Young adults are a growing market in publishing: Walk into a bookstore in a European city on a Friday or Saturday afternoon and you can find teenagers crowded in front of a wall of the comic books – a sight nearly non-existent a few years ago.

On Duesseldorf's Immermannstrasse, an avenue lined with shops catering to the city's Japanese population, is a scene that could come straight from Harajuku, where Tokyo's youth congregate – except the butcher around the corner sells sausages.

German teenagers dressed as Japanese goth rock stars, with multicoloured hair and heavy eyeliner, mingle with Japanese schoolchildren in a bookstore on the street, giggling as they step into “purikura” photo booths that shoot instant snapshots that people decorate themselves and print as stickers.

“They have something special,” said Berenike Schmoldt, whose fascination with manga has turned the German teenager into a full-blown Japanophile at 17, during a Friday expedition with her friends. “I spend hours every week reading them.”

Already fluent in basic Japanese, she is making her fourth visit to Japan this month to soak up the culture, eat her favourite dish of ‘yakisoba' fried noodles, and read manga.

It's a scene replicated in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Rome: local bookshops have expanded their manga sections and feature hundreds of French, Dutch and Italian titles. Often without the credit cards to shop online, these teenagers visit the stores as part of their social life.

“It is something that is much more than a fad,” said Paul Gravett, a publisher and expert on comics in Europe.

“The term ‘manga' is becoming a global word.”

Some 57.5 percent of voters supported the ban. The initiative was also supported by the required majority of cantons, with 22 of Switzerland's 26 cantons voting in favor of the ban. The two city cantons of Geneva and Basel-City rejected the proposal, as did two French-speaking cantons, Neuchâtel and Vaud.

[. . .]

the organizers of the campaign managed to turn the dispute over minarets into a symbolic referendum on the influence of Islam. They did not speak much about minarets. Instead, they talked about Sharia law, burqas and the oppression of women in the Islamic world. In the end, even the prominent feminist Julia Onken supported the initiative.

The poster which the organizers used for their campaign showed a number of black minarets resembling rockets standing closely together on a Swiss flag. In front of the flag, a woman stared angrily out from beneath a black burqa. It was an image of a Switzerland that had been taken over by Islam. Minarets are "symbols of power" of a foreign religion, argued politician Ulrich Schlüer, who belongs to the SVP's right wing. The ban, he said, represents a clear statement against their spread.

The debate was largely divorced from the reality of Switzerland. Although around 22 percent of the population is of foreign origin, the country has so far had relatively few problems with its roughly 400,000 Muslims. Most of them are liberally minded Bosnians, Kosovo Albanians and Turks and their approximately 160 mosques are practically invisible. Burqas are seldom seen on Swiss streets and there have never been serious calls for the introduction of Sharia law.

The decision, therefore, does not reflect real problems in Switzerland, but rather a general feeling of unease toward Islam. The issue revolves around a deep-seated fear that society's values could be in danger.

When most people think BlackBerry they think of the booming high-tech company Research In Motion Ltd. making billions - an outfit with thousands of employees, easily bankrolling a millionaires' row in its hometown of Waterloo in southwestern Ontario.

And indeed, in Canada's so-called Technology Triangle - the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge - as many as 2,000 high-paying, high-tech jobs are going begging.

But in a startling juxtaposition, the region is also registering an unemployment rate of 9.2 per cent, higher than the national average of 8.6 per cent.

Though 30,000 people work in the [computer industry, community leaders believe they may have a classic skills mismatch on their hands.

Many of those available, well-paying, high-tech jobs are highly specialized or require significant experience, or both, says Iain Klugman, CEO of Communitech, a 600-member, high-tech industry association.

Salaries ranged from $50,000 to more than $177,000 in 2008, but the qualifications are steep.

"It's not just about smart people, its about smart people with some very specific skills, abilities and experience," Klugman said.

