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The 5 W’s of Nigeria’s Unemployment: Act 1
A young woman struggles through university, enduring a few strikes, disreputable advances from cultists, depraved lecturers and other similar low-life and manages to graduate with a second class upper degree, maybe even a first class. She’s from a low income family, maybe the first or second from her kindred with […]
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Spanish Youth Look for Jobs in Mexico
The youth unemployment situation in Spain is disturbing: more than 50% of young people (between 18 and 30 years old) are unemployed. This has caused a strong immigration wave of Spanish youth to Latin American countries, especially Brazil and Mexico. During the first half of 2012, the number of Spanish who were […]
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Reform and Backlash: What Europe Can Learn from Latin America
In November, the backlash to externally imposed austerity once again boiled over. Labor unions executed coordinated strikes. University students took to the streets. Daily life came to a halt as citizens protested grinding reforms. The harsh economic restructuring was demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and backed by the […]
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How Europe’s financial crisis ambushed my German class
None of us saw it coming. It was a cold November afternoon in a Berlin. We were huddled around four scratched-up tables practicing German. The topic was rent hikes caused by one of the city’s many renovation projects. Then all of a sudden, the Basque girl burst out with: “We […]
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From “You’re free to leave” to “When are you returning?”
A few years ago, in 2006, the then Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány made a memorable statement that was later understood as encitement for Hungarians to leave the country if they didn’t like it there. A look at the statistics today reveals that quite a few people have followed his […]