Tuesday, December 4, 2012

UGC NET: Suggested Reading for Propaganda (Unit IX)


                                  Media   Mentor
                      Unit IX  
Propaganda
Propaganda is defined as an expression of opinion by individuals and groups which is deliberately designed to influence opinion or action by other individuals or groups with reference to pre-determind end. Propaganda intends to advance a cause e.g. a religious faith, and hence can be considered as legitimate persuation, it has come to aquire a negative image because it has been used to unleash hatred and fear during wars. It is still being used by suppressing facts. Propaganda has therefore gained notoriety as brainwashing and barbarity as:

  • Use of words of double meaning
  • Appeals to prejudices of people and arousal of negative emotions like fear, hatred etc.
  • Evasion of truth, suppression of facts, distortion.
  • Provocation, playing up trivia.
  • Presentation of only one sided arguments
  • Repetation

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.

As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.

While the term propaganda has justifiably acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples (e.g. Nazi Propaganda used to justify the Holocaust), propaganda in its original sense was neutral, and could refer to uses that were generally benign or innocuous, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging persons to report crimes to the police, among others.

Model of Propaganda:

Social Psychology: The field of social Psychology includes the study of persuasion. Social psychologists can be sociologists or psychologists. The field includes many theories and approaches to understanding persuasion. For example, communication theory points out that people can be persuaded by the communicator's credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness.

Nobel Prize winning psychologist Herbert A. Simon won the Nobel prize for his theory that people are cognitive misers. That is, in a society of mass information people are forced to make decisions quickly and often superficially, as opposed to logically. Role theory is frequently used to identify an idea as appropriate because it is associated with a role. For example, the public relations firm Leo Burnett Worldwide used the Marlboro Man to persuade males that Marlboro cigarettes were a part of being a cool, risk-taking, cowboy rebel who was fearless in the face of threats of cancer. The campaign quadrupled sales of their cigarettes. Of course, smoking has nothing to do with being a cowboy or a rebel. This is a fantasy but the campaign's success is consistent with the tenets of role theory. In fact, the three actors who played the Marlboro man died of lung cancer.

 Media Mentor, 28A/11 Jia Sarai, New Delhi-110016; Ph. 9013500130

Monday, November 26, 2012

Model Questions For UGC Net in Journalism / How to prepare

Communication:  The transfer of conveying of meaning - (Oxford Dictionary)
                             Transmission of stimuli - (Colin Cherry)
                             One system influence another – Charles E. Osgood

Free Press Theory: Libertarian Theory

Social Responsibility Theory: Market has failed to fulfill certain obligation in society

Communist Media Theory: Media to be under the control of the working class whose interest                                                      
                                               they are meant to serve.

Mass Society Theory: Inter-dependence of institutions

Hegemony Theory: Concentrates less on the economic system and more on the ideology itself.

Culture and Semiotic Theory: Saussure’s and Peirce’s

A television center was commissioned:  Srinagar (Kashmir) on January 26, 1973
                                                                  Amritsar (Punjab) on September 29, 1973
                                                                  Poona (Maharashtra) on October 2, 1973
                                                                  Calcutta August  (West Bengal1975 

Sunday, November 4, 2012

NET Journalism

मॉडल प्रश्न 
 UGC NET (Journalism)



All India Radio: BBC ने लियोनेल फिल्डन की सेवाएं (AIR) को मुहैया कराई और लियोने प्रसारण के नियंत्रक बने. यह तब रेडियो का शीर्ष पद था. 1938 में शॉर्ट-वेब सेवा शुरू किया गया. 1939 से दिल्ली में विदेश सेवा की शुरुआत की गई. वर्ष 1952 में पहला ऑर्केस्ट्रा पं. रविशंकर के संचालन में स्थापित किया गया. 1957 में विविध भारती की शुरुआत हुई, 1959 में श्रोताओं के साथ दोतरफा संवाद के लिय "रेडियो ग्राम मंच" योजना शुरू हुई.                                                 
                                                                                 .
सन् 1962 में अलिबर्ग नामक एक उपग्रह छोड़ा गया जो संचार के क्षेत्र में छोड़ा गया प्रथम उपग्रह था.                                                                                
                                                                                   
सन् 1991 में कांग्रेस सरकार ने विदेशी उपग्रह टेलीविजन के प्रभाव से बचने के लिए "वर्धन समिति" का गठन किया. जिसे प्रसार भारती अधिनियम (1990) की पुनरीक्षा का काम सौपा गया.           
                                                                                  
बी.बी.सी. ने नियमित टेलीविजन सेवा का प्रसारण 2 नवम्बर 1936 को प्रारम्भ किया. जर्मनी में टेलीविजन प्रसारण सेवा 22 मार्च 1935 को ही प्रारम्भ हुई थी. फ्रांस में भी टेलीविजन प्रसारण 1935 में ही प्रारम्भ हो गए थे.                                                                           
                                                                                     
भारत में टेलीविजन का प्रारम्भ यूनेस्को के 20,000 डॉलर के अनुदान से हुआ ताकि शिक्षा और     ग्रामीण विकास के लिए टेलीविजन का उपयोग हो सके. आकाशवाणी के एक नए विभाग के रूप में टेलीविजन प्रसारण-सेवा का उद्घाटन 15 सितम्बर, सन् 1959 को राष्ट्रपति, डॉ.राजेन्द्र प्रसाद नए नई दिल्ली में किया.                                                                       
                                                                                   
1966 में 26 जनवरी के दिन कृषि - प्रसारण सेवा के अंतर्गत 'कृषि दर्शन' कार्यक्रम प्रारम्भ हुआ था. 
                                                                                    
1972 में 2 अक्टूबर को देश का दूसरा टेलीविजन सेंटर मुंबई में स्थापित किया गया.              
                                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                    
1 अप्रैल 1976 को टेलीविजन, आकाशवाणी से अलग एक स्वतंत्र विभाग, 'दूरदर्शन' के नाम से कार्य करने लगा.                                                                            
                                                                                           
फ्रांस में ल्युमरे भाईयों (Lumiere brothers) ने 28 दिसम्बर 1895 को एक फ़िल्म पेरिस के एक कैफे में प्रदर्शित की.ल्युमरे फ़िल्में 30 स्व 60 सेकेण्ड की होतो थी.                                      
                                                                                        
सदर-उल-अखबार की शुरुआत 1849 में फिंक ने की थी. उसने अपने अखबार के लिये वित्तीय      समर्थन जुटाने के वास्ते पांच रूपये वाले 200 शेयर जारी किये.                                       
                                                                                           
मजहर-उल-हक के संपादक शेख इमदाद हुसैन थे. और इसे उर्दू अखबार के मालिकों का पत्र माना जाता था. इसे शिया सम्प्रदाय का पत्र माना जाता था.                                      
                                                                                         
आगरा की तरह दिल्ली कॉलेज से भी अखबार और पत्रिकाएँ निकलती थीं. समाचारपत्र का नाम था- किरान-उल-सदायु जिसके संपादक अंग्रेजी विभाग के वरिष्ठ विद्वान धर्म नारायण थे. इसमें प्रायः समसामयिक ख़बरें छापती थीं जबकी वैज्ञानिक और साहित्यिक लेख तीन पत्रिकाओं- मोहिब-ए-हिंद, फुवायुद-उल-ह्द्युक तथा तोहफत-उल-हद्युक में छपते थे.                                    
                                                                                   
तमिल साहित्यिक महत्व की पहली  पुस्तक तमिल एक्सपोजीटर थी जो 1811 में प्रकाशित हुई. यह तमिल मुहावरों की पुस्तक थी.                                                            
                                                                                     
कन्नड़ में पत्रकारिता की शुरुआत लगभग 1870 में शुरू हुई. 1907 में धारवाड़ नगर में धारवाड़ वृत नाम का मराठी साप्ताहिक निकला. बैंगलोर से पहला अखबार कर्णाटक प्रकाशिका वर्ष 1865 में             प्रकाशित हुआ.                                                                      
                                                                                     
मलयालम में मुद्रित और प्रकाशित पहली किताब वर्ष 1772 में रोम से आई और पूर्ववर्ती लकड़ी के टाईपों के स्थान पर रेगुलर टाईप का चलन हुआ                                           
                                                                                       
तेलगु भाषा में भी 1860 में ईसाई मिशनरियों प्रयास से पहला अखबार शुरू हुआ. हितवादी         साप्ताहिक अस्तित्व में आने के कुछ वर्ष बाद बंद हो गया. कनाडाई बैपटिस्ट मिशन ने काकीनाडा से              साप्ताहिक रवि प्रकाशित किया.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                            

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Suggested Reading for UGC NET Journalism /Mass Com.



Magazines:-

  • Frontline
  • India Today
  • Pratiyogita Darpan
  • Pratiyogita Kiran
Newspapers:-
  • The Times of India
  • The Indian Express
  • The Hindu
  • Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi)
  • Dainik Jagaran ( National Ed.)
Books:-
  • Mass Communications in India  by Kewal J Kumar

Sunday, September 23, 2012

                   Sample of UGC NET for Mass-Com 



Definition of communication
Dreaming, talking, arguing, speaking with someone  or reading a newspaper, watching TV or listening of radio or to listen the speech of leader or teacher etc are all different kind of communication.

  • Some of more functional definitions of communication describe it as the “transfer or conveying of meaning”. Oxford Dictionary
  • Transmission of stimuli – Colin Cherry.
  • One mind affecting another – Cloude Shannon 
  • One system influences another – Charles E. Osgood
  • The mechanism through which human relations exists and develop or sharing of experience on the basis of commonness. – Wilbur Schramm


ई.एम.रोजर एवं शुमाकर (E.M.Rogers & Shoemaker): संचार वह प्रक्रिया है जिसमे स्त्रोत एवं श्रोता के मध्य सूचना सम्प्रेषण होता है. इस प्रकार संचार विचारों के अदन-प्रदान से संबद्ध है.
चार्ल्स ई. ऑसगुड (charles E. Osgood): आम तौर पर संचार तब होता है जब कोई ढाँचा या स्त्रोत किसी अन्य को प्रभावित करे, कुशलतापूर्वक विभिन्न संकेतों का प्रयोग करके उन साधनों के द्वारा उन्हें जोड़ते हैं." (in the most general sense we have comunication whenever one sustem a source influence, another the destination by maniputation of alternative, signals which can be transmitted over the channels connecting them.)

एडविन एमरी, फिलिप एच. ऑल्ट & डब्लू.के.एगी(Edwin Emery, Phillip H. ault & W.K. Agee) सूचना, विचारों और अभिव्यक्तियों को एक व्यक्ति से दूसरे व्यक्ति तक संप्रेषित करने की कला का नाम संचार है." (Communication is the art of transmitting information ideas and attitudes from one person to another.)

लेनिन (वामपंथी विचारक)  के अनुसार "आज उप्लब्धियों और संस्कृति को आम जनता की समत्ति बनने का युग है. किसी एक समूह के काबिज होने का नहीं. अतः संचार की प्रक्रिया की अनेक विधियां अपनाकर आम आदमी से जुड़ने का प्रयास कर रही हैं.

बर्लसन एवं स्टीनर (Berelson and steiner-1964): ट्रांसमिशन संचार प्रक्रिया का महत्वपूर्ण भाग है जो उसकी प्रक्रिया को इंगित करता है. इसमें संकेतों का भी उतना ही महत्व है. (The transmission of information, ideas, emotions, skills etc;by the use of symbols-words, pictures, figures, graphs etc.)

शैनन एवं वीवर (Shannnon and Weaver 1949): ने भी ट्रांसमिशन को सबसे ज्यादा महत्व देने के साथ Effect or affect पर भी जोर दिया है जो प्राप्तकर्ता को प्रभावित करता है. 

Suggestive Readings for UGC NET in Mass – Com
                                    
  
News papers – The Times of India (Any two)
                          The Hindu
                          The Indian Express
                           Dainik Bhaskar
                           Dainik Jagran 
                           Jansatta

Magazines -       Frontline (Any One)
                            Tehelka
                             EPW
                             India Today

Reasoning       Pratiyogita Darpan
                         Competition Success Review 

Saturday, July 21, 2012


 The class room coaching for  “UGC NET JOURNALISM" is going to be started from 29 th of September


                                

                                         

Thursday, July 19, 2012


                                     Media Mentor 

                          Got 100 % success in IIMC 

                                     Media Mentor 

                          Got 100 % success in IIMC 

Friday, June 29, 2012

Congratulations Shahnawaz



Since I had been inflicted to pursue a career in Journalism since my final year graduation days. I was very selective and clear with my contention in due process of choosing the college/University for the same.  One year of failure disappointed me a bit, but I didn’t bow. I analyzed my strengths and weaknesses and realized to have a proper guidance to crack the entrance tests of the topmost colleges/institutes of Journalism in India, consequently joined Media Mentor. Media Mentor instigated my passion and enthusiasm towards Journalism. I found the interactive classes and the series of mock interviews in particular the most influential which strengthened my confidence to face interviews. I have been selected for M.A in Convergent Journalism (20 seated course) at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia University.  Thanking you all the wonderful teachers of Media Mentor.
Shahnawaz Alam 

Friday, June 15, 2012

Get Prepare for IIMC Interview



Get Best Guidance for IIMC Interview

Why You Should Join Media Mentor Interview Classes

  • How to prepare for GD
  • Expected Topics For GD
  • Body Language
  • Basic Questions for Interview
  • Expected Questions for Interview
  • Relevant Current Affairs
  • Interactive Practice sessions
  • Time Management
  • Preparation with highly successful Method
  • Value for Money

Tips and Tricks for IIMC Interview


Very Helpful Articles for IIMC Interview by IIMC Alumni and Successful Journalists
(Tips and Tricks for Journalism Interview)

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Congratulations Sidhant

                                 
                                                         Sidhant Bhagat
             Qualified in both English Journalism and Radio & TV Broadcaste, IIMC Delhi.

Congratulations Mani

                                            Mani Sharma



Media mentor has been like a golden key of success for me. Having  given my third year exams I was really  exhausted  but  when I attended the first  class all my apprehension and tiredness  lost in thin air. The interctive classes gave me the adequate guidance I needed to crack the tough IIMC entrance, which I almaost dreaded before I joined Media mentor.  The classes not are informative but at same time it instilled confidence in me.. thank you media mentor for being there for me!!!!!!

Congratulations Debjit


Profile Picture  Debjit Sinha

After completing my Graduation in English Language and Literature in WEST BENGAL, I want to pursue my career in Mass communication. I choose NEW DELHI since it is known as the hub of journalism in ASIA. But I found the entrance examination of the some institution very tough and eagerly searched for a proper guidance. After a long wait I found MEDIA MENTOR.
                                     Yesterday, IIMC result has come out and I successfully came across the hurdle of written test in both ENGLISH JOURNALISM and TV AND RADIO JOURNALISM. Undoubtedly, it could not be possible without the tutelage of MEDIA MENTOR. The classes are interactive and teachers are caring and friendly .They teaches us in and outs of Journalism, Indian political structure, economic scenario and Constitution etc. Mock tests helped us to prepare for the examination.
                                     For those who want to be student at top ranked MASS COMMUNICATION INSTITUTION OF INDIA, MEDIAMENTOR should be the destination for them.

                                                                  

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Media Mentor 
is now  going to arrange 
Interview Series Program 
for selected candidates (Written) of IIMC and Jamia 
   
Contact on  9013500130 
Address - 28 A / 11, Jia Sarai, DIAS  (Near IIT Delhi & Hauz Khas Metro)

Sunday, June 3, 2012




Admission for JOURNALISM ENTRANCE EXAM 2013 is started now.  Batches starting for June 2012 to May 2013. New batch starts on 5th, every month  
The institute provides coaching and personal guidance for IIMC, ACJ Chennai, JAMIA, XAVIER Mumbai, IP Delhi and various entrance exams in the field of JOURNALISM. We claim to provide innovative and superior learning environment to our students. 
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Friday, June 1, 2012

Congratulations Yogesh ( Selected in ACJ Chennai)

Raw00897.JPG

While searching online, I found Media Mentor, a coaching centre, for my PG entrance exams and in that Raj Sir who really helped me out in providing relevant answers for all queries. Owing to their regular efforts in making me capable for the same now I have been selected in IIMC Delhi and Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. There guidance worked as a key to success. Thank you so much for guiding me in the right direction


Thanks again
Yogesh

Tuesday, May 22, 2012


Immigration is a Human Right

MARY SCULLY
A new specter is haunting not just Europe but the entire planet Earth: the mass movement and migration of millions of people on a scale unprecedented in human history as a result of war, political conflict, and economic predation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental monitoring agency, estimated in 1992 that 100 million people were on the move; today their estimate is 200 million people moving under perilous conditions on well-traveled routes from the southern Americas to north Americas, from eastern Europe to western Europe, from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, from Asia to Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Many do not survive the dangerous trips, many are subject to violent crimes and disabling injuries along the way. Many are unaccompanied women and minors. All are escaping intolerable conditions and risking everything to find a better life for themselves and their families.



On every route taken by undocumented migrants, human rights catastrophes are the norm. Governments in destination countries know full well what migrants are subjected to in order to gain entry to a country and they turn a blind eye to the often criminal misconduct migrants endure. In just a cursory review of some of the routes, there is substantial forced trafficking for debt bondage, slavery, and of women and children for purposes of sexual exploitation and violence. Where in previous migrations, men dominated, today there is a huge feminization of immigration, along with millions of unaccompanied minors. The migration of orphaned and abandoned children is perhaps most noteworthy between Mexico and the US and between Zimbabwe and South Africa. (Children from Mexico are often attempting to reunite with parents who already migrated.) These are particularly vulnerable groups to depredation and crime. Hundreds (some estimate as high as 1,000) of unidentified migrants die every year on the US-Mexico border from heat stroke, dehydration, hyperthermia, drowning. Hundreds are injured and dismembered  jumping on and off moving trains en route to the US border. Thousands die from traveling on overcrowded, rickety boats from Africa to southern Europe and from the Middle East to Australia. Thousands of Ethiopian and Somali migrants attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen suffer from diarrheal diseases, malaria, respiratory infections, snake bites, and exposure from sleeping in the open. Migrants everywhere are extorted for money, murdered, disappeared, raped, maltreated. Illegal trafficking of migrants–distinct from coerced trafficking for slavery or prostitution–is an operation with estimated earnings up to $11 billion per year. Many perform a service; many are predators.

Todays mass migrations include millions of workers moving across country, between countries, and between continents to find work. There is scarcely a country unaffected by this massive movement of people in what is called a “transnational revolution” and what is not just an episodic phenomenon but will be a determinant factor in international politics for a long time. This global migration is a result of the economic, social, and political transformations of the post-Cold War period, particularly the globalization of capital and commodities, and to constant military ventures. Deteriorating economic conditions and effects of IMF structural adjustment programs have rendered many countries incapable of sustaining their populations and compel people to migrate.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made all 15 of its republics sovereign states and eliminated the social securities which, while inadequate, kept millions of people economically afloat. The ensuing economic and political chaos of that disintegration and  restoration of capitalism led to massive unemployment and a massive head-long rush of millions to western Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall over one million East Germans moved west in the first year alone.

For purposes of immigration control, governments of destination countries make distinctions between economic immigrants seeking employment and political immigrants seeking asylum from persecution, civil conflict, and war. That distinction served a political purpose during the Cold War as a way to discredit communism by accepting its refugees. Now asylum seekers are fleeing from capitalist dictatorships and conflicts so new restrictions are placed on definitions of political refugees. Nevertheless, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates the world total of asylum seekers as 62 million, with 32 million displaced by war and living in refugee camps set up throughout the world.