"Filter tuning is a very specific kind of area that is not a common skill, working in optics and optical engineering is a very specific skill, software space is a very specific skill.

"So that's really the problem."

The labour market in Ontario is in the midst of a long-term adjustment, which was likely accelerated by the ongoing crisis. A VicinityJobs.com hiring demand report focusing on the suburban GTA that we published recently (found here) also found that in the first quarter of 2009, the demand for lower-skilled jobs declined the most. Those types of jobs are like often found in the manufacturing sector.

We expect to see continued increases in unemployment in Ontario during the next months, because for employment to start growing, hiring demand must pick up. Hiring demand has yet to start growing – although it seems to have at least stopped deteriorating. And even when hiring demand does pick up eventually, many lower-skilled jobs that were lost in Ontario will likely never return. They will be replaced by jobs in other occupation classes – Healthcare, Social Services, Technology, etc. The real danger for Ontario is that it may end up with high structural long-term unemployment: People available to fill new jobs may not have the skills that these jobs require. To avoid this fate, Ontario must step up efforts to retrain workers who have lost their jobs in the past months – and those who will join the ranks of the unemployed in the months to come.

One hypothesis I have held is that there is a cultural gap in the United States whereby the West Coast and the Northeast are more "European" than the rest of the nation. So you have ideas crop up like Jesusland. I decided to see if I could compare European nations and American subregions using the WVS, Eurobarometer and GSS.

• blogTO reports that Church Street restaurant Zelda's has moved away on account of too-expensive rents.


• Excitingly, Centauri Dreams talks about a model of the Europan interior ocean that allows for the possibility of large amounts of oxygen dissolved in that moon's water, creating the possibility for macroscopic life, not just microorganisms.


• Crooked Timber argues that European left-wing political parties have done so badly of late because, well, there isn't much left-wing about them any more.


• Daniel Drezner doesn't think that China's possession of US Treasury bonds makes it all that much a financial power, and likewise doesn't think that Europe's long experience with multinational negotiations via the European Union will help it at the G-20 table.


• English Eclectic's Paul Hall is critical of some criticism of an increasingly queer-friendly British Conservative Party for its anti-gay European Parliament allies.


• Far Outliers quotes a reflection on the frequent contradictions between official and personal histories as illustrated by the history of Thessaloniki.


• Gideon Rachman blogs about the intensification of Latvia's ongoing economic crisis.


• Hunting Monsters says that the problems surrounding the European Constitution's passage and the documents lack of popularity generally reflect wider European ambivalence about an unaccountable Union.</a>
  
• Normblog cites a couple of paragraphs by David Malouf making the point that one of the best things about cities is the way they can detach people from tribes.


• Slap Upside the Head reports on a recent court ruling in Russia establishing the legal non-existence of same-sex marriage in that country.


• Window on Eurasia reports that most Ukrainians don't see a military threat from Russia and observes the growing role of Central Asians and Caucasians in Russian Islamic communities.

"La stratégie de l'Europe est claire, elle consiste, à travers la mise en place de l'Union pour la Méditerranée (UPM), à séparer l'Afrique du Nord et l'Afrique subsaharienne", a déclaré le président Wade.

On rappelle que l'UPM, fondée le 13 juillet 2008 à l'initiative du président français, Nicolas Sarkozy, regroupe les Etats membres de l'Union européenne et les pays riverains de la Méditerranée dont l'Algérie, l'Egypte, le Maroc, la Mauritanie et la Tunisie.

Seule la Libye, au Nord de l'Afrique, a refusé de participer à cette union, réaffirmant son ancrage dans l'Union africaine (UA).

Le président sénégalais a invité, au cours de son intervention, les dirigeants de l'Afrique du Nord à se prononcer clairement par rapport à cette situation. "Il n'y a pas de réaction des pays du Nord de l'Afrique, or nous avons besoin de savoir si ces Etats vont aller avec nous dans la direction des Etats- Unis d'Afrique", a-t-il dit.

[. . .]

"The strategy for Europe is clear, it requires the establishment of the Mediterranean Union in order to separate North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa," said President Wade.

The Mediterranean Union was founded on 13 July 2008 on the initiative of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, bringing together the Member States of the European Union and Mediterranean countries including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia.

Only Libya, in North Africa, refused to participate in this union, reaffirming its roots in the African Union (AU).

The President of Senegal requested, in his speech, that the leaders of North Africa to take a clear position in relation to this situation. "There is no reaction from North Africa, we need to know whether these states will go with us towards the United States of Africa," he said.

A ceremony at Auschwitz Sunday to commemorate the half a million Sinti and Roma killed by the Nazis became a reminder of the threats these people continue to face across Europe.

Evidence of the threats came the following day with the murder of a Sinti woman in her home in Kisleta village in Hungary 230 km east of Budapest. Her 13-year-old daughter was injured in the attack. The police in Budapest say that at least 16 attacks on Sinti and Roma people have taken place in the last 12 months.

The Roma are a people who have migrated to Europe since the 14th century. The Sinti are an offshoot of this group living mostly around Germany and Austria. There are an estimated 12 million Roma and Sinti in Europe.

Sinti and Roma, popularly known as gypsies, are the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, and have endured racism and discrimination for centuries. The Nazis killed some 500,000 of them in concentration camps and in raids.

The Aug. 2 ceremony was held because on that date in 1944 Nazi forces killed 2,800 Sinti and Roma detainees – among them children, women, and the elderly - in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. They were brought in from the concentration camp Birkenau that was constructed to imprison gypsies.

Sinti and Roma delegates spoke at the ceremony of the significance of Auschwitz and Birkenau in the history of European racism against gypsies.

"For us Sinti and Roma, both concentration camps constitute a symbol of the affliction and death of hundreds of thousands of our relatives," said Roman Kwiatkowski, chair of the Polish Union of Sinti and Roma. "We, Sinti and Roma from all Europe, are united by the memories of the crimes committed by the Nazi dictatorship against our people."

[. . .]

The discrimination Roma face was evident at the Aug. 2 ceremony itself. The event was nearly cancelled after the Polish government withdrew a grant of 25,000 euros. It was saved by the Polish Jewish community.

"When I heard that the Polish government had withdrawn its financial support for the Sinti and Roma commemoration, I immediately picked up the telephone," Piotr Kadlcik, chair of Poland's Jewish community told IPS. "We cannot allow a moment such as the commemoration of August 2 to fall into oblivion." He called friends and organisations, and persuaded them to donate money for the ceremony.

Beginning in the mid-1970's, though, the League spacefaring powers and the United States embarked on a substantial program of unmanned exploration of the Solar System, using robotic probes. During the 1960's, Europe, Japan, and the United States had launched simple fly-by space probes to other planets in the Solar System. The images sent back by the Japanese M-1 probe to Mars in 1966, for instance, decisively demolished the hopeful beliefs of Earth-bound astronomers that Mars might yet be home to a simple biosphere, while the American Mariner 5 and Mariner 6 space probes revealed that Venus -- once thought to be a lush jungle world -- was in fact enveloped by a superheated and dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide. By 1970, these simple probes had managed to chart the atmospheres and surface features of the planets of Mars, Mercury, and Venus to a high degree of accuracy.

In the 1970's, rapid advances in long-range radio communications and informatics made possible the construction of far more sophisticated space probes. This new generation of space probes -- Europe's Explorateur series, Brazil's PLD series, the American </i>Lewis and Clark probes, and Japan's single Meisuko Orbiter -- could theoretically work as autonomous agents entire light-hours from Earth, imaging each of their preassigned targets and transmitting these images back to earth as television pictures with only a minimum of intervention from Earth-based controllers. Power concerns were no problem, though the weak sunlight of the outer Solar System could not generate enough electricity with even the most efficient solar panel arrays; this new generation of space probes was powered by radioisotope generators, which harnessed the heat produced by the decay of radioactive elements to provide more than enough power.

The first of the long-range probes were launched in 1972, when the Explorateur-2 was sent to Mars and the PLD-1 set forth on its long voyage through space to Jupiter and then into the depths of interstellar space. (Explorateur-1 was destroyed when its first-series Hermès booster exploded upon launch.) Explorateur-2 arrived in Mars orbit at the end of the year, and to the amazement of planetary scientists the world over began radioing back high-resolution images of Mars' surface that revealed that though that world might be lifeless, the Martian surface was still being actively reshaped by natural forces.

As plans were made by ASE to dispatch two more Explorateurs to Mars in 1974, Brazil prepared to launch the PLD-2 for December of 1974. The PLD-2 was to be sent on a different course than its sister ship the PLD-1, visiting Jupiter and then Saturn. Although the two probes would be the first spacecraft to ever visit a world beyond the orbit of Mars and would provide valuable information on the two largest planets in the Solar System (and their moons); they also played an important role by gathering navigational data for the future "Grand Tour" probes. In the 1960's, a team of German scientists who had been calculating planetary orbits in the near future noticed that in the 1970's and 1980's, all five planets in the outer Solar System would be aligned on the same side of the Sun. With special planning spacecraft could be sent to explore all those worlds at a minimum cost in fuel by flying the gravitation of each planet to send the spacecraft towards the next planet. Two sequences were identified as being of particular scientific value, the first being the route Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune, the second Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto, the two being known collectively as the "Grand Tour" routes. As it happened, the robust design of the Explorateur series of probes allowed ASE to present these two missions as inexpensive and scientifically invaluable, and the two missions were approved in October of 1973.

An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other "deplorable acts."

The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Holy See’s observer mission issued a statement saying that the declaration "challenges existing human rights norms."

The declaration, sponsored by France with broad support in Europe and Latin America, condemned human rights violations based on homophobia, saying such measures run counter to the universal declaration of human rights.

"How can we tolerate the fact that people are stoned, hanged, decapitated and tortured only because of their sexual orientation?" said Rama Yade, the French state secretary for human rights, noting that homosexuality is banned in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least six.

France decided to use the format of a declaration because it did not have the support for an official resolution. Read out by Ambassador Jorge Argüello of Argentina, the declaration was the first on gay rights read in the 192-member General Assembly itself.

Although laws against homosexuality are concentrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, more than one speaker addressing a separate conference on the declaration noted that the laws stemmed as much from the British colonial past as from religion or tradition.

Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, speaking by video telephone, said that just like apartheid laws that criminalized sexual relations between different races, laws against homosexuality "are increasingly becoming recognized as anachronistic and as inconsistent both with international law and with traditional values of dignity, inclusion and respect for all."

The ECHR began to form on November 4, 1950 when the Council approved the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This document became the first international legal instrument to safeguard human rights.

The Convention contains articles that establish a right to life, a ban on torture, the outlawing of slavery, a right to liberty, minimum protections for those charged with a crime, a right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. Article 12 established the right to marry for men and women according to national laws.

These rights did not expressly include the freedom to be queer. However, several of the provisions, notably the right to privacy, have been interpreted in a manner that gives protection to gay men and lesbians.

To ensure the observance of the Convention, the member nations established the ECHR and a European Court of Human Rights on September 18, 1959. The ECHR received applications alleging violations of the Convention. Applications could come from nations, but most came from individuals unable to find satisfaction within their national legal systems.

The ECHR accepted cases only after all domestic remedies had been exhausted and within a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken. It charged no fees and did not require a plaintiff to hire an attorney.

The Commission either attempted to achieve a friendly settlement, issued an opinion on whether a breach of the Convention had taken place, or referred a case to the Court. Only the Court had the ability to reach judicial decisions.

The ECHR acted only when it received a petition. Throughout its history, it received relatively few requests for assistance. In the 1980s, queers became more aggressive about pursuing justice and the ECHR began to move.

In 1981, a gay man named Jeffrey Dudgeon asked the ECHR to decriminalize homosexual relationships in Northern Ireland. He charged that the Irish ban violated a person's right to privacy, contrary to the Convention. Dudgeon won. His victory forced the British government in Northern Ireland to legalize homosexuality in 1982.

The next successful gay rights ECHR case also involved the decriminalization of same-sex sodomy. In 1988, David Norris persuaded the ECHR to rule that the Republic of Ireland's prohibition of all homosexual acts was illegal.

Considering the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, it is doubtful that homosexual relations would have become legal in that country without the intervention of the ECHR.

While it protected adult gays, the ECHR hesitated to allow minors the right to practice homosexuality. In 1983, British teenager Richard Desmond became the first person to take the United Kingdom to the ECHR over Britain's age of consent laws.

Unable to broker a compromise, the ECHR sent the Desmond case to the European Court of Human Rights. Desmond lost. The Court deferred to the right of each member state to fix its own minimum age for homosexual contact. It ruled that each nation was entitled to take into account the "moral interests and welfare of young people."

By 1997, the social climate in Europe had become friendlier to gays. Euan Sutherland, another British gay youth, attempted to use the ECHR to overturn the British age of consent.

Sutherland argued that the difference between the heterosexual and homosexual ages of consent affected his enjoyment of his human rights. He charged that Britain had violated the Convention with a discriminatory law that infringed upon his right to respect for a private life.

Sutherland won his case. The Commission became the first international body to recognize an adolescent male's homosexuality.

The opposing statement read in the General Assembly, supported by nearly 60 nations, rejected the idea that sexual orientation was a matter of genetic coding. The statement, led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said the effort threatened to undermine the international framework of human rights by trying to normalize pedophilia, among other acts.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference also failed in a last-minute attempt to alter a formal resolution that Sweden sponsored condemning summary executions. It sought to have the words "sexual orientation" deleted as one of the central reasons for such killings.

The problems had emerged around 1870, starting in Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, formed in 1867, in the states unified by Prussia into the German empire, and in France, the emperors supported a flowering of new lending institutions that issued mortgages for municipal and residential construction, especially in the capitals of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Mortgages were easier to obtain than before, and a building boom commenced. Land values seemed to climb and climb; borrowers ravenously assumed more and more credit, using unbuilt or half-built houses as collateral. The most marvelous spots for sightseers in the three cities today are the magisterial buildings erected in the so-called founder period.

But the economic fundamentals were shaky. Wheat exporters from Russia and Central Europe faced a new international competitor who drastically undersold them. The 19th-century version of containers manufactured in China and bound for Wal-Mart consisted of produce from farmers in the American Midwest. They used grain elevators, conveyer belts, and massive steam ships to export trainloads of wheat to abroad. Britain, the biggest importer of wheat, shifted to the cheap stuff quite suddenly around 1871. By 1872 kerosene and manufactured food were rocketing out of America's heartland, undermining rapeseed, flour, and beef prices. The crash came in Central Europe in May 1873, as it became clear that the region's assumptions about continual economic growth were too optimistic. Europeans faced what they came to call the American Commercial Invasion. A new industrial superpower had arrived, one whose low costs threatened European trade and a European way of life.

As continental banks tumbled, British banks held back their capital, unsure of which institutions were most involved in the mortgage crisis. The cost to borrow money from another bank--the interbank lending rate--reached impossibly high rates. This banking crisis hit the United States in the fall of 1873. Railroad companies tumbled first. They had crafted complex financial instruments that promised a fixed return, though few understood the underlying object that was guaranteed to investors in case of default. (Answer: nothing). The bonds had sold well at first, but they had tumbled after 1871 as investors began to doubt their value, prices weakened, and many railroads took on short-term bank loans to continue laying track. Then, as short-term lending rates skyrocketed across the Atlantic in 1873, the railroads were in trouble. When the railroad financier Jay Cooke proved unable to pay off his debts, the stock market crashed in September, closing hundreds of banks over the next three years. The panic continued for more than four years in the United States and for nearly six years in Europe.

