Shepherds and their flocks are integral to the history of European culture and ecology. Now, a new generation of pastoralists – from migrants escaping underpaid care work, to science graduates looking for tangible ways to protect the planet – are rewriting patriarchal traditions to preserve it for the future.
After a Canadian mining company challenged a Zapotec community’s Indigenous identity, recalling the ancestral names of sacred landmarks helped reinvigorate their connection to the land – and defend it from extractive industries.
When foreign companies restarted mining operations that had been shuttered since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Vareš had high hopes of economic revival. But as the state fails to take a stand against pollution and deforestation, optimism has given way to nostalgia for the socially owned mines of the communist era.
Roma people are routinely excluded from jobs, housing and public services. Yet tens of billions of euros to promote Roma inclusion are vanishing into projects with no transparency or measurable impacts. Our investigation found evidence of some of this EU money being spent on displacing or demonizing Roma communities in Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechia and Italy.
In communities shaped by redlining and disinvestment, the only places to shop are often dollar stores – stocked with plastic goods that have crossed oceans on container ships and rolled across states on eighteen-wheelers. These journeys are long, carbon-heavy, and almost invisible, but their impact is felt from Suzhou to Chicago, from the global climate to the human body.
With almost a third of young Portuguese living abroad, the country’s visa options and growing recognition of foreign qualifications help keep the economy on its feet. But despite so many immigrant workers coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, their degrees still don’t have the same clout as qualifications earned in Portugal.
College-educated migrants arriving in Italy face one of the harshest job markets in Europe. Compared to natives with similar qualifications, migrants are overqualified, underpaid, and underemployed. As a doctor from Venezuela learned, landing steady employment even in a field with shortages can be a long struggle.
High language requirements, a one-size integration policy, and discrimination. Despite the need for labour, landing a job in Sweden has become a hurdle race for college-educated migrants, a new joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports shows.
“During the third week of the first Covid-19 lockdown, we ran out of the little food we had. We spent two days on empty stomachs and this forced me to join a group of children from my village who were going to pan for gold along Odzi River. I have not stopped since then,” she said.
When talking about diversity in the newsroom, the issue of class is usually the last to be mentioned, or not mentioned at all.
