The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you that I don't belong to English
though I belong nowhere else
if not here...in English.
                                                               ---Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Cuban-American writer

Teenager's request for asylum denied after 8 years
Source: Feet in 2 Worlds

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After eight years struggling for asylum, 18-year-old Arigona Zogaj has been ordered by Austria’s highest court to leave her adoptive home in Austria and return to Kosovo, the country she barely knows.

Immigration in Austria: integration debate
Source: Feet in 2 Worlds

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Photo by Jessica Horner
Brunnen Market in Vienna's 16th district - Ottakring - is a home to many immigrants from Turkey and former Yugoslavia who have settled in Austria's capital.  It is a bustling place, filled with immigrant-run restaurants and stores. For two weeks in May, the district becomes the center of an art festival SOHO in Ottakring. This year's theme - Kick the Habit, Ventil Rassismus - speaks to the tensions that play out across Austria and the need to address them.

Sevdalinka, A Melancholy Soundtrack for Bosnian Immigrants and Refugees in the U.S
Originally published by Feet in 2 Worlds

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Mary Sherhart sings sevdalinka.










NEW YORK – When Mary Sherhart first sang the traditional Bosnian songs known as sevdalinkas at a concert in 2004, a woman stood up and started weeping. Her bare arms, emblazoned with scars from the war that ravaged Bosnia in the early nineties, rose toward the ceiling.


Please, Take My Home:
In Spain, Indebted Immigrants Plead for Leniancy with Home Mortgages
Originally published by GlobalPost

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Women rest on the 10th day of their walk from Valencia to Madrid.
MADRID, Spain — Federman Heredia hopes the bank will take his home.

It would be better if the government deferred his mortgage payments for two years. But they haven’t. So Heredia, who hails from Ecuador, walked more than 250 miles from Valencia to Madrid with 19 other homeowners unable to meet their monthly obligations to plead for leniency.


Off the Beaten Path: Korcula, Croatia
Originally Published by The Savvy Explorer

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KORCULA, Croatia — Croatia has secured its well-deserved place on the top of summer destination lists in large part due to the popularity of "Adriatic jewel" Dubrovnik. Yet lesser known are the numerous - and equally spectacular - small islands that dot its coast. One of the most notable is the island of Korcula, a favorite destination of Croatian vacationers known for beautiful beaches, distinctive wine and excellent olive oil.


Activists March on DC to Demand Immigration Reform and Stop to the Separation of Families
Originally published by Feet in 2 Worlds

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Activists lobbied Congress to stop deportations and pass immigration reform.
WASHINGTON, D.C — At four o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, a handful of people gathered on the corner of St. Nicholas Ave. and Linden Street in Brooklyn, waiting for the van to arrive. The morning cold did little to temper the group’s enthusiasm as they were getting ready to head to Washington D.C. for an immigration reform march.


Café Culture - Eastern and Western Europe
Originally published by The Savvy Explorer

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Traditional Bosnian coffee is served in a copper dzezva and drunk from a small cup called fildzan.








Our author loves cafes - not only because she is a coffee aficionado but also because they reveal the social fabric of a place. In cafés, the working day is suspended long enough to allow the trading of gossip or an argument about politics over a cup of coffee. For travelers, these places are a respite from overly ambitious itineraries and portals into a place's culture, especially for those who dare to follow the caffeine trail down alleys and streets away from the usual tourist haunts. (Contributed reviews of cafés in London, Madrid, Vienna, Mostar, Sarajevo and Dubrovnik.)


Creative Campaigning: "Bark for Barack" and "Hillary Happy Hours"
By Merry Pool and Jelena Kopanja
Originally published by Pavement Pieces

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NEW YORK — Ruffy the Dog may not be willing to disclose his political preferences. Bitsy, on the other hand has
conservative tendencies, her owners say. Whether they wanted to or not, both served the campaign purposes
of Bark for Barack, held in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Saturday: to get voters talking about the
presidential primaries on Tuesday.

Twenty Years after the Velvet Revolution, All That Remains of Communism in Czech Republic is a Babushka with an Ominous Overbite. Or is it?
Download article

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PRAGUE, Czech Republic – Renting its space from McDonalds on one of the busiest streets in Prague is Museum of Communism. It shares the first floor of a beautiful, Baroque building with a casino.

Haphazardly thrown into the corners of its rooms are artifacts – pieces of Soviet airplanes, propaganda posters, a time card puncher with a proletarian slogan– that bear witness to decades of communism in Czechoslovakia (today's Czech Republic), now almost 20 years gone.


Music as Medicine: Sevdalinka Songs Help Bosnian Immigrants Remember and Heal
Originally published by Feet in 2 Worlds

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Refik Ahmetovic enjoys sevdalinka at a Bosnian celebration in New York.
NEW YORK –The name of Bosnia and Herzegovina –a small, heart-shaped country in the Balkans– is rarely associated with love. The country made headlines in the mid ’90s as a place where ethnic hatred resulted in the death of 100,000 of its people and the exodus of many more.


Ailing Building Industry Squeezes Remittances
Originally published by Inter Press Service, Worldpress.org

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NEW YORK -- Wearing a hat emblazoned with a bald eagle and an American flag, Gerardo waited with some 30 other men in front of a 7-Eleven in Alexandria, Va., hoping a builder or contractor would come by to offer a job. The Sunday morning cold was a minor inconvenience. Lack of papers and, more recently, lack of work, were bigger worries.


Spain Considers Immigration Reform That Would Make Things Harder for the Undocumented
Originally published by Feet in 2 Worlds

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Policeman stands in front of immigrant detention center in Madrid.
MADRID, Spain — A little girl stood in tears amidst the crowd at a protest in front of an immigrant detention center in Madrid, Spain. She was wearing a white shirt with her father’s identification number: 2286. An immigrant from Morocco, the man was apprehended while filling up his car at a gas station and had been in detention at the center for 30 days.


Mostar: Where Bridges Divide
Originally published by Janera.com

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New 'Old' Bridge in Mostar.
MOSTAR, Bosnia and Herzegovina — On July 25th, 2008, I lost my country. It fell out of my heart, bounced off the polished stones of the new Old Bridge and with a suicidal salto mortale, landed in the folds of the Neretva river.

The indifferent water continued to course along its path.


Cuba Through Cracks
Originally published by Anamesa

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HAVANA, Cuba — I left the America of wide hips in search of the exposed bellies of the Caribbean.

It had seemed a good time to run away.  But I chose a land where escapism was a hypothesis tested only by waves and not-so-distant shores of Florida, too often refuted.

Cuba. 

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