in camps.
However, cities are sometimes struggling to adapt to the new responsibilities.
Mayors have said city authorities are increasingly called on as first responders to meet refugees’ basic needs, and are also required to take long-term responsibility for their well-being.
“Big cities have more challenges with migration than the countryside,” Lindner told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone. “It’s the cities that have the obligation to provide housing, education and ... social welfare services.”
In October last year, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that he believed cities should be given a bigger voice in deciding and implementing measures to deal with migration.
Planning ahead for refugees and implementing long-term integration programs is a cost-effective way for cities to deal with new arrivals, said Julien Simon of the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development.
“When you don’t deal with an issue and you keep on postponing it, you will pay the price at some point,” said Simon, who is head of the center’s Mediterranean branch in Malta.
Helping refugees participate in city life is a “win-win,” because it helps them contribute positively to their new communities, he said.
BRIGHTER FUTURE?
However, at Vienna’s Youth College Steindl said it was challenging to keep refugee students motivated against Austria’s unfriendly political backdrop.
“Getting asylum status knocked back is a blow to their motivation, but that is the political framework in which we have to work,” Steindl said. “The best thing we can do is to invest in the training and education of these young people.”
For Iraqi refugee Alaa al-Dulaimi, the college has offered a chance to finish his interrupted high-school education.
“I didn’t go to school for almost three years, so I have forgotten a lot of subjects,” said al-Dulaimi, who arrived in Austria at the end of 2014, when he was 17.
With the help of social workers and teachers, the 20-year-old now hopes to pursue further studies, find a job and settle in Vienna for good.
“I feel very welcome. I have lots of friends from Austria. They are very kind people,” al-Dulaimi said.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS