We are pleased to announce the launch of ECHOES, a series of original contributions hosted by the Global Migration and Health Initiative (GloMHI). 

GloMHI, as a group of scholars and advocates, is interested in understanding the complexity of the migration phenomenon, its global determinants, and migration as a determinant of health. On a monthly basis, we will host original contributions by migrants, advocates, community workers, students, educators, policy makers, and applied researchers, from all over the world, who want to share ideas that contribute to an in-depth understanding of migration and its articulations with health, from multiple perspectives and disciplines.
 
To submit a contribution, please send a one-paragraph proposal to:
​globalmigrationandhealth (at) gmail.com

The Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture (SSPC) is hosting a webinar on the mental health of refugees and im/migrants, specifically the impact of separation on families and children by  Cécile Rousseau and Suzan J. Song. 
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Registration for this webinar is free for students, trainees, and residents, as well as SSPC members. The webinar is free for registrations in low- and middle income countries. It is $5 for non-SSPC members. Early-bird regisration ends March 15.

Webinar Details:
Fri Mar 29 2019, 1:00-2:30pm PDT

Professor Alison Mountz, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Laurier University is giving a talk on March 21, 2019 at The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Registration for the event is now open.

The talk presents research on global migration through contested border-crossings where people navigate policy, jurisdiction, and sovereignty. Mapping geographies of asylum-seeking and border enforcement reveals the creative interplay between geography, law, and public policy. While states of the Global North contain and manage human mobility by intercepting people and ships en route to their shores, people migrating from locations in the Global South must work creatively to gain access to asylum. The borderlands render legible contemporary trends and forces of global migration: the intended and unintended effects of public policy, intensified precarity, innovative technologies of interception and detention, struggles over access, debates about humanitarianism and policy design, and shifting geographies of enforcement. 

According to the Guardian, nearly 8 million indigenous people in India are at danger of being evicted from forests that their ancestors have lived in for many years, under the false guise of conservation. 

Several Indian wildlife and conservation organizations, such as Wildlife First, the Wildlife Trust of India, and the Tiger Research and Conservation Trust have accused the tribal people of ruining the forests’ biodiversity and "have petitioned the court to clear them from the land. Yet the 2006 Forest Rights Act gave Adivasi rights to live on and protect the land that they had been cultivating within forest boundaries." 

Human rights defenders in India and international groups are fighting the order. 

The Queen Mary Centre for European Research is hosting the following event: The Right to Rescue: A Human Rights Defender Framework, on March 25, 2019, 18:30-20:00 at Arts One Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London.

"The so-called migration crisis that Europe has witnessed in the past years has generated much political turmoil across the continent. While a great number of refugees lose their lives on sea routes or suffer due to inhumane circumstances awaiting them along the Schengen borders, European decision-makers seem to focus increasingly on defending the Union’s frontier and less on protecting the lives of those arriving from abroad. Should the EU have a different approach putting the lives and dignity of individuals in the focus of its attention during policy making? Is the protection of human rights and the provision of security to European citizens necessarily a zero-sum game?"

Keynote Speaker: Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, Centre for European Research, Queen Mary University of London

Discussant: Pia Oberoi, Advisor on Migration and Human Rights, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Chair: Dr Sarah Wolff, Director of the Centre for European Research, Queen Mary University of London 

In partnership with the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Canada and Hart House, the Art Museum is one of the first Canadian institutions to take part in this French-initiated global, all-night event happening simultaneously in more than 50 cities. The Night of Idea's Event is taking place at the Hart House of University of Toronto on Feb 2, 2019.

One of the topics covered will be Migration and Frontiers, specifically zones of detention and dislocation. 

Speakers include:

• Syed Hussan, No One is Illegal-Toronto activist, writer, Migrant Workers Alliance
• Hanna Gros, Refugee and Immigration Advocate, UofT International Human Rights Program
• Moderator: Alison Mountz, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration (Wilfred Laurier University). 

The event is free and will run from 7 pm till 2 am.
#NightOfIdeasTO

"On Saturday, a Saudi teenager fleeing domestic abuse was offered protection in Canada. However, why was Rahaf’s case prioritized over the other precarious-status or non-status women searching for a new Canadian life free from abuse?"

An article in the Toronto Star by Dr. Stephanie J. Silverman sheds light on how there are thousands of women and children who become undocumented or non-status in Canada after escaping domestic violence. Around 20,000 to 200,000 people in Canada do not have legal immigration papers and many of them in the same situation as Rahaf's. 

"The government is, at best, ignoring the claims and calls for protection for these women and their dependants and, at worst, potentially pushing them back to their abusers."