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Migrations: how movement shapes our world
Missed connections
A 10-year project documenting the lives of young migrants to the UK exposes the divisions of our globalised age, by Les Back and Shamser Sinha.
The experience of movement today is much more than the cheap availability of travel by air, land or sea. We live our lives “on screen” through our mobile phones and personal computers, linking our most intimate moments to events around the globe or relatives and loved ones living in other places. The experience of being young now is to live with this unprecedented mobility and connectedness. However, this connectedness has not reduced the divisions between people.
Time to log off
Calls to delete Facebook raise a bigger question: can we live without the internet? Giovanni Tiso explores.
We may also question – as Jurgenson has – the proposition that online social interactions are inherently less “real” than offline social interactions, or that a life lived offline is necessarily more authentic.
Invasion alert
Non-native plants and animals can damage the environment, but tackling them is an ethical as well as technical challenge, writes Cal Flyn.
The language of ecology often crosses over with the language of empire. Plants indigenous to a place are “natives”; those that have recently arrived are “aliens” or sometimes “colonisers” or “invaders”. Indeed, the colonial era was a peak time for the transport of species around the world.
Breaking the cage
For refugees trapped in Greece, creative projects are not just diverting – they’re the key to survival. Teresa Thornhill reports.
For a refugee fleeing war, torture or sexual violence, a wait of up to two years in a tense and overcrowded camp a few nautical miles from the Turkish mainland can have a devastating effect on already fragile mental health.
The autumn 2018 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! Subscribe here for just £27 a year
Also in this issue:
- Samira Ahmed on how archives and libraries could be a vital tool in our irrational age
- Lucinda Elliott reports from Brazil on the rising political power of evangelical churches
- A 500-year-old pillar in Kenya tells a story of conflict and conquest. Daniel Sitole reports
- David Wearing on Akala, the rapper and author who has awkward truths to tell about Britain today
- Alexei Korolyov takes the train from Vienna to Moscow and discovers a shifting cultural landscape
- How the fashion boom of the 1980s helped shape our turbulent present, by Elizabeth Wilson
- Marcus Chown on the central magic of science: the ability to predict what we don’t already know
- J. P. O'Malley interviews John Gray on the limits of atheism
- Columns from Michael Rosen and Laurie Taylor; the latest developments in biology, chemistry and physics; cartoon by Grizelda; book reviews; cryptic crossword and Chris Maslanka's quiz
New Humanist is published four times a year by the Rationalist Association, a 133 year-old charity promoting reason, science and secularism. Our journalism is fiercely independent and supported entirely by our readers. To make a deeper commitment, why not donate to the Rationalist Association?
