Saskia Sassen on Immigration [and a roundup]

Immigration: control vs governance, Saskia Sassen

The United States has resorted to fairly extreme state action in order to control undocumented immigrants. This is a long history, with ups and downs. The current phase of strong-state action began in the 1990s with Bill Clinton. But the US is not alone. Some of the most powerful states in the world ? Britain, France, Italy – have increasingly reoriented large parts of their state bureaucracy to control, detect, stop, detain, and deport basically vulnerable and powerless migrants. These states have been willing to sacrifice major and minor laws, and more generally the spirit of the law – one of the most valued achievements of collective history in the west. They have sacrificed the civil liberties of their citizenry in order (supposedly) to control foreigners.

New Human Rights Web Archive

The Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research (CHRDR), part of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, is pleased to announce the development of the Human Rights Web Archive .  As part of Columbia?s larger initiative to collect free and at-risk web resources, the Human Rights Web Archive is dedicated to preserving web-based information of importance to the global community of human rights researchers, students, policymakers and advocates.

Reducing the World’s Suck with Henry Jenkins

Photo: Deney Terrio

USC Professor Henry Jenkins is a hard-core fan with hard-core fans.

I should know. I’m one of the audience members who stalked him at a conference a few years ago after his keynote, hoping to have a conversation about a paper he’d just published at the time. It was an argument for a whole new way of thinking about literacy. Reading, writing, and understanding words on a page won’t cut it anymore. In a digitized world, Henry says young people need new skills that go way beyond basic composition and comprehension. Skills like play (“the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving”), collective intelligence (“the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal”), and transmedia navigation (“the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities”).

The nuclear-weapons risk, Paul Rogers

The nuclear-security summit in Washington on 12-13 April 2010, attended by forty-seven states, resulted in a four-point communiqué and seven-page work plan that outlined tasks to be achieved by 2014.

The sense of progress was reinforced by the deal between the United States and Russia to destroy weapons-grade nuclear material; the decision by Ukraine to abandon its stockpile; and the scheduling of a follow-up meeting in Seoul in 2012. But the atmosphere of the gathering was shadowed by the prospect President Barack Obama described in his opening address as one of the greatest threats facing the world, namely the possibility that terrorists might acquire and use a nuclear weapon:

Herta Müller’s novel “Everything I Own I Carry With Me”

The new novel of Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller tells of a harrowing experience which will leave an indelible stamp on its survivor for the rest of his life. Her book stems from interviews with the poet Oskar Pastior and other Gulag survivors. An excerpt in English.

Social Analytics: Tapping Prediction Markets for Foresight
Source: Deloitte Development LLC

Prediction markets are emerging as a valuable forecasting tool in areas from sales forecasts to project success. This social analytics strategy could potentially help resolve a number of business uncertainties ? especially where prior data may be sparse or the situation is so unique that other forecasting tools are less useful. Instead of fancy statistics and software, prediction markets tap into the wisdom of crowds and the capacity of markets to aggregate beliefs to generate predictions.