Migrants on a boat crossing the Mediterranean Sea on January 29, 2016. Photo by callmonikm/Flickr. With the start of the New Year, it seemed like all of Europe breathed a deep sigh of relief. After being charged by the Greek government with a series of misdemeanors in 2018, the high-profile
Continue readingAuthor: Kim Wilson
Canadian Dimension: Locals pay the price of super gentrification in Mexico City
La Roma Norte, Ciudad de México. Photo by Natch Jarero/Flickr. The accelerated gentrification of two of Mexico City’s neighbourhoods, La Condesa and La Roma Norte, has caused tensions and a near-impossible living situation for local Mexicans. The already trendy neighbourhoods, accustomed to the presence of foreigners and their money, have
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Planning our way out of poverty: Racism and Toronto’s housing crisis
Kensington Market, Toronto, Canada. Photo by Dan D./Unsplash. Fearing the Immigrant: Racialization and Urban Policy in Toronto Parastou Saberi University of Minnesota Press, 2022 The cities of Europe are in peril once again, and soon the threat will come for us. The North American settler narrative persists: if we don’t
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Places of freedom: Reimagining the future of Standing Rock
Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance Nick Estes Verso, 2019 In the fall of 2016, in a shopping mall located near a small city in North Dakota, the smell of campfire betrayed a group of activists arriving
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Growing cultures of despair in Middle America
Hillbilly Elegy Ron Howard Netflix, 2020 American director Ron Howard’s latest film, Hillbilly Elegy, released on Netflix in late November, is the latest Trump-era attempt to capture the decay of Middle America. Based on a bestselling memoir written by J.D. Vance (2016), the movie tells a heart-rending story set in
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Murder Bay: Investigations into the deaths of Indigenous youth
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City Tanya Talaga House of Anansi Press, 2017 Thunder Bay Ryan McMahon Canadaland, 2018 Investigative journalist and Toronto Star columnist Tanya Talaga couldn’t ignore the similarities in the recent suspicious deaths of seven Indigenous teenagers in Thunder Bay. Talaga
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Trees and teargas: worldviews clash at Barriere Lake
Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State Shiri Pasternak University of Minnesota Press, 2017 Events from a chilling October day in 2008, on a gravel road entering Algonquin First Nation bush territory, epitomize the contentious history of jurisdiction in what is now known as Canada. Riot cops
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Criminal law ejects Indigenous peoples from the frontiers
Fragile Settlements: Aboriginal Peoples, Law, and Resistance in South-West Australia and Prairie Canada Amanda Nettelbeck, Russel Smandych, Louis A. Knafla and Robert Foster UBC Press, 2016 A legal system designed to settle new territories and eject the resident population. A security apparatus installed to monitor the movements of dissenters. Collective
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