Search results for "migration"

La Musa estranea. Gottfried Benn (1913-1945)

2009

Salah Methnani’s Immigrato: Portrait of a Migrant as a Young Man

2012

Although after Unification Italy was predominantly a country of emigration, in recent years it has become a hub for migrants from different parts of the world. Among these migrants a group of writers has contributed to re-configuring Italy's national literary identity. Read by critics primarily as an autobiographical text with remarkable sociological value, Tunisian-born Salah Methnani’s Immigrato is, I argue, first and foremost a classic Bildungsroman. Salah, the 'immigrant' in the title, is the story's protagonist, point of view and leading metaphor. His Bildung follows a double path. On the one hand Italy is a country imagined through TV and books read in school, on the other it is the c…

Prefazione a Sulaiman Addonia, Il silenzio è la mia lingua madre

2022

Sulaiman Addonia's 2018 novel Silence is My Mother Tongue, uncharacteristically set in a refugee camp, follows the sentimental education of a girl, Saba, in the place that she, her brother, and their friends have learnt to call home. The Preface to the Italian edition remarks how this classic and yet extraordinary coming-of-age novel offers a fundamental counter-narrative to the mainstream representations of life stories of minor refugees all over the world.

Postfazione a E. C. Osondu, Quando il cielo vuole spuntano le stelle

2020

The Postface to E. C. Osondu's most recent novel offers a commentary on this Bildungsroman, whose protagonist is a young man from an unknown African country who leaves home behind to reach Europe hoping in a better world. Although narrated in a lyrical tone, the protagonist's epic journey resonates with the actual stories of the uncountable young African men who in the past years have crossed the Black Mediterranean.

Individual repeatability in timing and spatial flexibility of migration routes of trans-Saharan migratory raptors

2015

Satellite-tracking technology has allowed scientists to make a quantum leap in the field of migration ecology. Nowadays, the basic description of migratory routes of many species of birds has been reported. However, the investigation of bird migration at individual level (i.e. repeatability in migratory routes and timing) still remains seldom explored. Here, we investigated repeated migratory trips of a trans-Saharan endangered migratory raptor, the Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus, tracked by GPS satellite telemetry. We compared between- and within-individual variation in migratory routes and timing in order to assess the degree of repeatability (or conversely, the flexibility) in mi…

Migration, Identity, and Threatened Mental Health: Examples from Contemporary Fiction.

2018

In 2015, the world saw 244 million international migrants. Migration has been shown to be both a protective and a risk factor for mental health, depending on circumstances. Furthermore, culture has an impact on perceptions and constructions of mental illness and identity, both of which can be challenged through migration. Using a qualitative research approach, we analysed five internationally acclaimed and influential novels and one theatre play that focus on aspects of identity, migration, and threatened mental health. As a mirror of society, fiction can help to understand perceptions of identity and mental suffering on an intrapsychic and societal level, while at the same time society its…

A divergent Anaplasma phagocytophilum variant in an Ixodes tick from a migratory bird; Mediterranean basin

2020

Anaplasma phagocytophilum (AP) has vast geographical and host ranges and causes disease in humans and domesticated animals. We investigated the role of northward migratory birds in the dispersal of tick-borne AP in the African-Western Palearctic. Ticks were collected from northward migratory birds trapped during spring migration of 2010 at two localities in the central Mediterranean Sea. AP DNA was detected by PCR (gltA and 16S rRNA) and variant determination was performed using ankA sequences. In total, 358 ticks were collected. One of 19 ticks determined as Ixodes was confirmed positive for AP DNA. The tick was collected from a woodchat shrike (Lanius senator senator) trapped in Greece, a…

Detection of tick-borne encephalitis virus in I. ricinus ticks collected from autumn migratory birds in Latvia.

2014

Birds have a potential of spreading ticks via bird migration routes. In this study, we screened 170 ticks removed during autumn 2010 from 55 birds belonging to 10 species for the presence of tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV). In total, TBEV RNA was detected in 14% of I. ricinus tick samples obtained from different birds species. The results of this study indicate the possible role of migrating birds in the dispersal of TBEV-infected ticks along the southward migration route.

Cognitive Responses to Populist Communication

2019

This chapter investigates the cognitive effects of different populist messages on blame attributions and stereotyping in the 15 countries participating in the study. It first gives an overview about whether respondents blamed politicians, the wealthy, immigrants, or ordinary people for the future economic decline described in the experimental stimulus. In addition, general stereotypical perceptions of those groups among respondents are presented. With respect to populist message effects, the analyses show that these were generally rather weak. But the analyses were also able to show that left-wing anti-out-group cues blaming ‘the rich’ and economic elites were most influential in this exper…

Specific expression of a TRIM-containing factor in ectoderm cells affects the skeletal morphogenetic program of the sea urchin embryo

2011

In the indirect developing sea urchin embryo, the primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs) acquire most of the positional and temporal information from the overlying ectoderm for skeletal initiation and growth. In this study, we characterize the function of the novel gene strim1, which encodes a tripartite motif-containing (TRIM) protein, that adds to the list of genes constituting the epithelial-mesenchymal signaling network. We report that strim1 is expressed in ectoderm regions adjacent to the bilateral clusters of PMCs and that its misexpression leads to severe skeletal abnormalities. Reciprocally, knock down of strim1 function abrogates PMC positioning and blocks skeletogenesis. Blastomere tran…