‘Leaving Afghanistan! Are you sure?’ European efforts to deter potential migrants through information campaigns

Policymakers in Europe are currently under pressure to both lessen the number of incoming asylum-seekers and ‘irregular migrants’ and address the humanitarian crises occurring at Europe’s border crossings. Increasingly, we see an externalization of Europe’s border controls, as migration management policies try to stop migrants before they even arrive in Europe. One form of externalized control is information campaigns, discouraging would-be migrants and asylum-seekers from leaving their countries of origin. Such campaigns intend to inform potential migrants about the difficulties of settling in Europe and the dangers of being smuggled. As such, these campaigns aim to both discourage migration and present that discouragement as a means of protecting people from financial and bodily risk. I examine the use of information campaigns in Afghanistan, and ask why they are continued, when ethnographic work with Afghans suggests that the campaigns are unlikely to be believed. I argue that these information campaigns are symbolic, fulfilling the need of policymakers to be seen to be doing something, and also – and more ominously – serve a role of shifting responsibility for the risks of the journey onto Afghans themselves, rather than the restrictive border regimes of the EU

Impact as Odyssey

Within the context of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), academic labor is being tagged to ‘impact’: to demonstrable outputs that go beyond academia and benefit “the wider economy and society” (HEFCE, 2009, 13; see also Rogers et al., this issue). This move is certainly not new, nor is it unique to institutions of higher education in the UK. ‘Impact statements’ have been standard in funding proposals for quite a while, grant funded projects have long required evidence of application within the communities where research occurs and, in the US, ‘service’ to institutional, professional, and broader communities is well established as one of the metrics used in governing promotion and tenure processes. In this intervention, we reflect on our experience working on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project where questions of impact – understood as efforts to engage participants and to produce applied results – were an ongoing concern. We offer a vision that recognizes that producing impact in research is a complicated process where alternatives to what some describe as the “wholesale neoliberalization of knowledge production” (Jazeel, 2010, np) might potentially be realized. More specifically, we offer an allegorical rendering of impact as odyssey

Modelling cohort seasonal mortality e ects in a compositional framework

In the late 20th century, the average age at death for Danes and Austrians aged 50 or above and born in the Spring was approximately 6 months older than those born in the Autumn (Doblhammer and Vaupel, 2001). The pattern was reversed for native-born Australians but, using British migrants to Australia as a natural experiment, these authors showed that the latter retained the northern hemisphere pattern indicating that it must have been an `early life' e ect. This indicates that the human body can experience damage or selection in early life that can be expressed as a mortality risk 50 or more years later. The problem is that month of birth is simply an indicator. We do not know if these e ects occured during pregnancy or after birth. Those born in the Spring were in utero during the winter, which may have been bad for the mother's health and therefore their own development, but they also experienced the Spring peak in infant respiratory infections. Bengtsson and Lindstr om (2003) used historic data for southern Sweden to show that mortality risk after the age of 50 was higher if the person was born in a year with above average infant mortality. This suggests that, on balance, the survivors of a bad year were not more robust (selection) but had been damaged by the experience (debility)

Can Afghans reintegrate after assisted return from Europe?

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Forced to leave? The discursive and analytical significance of describing migration as forced and voluntary

This article examines voluntariness in migration decisions by promoting the acknowledgement of forced and voluntary migration as a continuum of experience, not a dichotomy. Studies on conflict-related migration and migration, in general, remain poorly connected, despite calls for interaction. This reflects the forced–voluntary dichotomy's stickiness within and beyond academia, which is closely connected to the political implications of unsettling it and potentially undermining migrants’ protection rights. We delve into notions of the ‘voluntariness’ of migration and argue for the analytical need to relate evaluations of voluntariness to available alternatives. Drawing on qualitative research with people from Afghanistan and Pakistan coming to Europe, we hone in on three particular renderings of migration: migrants’ own experiences, scholarly qualitative observations and labelling by immigration authorities. Analysing migration as stages in a process: leaving – journey (and transit) – arrival and settlement – return or onward migration, we highlight the specific effects of migration being described as being forced or voluntary. Labelling as ‘forced’ (or not) matters to migrants and states when asylum status is on the line. For migration scholars, it remains challenging to decouple these descriptions from state systems of migration management; though doing so enhances our understanding of the role voluntariness plays in migration decisions

Networks of asylum support in the UK and USA: a handbook of ideas, strategies and best practice for asylum support groups in a challenging social and economic climate

Asylum Network Project Repor

Logos, Ethos, Pathos and the Marketing of Higher Education

This article utilises rhetorical analysis as a method to investigate course level marketing communications for undergraduate fashion marketing degrees in England. The purpose of this method is to explore the persuasive appeals of Aristotle’s triad of logos, ethos and pathos, how they are used and how these appeals could differ by university type. 16 course pages were analysed, with the analysis of course web pages shows a clear distinction between ‘types’ of university, with Post 92 institutions relying heavily on appeals to emotion (pathos) and giving more focus to ‘value for money’ that would be a concern to their students. Russell Group and Specialist universities rely more on appeals to ethos (credibility) and logos (fact/data) to market their courses. This research finds evidence of market segmentation, demonstrated through the different use of persuasive appeals to express the course focus, and giving insight to their target audience

Modelling and forecasting healthy life expectancy. A Compositional Data Analysis approach

Will the extra years of life gained by the increase in life expectancy be lived in good or bad health? As forecasts support social, economic and medical decisions, as well as individuals' choices, there is a clear rationale for forecasting healthy life expectancy. However, only a limited number of models are available to forecast healthy life expectancy. Some are based on multistate modelling, which can be data-demanding and requires separate forecasts of transition rates for mortality within different health statuses and the incidence rate. We here suggest a less data demanding model to forecast mortality and health prevalence simultaneously. The model is based on the Sullivan method, which uses cross-sectional data, and Compositional Data Analysis. The method is applied to Swedish female mortality aged 65 and above. We show that deaths have been shifted towards older ages and not-limited, leading to an increase in both life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy