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Marta Vidal

After fleeing conflict at home, African refugees battle racism in Jordan

EQUAL TIMES (22/3/2019) “There is war in Sudan. Many people are getting killed, women raped, men beaten. In Jordan, we just stay at home but it also feels like war. Discrimination. Not being able to work. It’s just like war,” says Abdul*, who fled Darfur in 2010. He is among the more than 4,000 Sudanese […]

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Tourists, tourists everywhere

NEW INTERNATIONALIST (MARCH 2019) Lurdes Magalhães no longer sees her neighbours, she only sees tourists. The neighbourhood chatter has been replaced by the sound of suitcase wheels on the cobblestones.   Tourism is booming in Porto, Portugal’s second largest city, where visitors now outnumber residents 8 to 1 – a higher ratio than Barcelona or […]

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Framing Hope: Refugee Children in Jordan Explore Analogue Photography

LOMOGRAPHY MAGAZINE (5/2/2019) Forced to flee war with their families and to leave their homes, Iraqi and Syrian youth living in Jordan saw their childhood disrupted by displacement. But their photos still manage to capture the beauty that surrounds them: olive trees, smiles, flowers, and rays of light. In the autumn of 2018, eighteen children […]

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Portuguese shopkeepers using ceramic frogs to ‘scare away’ Roma

Al JAZEERA (4/2/2019) Portugal’s ceramic frogs croak racism. Al Jazeera reveals racist practice that plays on superstition among Roma who consider frogs symbol of bad luck. Porto, Portugal – Surrounded by baskets of oranges and tangerines, a bright green ceramic frog stands at the entrance of Helena Conceicao’s grocery shop. “Everybody has frogs here,” she said. […]

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A língua do outro

CERCHI NELL’ACQUA (DEZ 2018) Em Março de 2016, Hasan Aldewachi, um cientista iraquiano, foi expulso de um voo Easyjet porque a mensagem que estava a escrever no telemóvel em árabe foi vista como suspeita por outros passageiros e denunciada à polícia. Em Outubro do mesmo ano, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi foi obrigado a sair de um avião […]

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Gentrification in Porto: will the city turn into a hotel?

OPEN DEMOCRACY (9/1/2019) Tourism is booming in Portugal, but so is housing speculation. Gentrification has been causing the displacement of the poor, a proliferation of hotels and shrinking public space. “The bookshop closed, the greengrocer and the florist closed. The city will turn into a tourist’s hotel”, sings the band Samba sem Fronteiras. They sing in the Worst […]

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The Jordanian women fighting for labour rights

EQUAL TIMES (4/12/2018) In Jordan, more women than men are going to university and girls have been consistently outperforming boys academically. Yet women’s participation in the workforce remains one of the lowest in the world. Meet some of the women trying to change this.   When Dina Saad attended a job fair in Jordan’s busy […]

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Retratos dos despejos no Porto

JORNAL MAPA (SET/NOV 2018)  A especulação imobiliária desencadeada pela explosão do turismo tem feito com que a habitação no Porto seja cada ver mais vista como um investimento e não como um direito. As rendas têm vindo a disparar, e são cada vez mais os inquilinos com ordens de despejo ou com contratos que não […]

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“Baynatna – the Arabic library promoting inclusion in Berlin”

AL JAZEERA (12/10/2018) On Friday evenings in Mitte, Berlin’s central district, the sound of an oud travels up from the public library’s ground floor. The Middle Eastern string instrument is being played in a room in Stadtbibliothek, Berlin’s municipal library, where Baynatna has found a home. It is the first Arabic-language public library in the German city. An […]

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