Long week

Yesterday, I went to a meeting with a lawyer from ECRE-European Council on Refugee and Exiles. She offered quite some good angles into what I should be looking for regarding the chapter that I am drafting during my three months here in Brussels, such as researching more international court decisions. One particular case that I was reading about today has to do with a bilateral agreement between Australia and Malaysia about the exchange of refugees. I will have to put more about this specific case on here, because it is quite interesting-some pros, but also some negative things about this decision on the part of the Australian government. I feel a bit like a detective trying to piece everything together. I have to keep reminding myself that it's good I have access to so much information, and that this is a process, when a large part of me is wondering how the heck I am going to transform my notes into 20 pages that will eventually be published? Deep breaths...

Bon weekend

Bon weekend is what you say in French to wish someone a good weekend, which makes that aspect of my French learning experience easy at least! My weekend has been low-key but fabulous. Yesterday, we had quite a mix of countries represented on our excursion to Antwerp, or Anvers, as it is called in French, although it is a Flemish city. It was me, the American, my new roommate, Loredana (Italian), my friend Anne and her flatmate, Julia (Germans), my friend from French class Lucy (Czech) and her male flatmate, Clement (Austria). Antwerp was quite lovely, but it was so cold! Most of the diamond shops were closed, at least the ones in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood we walked through to get to the city center due to the fact that Saturday is their Sabbath. In any case, all of us but Lucy, who had already been and preferred shopping, went to the artist Ruben's house, which only cost us 1 euro entry fee. Fantastic deal, as we stayed an hour and a half, looking at art. The night before, Friday, I had met up with Anne for a couple of drinks, but by 10:30, we had already called it a night in preparation for our trip to Antwerp. It's crazy what a little bit of snow will do, but seeing as how we just got snow on Thursday, the first since I've been here, no one seems to want to go out. Today was more museum hopping, 2 euro entry at the Magritte art museum, where I went with Loredana and her coworker, Valentina (both work at the Italian Mission to the EU). We stayed for three hours, so I have reached my museum capacity for the weekend! Now, it's just finishing laundry and getting ready to go back to work. However, one last thing to comment on:

Brussels, a city of 1 million people, is ridiculously small in some way. Today, we ran into Clement, the guy from our group last night. He also was the museum, and he started peering at me on the other side of the glass exhibit I was looking at, which made me laugh. This has been the seventh or eighth time I have run into someone, or someone has seen me in Brussels. The other day, I ran into our director at work around 8:30pm-I was on the metro going home from French class, and he was trying to get on the too crowded metro (he ended up waiting for the next one, but we said hello). Ah. C'est la vie.

A sampling of my academic journal:

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting at the Bavarian Permanent Representation to the EU. Many countries, such as Germany, have their own regional representation to the EU. One of the benefits for these regions is to connect the EU political debates with their own national and regional political debates. Michael, the regional director of JRS Europe was kind enough to invite me to this meeting, in which there was to be a panel of speakers, including two MEPs (Members of European Parliament) discussing the topic of immigration and integration within Europe. These discussions are open to the public, and Michael also informed me about how countries often have funds set aside for political information/education in which they can host events that educate the public, with the idea that being an informed citizen is the only way one can actually fully exercise his or her citizenship.

This meting was quite interesting as the focus was on immigration and asylum issues from an economic and business perspective, with many of the politicians taking a more conservative approach than JRS. Still, I found myself amazed that even this right-centrist approach was still perhaps more open minded than view points I might hear being espoused in the United States. After the meeting was over, I found myself better able to articulate why small countries like Malta have issues with the Dublin Regulation and what some of their alternative paradigms to how the EU should work on asylum and immigration issues might be. I also learned more about some of the challenges that Eastern Europe faces, in that as migration flows traditionally have stemmed from Eastern Europe into Western Europe, and Eastern Europe itself has not necessarily been a destination for large numbers of people, politicians in places like the Slovak Republic do not want to take preventive measures to address migration. Rather, they would rather wait until after there is a particular problem. Hearing politicians actually articulate their positions and listening to the types of questions that audience members asked after the panel, I realized why, as an NGO, it is good to attend these meetings. Because the perspective is different, you can gauge not only the arguments but also how the arguments are being presented and the strategy behind them, so you can plan yours.