Ji Temple, Jia Min
Refugee crisis in Ukraine
Across Europe, a vast network of collection and delivery systems for aid to Ukrainian refugees is emerging, in some cases formally organized, but often managed only by ordinary people doing their part. In a small city in rural France, Jakopan author Nathan Akehurst saw no less than three homemade signs on a short trip pointing to this help. Meanwhile, with the support of volunteers, the Polish Ministry of Railways is frantically rebuilding a line to transport people in the area. Pictures of przemysl stations at przemysl stations on the Polish-Ukrainian border for those in need have spread.
Cities throughout continental Europe already offer free public transport for Ukrainians entering the country. The Czech Republic, a country about the size of Scotland, has declared it capable of absorbing up to 250,000 Ukrainians. The EU's internal borders remain firmly open.
Ukrainian refugee Rahela Captari, cradles a child in a temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees converted from a sports stadium, 17 March 2022 in Dumblevani, Romania.
This is a silver lining in the midst of frustrating weeks. However, as someone who has been following and working on immigration and refugee protection for years, the author sees this and realizes that people have always been able to react in this way, and the feelings are complicated. For the past decade or two, Europe has struggled to build one of the world's most violent borders, including pushbacks linked to thousands of drowning incidents each year. Dozens of people have drowned in the past few days alone.
Then there's the kind of trade that sends people back to slavery in Libya, as well as a vast, ever-expanding network of maritime military and surveillance infrastructure, and the general conviction of aid workers. Now, Ukraine's response has proved that these institutions are capable of not orchestrating a barbaric movement. Europe's swift closure of the door to Afghans fleeing the Taliban last fall shows that straightforward ethnic issues and geopolitical considerations dictate this apparently different response.
Of course, aiding refugees is always the right thing to do. The Home Office's initial approach seemed to be as anti-social toward Ukrainians as it was to others fleeing the war (only 50 Ukrainians were granted visas in the first two weeks of the war). This is simply to say how Europe's relatively liberal approach to Ukrainians seeking safety has exposed how its usual actions are not only cruel but also extremely unnecessary.
For years, politicians and commentators from all political factions in Europe have told people that the continent is full, that getting people in will only encourage more people to migrate, and that most refugees are not real. In the case of Ukraine, this superficial argument is gone. Even governments that are generally strongly opposed to immigration have not embraced these views. Countless scrambled European politicians have told us that the impossible and unrealistic is happening right now, fast and on a large scale.
The positive impact on refugee protection as a whole needs to be grasped quickly. First, it could be a protracted crisis with great potential for escalation. EU Commissioner Josep Borrell has warned that as many as 5 million Ukrainians could flee as the crisis continues. In this case, people's attitudes can easily begin to shift over time, so we need to ensure that Ukrainians are provided with maximum and long-term services in the EU, including the right to work and social security, regardless of the circumstances of Ukraine's brewing accession to the EU.
Secondly, displacement has reached record levels worldwide, and the current instability is likely to create more problems. The war is already fueling a pre-existing fuel crisis and raising concerns about food shortages in third countries, leading some countries to further jeopardize supplies by hoarding food. Finally, the same Europe, which shows an extraordinary human touch to those who have fled their homes, is also about to strengthen its ability to do the exact opposite in other situations.
On March 22, the EU's new "Strategic Guide" will be approved at the European Council. This is a grand new concept of action for European defense, and as such, it involves much more than immigration. But the escalation of violence along the border is written into the DNA of the strategy.
Among refugee groups, there are also ethnic issues that deserve attention. The Guardian reported that two weeks ago, Alani Iyanuoluwa in Ukraine fled Kiev. On her way through Europe, the 24-year-old hopes to be reunited with her family in London. However, she has been stranded in French ports for 10 days because she is Nigerian. The growing number of refugees claiming that the British government ignored blacks fleeing Ukraine has reignited the debate on race, and Iyanuoluwa is one of them.
Critics say that while Britain's housing secretary Michael Gove's refugee reception scheme has no limit on the number of people, it stands in stark contrast to the government's visa program for Afghans, which promises to offer only 5,000 places in the first year. When the scheme finally opened in January, it was found that most of those places would be occupied by Afghans already living in Britain. The previous sponsorship program, launched in 2015 and primarily targeted Syrian refugees, was hampered by bureaucracy, offering about 700 resettlement spots over seven years, while Gove promised "tens of thousands" for Ukrainians.
Alba Kapoor, senior policy manager at the Runnymede Trust, said Britain's response to the Ukraine crisis raised equality issues because of claims that blacks fleeing conflict were often "dehumanized" and seen as African migrants rather than Ukrainian refugees. "There is a clear question as to why people of color fleeing war, terror and persecution do not have the right to be treated on an equal footing with others," she said.
"We still face the inability to properly view people from the Global South as human beings if they try to flee war and persecution." It's a sad place – not just the government, but the media. Kapoor said there was no need for Alan Kurdi — a Syrian boy photographed dying lying on a beach in Turkey in 2015 — to inspire support for refugees fleeing the fighting.
