Justin's Berlin Trip

I think one of the most interesting things from both the readings and my experience so far in the city would have to be the memorial culture, and the different ways the city's difficult history has been managed and displayed (or not displayed) throughout time.  Berlin has devoted huge amounts of time, money, and effort to memorials on a scale that I personal have not experienced before, and I find myself thinking about the secondary effects this has on the city. For example, how have memorials affected gentrification in the neighborhoods they reside in?  Certainly some are tourist attractions which 'artificially' raise the value of the property around them as interest in them grows.  In this way, businesses stand to profit off the city's history, and a neighborhood which might have otherwise been affordable to some is no longer so.  Of course, tourism is a tricky business to nail down the effects from.  Does the business gained from tourism around, say, the Mi...

Because there is quite a bit of overlap the topic of the 5-senses survey and my initial feelings and thoughts about Berlin, I've combined these two entries and extended the target word count. Because I have not yet spent much time in the southern part of the city where my community partner is based, this survey deals mostly with the first area I stayed after arriving, and one which I still think of as being the most interesting in many ways. I am defining the area as being between Landsburger Alle station, the DDR prison museum, and the REWE store. These three landmarks form a sort of cone to the east of the city in an area dominated by old soviet housing and small storefronts. This seems to overlap quite a bit with the north-western quarter of the Lichtenberg neighborhood, and so I will sometimes refer to it as Lichtenberg though I feel like that neighborhood is much larger than the area I've defined. I'm choosing this area over Kreuzberg even though I have now sp...

Communication's Effect On Migration Although the economic theory of migration doesn't explain every facet of the issue, it seems like it must be a large part of the whole.  This makes me wonder how modern communication has affected labor migration.  I assume in the past people had migrated for work and discovered there wasn't any in the place they had originally planned on staying.  Without a good way to communicate this back to their homeland, more people would likely follow and find the same thing unless it became possible to send a flow of information back against the flow of people.  When people are traveling in the same direction, because of famine or natural disaster or other factors, it likely becomes difficult to get information from those who have gone ahead, especially before modern, long-distance communication methods. Historical Approach The historical approach is really interesting to me just because of the number of different factors it potentially ...

CERP DRAFT II Justin Miller In a modern, capitalist society, the necessity of finding work in order to obtain money is obvious. However, for many newcomers into a new city or area, finding work can be difficult. This is especially true in the case of people forcibly displaced from their previous location. Language barriers, discrimination, and a lack of documentation can all be massive barriers to employment for immigrants and refugees. How do migrants and refugees navigate these barriers, and how do their choices affect their assimilation into local culture? The options available to displaced workers are likely not always well documented, especially, for obvious reasons, those options which are exercised outside of the 'usual' or legal employment systems of the country. Additionally, programs and options provided by the government may be documented only in terms of the basic steps needed to apply to them, and finding actual information about the realities ...