[. . .]

As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans suffered terribly. A cigar maker named Samuel Gompers who was young in 1873 later recalled that with the panic, "economic organization crumbled with some primeval upheaval." Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller factories and workshops shuttered their doors, tens of thousands of workers — many former Civil War soldiers — became transients. The terms "tramp" and "bum," both indirect references to former soldiers, became commonplace American terms. Relief rolls exploded in major cities, with 25-percent unemployment (100,000 workers) in New York City alone. Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston, Chicago, and New York in the winter of 1873-74 demanding public work. In New York's Tompkins Square in 1874, police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up thousands of men and women. The most violent strikes in American history followed the panic, including by the secret labor group known as the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania's coal fields in 1875, when masked workmen exchanged gunfire with the "Coal and Iron Police," a private force commissioned by the state. A nationwide railroad strike followed in 1877, in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland, Md.

In Central and Eastern Europe, times were even harder. Many political analysts blamed the crisis on a combination of foreign banks and Jews. Nationalistic political leaders (or agents of the Russian czar) embraced a new, sophisticated brand of anti-Semitism that proved appealing to thousands who had lost their livelihoods in the panic. Anti-Jewish pogroms followed in the 1880s, particularly in Russia and Ukraine. Heartland communities large and small had found a scapegoat: aliens in their own midst.

• Claus Vistesen worries that the economy of the Eurozone may be about to jump off a cliff.


• Amused Cynicism's Phil Hunt lets us know that Britain, too, has public officials who refuse to provide public services to non-heterosexuals and then claim religion as a defense.


• blogTO links to the story of a couple who decided to make their front yard and lawn over into a garden.


• Daniel Drezner writes about how the Chinese government, fearful that bad lending policies might create an American-style bubble, is trying to pressure banks to be more prudent.


• Hunting Monsters provides a rundown of the recent history and directions of Abkhazia.


• Do you want to take part in [murmur], Toronto's archive of stories, memories and thoughts about Toronto's different attractions and neighbourhoods accessible by cell phone? Go here.


• Strange Maps hosts a map of Spain from the 19th century that shows the major historical divisions of that country: Catalonia, the Basque Country, and the rest of Spain.


• Torontoist points out that Toronto's homicide rates place it in the middle third of Canadian cities and at the lowest end of American ones.


• Martin Wisse points out that the groups that decry terrorism can feel quite free to shove their own terrorist histories under the nearest rug.

The "Ergenekon network" or "Ergenekon" (Turkish: Ergenekon or Ergenekon terör örgütü) is an alleged clandestine Gladio-type ultra-nationalist terrorist organization within Turkey, plotting to foment unrest in Turkey, inter alia by assassinating intellectuals, including Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, with the ultimate goal of toppling the present government.

Revelations emanating from the investigation thus far have shown that many of the attacks attributed to separatist or Islamist groups or seen as hate crimes against minorities were actually "inside jobs."

The investigation into the gang, 33 of whose members were taken into police custody earlier this week as part of an investigation into an arms depot found in İstanbul in June of last year, has exposed solid links between an attack on the Council of State in 2006, threats and attacks against people accused of being unpatriotic and a 1996 car crash known as the Susurluk incident, which revealed links between a police chief, a convicted ultranationalist fugitive and a member of Parliament as well as links to plans of some groups in Turkey's powerful military to overthrow the government.

Meanwhile, 15 of the suspects detained on Tuesday on charges of membership in the Ergenekon terrorist organization were taken to a courthouse in İstanbul's Beşiktaş district under tight security on Friday, while one of them, retired Maj. Zekeriya Öztürk, was arrested. Three of the suspects were released on Thursday by the prosecutor after their interrogation was complete, while the court released one of the suspects.

