Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Online Manifestation

The following are a couple links we found:

http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/imes/publications/imesdownloads.html

This is a major one Irina and I found on Monday which belongs to a research group currently undergoing extensive research with various angles of study centered around immigration and ethnic studies. From this page we found a couple articles that gave us some focus and direction.

http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/urbex/resrep/r19_rotterdam.pdf

This article describes integration issues in the Netherlands, which has inspired us to maybe narrow down our topic even further to whether immigrants feel oppression due to integration problems. I found it interesting that influx of migrants, especially from the middle east as this article seemed to emphasize, produce the perception of resource scarcity which leads to negative perceptions of ethnic groups despite the fact it may all be imaginary. So maybe there is difficulty in attaining cultural acceptance stemming from economic and psychological issues.

http://immigrantpolitics.org/?p=51

This is a blog post that I found describing immigration in Europe and specifically mentions the Netherlands. This was found on a blog that was opened by professors in California to discuss immigration in US and abroad. I really think it might be interesting to do some research into what makes life as an immigrant in Europe or specifically Netherlands particularly unique. There are first person accounts that immigrants feel themselves being "ripped apart" by different values and expectations. Is that a feeling of oppression? The inability to be fully integrated? that would be interesting to research.

I'm still having trouble finding a locus or web of sources because to find first person accounts would require finding blogs that usually are not in English. Finding research organizations like the first link I posted is very helpful in finding what areas are worth studying but I'm not sure where they connect to the everyday life. However, I think right now I might try to focus on the news articles and research groups because they are more accessible. Later on, once we understand the framework and cultural atmosphere it would be more beneficial to look at individual cases.

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