By Dr Ruji Auethavornpipat. The European Commission’s Rule of Law Report, while assessing EU member states’ adherence to key rule of law principles, significantly lacks a focused evaluation of fundamental rights protections, especially for migrants. This oversight not only undermines the report’s comprehensive integrity but also reflects poorly on the EU’s commitment to its core democratic values.
Syrian writer Rasha Abbas and Palestinian artist Muhammad Jabali, in conversation with Diana Abbani, discuss the evolving dynamics and narratives shaping Berlin, a city once envisioned as an Arab cultural hub. By exploring how Berlin’s cultural landscape has been influenced by migration, identity politics, and recent political changes, emphazizing the need for both imagination and realistic approaches to create more livable cities.
By Elise Daniaud Oudeh and Loaay Wattad.
“Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo” is an animated film produced by artists Marya Zarif and André Kadi. As the sequel of the film, “Dounia and the Great White North”, will soon be playing at festivals, this article explores the original creative process of Marya Zarif. The movie introduces us to the life of Dounia, a young Syrian child born and raised in Aleppo. From her birth in an old traditional house, to her departure, hands in hands with her grandparents, as civil unrest and repression start spreading in the country, the viewer follows the daily life of the small family.
By Ferenc Laczó, András Vadas, and Bálint Varga. As a recent project on the global history of Hungary aims to demonstrate, studying Central and Eastern Europe through the systematic application of transnational methods and from a truly global perspective can offer original and valuable insights. In this essay, the authors of Magyarország globális története (A Global History of Hungary) would like to outline their agenda of applying transnational methods to the long-term reinterpretation of a country’s history and reflect on the ambition to embed Hungarian history comprehensively in global frameworks.
Natalia Zaitseva-Chipak is a sociologist and a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Her scientific interests focus on problems of modern Ukrainian society and individual social groups, such as youths or internally displaced persons (IDPs). She has been a non-resident Fellow and member of the Prisma Ukraïna War, Migration, Memory research group since 2022.
By Lidia Kuzemska. The scales of displacement and return have symbolical meanings for state actors, either of political failure (massive outflow of population) or political success (high number of returns). In the case of forced displacement of Ukrainians to Russia, the inflated and unverified number of border crossings between Ukraine and Russia, moreover, provided only by the Russian side, mistakenly transformed into a number of supposedly real individual Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion in the direction of the aggressor state.
By Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova. Recent years have seen an increase in the violation of asylum-seeker rights in the EU, including through so-called pushbacks. These practices have typically not been authorised by domestic legislation and have been denied or concealed by the relevant Member States. However, this changed with the crisis at the EU-Belarus border that has unfolded since summer 2021.
Hannes Grandits is Professor of Southeast European History at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is the author of The End of Ottoman Rule in Bosnia: Conflicting Agencies and Imperial Appropriations (Routledge 2021). A conversation with Alex Favalli.
By Denys Brylov and Tetiana Kalenychenko. With the beginning of its independent history, Ukrainian society experienced a religious renaissance, which also began to define identity. Identities did not always remain purely religious, but could also have a cultural and traditional character, such as the self-definition of a Ukrainian as a Christian, despite the country’s multi-religious and multicultural map. Since 2022, the problem of the transformation of religious identities is further exacerbated. Dramatic changes are taking place among the believers and clergy. This study explores precisely these transformations of religious identity taking place under the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
On Thursday, 29th of June 2023, the class 8b of the Walther-Rathenau-Gymnasium visited the Forum Transregionale Studien for a full-day workshop on the topic of displacement in the context of Russia’s War against Ukraine. In the Displacement Masterclass, pupils learned about the Forum Transregionale Studien’s Prisma Ukraїna: War, Migration and Memory project. A report.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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