A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone | Hacker News Reader

A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone

nytimes.com

47 pointsphodo32 comments

wouldn't it be sane to not put all migrants in the same group. Shouldn't we differentiate people that want to escape a warzone to save their lives, often people without any cellphones, without money, who lost everything and are not necessarly middle class but lower income people who bring their families with them to SURVIVE and people who have fancy cellphones and are now in a safe country (ex:turkey) and want to come to europe only for economic purposes leaving by side their families to make some money and bring them when they get enough $$$?

as such the article would focus only on the second part. the first part being the one stuck in syria who can't even afford the thousand dollars trip to europe, who can't even afford to be a fancy cover story of the sacro-saint newyork times

Why would a person fleeing a war zone leave behind their smartphone? That's the second thing to grab before running, right after your passport. For most of humanity, smartphones are not a symptom of abundance, they are a symptom of not having a desktop computer, laptop computer or landline.

The answer was given in the article. Soldiers ask for your Facebook password at checkpoints to check your allegiance in the war. If you don't give it, you'll often get beaten or your phone stolen / destroyed.

"Why would a person fleeing a war zone leave behind their smartphone? "

Quite a first world question.

I made the same argument when arguing with a friend. It is impossible to not cross a safe country from Syria to the Balkans.

Her answer was "They can go to Australia and still be refugees". I have also noticed similar sentiments in the people that happen to live in the better parts of the city where the refugees we are overran at the moment do not gather.

The point of the article was to demonstrate that, regardless of why someone is a migrant, a smartphone is a necessity to their lifestyle, not to bucket them.

That distinction should be made and is often made, but at the same time it's also often made for the wrong reasons, drawing wrong conclusions that drive irrational anti-immigration.

i.e. here in the Netherlands whenever a refugee is spotted with a smartphone, that's immediately suspect and seen by one part of the population as 'This is some rich guy who's here just for economic opportunities, therefore doesn't need or deserve to be here. After all he has a smartphone'. The irony in a 'rich person' at the same time being accused of being 'lowly economic opportunist taking our jobs' I guess is lost on them.

But more importantly, it overstates 1) the indication of wealth that is a smartphone in 2015, and 2) posits it's simply okay and good enough for refugees to be safe even if they live in a tent for years in a refugee camp devoid of normal livelihoods, jobs, education, entertainment and an outlook on the future.

In terms of 1) smartphones are incredibly cheap and ubiquitous. They're also one of the most functional pieces of equipment one can have with them, for anyone but perhaps especially a refugee. The ability to communicate with lost friends and family to prevent total disappearance of personal networks due to the war, the ability to organise everything you need to do, access to information etc. It's crucial. And it's one of those things you take with you when you flee. If a civil war broke out in your country, would you not bring your phone? It's right up there in the top 3. And with $30 smartphones, and a healthy 2nd hand market around, is it that surprising to see a refugee holding a smartphone every now and then? Yet this is blown up to some kind of 'underserved richness' in a lot of European discussions.

2) Think about who those people in Turkey are who want to come to Europe 'only for economic purposes', as if that type of desire is trivial, as if not everyone deserves that kind of life. Consider that the civil war in Syria has been waged since 2011. Imagine you lived in a tent in some camp since then, living out of a bag, holding no job, getting no education, not getting anywhere in life and seeing your country still torn up and worsening by the year. Now imagine there are 2 million of you in Turkey, 1 million of you in Lebanon etc, in a camps like this one

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/An_Aeria...

And somehow we say that Europe must remain closed to these people. That such a camp in Turkey is good enough and that if you're spotted with a smartphone, or coming through Turkey, it must mean you're not in need of anything and it's simply okay to close the borders. Where is the compassion for millions of refugees who want livelihoods just like we do?

Now if you want to pay more attention to those stuck in Syria, great. I applaud it and support it. But if they're stuck in Syria they're not immigrants from Syria, so I don't see how you'd 'differentiate between two groups of immigrants' when one is an immigrant, the other is not. And I also don't see how the group that does make it out and happens to have a cell phone and happens to aspire greater dreams than living in a tent in a refugee camp deserves our scorn rather than our sympathy. (totally not saying your post is anything like this, but you brought up points that I hear every single day from the most xenophobic people in Western Europe for the wrong reasons and it's pretty sad.)

Actually, eco-migrants should be taken care similarly to warzone ones. I wouldn't say that dying slowly - "living" a low quality of life in poverty is much better than dying in war...

And all in all, moving/migration is a basic human right. Nobody's knocking on your private apartment door, it's about public space.

This is similar to the distinction that the media fail to grasp between "asylum seeker" and "immigrant".

I'm not sure how much of it is "fails to grasp" so much as a deliberate blurring of lines. Sometimes it's accurate - like a Syrian dentist displaced by violence who cannot find a new job. From listening to coverage, there's a group number of economic migrants who prefer to present themselves as asylum seekers.

