migration

It has been revealed that the global shortfall in healthcare professionals has reached four million people – with one million needed in Africa alone. The figures were voiced at the Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, which opened in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on March 3rd.

Just outside of Paris at the Areva TD factory in Montrouge, 89 striking workers have been occupying and blockading the factory for four days.The movement began after management announced plans to close the factory, which produces electrical transformers. Workers are demanding large compensation payments, management is currently refusing to negotiate.

The mainly Polish workers employed by cleaning company Glenn Management to clean offices on the Moulton Park industrial estate, Northampton, had not been paid properly for around four months. However after only one day's strike action they were paid the money that they were owed.

With the openly anti-immigration policies of the government immigrants have found themselves targetted by police. This is part of a worrying racist trend in contemporary French politics.

A familiar sight to many Parisians are the rows of people living in tents along the banks of the canal St Martin. They are homeless, mostly immigrants, mostly illegal. The tents are supplied by les enfants de Don Quichotte, an organisation that battles for the rights of homeless people.

The deadly stand-off between workers and the National Guard was the culmination of events that began on Saturday May 1, 1886.

A historical marker, pictured above, is located at Russel and Superior on Jones Island in Bay View. It commemorates the Bay View Massacre.

The one-month occupation of the restaurant and parking lot of the Buffalo Grill in Viry-Chatillon outside Paris has resulted in an important victory for 20 undocumented migrant workers fired at the fast food chain.

The migrants, mostly of African origin, many with years of employment at the chain, face expulsion from the France of Nicolas Sarkozy to their country of origin.

The case began in 2004 when a Lithuanian company, Laval, entered the building trade, winning a string of contracts in Sweden. The company, then best known for producing cake, based its strategy on the importation of cheap Latvian labour. Laval argued that as Sweden does not have a legal minimum wage this was entirely legal.

thelocal.se reported:

Set in the context of the then-recent reunification of the German state;

The workers were originally fired towards the end of January, after a government inspection of the factory showed that 19 of the factory's 64 workers. The worker's contracts were cancelled after the inspector declared that they were using false papers.

The whole crew, around 80 people, both immigrant and natives - in solidarity stopped their work after successive acts of discrimination by the management.

Valérie Boukobza, the headmistress of a school in the north of Paris, was arrested on the 20th of March after intervening to try to prevent the arrrest of a chinese illegal immigrant who was collecting his two grand-daughters from her school.

The plane had not landed at the usual passenger terminal but instead taxied to a cargo area where media access was barred. Deportees were then herded into a waiting bus while some were beaten. They were subsequently taken to a hotel controlled by the Asayish, where those with family members already in Erbil were eventually released.

Good leaflet with questions and answers about immigration and asylum seekers to the UK. It examines common perceptions, where they come from, whether they are accurate, who is spreading them and why. In text and PDF.

Introduction to debate on the new 'under classes'1

Between Repression and the Mafia

Behind the Border
It is only a one hour journey from Berlin to the German-Polish border, the supermarkets in Berlin offer Polish food, immigrants from Poland are part of daily life in the German capital - nevertheless there are not many direct contacts (apart from perhaps the punk scene). The ‘iron curtain’ is slow to dissolve, due to languages and the geographical location.

Article about the agricultural industry in Spain, and the strike of mostly immigrant olive harvest workers in 2005.