President Joe Biden emerges from 2446 North Washington Avenue in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and strolls down the driveway, flanked by six children, hand-in-hand with two.

This is President Biden’s happy place – his childhood home, in a city that has come to embody one of the main themes of his reelection campaign: that the “little guy” can succeed through hard work, love of family, and faith in God and the future.

The president’s visit to Scranton also reflects a new, more energetic phase in his campaign. Less “Rose Garden,” Biden insiders say – referring to a White House-centered style of campaigning – and more travel around the country. Last week, Mr. Biden spent three days in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania – going to Scranton, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Today, he’s in Tampa, Florida, talking up abortion rights. Later this week, he’ll be in Syracuse, New York, announcing new federal funds for microchip production.

“We are entering a distinctly new period” in the campaign, says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “It’s been really noticeable since the State of the Union.”

Alex Brandon/AP

President Joe Biden speaks at the Carpenters Union Hall during a visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, on April 16, 2024. The economy is a key issue for voters in this battleground state.

With former President Donald Trump as the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, the United States is in uncharted territory: an incumbent president out on the campaign trail battling a quasi-incumbent, confined for now to a Manhattan courtroom as he fights criminal charges over hush money payments to a porn star.

It’s too soon to say how the “trail versus trial” scenario will play out. Recent polls have shown an uptick in Mr. Biden’s support, with most surveys showing him and Mr. Trump essentially in a dead heat, though it’s still early. For now, the Biden campaign is sticking to core messages, emphasizing issues like abortion that will energize key voter groups and highlighting economic initiatives aimed at improving the lives of everyday Americans.

“There are some key fundamentals that apply here,” says veteran Democratic strategist Robert Shrum. “You’ve got to make a positive case. But you can’t say, ‘Everything is hunky-dory.’ You can say, ‘A lot of things are better, but there’s a lot more to do.’”

Aside from reproductive rights and “reshoring” of key economic components like microchips, the Biden administration has also focused on student loan forgiveness, health care costs, inflation, and public safety as pathways into Americans’ everyday lives.

Israel’s war in Gaza and climate change are also crucial issues to Mr. Biden’s chances in a close election, especially among young voters, as he seeks to ensure voters don’t peel off to outside candidates or simply stay home on Election Day.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the slain Democratic icon, represents the biggest independent challenger this cycle. Last week in Philadelphia, more than a dozen members of the Kennedy clan – including six of Mr. Kennedy’s siblings – appeared in person to endorse Mr. Biden.

To the president, the event was deeply personal. He has a bust of Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the late President John F. Kennedy and a candidate for president in 1968 until his assassination, in his office. As fellow Irish-American Catholics, the Kennedy clan (aside from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) have become loyal allies of Mr. Biden.

But whether the Kennedys will matter is questionable, as an unusually high number of voters have yet to engage in the 2024 election. The latest NBC poll shows that the share of voters with a “high interest” in the current election has hit a 20-year low, compared with previous presidential races.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Women hold signs ahead of President Joe Biden's speech on abortion rights during a visit to Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry campus in Tampa, Florida, April 23, 2024.

Furthermore, Mr. Biden’s team is more focused on issues than endorsements, including matters that speak to people directly, such as the economy and immigration, as well as abortion and the future of democracy.

On fundraising, the Biden campaign has a clear advantage, with more than $192 million in cash on hand at the start of March, compared with the $93 million the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee had raised by the start of April.

But fundraising isn’t everything, as campaign professionals know. In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raised twice as much as Mr. Trump in a losing effort.

In this still-early phase of the 2024 cycle, “free media” is also a key part of the game. One challenge for both candidates is to garner as much free media as possible, and for Mr. Trump, that involves making a criminal trial into a positive, amid charges of a “witch hunt.” For Mr. Biden, that means touting promises of a return to normality.

Which brings us back to Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden made eight campaign appearances last year.

In south Scranton last week, at a campaign organizing event in a carpenters’ union hall, chief Biden campaign strategist Mike Donilon agreed that the president will keep appearing regularly in his home state – as well as the other top battleground states.

So just how crucial is Pennsylvania? “It’s pretty high – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan,” Mr. Donilon tells the Monitor, rattling off the “big three.”

Some analysts describe Pennsylvania as a microcosm of the country, though it’s a bit whiter and older.

“It does look like America in many ways, especially when you’re talking about voting behaviors,” says Berwood Yost, director of polling at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “The mix of geographies and educational attainment, plus age distribution and race – all those things come together in ways that lead to competitive elections.”

Mr. Biden used his Pennsylvania connection for all he could last week.

In Scranton, as he prayed at a World War II war memorial and shook every hand in a visit to a cafe, the visuals were clear: His roots are in middle America, no matter how high he has risen.

George Walker IV/AP

Volkswagen automobile plant employee Stephanie Romack celebrates after employees voted to join the UAW union April 19, 2024, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The United Auto Workers’ organizing win at Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant represents a huge step for the labor movement in the South, which up to now has proved resistant to unions.

It’s the first time the UAW has successfully organized a foreign-owned auto plant in the South, and builds on the union’s success winning big raises for its members at Detroit-based automakers last fall.

With that momentum, the union now hopes to organize other foreign-owned auto plants. Next up is Mercedes in Vance, Alabama, where more than 5,000 workers will vote next month on unionization. The union is also actively working to organize Hyundai’s plant in Montgomery, Alabama, and Toyota’s facility in Troy, Missouri.

“No one should be paid less or treated worse on the job because they live in the South,” Patrick Gaspard, head of the liberal Center for American Progress, said in a statement Friday following the UAW win at VW’s Chattanooga plant.

Autoworkers are part of a larger organizing push by the labor movement since the COVID-19 pandemic. An acute labor shortage has shifted power to employees to establish unions in unlikely places, such as Google, Amazon, and Starbucks. An uptick in public approval hasn’t hurt, either. 

George Walker IV/AP

A person walks across the Volkswagen automobile plant parking lot in Chattanooga, Tennessee, April 19, 2024. Plant workers finished voting Friday on whether to join the United Auto Workers union.

Despite these efforts, the labor movement has failed to reverse a seven-decade decline in union affiliation. In the 1950s, 1 in 3 American workers belonged to a union. Last year, the share fell to a postwar low of 1 in 10. The decline is even sharper in the private sector: Fewer than 1 in 16 workers belong to a union.

That is why the UAW is fighting so hard to organize foreign automakers: If union growth can’t keep pace with the growth in the U.S. workforce generally, it must dominate certain industries to retain its bargaining clout.

The South poses particular challenges for the UAW. Many foreign automakers set up shop there because wages and benefits are lower and unions are weaker than in much of the Upper Midwest. The region has some of the lowest union affiliation rates in the United States, especially in South Carolina (2.3%), as opposed to, say, New York (20.6%) or Hawaii (24.1%).

SOURCE:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Gallup

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Low pay and benefits give foreign automakers a cost advantage over the Detroit automakers, with workers having little power to improve them. Whether the UAW can change that equation will depend on how many times it can replicate last week’s victory at VW at other foreign-owned auto plants. Like VW, Mercedes has long experience with independent, powerful unions in its home country. Asian automakers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Hyundai have no such experience at home and prove more resistant.

Moreover, all the Southern states have “right-to-work” laws. These laws ensure that unions can’t compel workers to join their ranks. Thus, workers can get the benefits of a union contract without having to pay union dues. This free-rider problem poses a challenge for unions, which depend on dues to fund their operations. A study of five states that adopted right-to-work laws between 2011 and 2017 found that wages fell an average 1% and unionization dropped 4 percentage points within five years of adopting the law.

Indiana, where Honda, Subaru, and Toyota have plants, is a right-to-work state. Missouri, home to a Toyota engine plant, is not. Michigan, home to many auto plants under U.S. ownership, repealed its right-to-work law last year.

Still, the minimum 25% raise over four years in new UAW contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis (owner of Fiat Chrysler) may prove a powerful siren call for nonunion autoworkers, who were averaging some $8 an hour less than established UAW workers even before the new contracts.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Sam Trizza, a U.S. graduate student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China, visits Beijing during spring break, April 6, 2024.

When Sam Trizza got the news last April that he’d won a prestigious Boren Fellowship for Chinese-language study, he literally leaped for joy, throwing a fist in the air.

But as he read the congratulatory letter, he felt a wave of disappointment. The Boren Awards had decided not to fund study in his destination country: China. Going to China anyway would mean turning down a $30,000 fellowship.

“It was very frustrating,” he says.

Mr. Trizza’s dilemma is just one example of the hurdles confronting American youth who want to study in China.

The pandemic shut China’s doors and caused the number of U.S. university students here to plummet – from nearly 12,000 in 2019 to only 211 in 2022. U.S.-China tensions are keeping those numbers low, with only about 700 American students in mainland China today.

The collapse of the U.S. student population in China risks depriving the United States of its next cohort of China specialists, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, who can help navigate what is arguably the world’s most consequential political relationship, experts say. As the two countries engage in a wide-ranging competition, skillful management is critical to prevent conflict. 

“The U.S. really needs a new generation of China experts to understand China – whether friend or foe,” says Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington. 

Beijing and Washington agree it will serve their interests to rebuild the ranks of U.S. students here. Decades of U.S.-China student and scholarly exchanges have brought huge benefits to both countries, such as pathbreaking research in science and technology. But whether they can remove key obstacles remains uncertain, given the intense focus in both capitals on national security.

A major inhibiting factor, says Dr. Kennedy, is “concerns about China’s domestic political environment and how that might affect the student experience.”

Mr. Trizza felt those concerns. Safety considerations drove the decision by Boren administrators to deny funds for China study, he learned. Meanwhile, worried relatives quizzed him about his plans. 

Despite the pressure, he chose China. He gave up the fellowship and enrolled last September in a master’s program at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, part of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 

“I came to China on my own because I knew it was important,” he says over coffee in a Beijing cafe during spring break. He pauses and turns sober. “And – I hate to say this – while Americans still can come to China.” 

Students face new hurdles

Zhao Gu Gammage, a junior at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, wanted to learn Chinese and see the country where she was born and lived until her adoption at the age of 11 months by an American couple. She, too, faced obstacles. 

Courtesy of Zhao Gu Gammage

Zhao Gu Gammage, a U.S. college junior, takes a selfie in the Huangpu neighborhood of Shanghai, March 26, 2024.

Haverford required her to obtain special approval from a school board before she could even apply for China study – asking her to write a letter explaining her choice. 

“Colleges want to ... limit the liability as much as they can,” says Ms. Gammage. She’s the only member of her class of 400 to major in East Asian languages and cultures, and the first Haverford student in five years to study in China. “The last thing they want,” she says, “is a news headline saying something happened to their student in China.”

China’s government has tightened its grip domestically in recent years, using “exit bans” to stop some foreigners from leaving. It has heightened surveillance and political controls on university campuses, intensified internet censorship, and fortified the firewall that blocks Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other American social media. Ms. Gammage is excited to be living in Shanghai, but says she found the biometric scanning that is required to enter her university “very jarring.”

The U.S. State Department recommends that Americans “reconsider” travel to China due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions. The “Level 3” travel advisory – the second-highest warning level – is a “clear signal to general counsels at universities that they ought to reconsider their study-abroad programs in China,” Dr. Kennedy says.

Some U.S. universities have canceled their China study-abroad programs, redirecting students to Taiwan. For example, Dickinson College in Pennsylvania suspended its China program due to the Level 3 travel advisory. “If and when that advisory is changed, Dickinson will reevaluate,” spokesperson Craig Layne wrote in an email.

Still, there are signs of progress. 

Adam Webb, co-director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, says applications to the center are up. “I do get questions about security and arbitrary detentions,” he says, but notes that “we have never had that happen to the HNC community in 40 years.”

Stanford University approved a new pilot initiative this spring to bring 20 undergraduates to the Stanford Center at Peking University, relaunching its China program for the first time since the pandemic. “We had twice as many applicants as we had slots,” says Jean Oi, SCPKU director and William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics at Stanford. “We really believe in the importance of getting faculty and students to China to better understand China.”

A recent CSIS report by U.S. and Chinese academics, focused on rebuilding scholarly ties, recommended that Beijing and Washington accelerate talks to address the China travel concerns and enable the U.S. to adjust its advisory. 

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said this month that changes to the travel advisory are “under active consideration,” acknowledging that it is “an inhibition” to academic exchanges. But, he added, “both sides are going to need to take steps. It’s not just the United States.”

“The best place for study abroad”

Over the past year, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have stressed the need to expand people-to-people ties – including student exchanges – as part of their drive to steady U.S.-China relations. 

Courtesy of Emre Ozmemili

College junior Emre Ozmemili visits the Millennium Monument in Beijing, February 2024. He is spending a semester at Shanghai’s Donghua University.

During his U.S. visit last November, Mr. Xi said China is ready to invite 50,000 American youth to China on exchange and study programs over the next five years. In January, China launched the Young Envoys Scholarship to fund the programs, with the first group of U.S. students, from Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, arriving in China in March. 

This summer, 87 undergraduates from seven U.S. colleges and universities will receive the Young Envoys Scholarships, which cover tuition, lodging, and a stipend to study in China. “There is real intention coming from the Chinese government to welcome U.S. students and faculty,” says Terry Brown, vice president for academic innovation and transformation at the 350-member American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The association is collecting applications and matching U.S. faculty-led student groups with Chinese schools. 

“I want to have evidence of the success of the program to encourage more institutions and faculty to participate,” Ms. Brown says.

U.S. students interviewed in China were largely upbeat about their experience.

For Emre Ozmemili, study in China was a dream sparked by a high school community-service trip to a Chinese village in 2019. Now on a semester at Shanghai’s Donghua University, Mr. Ozmemili is soaking up the city, its unique culture, and the Chinese language. “I am in love with Shanghai,” he says. “It’s the best place for study abroad.”

He ticks off things he likes – the clean streets; efficient transportation; tasty, inexpensive food; and friendly people. “People are very kind,” he says. “There’s a great sense of community. I love when you go out to eat and there is a Lazy Susan with gongkuai – public chopsticks,” he says. “It stands in sharp contrast with the individualistic mindset of the U.S.”

Mr. Trizza and Ms. Gammage are also enthusiastic about their programs here – and both are looking ahead to China-related careers.

“It’s so interesting – culturally, politically. Every day I learn something new,” says Mr. Trizza. “I like hearing their perspectives and hearing things that rub me the wrong way – that is where I learn.”

Shortly after the U.S. House of Representatives approved long-stalled military assistance for Ukraine, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, lauded the vote for putting the United States back in its rightful place as leader of the free world.

“Thank you America!” Mr. Zelenskyy wrote on his Telegram channel Saturday. “Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it.”

But in reality the vote sent mixed signals about America’s place in the world and Washington’s appetite for maintaining a strong leadership role, some foreign policy analysts say.

“American leadership in the world is not dead yet,” says Peter Feaver, director of Duke University’s Program in American Grand Strategy. “But the fact it took so long and the vote was so close is ominous and shows there’s still something of a fight.”

The Ukraine assistance – part of a larger package of $95 billion in foreign military aid that also helps Israel and Taiwan – was expected to easily win Senate approval Tuesday before President Biden signs it into law. Pentagon officials say Ukraine could start seeing fresh weaponry within days. 

Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inspects the fortification lines in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine earlier this month.

Allies’ relief may be short-lived

Saturday’s House vote prompted a sigh of relief among U.S. allies, who had worried for months that the aid hold-up signaled rising U.S. isolationism and the end of Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a force for global freedom.

“America’s back, and we have our allies’ back now,” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, promised Sunday in a U.S. television interview.

