Category Archives: Blog
Carlos E. Chardón: Masking Puerto Rican state failure
With the recent default on debt payment (see Franqui Rivera and Colón-Garcia 2015), Puerto Rico became a failed state. State failure is the inability or incapacity of a government to provide services it determines are absolutely necessary to its population. Thus, if a government tries to provide services it deems necessary for its population and […]
Lisa Jahn & Sarah Molinari: New developments in Puerto Rican economic readjustment?
This commentary comes from a discussion panel hosted on Tuesday, September 8, by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) at the Graduate Center, CUNY, featuring the authors of the recent FocaalBlog article “Puerto Rico Is NOT Greece: Notes on the Role of Debt in US Colonialism,” Ismael García-Colón and Harry Franqui-Rivera. The authors […]
Justyna Kajta & Adam Mrozowicki: The new Polish parliament: Between the Right and the radical Right
The new parliament in Poland resembles in its makeup the one in Hungary, almost completely dominated by right-wing political parties. The Law and Justice party beat the Civic Platform party, with 37.8 percent of the vote, against 24.9 percent. The victory of Law and Justice was not surprising. It shows again that good economic growth […]
Manuela Bojadžijev & Sandro Mezzadra: “Refugee crisis” or crisis of European migration policies?
This post is part of a series on migration and the refugee crisis moderated and edited by Prem Kumar Rajaram (Central European University). “The refugee crisis in Europe is fabricated,” Prem Kumar Rajaram writes in the opening post of this series. It is certainly true that the framing of current events in terms of crisis and […]
Prem Kumar Rajaram: Beyond crisis: Rethinking the population movements at Europe’s border
This post is part of a series on migration and the refugee crisis moderated and edited by Prem Kumar Rajaram (Central European University). Crisis The refugee crisis in Europe is fabricated. Like most “crises,” the recent onset of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan trying to cross into the European Union is a representation. […]
Stef Jansen: Yearnings in the meantime
“Normal lives” and the state in a Sarajevo apartment complex Yearnings in the Meantime is a volume of the “Dislocations” series published by Berghahn Books. The immense dislocations and suffering caused by neo-liberal globalization, the retreat of the welfare state in the last decades of the twentieth century, and the heightened military imperialism at the […]
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Mallika Shakya: Ethnicity in Nepal’s new constitution
From politics of culture to politics of justice Nepal promulgated its constitution on 20 September—the first after ending the monarchy, and one replacing the interim constitution in place since 2007. That interim constitution had been put in place to mark the peace agreement with the Nepali Maoists, mainstreaming them into democratic politics and unarming them […]
Chris Hann: The new Völkerwanderungen: Hungary and Germany, Europe and Eurasia
I spent the last weeks of August and the first days of September in Hungary, close to the European Union’s border with Serbia. Never before had a routine field trip catapulted me into an engagement with issues dominating daily headlines, both in Hungary and elsewhere. What light can social anthropology throw on the current “migrant […]
FocaalBlog Event: CUNY Panel Discussion on Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis
On Tuesday, September 8, the City University of New York (CUNY) Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies is hosting a free panel discussion and presentation based on the recent FocaalBlog post “Puerto Rico Is NOT Greece: Notes on the Role of Debt in US Colonialism.” Where: The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue Room […]