Persons seeking asylum from war, coups, revolutions, repression, include especially those displaced by US military ventures in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. The US Gulf War against Iraq displaced millions of Iraqi citizens along with forcing the mass departure of an estimated 5 million foreign workers (from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). The US war against Afghanistan has displaced over 5 million refugees to Pakistan and Iran and has also internally displaced millions of Pakistanis fleeing US drone attacks. There are nearly 2 million Somalis displaced or seeking asylum from US bombing and war and 4 million experiencing famine. Asylum seekers in the 1970s included refugees from the US-backed coup in Chile, from apartheid in South Africa, political upheavals in several other countries. Colonization of Palestine by Zionist settlers from around the world not only dispersed millions of Palestinians to Syria, Jordan, Africa and other Gulf states but there are still 5 million living in refugee camps. The list of mass dislocations goes on and on.

The migration within countries is often to find work in mining, agriculture, construction, or domestic service in other regions but the primary dislocation is from rural to urban slums. This is caused by the ruthless expropriation of small farm holders by agribusiness in league with the IMF and World Bank under the banner and defrauding of the “green revolution” in agriculture. This  change in agriculture is integral to neoliberalism and involves giant international food conglomerates like Monsanto, chemical companies like Dow, government agencies like USAID, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the structural adjustment programs of the IMF, and financing by the World Bank. The narrative used to promote this usurpation of land tenure is to increase world food production to overcome mass starvation. In fact, it is a program intended to undercut radical political proposals for agrarian reform that would serve farmers and not the oligarchs. Mexico, India, Latin America, and now Africa are the laboratories where this devolution in agriculture is being  carried out. The green revolution involves the production of cash crops for the global market, leaving countries unable to produce food for themselves and making them dependent on the global market; it involves herbicides, pesticides, chemical farming, and genetically modified crops which have caused land degradation, pollution, loss of biodiversity and depleted food quality; and it requires genetically restricted technologies making farmers dependent on outside companies for new seeds. The green revolution does not leave redistribution of land ownership and tenancy up for grabs but privileges international agribusiness so that food systems are firmly in their control. The food shortage has not thereby been solved but exacerbated. In a world where the majority of people depend on farming for their livelihood, that has meant dispossession and migration.

Another result of this neoliberal process has been deforestation, hydroelectric projects, oil drilling, mining, massive water diversion schemes requiring the forced removal of people from traditional lands farmed by them for countless generations, the dispossession of millions of farmers and farm labor and their forced migration to urban poverty. There is no more cogent critic of this process in India than Vandana Shiva and no country which more glaringly exposes the neoliberal schemes and crimes against farmers than India, where about 17,000 small dispossessed farmers commit suicide every year. The indigenous peoples being forcibly removed from their lands to make room for agribusiness have not gone quietly but their resistance has been violently crushed militarily in every country.


In the 20th century, US and European employers deliberately recruited foreign workers to work in agriculture, construction, domestic service. Temporary work migration programs were established to ensure and monitor migration. To the employer, this served a dual purpose: to acquire cheap labor and to undercut the organization and strength of domestic labor. Immigrants also served as convenient scapegoats in periods of economic downturn. Foreign immigrants became an irreplaceable component of the labor force. Regulation of immigration was first initiated during WWI and strengthened during the 1920s and 1930s but was relaxed after WWII with European and US guest workers programs. The organized labor movement has never practiced the concept of fellowship with immigrant workers. It has historically held to a racist and xenophobic program of seeing immigrant workers as competitors, refusing to organize them into unions or defend them against attacks. As a result, employers continue to use immigrant labor to weaken domestic labor. Unorganized immigrant workers are indeed competitors; there’s no getting around that. But while their representatives have often made initiatives to union officials to bridge this chasm and work together, outside of some recent ceremonial rhetoric by US union leaders, no initiatives have been pursued to organize immigrant workers and make labor a solid phalanx of unity and solidarity. And that is true in Europe as well as the US. Until that is done, immigrant labor will remain a lever to weaken the trade union movement and eventually to destroy it. There’s no way around that either.

On the jobs, migrants have no rights that are respected. In Ontario, Canada, eleven Peruvian migrant workers were killed in an auto accident when the van carrying them between farm jobs was broadsided by a truck. In Canada, there have been several car crashes in the past decade involving deaths and serious injuries for migrant workers. A guest workers program brings 30,000 seasonal migrant workers to Canada mainly for agriculture; there are undoubtedly thousands more working without visas. All are most certainly their families’ main income earners. Like the US, Canada and the agriculture industry are quick to dispose of migrant workers who get injured on the job. Most often, they’re deported to their own countries without compensation, unable to pay for medical care, and unable to work. According to a Canadian farm workers rights group, migrants who get injured in the course of employment are entitled to the same rights & benefits as citizens but the accident was not declared a workplace accident. The men who survived the crash will likely lose worker’s compensation benefits and will certainly be deported. Recently, a 21-year old undocumented worker from Mexico, paralyzed in a construction job accident in Chicago, Illinois, was deported to Mexico where he died in a hospital unable to provide the necessary care and away from his family. In the US, child labor is illegal except for agricultural work where an estimated 800,000 immigrant children work with no protective laws. It is also common for employers to withhold wages from undocumented workers, knowing there is little legal recourse that could not lead to deportation.

