Classes so far

My classes have only met three times each so far, but there is much to tell already about them. The academic program that I am studying with here at DIS is Migration and Identity, which deals with issues surrounding immigration in Europe. I am taking two classes that fall within this program: the core class, Cross Cultural Encounters in a European Context and Human Trafficking. The academic program is important partly because of the two different study tours with the group. There are about 40 students in my program, and it's mostly girls. I have some good friends within the program so far, so that will make the study tours more fun! Next weekend is the short study tour, and I'll go to western Denmark. I don't know too much about the trip so far, just that it lasts from Thursday morning to Sunday, and that we'll be staying at a hostel. In March I'll be traveling to Bulgaria for a week for the long study tour.
On Wednesdays, no one has classes and its a day for field studies, and this week I went on a trip to the US embassy for my Human Trafficking class where we listened to two speakers talk about how they combat trafficking in various ways, including ad campaigns that encourage people to report suspected trafficking, writing a report on the status of all countries and trafficking, etc. Some of what they said we already knew, but it was interesting to hear it from their perspective.
So immigration is a very appropriate subject to study in Denmark because they are known through Europe as having a strict immigration policy. After 9/11 especially, there was a rising nationalism in Denmark and the government elected in November of '01 made it difficult for anyone to immigrate to Denmark, and even to get asylum in the country. This becomes a serious problem when there are immigrants from Middle Eastern countries where there is conflict that are seeking asylum, or protection in Denmark, and they cannot meet the demands of the government to get asylum. Recent figures show that even the small country of Denmark has about 2,000 asylum seekers every year, and that larger European countries, Germany for example, receives about 20-25,000 every year. Last year, about 18% of asylum seekers in Denmark were granted asylum. On Thursday, we had a speaker in class who was a legal advisor working with asylum cases and she explained the complexity of the process and how many of the applicants end up living in centers for years and years due to discrepancies in certain laws. For instance, people may not be able to prove that they have individual risk of discrimination, torture, etc. in their home countries. To do this, papers are needed to prove it and some of the applicants don't even have proper ID so they cannot complete the process. But, because of the state of certain countries, asylum seekers won't be accepted by their home countries so Denmark cannot send them back home. Instead, these people live for years and years in centers where they are unable to work or become self-sufficient at all, and must just wait.
A semester-long project that we will be all participating in is helping the asylum seekers publish the next edition of NewTimes, a magazine that is produced by the asylum seekers in the Danish Red Cross asylum centers. They want to tell their stories, but the magazine is produced in English and many are not proficient in the language, so we are going to be interviewing them and helping them tell their stories in English. This Wednesday we will be going to meet those involved in New Times and be assigned to specific people and stories to write. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this project turns out. I'm sure I will learn a great deal more about the asylum process too. To see the website for New Times, visit http://newtimes.dk/.