The gang is a part of a structure named Ergenekon, declared a terrorist organization by the İstanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office, an aggregation of many groups of varying sizes, many of which have in their names adjectives such as "patriotic," "national," "nationalist," "Kemalist" or "Atatürkist." Ergenekon is the name of a legend that describes how Turks came into existence.

A number of those detained in the recent raids, including Veli Küçük, Sami Hoştan, Drej Ali and Muzaffer Tekin -- who was already in jail prior to Tuesday's detentions-- have repeatedly been named in many similar investigations.

The investigation has found that the Ergenekon phenomenon, also referred to as Turkey's "deep state," stages attacks using "behind-the-scenes" paramilitary organizations to manipulate public opinion according its own political agenda.

When the Iron Curtain between the then Czechoslovakia and Austria tumbled 18 years ago, residents of the grey, run-down and impoverished Bratislava crossed the nearby border, just 7 kilometres away, in search of jobs and western goods in better-off Austria.

Now the Slovaks are scouting Austria's border region in search of land or houses, which are substantially cheaper here than in booming Bratislava.

Three years ago Miriam's Slovak-Canadian husband Daniel Soska, 39, a regional sales director in a telecoms company, was one of them.

"If we wanted to have the same land 7 kilometres from downtown Bratislava on the Slovak side we would have to pay at least four times more per square metre," he said.

[. . .]

The expansion of the borderless Schengen area on December 21 will bring Wolfsthal even closer to the Slovak capital than it has been for 90 years - since the time when Bratislava, known then in German as Pressburg, belonged to the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

The village's population has been shrinking since the monarchy disintegrated into nation states after World War I and a border between Austria and the nascent Czechoslovakia emerged in its backyard.

In the years after World War II, the Iron Curtain came and a once-busy imperial tram line between Bratislava and Vienna, which passed through Wolfsthal, finally ceased to run. The village faded from a stop on a busy artery into a declining station in the middle of nowhere.

"This used to be the end of the world," said the 45-year-old Schoedinger, a former policeman whose entire life has been linked to the border. "I've witnessed everything that happened here," he added.

[. . .]

The village of 250 weekend inhabitants and 800 permanent residents, 40 per cent of whom are now under the age of 30, saw a rise in its population for the first time in 2001, the mayor said.

Schoedinger has been in talks with Bratislava's public-transport authorities so a regular bus line could start running between the city and his hometown as soon as the border controls disappear.

"Now we have a future," the beaming mayor said. "We live in a region between Bratislava and Vienna. That's what is important, not which passport we carry."

When Daniel Sosin was looking to buy a house for his family in the north-western Polish city of Szczecin he was aghast at how little he would get for his money. So he went looking across the nearby border with Germany, buying a 150-year-old house in the village of Penkun for about the same price as a bachelor flat in Szczecin.

"Poland is an unkempt country and I don't want to live like that," says Mr Sosin, an architect, sitting in his house overlooking a cobbled street in the heart of the village. "I want to live in a beautiful area. It will take Poland generations to get to the same level as here."

Mr Sosin is part of a wider trend as people from the new EU member states, often flush with cash from real estate booms in their home countries, are beginning to buy properties in nearby "old" EU states to the west. Penkun is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, one of Germany's most economically depressed areas. Thousands of young people have left for better prospects in the west, leaving behind empty houses and apartments that are being snapped up by Poles.

"We have a few dozen calls a day," says Mariola Dadun, owner of the A do Z real estate agency in Szczecin. "There are three reasons people are interested in Germany: prices, prices, prices."

[. . .]

In eastern Germany prices are also rising thanks to the arrival of the Poles. "Before Poland's entry into the EU there was depopulation here - a lot of houses were abandoned and there was no real estate market at all. The early pioneers who bought a few years ago were able to pick up houses for very little but prices have risen since then," says Jan Rybski, a property developer in Löcknitz, a German village 25km from Szczecin. "But even if land prices are becoming similar, you still get a lot better quality and infrastructure in Germany than in Poland."

