大きな問題ですが

今週のTIMEの特集はMigrants（移住者たち）でした。親子を別々の表紙に掲載し、米国が親子が引き離したことを暗示したものになっています。シリアの難民についても触れていますが、中南米のmigrantsたちがメインになっています。やたらと壁にこだわるトランプですが、TIMEの主張ではmigrantは長期的には経済を下支えするものとして好意的に捉えています。南米の特徴かどうか分かりませんが、見知らぬ国に行こうとする動機にギャングから脅迫や迫害を受けているからという理由が多かったです。

The Stories of Migrants Risking Everything for a Better Life

By Haley Sweetland Edwards January 24, 2019

世界的な傾向として2億6千万人もの人が出身国の外で暮らしているそうです。移住には経済的な理由や貧困、戦争など様々な原因があるようですが、この流れは壁を作ったとしても、親子を引き離したとしても、軍隊を派遣しても変えられないと米国の取り組みを批判しています。

Monterroso and Calderón, along with the thousands of other families who had gathered in late November in encampments outside Tijuana, represent a tiny fraction of the record-breaking 258 million international migrants, defined by the U.N. as people living outside their country of birth. The total number has more than doubled since 1985 and ballooned by 36 million since 2010.

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

（中略）

The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

受け入れ国としては、移民たちのポジティブな影響は過小評価し、事件などのネガティブな影響は過剰反応する傾向があるようです。これは日本でも他人事ではなさそうです。

Despite the fevered rhetoric in Washington, there were actually fewer undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. in 2016 than in 2007, according to a Pew Research Center study. Apprehensions along the border with Mexico plummeted in 2017 to their lowest level since 1971. Inside the U.S., immigrants are less likely than U.S. natives to commit crimes (despite Trump’s suggestion to the contrary) and are overwhelmingly more educated than immigrants were in the past. According to a Brookings Institution analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, the biggest group, 41%, of new immigrants from 2010 to 2017 came not from Latin America but from Asia. And as whole, 45% of immigrants to the U.S. had college degrees—compared with roughly 35% of non-Hispanic white Americans.

But statistics go only so far. In elections, facts often matter less than voters’ feelings. In fact, studies show that native-born U.S. and European citizens’ perception of immigration writ large, and the character of new immigrants in particular, is largely wrong. Native-born citizens dramatically overestimate how many immigrants live in their own communities. They also underestimate the average immigrant’s skills and education levels while overestimating their poverty rate and dependence on social safety nets. Native-born citizens also overestimate the share of immigrants who are Muslim.

TIMEではmigrantに自ら書いてもらったイラストを掲載していましたが、シリア難民たちの暮らしをジャーナリストがイラストにした本があります。The New York Review of Booksの書評で知ったのですが他にもこのようなスタイルの本があるそうです。

次のような書評でイラストのいくつかを読むことができます。

Documenting the Journeys of Syrian Refugees in Comics

Escaping Wars and Waves culls Olivier Kugler’s contributions to Harper’s, Le Monde diplomatique, The New Yorker, and more.

Dominic UmileSeptember 24, 2018

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Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees

Posted on July 17, 2018

TIMEの記事では米国を目指す中南米からのmigrantsがメインになっていましたが、ヨーロッパの難民も含めて色々な難民キャンプを訪れたAi Weiweiの映画が公開中です。

次のレビューではAi Weiwei自身も中国で軟禁されたりした経験があるからではと推測しています。先日見に行ったのですが、芸術家ということで何か凝った作りをするのかと思っていたら「普通のドキュメンタリー」でした。インタビューでも語っているように、難民キャンプ生活での寒さ、泥のぬかるみなどを感じれるようになっています。

Ai Weiwei brings humanity to the refugee crisis in ‘Human Flow’

by Mac Taylor   November 2, 2017

One might wonder, though, why Weiwei would spend so much time including himself in a work about human migrants. One might think this selfish, or perhaps egotistical. Yet to have such thoughts would be to ignore Weiwei’s own tumultuous past. Born to a poet father sentenced into exile by the Chinese government, Ai grew up on the move. Before he became the artist so many know and love today, he endured police beatings, imprisonment and house arrest. Weiwei’s own movements have a history of being restrained. Thus, when he reaches out to a refugee anywhere, he does so with the knowledge of what it means to be displaced, disrespected and distanced. “I see this crisis,” he states, “as my crisis. I see those people coming down to the boat as my family. They could be my children, my parents … Like me, they are also afraid of the cold.” Importantly, this cold is not simply the frigid waves of a wintery Mediterranean, a snowy trek across France, or continuous states of blinding rain. This cold is a human infliction: it sears the heart and the mind, attempting as it does so to steal from the refugee a sense of integrity, dignity, any and all semblances of self-respect. It is a cold of rejection, unwantedness. It is a cold of a yawning human indifference.

Within this layered context, Weiwei’s interactions take on a greater importance. Every handshake is a knowing one, a warming one. Every meal served is an appreciated gift. To the large populations of peoples currently seeking refugee among other nations, in foreign lands, in “Human Flow,” Ai’s empathetic presence can only be a source of communal comfort. Indeed, he is a needed reminder that the soul, too, shall persevere.

ドイツのドキュメンタリーでは中国での経験も含めて取り上げてくれています。先ほどのレビューの最後ではArt has to be involved with the moral and philosophical and intellectual conversation.と芸術はこのような問題に無関心ではいけないと思っているようです。

By using the documentary film as an art piece to project such important sentiment, Weiwei purposefully defines the power of art as well. The human condition, Ai contends, is “part of an aesthetic judgment. Art has to be involved with the moral and philosophical and intellectual conversation. If you call yourself an artist, this is your responsibility.” For the self-proclaimed “lifelong refugee,” such a responsibility is, and has always been, inescapable. The ancient poets named it, the bird in flight calls it reminiscently, the pervasive color orange all but screams it. And Weiwei welcomes it, welcomes it all across the world, to all kinds of people undergoing all kinds of journeys. He welcomes it with heart, open arms, kind words. He meets such staggering pain with wise eyes, silently offering a thing of unequaled importance: warmth against the cold.

TIMEのカバーストーリーは英語学習者は読み切るのに精一杯で内容をしっかり考える余裕がないかもしれませんが、たまには時間をかけて取り組むのもいいのではないでしょうか。