The Government is focused on treating refugees in terms of their origins, a practice that needs to be re-examined. Jabeer Butt, CEO of the Racial Equality Foundation, said: "We cannot blindly accept a hierarchy that prioritizes people's needs based on nationality. It feels like being asked to accept by the government that in the UK we value the lives of people of a certain colour over other people. ”
Iyanuoluwa lives with two other Nigerian students in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. All three feared returning to Nigeria because of the risk of kidnapping and trafficking, but said they were not eligible to participate in the British scheme as non-Ukrainian nationals, although two of them had family members in the UK. "We came from the war and they told us that we couldn't come to Britain without a Ukrainian passport, but Britain should consider all the inhabitants living in Ukraine at the beginning of the war."
One group of people was separated from other Ukrainians by the authorities because they were black. They include Kevin Kanjuru from Kenya, whose family is in the UK, and an uncle who has British citizenship in Northampton is also a local MP. Also included is Michael Uwandu, a Nigerian who has lived in Ukraine for 12 years, but he was separated from his 9-year-old daughter and a Ukrainian ex-partner who fled earlier than him and lost contact with them. The 37-year-old was granted Ukrainian citizenship at the end of February but had to leave before collecting his passport. Uwandu should be eligible to participate in Gove's scheme, but a lack of proof of citizenship seems to have hampered his application, and he has a younger sister, who is a British citizen, and a cousin in the UK who is trying to join.
Other stranded people include an Afghan refugee who has refugee status in Ukraine but is not eligible to participate in the sponsorship scheme, although a British national has said he is willing to sponsor her. Clare Moseley, founder of the charity Care4Calais, said: "The UK's programme to help Ukrainian refugees come to the UK is heavily biased towards Ukrainian nationals. But they are not the only people whose homes and lives have been destroyed by conflict. ”
How burnout became a contemporary buzzword
Han Bingzhe's book "Weary Society" more than a decade ago has attracted considerable attention in recent years and has aroused countless resonance among readers. Recently, The Baffler magazine published a new book by religious scholar Jonathan Malesic, "The End of Burnout: Why Work Drain Us and How to Build Better Lives," which provides a new perspective on this pathology of the times.
Charlie Tyson begins this book review titled "The New Neurasthenia" with a joke: What do bankers, TikTok reds, and Prince Harry have in common? The answer is burnout. Psychologists have been studying burnout for 50 years, and specific professions such as doctors and social workers have long been calling for vigilance against burnout. But over the past two years, the cultural status of burnout has changed, and it is no longer a proper noun that describes the exhausted state of practitioners of a particularly heavy interpersonal service job, but continues to burn across all elite industries.
Tyson then points out that the recent epidemic of burnout has a lot to do with the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought about a pandemic of fatigue for workers. The stress and social chaos caused by mismanagement and seemingly endless public health emergencies constrain workers' ability to bear them. But the prevalence of burnout cannot be attributed solely to the pandemic, and while the exhaustion of nurses, teachers, and some other workers is partly responsible for the increase in burnout rhetoric, the most enthusiastic use of the term are highly educated remote workers in technology, finance, media, and more. So, is burnout a syndrome of chronic work stress that the World Health Organization summarizes, a form of depression, or a sign of disillusionment that underpins our workplace imagination?
Jonathan Malesic takes a critical look at the discourse about burnout. The press's treatment of burnout, citing Anne Helen Petersen's famous 2019 article ("How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation"), as an example, tends to emphasize the tireless efforts of burnout workers who insist on getting their jobs done no matter what. Malesic argues that such a description significantly boosts burnout's reputation by juxtaposing the disease with the "American ideal of constant work." But this is at best a partial view of burnout.
Psychologist Christina Maslach was the founding figure in the study of burnout, and the Maslach burnout assessment is the standard assessment of burnout, which she believes has three components: exhaustion; cynicism or depersonalization (for example, in doctors it can be found that they see patients as "problems" to be solved rather than people who need treatment); and a sense of ineffectiveness or futility. The narrative of desperate laborers as heroes of labor ignores the important fact that burnout can damage your ability to work. Malesic writes that a "precise list of diagnoses" could reduce the broad use of burnout while helping people suffering from the disease seek medical treatment. And as a religious scholar, he diagnoses burnout as a disease of the soul, which he believes stems from the gap between our ideals about work and the reality of our work. Americans have strong illusions about what work can offer: happiness, respect, identity, community. And the reality is much worse. Since the 1970s, working conditions have tended to deteriorate in many sectors of the economy. As our economy becomes more unequal and unforgiving, many people redouble their efforts in fantasies, hoping that through never-ending toil, they can get what they want and become the people they want to be, malesic says it's a false promise.
Malesic's research is related to his own experience. Although on the surface he had a perfect job, he was a tenured professor, teaching in his favorite fields of religion, ethics, and theology, with smart and friendly colleagues, and a satisfactory salary and benefits, in private, he became the shell of his past, barely able to go to classes in the afternoon, feeling isolated in a long-distance marriage, and eating ice cream and drinking beer in the evening. His students were sullen, indifferent, easily bored and plagiarized, and they damaged his spirit. After resigning, Malesic decided to figure out what had happened to him. It's not exactly depression because neither talk therapy nor antidepressants help him, and quitting is effective. He concluded that his illness was burnout.