Ukraine aid proponents praised Speaker Mike Johnson’s shift in attitude, from opposition to support of the aid package, as emblematic of America’s return to its traditional global leadership role. President Zelenskyy singled out Mr. Johnson for a decision that “keeps history on the right track.”

But a majority of House Republicans voted against the $61 billion in Ukraine aid, forcing Mr. Johnson to rely on Democrats to get it passed.

The Republican vote reflects a number of recent public opinion surveys showing that the Republican electorate is increasingly skeptical about a strong U.S. role in global affairs. Many voters are drawn instead to former President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to the world.

For the first time in nearly a half-century, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found in its October 2023 survey that a majority of Republicans preferred to see the United States “stay out of – rather than take an active part in – world affairs.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson talks to reporters just after the House approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and other U.S. allies on Saturday.

That marked a stark shift from 2015, when the same survey found Republicans more likely than Democrats to favor a strong international role.

The Chicago Council attributed the change to “Trump Republicans,” but it is not new, says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington who served on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council.

“Trump is as much a symptom as he is a cause of America’s inward turn,” he suggests.

Calling this new focus “something that is here to stay,” Dr. Kupchan points out that U.S. political leaders have tapped into the shift since President Obama’s campaign issued a bumper sticker declaring “It’s time for nation-building at home.”

U.S. political dysfunction overshadows international role

Dr. Kupchan says he is more worried by what he calls the “bigger message” sent by the long and bitter debate over the foreign aid package.

“What was so painfully on display and what the world now has to grapple with is an America of such political dysfunction and divisions that it will be difficult to predict where we go from here and where the United States will stand on key issues from one week to the next,” Dr. Kupchan says.

Speaker Johnson may have eventually shown the world that “you can count on America to do the right thing,” Duke’s Dr. Feaver says, paraphrasing Winston Churchill. And “there’s still a strong bipartisan majority that says America is able and determined to lead.” But that does not obscure the extent to which a torn and chaotic Republican Party has damaged America’s global standing, he adds.

The approval of Ukraine aid tells the world that while America’s leadership instincts remain intact, says Dr. Kupchan, there is no guarantee they will endure.

“The good news out of this vote is that American internationalism is still robust,” he says. “The bad news is that it took so long – and that while Washington dithered, Ukraine was left to defend itself against Russian aggression.

“That,” he adds, “puts in stark relief the degree to which the internationalism the U.S. has practiced since 1941 can no longer be taken for granted.”

At sundown Monday evening, as hundreds of Israelis sat down to the Jewish Passover ceremony, the Seder, in Hostages Square in downtown Tel Aviv, a digital clock loomed over them.

One hundred ninety-eight days, 11 hours, nine minutes, and three seconds, it read. The length of time that had elapsed since Hamas assailants seized more than 240 Israeli hostages Oct. 7, to hold them captive in Gaza.

Passover is a seven-day festival of liberation marking the Israelites’ delivery from captivity in Egypt, as recounted in Exodus. This year, Seders up and down Israel were dominated by thoughts for those still being held prisoner.

“How can people celebrate a holiday of freedom?” wondered Daniel Lifshitz, whose 84-year-old grandfather Oded was kidnapped from his home and remains in Hamas captivity, as hopes for his survival fade. “We are still being held hostage, every one of us in our own way.”

The circumstances made the evening meal marking the start of Passover a ceremony of reflection, grief, and solidarity.

Israelis said they were divided into two camps: those who found it almost impossible to celebrate, and others who saw the holiday as a moment in which to look for hope.

Taylor Luck

Photos of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas hang at the entrance to Hostages Square, shortly before sunset at the start of Passover, in Tel Aviv, April 22.

A Seder marked by absence

Both groups were represented among the 500 members of Kibbutz Be’eri who held their Seder in a giant tent in Hostages Square, which has been transformed into a memorial to the hostages and the epicenter of hostage family activities and protests.

One hundred members of the tightly knit kibbutz were killed during the Hamas fighters’ brutal rampage, and others were kidnapped.

Men and women carried bunches of yellow daffodils, carnations, and sunflowers, passing them out to visitors and placing them on the array of circular banquet tables that filled the tent. A Passover-themed color representing joy, yellow is now synonymous in Israel with hostages; on Monday evening, the flowers represented hope for their release.