The unwillingness of trade unions to defend and organize immigrant workers has meant the unchecked growth of right-wing nationalist opposition to them. These white supremacist and often neo-Nazi formations mobilize and in some places engage in violent attacks on refugees. Under the influence of the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, immigrant rights became seen as a human rights issue. Whereas the Civil rights Movement weakened the hold of supremacist ideas, political inaction has made cultural differences–allegedly irreconcilable–dominate recent discourse. Allowing white supremacists to go unchecked has meant the creation of a fictitious nationalist ideal of cultural unity and homogeneity and the dominance of racism and xenophobia. From Arizona to Amsterdam, xenophobes fret about being overcome by immigrants and fixate on birth rates among immigrant women. In every election campaign, in every country of the past decades, immigration is a pivotal issue with politicians trying to outdo each other in animosity and viciousness, like proposing electrified walls and moats of alligators to keep immigrants out.


Governments of course face a conundrum with their immigration policy. Immigrant labor is more vital than ever in the campaign to destroy organized labor at the same time as the economic crisis has increased their value as scapegoats and a way to undermine the Bill of Rights. A concern to the oligarchs is the rising militancy among immigrants in several countries, including France, England, the US where the second generation of immigrants protest discrimination, heavy-handed policing, racism, and unemployment. Thus there are new quotas, new restrictions, tighter border controls, new walls going up around the world, greater policing of employers, more work place raids by immigration officials, more detentions, and more deportations and this is true in every destination country. And of course, after 9/11, governments added a national security scare to justify greater surveillance and militarization of the borders.

One of the ways in which immigrant labor is demeaned is by categorizing them as unskilled rural people. Ignoring that they’re more skilled than the average US politician, this category is a US Department of Labor classification of little descriptive value except to demean. Many migrate with considerable skills. Many have more or as much knowledge and training than the average US male who can apply for well-paid factory or trade jobs. The fact that they find work in agriculture fields does not mean that’s all they are capable of doing; that is where they are permitted to work. They are also not moving from “developing countries” to industrial countries. Many of their home countries have industrial plants doing the outsourced work US workers used to do for much more money. More importantly, the so-called industrial countries have no intention of allowing the “developing countries” to develop. They are a source of cheap labor and natural resources and that’s how they intend to keep them.


To capitalists, globalization goes one way–to serve their profits and their need for cheap labor; globalization means free flowing, cross border exploitation and they respect no  impediments to their profiteering like national sovereignty. But when it comes to immigrants and their labor and human rights, they hold firm to national sovereignty and the sanctity of borders and the nation-state. Such nationalist fervor is not in the interest of working people. For us, globalization means only one thing: solidarity with other working people wherever they are from. This is not sentimental malarkey propagated by bleeding hearts but an essential program for freedom from the shackles of exploitation for everyone. Our solidarity and our wisdom begin with demanding the borders be opened, with opposition to US plunder abroad, and with campaigning within our unions and churches and political groups for the rights of undocumented immigrants.
A new specter is haunting not just Europe but the entire planet Earth: the mass movement and migration of millions of people on a scale unprecedented in human history as a result of war, political conflict, and economic predation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental monitoring agency, estimated in 1992 that 100 million people were on the move; today their estimate is 200 million people moving under perilous conditions on well-traveled routes from the southern Americas to north Americas, from eastern Europe to western Europe, from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, from Asia to Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Many do not survive the dangerous trips, many are subject to violent crimes and disabling injuries along the way. Many are unaccompanied women and minors. All are escaping intolerable conditions and risking everything to find a better life for themselves and their families.

On every route taken by undocumented migrants, human rights catastrophes are the norm. Governments in destination countries know full well what migrants are subjected to in order to gain entry to a country and they turn a blind eye to the often criminal misconduct migrants endure. In just a cursory review of some of the routes, there is substantial forced trafficking for debt bondage, slavery, and of women and children for purposes of sexual exploitation and violence. Where in previous migrations, men dominated, today there is a huge feminization of immigration, along with millions of unaccompanied minors. The migration of orphaned and abandoned children is perhaps most noteworthy between Mexico and the US and between Zimbabwe and South Africa. (Children from Mexico are often attempting to reunite with parents who already migrated.) These are particularly vulnerable groups to depredation and crime. Hundreds (some estimate as high as 1,000) of unidentified migrants die every year on the US-Mexico border from heat stroke, dehydration, hyperthermia, drowning. Hundreds are injured and dismembered  jumping on and off moving trains en route to the US border. Thousands die from traveling on overcrowded, rickety boats from Africa to southern Europe and from the Middle East to Australia. Thousands of Ethiopian and Somali migrants attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen suffer from diarrheal diseases, malaria, respiratory infections, snake bites, and exposure from sleeping in the open. Migrants everywhere are extorted for money, murdered, disappeared, raped, maltreated. Illegal trafficking of migrants–distinct from coerced trafficking for slavery or prostitution–is an operation with estimated earnings up to $11 billion per year. Many perform a service; many are predators.

