When I started my Masters in Intercultural Communications, I learnt that I would also be able to use my journalistic skills in the intercultural field. At that time, I wasn’t sure how I would do this, but as the course progressed and I started qualitative interviews for my master thesis, I found the answer. The […]
Egypt, the most populous Arab country in a region undergoing violent upheaval, is facing major challenges on multiple levels. Egypt is “a country at war with itself”, says the Guardian review of “Clash,” the opening film at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. As brutal as it sounds, this statement rings absolutely true. Observing Egyptian society […]
How do you teach a group of students a language, from scratch, when they don’t share a common tongue with you or each other, and they come from vastly different parts of the world? For many migrants to Switzerland, learning the local language is essential in order to integrate, find work, and make new lives […]
The chubby teenage girl with somewhat shapeless clothes thought “hopefully everything is all right” when the customs officer approached her on the train. How uncomfortable she felt, how embarrassed she was, how uneasy she felt in her skin, to be the only pupil out of her entire class picked to be checked by the guards. […]
Mirza Khan has come to Basel via Italy. His request for asylum in Switzerland was denied. Not safe but you can survive there. His family might be active in politics and might fight for the separatist cause of the Kashmiris, but since this conflict is as old as most of us, we don’t hear about it […]
On 26 May 2016, Frédéric Docquier, Professor of Economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, gave an NCCR conference on “Income disparities, population and migration flow over the 21st century.” Without minimizing the importance of the current refugee crisis, his analysis adopts a longer-term perspective and focuses on the structural forces that affected past […]
It was a sunny afternoon in May and I was on my way to ‘On the Road with Migrants’, a SIETAR event, where people would be asked to imagine what it feels like to be an asylum seeker or refugee. I was walking quickly towards the Allegra Sprachschule, conveniently located at Löwenstrasse 51, just a […]
Dr. Betty Goguikian Ratcliff is the head of the Intercultural and Interpersonal Clinical Psychology Unit at the University of Geneva. She has been working with the migrant population for twenty years, after her studies of psychopathology and mental health of migrants. Migrant wellbeing is a topic close to her heart not only for professional reasons. Born […]
A few months ago, I got a call from my friend Susan. Susan has been the headmistress of a large school in a popular suburb of Bern for over 15 years. “You deal with all things intercultural – so help me out here,” was her opening statement. The story was about a 14-year-old student from an […]
I met Achmet 3 years ago in Greece. Nineteen years old, charming and with an excellent command of the Greek language, he took care of horses. He left his home in Northern Pakistan at the age of 14 in search of a better life. After three months of adventurous travel through Afghanistan, Iran, Northern Iraq, […]
