International migration, extracts from the novel Texas.

James Michener, TEXAS

These five short extracts from the novel Texas, by James Michener, describe the awful conditions in which mexican migrants who cross Rio Grande to get to the US, commonly called wetbacks, arrive to the "land of opportunity" at the hands of illegal organisations that leave them to die on their own.

The story is told by an external narrator who however describes everything from the immigrants' point of view. That way, we can see migration the way migrants themselves live it, we are on their side. These people cross Rio Grande swimming, get put into a trunk like animals sent to slaughter, pay an amount of money (fifty dollars) which is huge to them, and then they finally see their hopes broken when the organisation which was illegally helping them to the US plays a trick on them and they find themselves alone in the desert, without any food or water. The heartless sugglers simulate a problem in the motor to make them leave the truck and then flee to avoid any responsibility over their lives. In less than one day most of the wetbacks die, even one of the main characters, Manuela, for a stronger shock in the reader. This scene causes a great impression as the characters die sentence after sentence untill less than half the group still survive in a desert where even a knowledge of plants and survival techniques are unuseful.

This document talks about people who have to endure torture just to move from one place to another in order to have a better life. Il is a criticism to the huge difficulty of mobility through selective borders, where the authorities, by closing the access to the US, end up failing to stop migration and allowing the kind of abuse described in the novel to happen every day. Wetbacks and other illegal international migrants are left behind in the globalised world, forgotten by the open borders that let everything in, everything except people 

OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING

In this cartoon drawn by Matson for the St Louis Post in July 2012 we can see Mitt Romney, a republican politician and candidate to the 2012 presidential election, standing in the middle of a desert island representing the Cayman Islands'tax haven, with a big trunk full of money to bury, with his name on it (he is offshoring his own money). In the background we can see two other tax havens: Bermuda and Switzerland. On the left side there is a boat called "Believin'in America" and, sitting on it and looking at him with admiration, Romney's grandchildren , according to their speech bubble. Romney explains to them why outsourcing and why offshoring and his grandchildren say "You are so smart!" "You should be president!"
The cartoon criticizes a thorough hypocrisy, because Romney himself said several times during his campaign that he would protect american jobs and capital while his own company,  Bain Capital, invested in businesses that were pioneers in ousourcing jobs, and was funded with money placed in Panama for example. Here he is seen as a master of offshoring and outsourcig, and what is bitterly ironic, appart the that he is admired for doing that, is that his boat is called believin' in America, an idea completely imcompatible with what he really does for America.




This simple cartoon from the website geek & poke was created in 2008. It is divided into three boxes where can see two office men talking about an upcoming new offshoring. first the man oo the left explains that they have to move country because their workers wanted even more that the thousands of  jobs the company created, then the man on the right asks why, so he is answered that, surprisingly,  they wanted to get paid, "unbelievable".
 It is again a very bitter humour. The reason why western companies make their products in foreign countries is because those countries have no workers'rights whatsoever, to spend much less money on wages. So if workers legitimately want their money they aren't useful anymore, but they are not supposed to ask for money in the first place. What the cartoon shows is another case of hypocrisy: companies justify their action saying that they are developing poor counries, but what actually happens is they shamelessly exploit local people.


These two cartoons tackle an issue very much related with the otion of spaces and exchanges. There are real spaces involved in outsourcing and offshoring: the company's country of origin, the destination countries for the outsourced working functions and the tax havens are some of them, and these two activities are all about exchanges. there is an economical exchange with tax havens and the country that hosts the outsourced function, a physical exchange of products that were made in one country and are sent back to be sold in the country where the company originally comes from, an exchange of knowledge when the new workers are trained...
Offshoring and outsoucing are a characteristic exchange in the increasingly big space of the globalised world.

Spaces and exchanges

International migration: the movement by people from one country to another with the intention of settling temporarily or permanently in the new location.

Hybrid/ mixed language: a language that arises through the fusion of usually two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism (Meakins, 2013), so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its sources.

Technology transfers: the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services.

Outsourcing/offshoring: offshoring is the relocation, by a company, of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Even state governments employ offshoring. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always.Outsourcing is also the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations.

