Irishman Joe Kearns worked as a software engineer and businessman before turning to the intercultural field. Today he is the director of Carmine Training, an intercultural consulting firm. He served for several years as SIETAR Ireland’s representative on the board of SIETAR Europa and was the driving force behind the creation of the SIETAR Europa Special […]
Migration and asylum are sensitive issues. They create emotions and opinions that do not always reflect realities. The blog “Facts instead of Myths” (Fakten statt Mythen/Des faits plutôt que des mythes) contributes to ongoing debates by discussing generally taken-for-granted assumptions by means of verified facts. A collaboration between the Swiss Refugee Council and the Swiss […]
My introduction to intercultural training was in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1983, running training courses for Cambodian families who had been granted asylum, to prepare them for their new life in the U.S., Canada, or Europe after fleeing the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Killing Fields’. I was a student volunteer, and it was an impactful […]
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 […]
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 Athena Centre for Women opened in Chios in July 2016; it is the first female-only facility for the refugee population of the Greek island of Chios. On opening day, the women who arrived told us they immediately felt a sense of safety, comfort, and excitement when they stepped through the door. As they removed […]
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 […]
