After twenty years of growth, labor shortages threaten to derail the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Since the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia joined the EU in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, their economies have been boosted through a combination of capital from multinationals and cheap and well-educated local workers.
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The European refugee crisis is officially over. That was the message of the European Commission when it presented its annual progress report on migration in Brussels earlier this month. “For 3 consecutive years, arrivals figures have been steadily falling, and current levels are a mere 10% of what they were at their peak in 2015,” the Commission wrote.
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Two years after the massive persecution of sexual minorities, a new crackdown on LGBTQ people in Russia’s Chechnya region appears to be in the making. In January, two queer people were killed and nearly forty detained, as reported by the Guardian. The cause of death was allegedly police torture.
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In many ways, World War I was a watershed when it came to women’s political rights. Before the war, women had the right to vote in only a few countries. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world in which women won the right to vote, although in Sweden some women had voting rights since the 18th century. The first female members of parliament were elected in Finland in 1907. Yet thanks to the suffragette movement – the 1910s saw the first International Women’s Days –, women’s contribution to the war economies, and revolutionary worker’s movements around the world, many national parliaments adopted universal suffrage during or following the war.
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Eloy Domínguez Serén is the director of the documentary film “Hamada”, about the daily life of three young Sahrawis in the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria. With vitality, humor and unexpected scenarios, the film paints an unusual portrait of a group of young friends living in a camp in the middle of the stony Saharan desert. “Hamada” premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) on November 15, 2018 and has since screened at film festivals in Gijón, Spain, where it was awarded Best Spanish Film and Best Spanish Director, and Porto, Portugal, where it received an award for Best Emerging Director. I spoke with the director the week before the premiere of “Hamada” at the IDFA.
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Excerpt in Spanish (Cineclub Calle Mayor).