Brain drain: the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or "brains."

Globalised trade: the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has been present throughout much of history (see Silk Road, Amber Road, Salt road), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries.

Ecotourism: a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights.

Human trafficking: the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation.

Arms trafficking: also known as gunrunning. It is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws. Although arms trafficking is widespread in regions of political turmoil, it is not limited to such areas, and for example, in South Asia, an estimated 63 million guns have been trafficked into India and Pakistan.

The suppression of gunrunning is one of the areas of increasing interest in the context of international law.

Illegal drug trade: the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.A UN report has stated that "the global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion in 2003."

Rural-urban/urban-rural migration: rural-urban migration is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas. Urban-rural migration is the departure of people from cities to the countryside with the intetion to flee urban stress and pollution.

Relief organisations/Aid agencies: Organisations dedicated to distributing aid. Many professional aid organisations exist, both within government (AusAID, USAID, DFID, EuropeAid, ECHO), between governments as multilateral donors (UNDP) and as private voluntary organisations (or non.governmental organisations (Oxfam,ActionAid, Doctors without borders...). The international Commitee of the Red Cross is unique in being  mandated by international treaty.

Student exchange programs: a program in which students from a secondary school or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions. A student exchange program may involve international travel, but does not necessarily require the student to travel outside of his or her home country. For example, the National Student Exchange program (NSE) offers placements throughout the United States and Canada.

Global cities/ global cultural events:  a global city is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.

Global warmig: Gobal warming is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.More than 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming; the remainder has melted ice, and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia, and this change comes without a doubt from human activities.

School shootings in the USA

On the day of April 20, 1999, in Columbine High school, Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two senior year students, planned and performed a bombing and a shooting that caused 13 deaths and injured 21 people. Luckily, some of the bombs they had set for that morning did not explode. Nevertheless, the Columbine High massacre remains the deadliest school shooting ever performed in the US, and perhaps the better known.

-It is interesting and particularly appalling to note that the bombing and the shooting were very carefully planned for over a year of secret video reports and schedules on paper.
-The initial plan was to blow up the school at 11:17 that morning, with several bombs set for that time inside the building which never exploded. Bombs set inside cars in the streets did explode though.
-They had then prepared 99 Molotov cocktails to light them inside the school.
- It all ended with the most fateful and unfair outcome: both Harris and Dylan committed suicide the very same day in the school library.
- the current library is called "Hope Columbine Memorial Library"



Harris and Dylan inside the cafeteria (survelliance camera shoot)



A swat team investigates in front of the main gate


Students visit a  memorial set for the victims of the Columbine shooting


I have never watched any movies which deal with the subject of school shootings so I cannot decide which one tackles the issue best. However, from the list given in the website "a Columbine site" the one I would find most interesting to discover is probably Bang bang you're dead, which apparently tries to find some of the reasons why a teenager would come to the point of killing his fellow students.

The reasons most commonly given to explain the abnormal recurrence of this kind of shootings in the US are:

- Violence as a revenge, resulting from years of bullying
-Plainly a lack of consideration for human life
-The criminal having witnessed or suffered from violence at home
- Mental health issues
   And llast but not least...
- The easy access to guns in the US

The US gun culture

This is a poster for one of the many campaigns against gun violence led by the Brady Center in the US since 1974.
What fist strikes the eye is a gun; quite a modern one, with the US flag stamped on it. It is here without a doubt the symbol of the US gun culture.
Then we automatically start to read the text above that gives some comparative information about people killed by guns in one year in various developped countries. These go from 17 to 200. The last country on the list is the US, and there, the statistic number changes dramatically: 9 484 deaths from gun violence. This last sentence is put forward with a bigger font size, so the difference is given more importance. Right below, in an even bigger and thicker font size we can read "GOD BLESS AMERICA", the traditionnal moto of the United States.
In the bottom left corner there is the logo of brady campaign, that gives information about who made the poster, but is also a guarantee for the numbers given.
This poster plays on two levels. With the statistic numbers (17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia etc.) it gives, on the one hand, objectibve and precise information about the impact of gun violence in the US compared to countries just as rich and developed. The numbers speak for themselves, the difference is alarming as it is. On the other hand, there is the intention of making the poster even more shocking, with strategical changes in the font sizes, and especially , with the gun that makes us see the very object that is causing all those deaths, and with the symbols of american pride: the moto and the stars and stripes related to that death rate. The point of having these two symbols of american culture appear in the poster is to hint that the problem is caused by the American mentality, that guns and "God bless America" are in close relationship. It is a clear reference to the second Amendment of the US Constitution.



