MER Article The Moral Panic Over Chinese in Egypt On a brisk autumn evening in 2010, male coffee shop patrons in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek were treated to the sight of young Chinese women in miniskirts circulating to hand out brochures for a new massage parlor. It was an unusual sight indeed for Egyptian public space -- both the wom Jessica Winegar • 8 min read
Current Analysis Saudis' Mass Expulsions Putting Somalis in Danger In 2013, Mohamed, a 22-year old Somali, was making a living washing cars in Saudi Arabia. Late that year, due to increasing government pressure on employers of undocumented workers, he was fired. In December, after several weeks without a job, Mohamed handed himself over to the police. He spent the Laetitia Bader • 9 min read
Current Analysis New Documentary on US Military's Migrant Workers Starting today, Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines” will air “America’s War Workers [http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/7/after-12-years-ofwarlaborabusesrampantonusbasesinafghanistan.html],” a documentary by MERIP editor Anjali Kamat (@anjucomet [http://twitter.com/anjucomet]) on the use of migrant Darryl Li • 2 min read
MER Article Sojourners and Settlers The United States is a nation of common people from marginal environments. In spite of contemporary America’s preoccupation with coats of arms, few of our ancestors were the children of privilege. Nor did they come from lush plains or fecund valleys. More often it was the mountains and hill country Jon C. Swanson • 15 min read
MER Article Sojourners and Settlers: An Introduction The full moon over Mecca marked the end of the holy month of pilgrimage. Ten thousand miles away in California, a Yemeni work crew gathered around a pickup truck with its precious cargo of sheep destined for sacrifice. A group of cowboys looked on, bewildered. These farmworkers are part of a two-dec Jonathan Friedlander, Joe Stork • 2 min read
Current Analysis Of Bodies and Blank Notebooks A man walks into a library and asks the librarian for a book on human rights in Saudi Arabia. The librarian hands him a blank notebook. A woman walks into a bookstore and asks for a tourist guide to Saudi Arabia. The bookseller hands her a blank notebook. A reporter walks into the Saudi embassy an Al Miskin • 2 min read
Current Analysis Lamped USA Amanda Ufheil-Somers has ably described [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer261/lampedusa] how refugee flows from the uprisings in North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa have pushed the strained infrastructure and the residents’ hospitality to the breaking point. The islanders aren’t the only ones David McMurray • 5 min read
MER Article Lampedusa More than 52,000 would-be migrants have landed on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011. Roughly half of the arrivals are young Tunisian men looking for job opportunities in Europe. Most of the others are Sahelians, sub-Saharan Africans or South Asians fleeing the violence in Libya. In many c Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 5 min read
MER Article The Clandestine Central Mediterranean Passage About 78 nautical miles separate the Tunisian town of al-Huwariyya at the head of the Cap Bon peninsula from Capo Feto at the southwestern tip of Sicily. An Italy-bound voyage between the two points, on the straight line headed roughly northeast-east, takes about 13 hours at an average speed of six Naor Ben-Yehoyada • 10 min read
MER Article Europe's Border Control with a Humanitarian Face “Suppose that Jordan decides to release its 2 million Iraqi refugees or that there is a regime change in Algeria,” hypothesized a risk analyst from Warsaw headquarters of Frontex, the European Union’s external border control agency, in 2008. Added his colleague, an operations specialist: “We have Cyprus, which has Greg Feldman • 10 min read
MER Article Extra-Legality A large, sinister pair of eyes stares out from the cover of the February 2011 Wired magazine, above the heading “The Underworld Exposed.” The rest of the face is darkened, melding with the shadows. At the top of the shadows reside the words “Counterfeit Ferraris, Sex Syndicates, Darknets, Secret Soc Carolyn Nordstrom • 11 min read
Current Analysis Of Principle and Peril Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya’s internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qadd The Editors • 10 min read