Legendary sociologist C. Mills Wright Mills) proposes that the "sociological imagination," an understanding of how our own experiences reflect broader societal and historical forces, can help us connect seemingly private troubles with public issues. Burnout, as a personal disease, reflects a broken labor system, and it is this reimagining that is the primary object. Burnout emerged as a psychological concept roughly parallel to a unique stage of development in American economic history. In the 1970s, the post-war glory faded and inequality began to soar. The rise of the temporary industry 20 years ago heralded future developments. At the suggestion of consultants, companies began to lay off employees. Malesic notes, "Temporary workers become ideal workers. "Workers are beginning to be seen as a source of debt rather than productivity. Fueled by deregulation and the decline of union power, firms have achieved a massive risk shift from capital to labor. At the same time, the increasingly dominant service sector places new emotional demands on workers. In service work, our personalities and emotions are the "main means of production", which are leased and controlled by the employer.
In this context, a new code of work ethics was established: what the sociologist Allison Pugh called a "one-way honor system" between employers and employees. If an employee wants to get (or keep) a job, they must be fully engaged in the work – knowing that employers don't feel obligated to reciprocate. One fact is worth repeating: Labor productivity has been rising since 1974, but real wages have remained flat. At the same time, as if to compensate for an increasingly unstable economy, our illusions about work have become even stronger. Hard work is probably america's most universally cherished value. A recent Pew survey found that 80 percent of Americans describe themselves as "hardworking," more than any other trait. If, as Malesic says, burnout stems from the difference between ideal and reality, then burnout is the punishment for the idealist.
In his famous essay "Useful Work Versus Useless Toil," William Morris envisions a political change that makes all work enjoyable. Malesic, on the other hand, believes that work should not be the center of our lives at all. Since max Weber's research on Protestant ethics came out, Christian thought has often been accused of instilling toxic work ideals. But Malesic believes that poison may produce an antidote. Religious worship, the Jewish Sabbath, are leisure activities that confirm a higher goodness than work. In communities where work is marginalized or strictly adheres to restrictions: a Benedictine convent in the desert of New Mexico, a nonprofit in Dallas that looks like a great place to work or a cult with extraordinary charisma, communities that subordinate jobs to higher purposes are all thriving on the growth of their members while surviving economically.
One of Tyson's criticisms of Malesic's book is his blurring of political value judgments about burnout. Is burnout a weapon for the weak, a way of rebelling against an unjust work system, or a new round of mannerism by the selfish elite? Malesic's focus on the pressures of work that push women and minorities into burnout is also instructive, as well as his discussion of how people with disabilities can lead us to rethink our dominant imaginations of work — quoting disabled artist Sunny Taylor's article "The Right Not To Work" — but also requires "white-collar work ethics" in addition to blue-collar jobs today. Aside from the brief discussion (no longer allowed to disengage) and an interview with a cyclist who lost a finger while working at a tire factory, class barely made it into his analysis. He makes no mention of how common burnout is among the working class, and the burnout in the book is mostly doctors and professors.
Malesic found that the closest historical phenomenon to burnout was neurasthenia—a state of mental exhaustion that emerged among the highly educated mental workers of the United States in the 19th century, and the language of burnout appeared in the classic medical writings on neurasthenia. This clear precedent gives us all the more reason to suspect that burnout, like neurasthenia, is a disease that stands tall. As Daniel Markovits points out in his book The Elite Trap, one of the eccentric features of the current economic order is how hard the super-rich work. The top 1 percent of earners are made up of executives, financial practitioners, consultants, lawyers, and specialists who report extremely long hours of work, sometimes exceeding 70 hours per week. It seems unlikely that these workaholic elites will get high marks on the inefficiency indicators of burnout (exhaustion and cynicism are another matter), but weird work ethics designed by the wealthy seem to be highly correlated with our understanding of the cultural phenomenon of burnout. The soul-damaging false ideals of work that Malesic laments belong largely to the upper middle class, and many working-class workers have long understood the exploitative reality of work from experience. A recent study in the UK showed that low-income, low-educated workers are more likely to feel that their jobs are useless.
Burnout is also not just an American phenomenon. From China's "lying flat" wave to the outcry against overwork and death in Japan and South Korea, it shows people's growing indignation at the concept of inhumane work. Paid leave is offered to burnout workers in Sweden and all European countries, and burnout patients in Finland can attend paid rehabilitation workshops. But the mainstreaming of burnout seems unlikely to lead to a more robust public discussion about the positive aspects of idleness and the pursuit of less alienated forms of work. The term is a cultural phenomenon precisely because it resonates with wealthy professionals who are obsessed with overwork. If the working class remains excluded from this indicator, burnout will not create an alliance between the intellectual workers and the working class.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Luan Meng