Comment, Prose

Close Campsfield

by Joanna Engle Unknown to many, North Oxford is the home to one of the UK’s ten immigration removal centres. Campsfield opened in 1993 and its detainees have included refugees, asylum seekers, foreign national offenders, and ‘overstayers’.  All of them are held without charge, without a time limit, often without legal representation. Around 25,000 people […]

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Comment, Prose

In Search of Safe Passage

The Psycho-Social Implications of the EU-Turkey Deal on Greek Islands. by Jacob Warn At the edges of Europe, there are borders you can cross, borders you cannot cross, and borders you may cross if you so wish, and to which you may or may not return. If you’re seeking refuge in Europe, the chances are […]

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Comment, Prose

Current Narratives

by Michael Angerer To us, narrow-minded land-dwellers that we are, the sea has for millennia been the great unknown, the Other, a fear to be overcome. Even now, in the age of submarines and recreational scuba-diving, it has managed to remain enigmatic: it is one of those so-called interesting facts that less than five percent […]

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Prose

The Changing Role of the International Volunteer on the Aegean Islands

by Jacob Warn, former Executive Editor, currently volunteering with refugees on the Greek island of Chios The refugee crisis has brought populations all over Europe to a breaking point of intolerance. Local populations, once welcoming, have lost their patience, evidenced on Chios, a Greek island separated from Turkey by five kilometres of water. Here, as elsewhere, […]

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Culture, Prose

On Dignity

by Alec Siantonas In what we now call the Ancient Near East, beards were a sign of dignity. Beards adorned the virile and the vigorous, the warrior and father of warriors. I myself have small desire to sire warriors, but I sympathise with the viewpoint. I delight in my hair, in all its luxuriant abundance. […]

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