Lothar Meistring, Löcknitz's mayor, is upbeat about the new Polish residents. Over 200 Poles live in the village and a further 400 in the immediate region. He says many have bought and renovated old properties or purchased land to build houses. "In many neighbouring areas they have to pull down houses because they are disused, as people move away. Here, it's the opposite - we are building new places."

Because of the clandestine nature of the business, it is not known how many migrants are processed or how many fishing boats set sail from Elinkine, nestled in the deep mangroves on the mouth of the Casamance River, in Senegal's southern province of the same name.

But what is certain is that it is a key departure point for west African illegal emigrants trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the so-called European Eldorado and that a network of smugglers are raking a fortune from the trade.

"Here everybody benefits, that is why people are careful," says Alioune who identifies himself by a pseudonym.

Residents of this tiny, leafy village are very cagey when it comes to talking about the booming trade that has prospered in recent years, from desperately poor Africans who exhaust their family's meagre resources for the risky 1,000-plus kilometre-long (625-plus miles) trip on high seas in ramshackle fishing boats.

When and if they talk, they neither give their full names nor details for fear of upsetting the system.

Boat owners and smugglers are directly involved in the trafficking, as are fishermen enlisted to sail the pirogues.

Along a sandy village street, a ferryman sitting on his veranda who gives his name as Joseph says that he is aware that he is on a police wanted list.

"We can make lots of money, but a lot of smugglers have been arrested," he said before dodging away.

According to Alioune, an average two boats set sail from Elinkine aiming for the Spanish Canary Islands every week, but it is generally not a subject of open discussion because "it is a very dangerous game" that concerns the entire village.

Some homes around the village serve as "lodges" where days before takeoff, the prospective migrants are gathered and prepared for the trip.

"Everybody is well aware and most of the people are involved. It comes with lots of money, it's a mafia here," added Alioune. Boats owners have created what he called a commission that "facilitates" the departures, he said.

Each boat owner contributes an annual fee to this commission of three million CFA francs (4,500 euros, 6,600 dollars) "and in return the departures are facilitated and the police get their share," he said.

The first wave of out-migration to Europe took place during the First World War, when many Senegalese worked in France as infantrymen (“tirailleurs” in French) (Guèye 2002: 284; Robinson 1991: 166). After Senegal gained independence from France in 1960, an increasing number of Senegalese left for France and settled in Paris and the main industrial centres such as Marseille. These migrants are mainly Soninké, Sereer and Tukulëë (Timera 1996) who lived primarily in the Senegal River valley regions. They were attracted by the European economic boom, and their out-migration was mainly supported by their families and facilitated by the fact that all Senegalese citizens at the time had both Senegalese and French citizenship. This structural affiliation to France continued for more than 20 years after Senegal’s independence (Garson 1992: 84–85). The out-migration of Senegalese citizens to France increased from 5,688 in 1968 to 32,350 in 1982 (INSEE 2004). Growing mass migration was also a response to the persistent drought as well as economic and politicalpressure on Senegal from the international community. For example, one of the major economic problems with deep social repercussions was the devaluation of the Franc CFA in 1994, which precipitated a harsh social crisis, particularly in the cities. The devaluation halved purchasing power, and resulted in price increases of 25–30 per cent for basic food stuffs such as rice. The high price of food had far-reaching effects on all social classes (Sane 1998; Vengroff and Creevey 1997). Thus, the deep economic and social crisis Senegal was facing induced more and more Senegalese from all social strata and ethnic and religious groups to migrate. Internally migrants went to the capital city Dakar; internationally, destinations included not only to France, but also new countries, such as Spain, Italy, Germany and beyond Europe to the USA, thereby shaping a new transnational space (see Guèye 2002, 2003; Robin 1997; Tall 2002).