This slightly older poster for the exact same campaign consists in pretty much the same thing.
One notable difference is the choice of the gun, giving a more traditional one that can then be a part of the American symbols along with the flag and the moto.
The numbers and some of the countries chosen as examples are different but the effect is the same.
A notable change howewer is the number of gun-related deaths in 2004: 11 344, as opposed to 9 484 around 2013, when the other poster was published. We can notice that gun violence in the US nowadays is dicreasing, but is still a major problem.





These compared graphs made by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show (based on the latest statistics made on each country between 2004 and 2010) the place the United States occupy in the rating of gun violence compared to the top ten most violent countries, and then the American gun-related death rate per 100 000 people compared to the most developed countries'.
If we look at the first graph there seems to be no major problem with guns in the US. In the gun violence ranking the United States come in 26th, with a gun-related death rate less than a quarter as high as the top ten most violent countries'. But then again, it is only predictable as the US are a very rich and developed country, with a very high HDI. It is precisely based on their Human Development Index that the countries in the second graph are classified. We can see that the US there comes in third, so we are making the second comparison with nations which have a social context much more similar to the US's. The violence rate then goes from not being very alarming at all to being exceedingly higher than the other developed countries'. Even the second on the list, which is Switzerland, has a violence rate exactly four times lower than the US's. These graphs show that there are much more violent nations than the US, but beyond this, if we look at the US in its own social context, it is an abnormally violent contry.



This cartoon drawn by the Pulizer Award winning cartoonist Steve Sack for the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) is an open criticism to the gun culture in the United States. Two Characters are standing in front of the Capitol, the famous US Congress building in Washington, one of them a member of  Congress, representing the political power, the other from the gun lobby, representing the economic power of gun trade. While a long blood stain crosses the image and goes up the stairs, signifying that there has been a shooting in Congress, the gun lobby is giving Congress a large amount of money. This money goes, no doubt, to keeping guns legal for sale for anyone as they have always been in America. While shootings kill hundreds of innocent people, Congress and the gun lobby work together for it not to change. The smile on both faces and the sentence: "now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted..." underline with irony the indifference, or even cynism of these people, whoose interest above and beyond anything is money. In this cartoon sack is telling us that, nowadays, the lethal US gun culture lies on dishonest agreements between the political power and the gun lobby, who are thus partly responsible for fatal shootings.



This second cartoon by Dave Granlund is just as critical with the US gun culture as the first. It is divided into two parts. On the left we can see a statue of a man from the eighteenth century holding a shotgun, probably to hunt, to fight in the indepencence war or to protect himself from any danger. This would be a representation of the "Second Amendment (part of the constitution that defines the right to keep and bear arms) as defined by the founding fathers" of the US. On the right there is another man, a real one, from the twenty first century, standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, in military clothes and with at least four guns on himself. This would be the "Second Amendment as defined by the NRA (national riffle association)". This second part is a clear hyperbole.  What this cartoon tries to say is that the current vision of the Second Amendment, the one  the NRA puts through, the one that nowadays is taken into consideration to make laws, is an abuse of what this amendment was iniccially ment to allow and ensure. Gradually the US would have gone from the first to the second vision of the Second Amendment, from ensuring one's own safety (and invading native americans in the West...) with one weapon to threatening everyone eslse's with an abusive and somewhat paranoid use of guns. The Second Amendment wouldn't then justify by any means the huge gun culture existing in the US, which would be a product of the NRA, the biggest and most important part of the gun lobby, not even an official authority, which we saw paying Congress for their interests to be mantained in the first cartoon. The US gun culture as seen in this cartoon doesn't respect but abuses the US constitution.