Taylor Luck

Noam Yitshaky, a Be’eri kibbutz member, stands next to candles lit for each kibbutz member killed on Oct. 7, at the entrance to a Passover gathering tent at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv.

“This is a statement that we are fighting to be ourselves and continue our traditions and our lives, even with the big loss of our people,” said Noam Yitshaky, a Be’eri kibbutz member, shortly before the Seder.

“We are balancing these two messages: We can’t go on with our lives, but at the same time we are fighting to survive.”

Several of the hostages who returned to Israel in November took part, but it was a Seder marked by absence – the absence of  husbands, wives, and friends killed; of parents and children missing; of homes burned to the ground.

Of the 17 Kibbutz Be’eri members still held in Gaza, only 11 are believed to still be alive.

This year, the kibbutz added an additional query to the four questions normally sung by the youngest member of the family at the beginning of the Seder to spark discussion of Passover’s importance.

The fifth question: “Why are our loved ones not sitting at the table with us?”

Food, people, blessings – but no holiday

At moments during the ceremony, participants turned to a large video screen that showed film shot at previous Seders, featuring Be’eri residents – now dead or missing – singing and reading.

They gathered as Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed an estimated 34,000 Palestinians and sparked a famine, has shifted media attention away from the suffering of Israeli families. Talks in search of a cease-fire and hostage release have ground into stagnation. Trust in the Israeli government, which many here believe has become indifferent to their plight, is low.

Taylor Luck

Dirty cloths, rusted nails, and placards on a symbolic Passover table recall the Israeli hostages still in captivity in Gaza. The bouquet of flowers signals hope for their return.

Outside the Be’eri communal Seder tent, as sunset neared, hundreds of Israelis gathered in solidarity, setting up plastic tables laden with food, or laying out picnic blankets.

Some were relatives of hostages and the deceased; others were Israelis who felt that the only way they could mark Passover was by honoring the hostages. Some bystanders simply stood and wept.

With more than 100 hostages still in Hamas’ hands, and little news of whether they are alive or dead, these families – and a nation – are held captive by Oct. 7.

“What freedom? What liberation? Every one of us is being held captive by Hamas,” one woman lamented. “We might as well still be slaves in Egypt. We feel that helpless. This is why all of Israel needs to be together at this moment.”

“There is food, there are people gathered, but this is no holiday,” said Doron Zexer, host father for American Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, still held by Hamas. “This is a meal, but it is not a celebration.”

At the end of the Seder, as guests poured their fifth and final cup, hostage families and strangers recited a prayer in unison.

May it be
That within every hostage
All tongues of redemption will be found
I will bring you out – I will deliver you – I will redeem you – I will take you – I will bring you unto the land
And they will all be able to return to the embrace of their families, safe and sound,
And we will be able to welcome them with incomparable joy
Soon in our day.

“Together,” said Ms. Yitshaky, “we will keep each other strong until that day comes.”

Colette Davidson

The Tegueste Club team lines up before a weekend lucha Canaria match in Tegueste, Spain, Feb. 18, 2024. The sport is played on a circular sandy pitch with rules similar to those of Korean “ssireum” wrestling.

Mamadou Camara and his opponent step out into the sandy arena. The two men – towering, hulking figures – bend at the waist and lock into position, grabbing the edges of each other’s rolled-up white shorts, head on each other’s shoulder.

The referee blows his whistle. And with a deceptively light touch, Mr. Camara throws his opponent to the ground, a spray of golden dust flying upwards.

This is lucha Canaria – Canarian wrestling – and Mr. Camara is one of the Canary Islands’ best wrestlers. But unlike most locals who enter this traditional sport through their parents or grandparents, Mr. Camara learned about it when a coach came to the youth migrant center where he was living after he arrived from Mali in a wooden fishing boat in 2008. Now it’s what’s keeping him here.