It's kind of mess, because the ideals on the two not-always-mutually-exclusive groups differ wildly. Generally countries get to pick their economic migrants, but not their asylum seekers...

Did you choose the country to which to run - then you are more of economic migrant, not asylum seeker.

Say your house is on fire, it burns down, and your house will remain on fire for half a decade (e.g. Syrian civil war is past 4.5 years old with no end in sight), and you have a list of different shelters to go to where you'll need to spend years, raise your kids, build a new livelihood because yours is destroyed. What do you do? You just go to any random one? Or to the best one that is within reach? The answer is obvious, and it doesn't make you an economic migrant.

An asylum seeker is simply somebody who as applied for asylum in another country, but not yet been accepted. They may do so because they are persecuted in their home country, but the definition of persecuted is (necessarily) very loose. There is no definition of an 'economic migrant', and there is no easy way of categorising the people involved.

Not sure why you are down-voted, this actually, somewhat true. My parents were refugees, and were above middle class.

The poorer ones never make it, the one who needs your help abroad. Sweden spends more money on hostels in Sweden than they donate to Syria. In fact, they have started to take the money they were supposed to donate to Syria and pay them out here instead to "entrepreneurs" and in welfare (since it's expensive to live in Sweden)

There is other side of this. Most migrants do not apply for asylum, but hide their identity, so they can not be deported. In that case my country (Czech republic) usually confiscates their possessions to cover their living expenses.

I do some work for IOM. The majority of people crossing Europe right now comes from countries where refugee status is granted (Syria, Somalia, Eritrea).

Yes, but according to Dublin treaty asylum should be granted in state where refugee enters EU. And Greece is not so sexy. Most people want into Germany because benefits are much higher in there.

I think using the term 'not sexy' to describe a nation that is undergoing internal conflict and massive economic contraction is using the wrong connotations. Refugees flee a terrible life to find stability. Not even native Greeks have stability. Clearly the EU refugee rules are not fair to border nations. It seems that yet again the rules of the EU benefit the richest, most powerful countries most.

These rules are in practice ignored by the receiving countries and the northern european countries accept this.

That is why Germany will receive nearly a million refugees this year and probably more next year.

The political (and economic) implications are massive and in many ways this is more disrupting for the european project than the crisis in Greece.

Being granted refugee status != being resettled. They can be sent home when the situation improves.

Germany(80 million), France(64), UK(64) have the capacity to absorb most of the refugees, compared to smaller European nations (below 10 millions)

That's ridiculous. A million refugees a year is a massive burden for a country of any size.

The refugees should be sent to Russia. There is plenty of room there. Or maybe China, since they have so many ghost buildings.

Complain about Mexicans all you want, but you got Tequila + Senioritas + Very similar culture and values. The refugees Europe is getting, not so much. No bueno!

You are the kind of person I'm patiently waiting for to be able to downvote.

Mmm yes and no. Germany is the exception in the story, really. Sweden (huge kudos particularly to them), Norway, Denmark and Switzerland are, too, but they're so small that the combination of them isn't very significant.

But say the Netherlands, France, the UK, Ireland, Finland, or down lower the large countries like Spain or Italy, have pretty poor records. I'd say the majority of the EU's populous countries (Germany being the exception, together with small countries, like Norway has 5 million people) aren't ignoring this practice and are very apprehensive about any leniency.

Those Dublin treaty rules are pretty bad - 'freedom of movement for me, but not for thee.' It speaks to an unworthy hypocrisy within the European liberal project...though having said that, my view of European democratic institutions is becoming increasingly jaundiced.

No wonder. A cell phone has penetrated into our lives so deeply that it literally hits the list of items people cannot do without. It’s one of a few things that make us come back and take if forgotten at home. However, connecting people in the distance, it at the same time increases this same distance making people feel even more lonely.

“If you didn’t give the soldiers your Facebook password, they would beat you, destroy your phone or worse,” Mr. Aljasem said.

xkcd was right https://xkcd.com/538/

Thermorectal crypto analysis - breaks arbitrary lenght passwords in constant time.

But did anyone at any point doubt it?

The article mentions one Mohammad Salmoni, 21 who travelled from Kabul, Afghanisthan through Iran to Belgrade, possibly on foot most of the way, with little else other than his smartphone ( and probably without any id, let alone a passport).

>"It was Very Dangerous"

Not to trivialize the hell he must have gone through, but that sounds like the adventure of a lifetime. Gives fresh perspective on the word 'adventure'.

It sounds like the adventure of the lifetime if you know that at any point you could take your credit card out of your pocket and buy something you needed, or a plane ticket home. If not, it sounds terrible.

I have a feeling he was a little too hungry, tired, thirsty, or terrified to appreciate the adventure.

"Adventure" is something bad happening to someone else, in another time and / or place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com