Todays mass migrations include millions of workers moving across country, between countries, and between continents to find work. There is scarcely a country unaffected by this massive movement of people in what is called a “transnational revolution” and what is not just an episodic phenomenon but will be a determinant factor in international politics for a long time. This global migration is a result of the economic, social, and political transformations of the post-Cold War period, particularly the globalization of capital and commodities, and to constant military ventures. Deteriorating economic conditions and effects of IMF structural adjustment programs have rendered many countries incapable of sustaining their populations and compel people to migrate.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made all 15 of its republics sovereign states and eliminated the social securities which, while inadequate, kept millions of people economically afloat. The ensuing economic and political chaos of that disintegration and  restoration of capitalism led to massive unemployment and a massive head-long rush of millions to western Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall over one million East Germans moved west in the first year alone.

For purposes of immigration control, governments of destination countries make distinctions between economic immigrants seeking employment and political immigrants seeking asylum from persecution, civil conflict, and war. That distinction served a political purpose during the Cold War as a way to discredit communism by accepting its refugees. Now asylum seekers are fleeing from capitalist dictatorships and conflicts so new restrictions are placed on definitions of political refugees. Nevertheless, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates the world total of asylum seekers as 62 million, with 32 million displaced by war and living in refugee camps set up throughout the world.

Persons seeking asylum from war, coups, revolutions, repression, include especially those displaced by US military ventures in Southeast Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia. The US Gulf War against Iraq displaced millions of Iraqi citizens along with forcing the mass departure of an estimated 5 million foreign workers (from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). The US war against Afghanistan has displaced over 5 million refugees to Pakistan and Iran and has also internally displaced millions of Pakistanis fleeing US drone attacks. There are nearly 2 million Somalis displaced or seeking asylum from US bombing and war and 4 million experiencing famine. Asylum seekers in the 1970s included refugees from the US-backed coup in Chile, from apartheid in South Africa, political upheavals in several other countries. Colonization of Palestine by Zionist settlers from around the world not only dispersed millions of Palestinians to Syria, Jordan, Africa and other Gulf states but there are still 5 million living in refugee camps. The list of mass dislocations goes on and on.

The migration within countries is often to find work in mining, agriculture, construction, or domestic service in other regions but the primary dislocation is from rural to urban slums. This is caused by the ruthless expropriation of small farm holders by agribusiness in league with the IMF and World Bank under the banner and defrauding of the “green revolution” in agriculture. This  change in agriculture is integral to neoliberalism and involves giant international food conglomerates like Monsanto, chemical companies like Dow, government agencies like USAID, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the structural adjustment programs of the IMF, and financing by the World Bank. The narrative used to promote this usurpation of land tenure is to increase world food production to overcome mass starvation. In fact, it is a program intended to undercut radical political proposals for agrarian reform that would serve farmers and not the oligarchs.IMF, and now Africa are the laboratories where this devolution in agriculture is being  carried out. The green revolution involves the production of cash crops for the global market, leaving countries unable to produce food for themselves and making them dependent on the global market; it involves herbicides, pesticides, chemical farming, and genetically modified crops which have caused land degradation, pollution, loss of biodiversity and depleted food quality; and it requires genetically restricted technologies making farmers dependent on outside companies for new seeds. The green revolution does not leave redistribution of land ownership and tenancy up for grabs but privileges international agribusiness so that food systems are firmly in their control. The food shortage has not thereby been solved but exacerbated. In a world where the majority of people depend on farming for their livelihood, that has meant dispossession and migration.

Another result of this neoliberal process has been deforestation, hydroelectric projects, oil drilling, mining, massive water diversion schemes requiring the forced removal of people from traditional lands farmed by them for countless generations, the dispossession of millions of farmers and farm labor and their forced migration to urban poverty. There is no more cogent critic of this process in India than Vandana Shiva and no country which more glaringly exposes the neoliberal schemes and crimes against farmers than India, where about 17,000 small dispossessed farmers commit suicide every year. The indigenous peoples being forcibly removed from their lands to make room for agribusiness have not gone quietly but their resistance has been violently crushed militarily in every country.