“I’m always learning. It’s not the same for me as locals who’ve been doing it since they were two,” says Mr. Camara, icing his ankle after a competition in Tegueste, on the island of Tenerife. “But it’s helped me learn Spanish, make friends. Lucha Canaria is about 80% of my life now.”

Mr. Camara wrestles for Tegueste, known as the birthplace of the sport. At the entrance to the town, a bronze statue shows two men tangled in an intense grip. Due to its rich history, the Tegueste Club has managed to maintain its roster, but that’s not the case across the archipelago. Clubs are fighting to return to numbers equivalent to the sport’s heyday in the 1980s, especially as lucha Canaria competes for young people’s attention in the face of other internationally recognized sports.

Colette Davidson

Mamadou Camara, who arrived from Mali in 2008 on a wooden fishing boat, is now one of the archipelago’s star wrestlers. He says lucha Canaria is 80% of his life in Tegueste.

But lately, coaches are recruiting from an unexpected population: young African migrants. Not only are they joining in increasing numbers and reviving this traditional sport, but lucha Canaria has become a catalyst to their integration into Spanish society.

And at a time when migration to the Canary Islands – and racism against immigrants – is at a record high, lucha Canaria is helping build understanding between migrants and locals.

“I believe that migrants who end up living permanently in the Canary Islands approach local traditions with great respect and vice versa,” says Vicente Manuel Zapata Hernández, an associate professor of human geography who studies migration at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife. “Sports like lucha Canaria can serve as an instrument of social inclusion of young migrants and this is a factor in their normalization vis-à-vis the local population … and they help prevent racist behavior.”

A new life for, and through, lucha

Lucha Canaria was first played by the islands’ Aboriginal population, Los Guanches, and was considered a noble sport throughout the 16th century. In 1943, the first lucha Canaria federation was created and today, some of the more important matches are broadcast on local television.

Lucha Canaria is played on a circular sandy pitch, and players must knock their opponent to the ground through grabs, blocks, or lifts. Striking and chokeholds are not permitted. Wrestlers lose when any part of the body besides the soles of the feet touches the ground.

But despite its longevity, lucha Canaria remains a local sport. The only equivalent abroad is traditional Korean wrestling – ssireum – so the opportunities to play it internationally or professionally are practically nonexistent. For the 2023-24 season, 2,794 people are officially registered among the 2.2 million people living across the chain of eight islands, according to the regional Lucha Canaria Federation.

Colette Davidson

Mamadou Camara (in blue and white) wrestles his opponent during a match in Tegueste. The sport is trying to build up its numbers after a lull during the pandemic.

“Kids don’t see it as an attractive sport anymore,” says Marco Galván Rodriguez, the president of the Tegueste club. “They think it’s for our ancestors. They want to play soccer or basketball, or play on their cellphones.”

But African migrants are changing that. In 2023, the Canary Islands received over 40,000 migrants, surpassing numbers from the archipelago’s 2006 migratory crisis. There are currently around 5,000 minors on the islands and around 60% are unaccompanied, according to the Immigration Observatory of Tenerife (OBITen).

While the majority of those over 18 years old are sent to the Spanish peninsula upon arrival, minors are provided housing in dedicated centers, where they can learn Spanish and get administrative help. That’s where lucha Canaria coaches increasingly see an opportunity.

Karen Norris/Staff

Whereas trainers once went into schools to tell local children about the ancestral sport, now they’re going to youth migrant centers for new recruits. On the island of El Hierro, the Concepción Club has built a team of 11 Senegalese minors, after coaches realized Senegal’s folk wrestling was similar to lucha Canaria, and that the sport could help the young men integrate.

The Spanish national government also sees sports as a way for young migrants to learn local traditions and Spanish values. In October, it announced the opening of 25 new sports centers, distributed between the Canary Islands and the Spanish peninsula, aimed specifically at migrants and their social integration.

“The majority of migrants don’t want to stay here in the Canary Islands,” says María Fonte García, assistant director of OBITen. “But for those who do, especially minors, there are more and more initiatives being created to help them integrate and create a life here. Sports are playing a significant role in that.”

Colette Davidson

Souleymane Sady (left) from Senegal and Youssouf Toure (right) from Mali, shown standing with their coach, Juan Pedro Hernández, say lucha Canaria helped with their integration since arriving in the islands.

“One more person at the table”

It’s not to say that integrating into Spain’s relatively homogenous social fabric has been easy. The continuing influx of migration in the last two decades has meant that immigrants face higher than average levels of microaggressions, dehumanization, and indifference, especially those who are racial minorities, according to a January study by OBITen.

But sports like lucha Canaria have offered one way around that. Juan Pedro Hernández, the coach of the Adelfas Club in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, says when he first invited his newly recruited African wrestlers to his parents’ house a few years ago, it was a shock.

“My parents had never had a Black person in their house before and they were uncomfortable at first,” says Mr. Hernández, taking a break on the stadium bleachers during a Monday night practice. “But now they say, ‘OK, it’s just one more person at the table.’”

Mr. Hernández says it’s been easy to integrate the half-dozen African migrants who practice regularly at his club into the team. He makes sure not to serve pork during team dinners for those who are Muslim, and some wrestlers have gotten seasonal work at his ranch.

The feelings are mutual. Souleymane Sady arrived in El Hierro in 2020 from Senegal and sought out the local wrestling tradition once he got to Tenerife because his grandfather was once a champion of Senegalese wrestling. He has learned Spanish and made friends through the sport.

For Youssouf Toure, who has been at the Adelfas Club for three years, lucha Canaria and his team have become like family. Mr. Hernández tears up when he talks about Mr. Toure, who arrived unaccompanied from Mali to Gran Canaria at age 16.

“When I think about all he’s been through to get here and have a better life, by himself …” says Mr. Hernández, his voice trailing off, as the two sit down on the bleachers before practice.

“Juan Pedro is like my dad,” says Mr. Toure, looking off toward the pitch. “I know that if I have any problem, he’ll find a solution. He’ll be there for me.”

Reuters

Trainers in a vocational school in Ganzhou, China, give a course in child nursing skills through a live-streaming session.

A new course offered for students in many of China’s vocational schools is a drama workshop. The goal, however, is not a job in theater. Rather, students are encouraged to speak out in a theater setting about the public stigma – and self-stigma – of being in vocational school.

They are taught to write a play and perform it before an audience based on their feelings about a deep social prejudice in China against those who do not follow the academic track for a university degree. They verbalize the internal shame, helping them reshape a negative identity, according to Wang Zijin, former program director at Hope School, a platform designed for mainly rural schools.

Some students find it helpful to joke about the stigma. Others feel a freedom just in responding to the labels attached to them – such as “loser” or “washout” – for not passing the rigorous exams to get into high school or university. “We are not inferior to others; we respect ourselves,” one student wrote.

Ms. Wang cited the ultimate goal for students: “By playing themselves they become new versions of themselves,” she wrote in Sixth Tone, a news website in China. They lift themselves above a social curse.

The drama program is a key part of a cultural effort in China to treat vocational training with equal importance to general education. In fact, that goal was stated in a 2022 law that included dozens of reforms in what is the world’s largest vocational education (voc-ed) system.

China will face a shortage of nearly 30 million workers in the manufacturing sector by 2025, according to official data. The shortage may hinder a plan to create an “innovation economy” that can reduce the high rate of youth unemployment – a problem caused in part by a surfeit of university graduates who cannot find work in their fields.

The reforms – beyond trying to end the stigma against vocational training – include allowing voc-ed students to take some academic courses and pushing employers to set up more and better apprenticeship programs. In addition, hundreds of new voc-ed schools are being built, while teacher quality is being improved.

“It will take time for people to stop stereotyping vocational education,” Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the National Institute for Education Sciences, told Sixth Tone. “For decades, many Chinese have believed education is to train literati and boost talents that can govern society. But education should also equip people with the abilities for labor. We need to change people’s mindsets.”

Or as Ms. Wang wrote about voc-ed students taking the drama workshop: “They can see that life doesn’t end when vocational school begins.”