In the 20th century, US and European employers deliberately recruited foreign workers to work in agriculture, construction, domestic service. Temporary work migration programs were established to ensure and monitor migration. To the employer, this served a dual purpose: to acquire cheap labor and to undercut the organization and strength of domestic labor. Immigrants also served as convenient scapegoats in periods of economic downturn. Foreign immigrants became an irreplaceable component of the labor force. Regulation of immigration was first initiated during WWI and strengthened during the 1920s and 1930s but was relaxed after WWII with European and US guest workers programs. The organized labor movement has never practiced the concept of fellowship with immigrant workers. It has historically held to a racist and xenophobic program of seeing immigrant workers as competitors, refusing to organize them into unions or defend them against attacks. As a result, employers continue to use immigrant labor to weaken domestic labor. Unorganized immigrant workers are indeed competitors; there’s no getting around that. But while their representatives have often made initiatives to union officials to bridge this chasm and work together, outside of some recent ceremonial rhetoric by US union leaders, no initiatives have been pursued to organize immigrant workers and make labor a solid phalanx of unity and solidarity. And that is true in Europe as well as the US. Until that is done, immigrant labor will remain a lever to weaken the trade union movement and eventually to destroy it. There’s no way around that either.

On the jobs, migrants have no rights that are respected. In Ontario, Canada, eleven Peruvian migrant workers were killed in an auto accident when the van carrying them between farm jobs was broadsided by a truck. In Canada, there have been several car crashes in the past decade involving deaths and serious injuries for migrant workers. A guest workers program brings 30,000 seasonal migrant workers to Canada mainly for agriculture; there are undoubtedly thousands more working without visas. All are most certainly their families’ main income earners. Like the US, Canada and the agriculture industry are quick to dispose of migrant workers who get injured on the job. Most often, they’re deported to their own countries without compensation, unable to pay for medical care, and unable to work. According to a Canadian farm workers rights group, migrants who get injured in the course of employment are entitled to the same rights & benefits as citizens but the accident was not declared a workplace accident. The men who survived the crash will likely lose worker’s compensation benefits and will certainly be deported. Recently, a 21-year old undocumented worker from Mexico, paralyzed in a construction job accident in Chicago, Illinois, was deported to Mexico where he died in a hospital unable to provide the necessary care and away from his family. In the US, child labor is illegal except for agricultural work where an estimated 800,000 immigrant children work with no protective laws. It is also common for employers to withhold wages from undocumented workers, knowing there is little legal recourse that could not lead to deportation.

The unwillingness of trade unions to defend and organize immigrant workers has meant the unchecked growth of right-wing nationalist opposition to them. These white supremacist and often neo-Nazi formations mobilize and in some places engage in violent attacks on refugees. Under the influence of the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, immigrant rights became seen as a human rights issue. Whereas the Civil rights Movement weakened the hold of supremacist ideas, political inaction has made cultural differences–allegedly irreconcilable–dominate recent discourse. Allowing white supremacists to go unchecked has meant the creation of a fictitious nationalist ideal of cultural unity and homogeneity and the dominance of racism and xenophobia. From Arizona to Amsterdam, xenophobes fret about being overcome by immigrants and fixate on birth rates among immigrant women. In every election campaign, in every country of the past decades, immigration is a pivotal issue with politicians trying to outdo each other in animosity and viciousness, like proposing electrified walls and moats of alligators to keep immigrants out.

Governments of course face a conundrum with their immigration policy. Immigrant labor is more vital than ever in the campaign to destroy organized labor at the same time as the economic crisis has increased their value as scapegoats and a way to undermine the Bill of Rights. A concern to the oligarchs is the rising militancy among immigrants in several countries, including France, England, the US where the second generation of immigrants protest discrimination, heavy-handed policing, racism, and unemployment. Thus there are new quotas, new restrictions, tighter border controls, new walls going up around the world, greater policing of employers, more work place raids by immigration officials, more detentions, and more deportations and this is true in every destination country. And of course, after 9/11, governments added a national security scare to justify greater surveillance and militarization of the borders.

One of the ways in which immigrant labor is demeaned is by categorizing them as unskilled rural people. Ignoring that they’re more skilled than the average US politician, this category is a US Department of Labor classification of little descriptive value except to demean. Many migrate with considerable skills. Many have more or as much knowledge and training than the average US male who can apply for well-paid factory or trade jobs. The fact that they find work in agriculture fields does not mean that’s all they are capable of doing; that is where they are permitted to work. They are also not moving from “developing countries” to industrial countries. Many of their home countries have industrial plants doing the outsourced work US workers used to do for much more money. More importantly, the so-called industrial countries have no intention of allowing the “developing countries” to develop. They are a source of cheap labor and natural resources and that’s how they intend to keep them.

To capitalists, globalization goes one way–to serve their profits and their need for cheap labor; globalization means free flowing, cross border exploitation and they respect no  impediments to their profiteering like national sovereignty. But when it comes to immigrants and their labor and human rights, they hold firm to national sovereignty and the sanctity of borders and the nation-state. Such nationalist fervor is not in the interest of working people. For us, globalization means only one thing: solidarity with other working people wherever they are from. This is not sentimental malarkey propagated by bleeding hearts but an essential program for freedom from the shackles of exploitation for everyone. Our solidarity and our wisdom begin with demanding the borders be opened, with opposition to US plunder abroad, and with campaigning within our unions and churches and political groups for the rights of undocumented immigrants.
                                               The writer is from Saint Paul, Minnesota
                                               Contact E-mail : mscully9@msn.com
                                               Courtesy : www.wisdomblow.com