Journal of Refugee Studies - recent issues

Early Repatriation Policy: Russian Refugee Return 1922-1924

Long, K. — 2009-06-10

The repatriation of Russian refugees from Bulgaria between 1922 and 1924 under League of Nations’ supervision represents the earliest international attempt to organize a co-ordinated refugee return. Drawing on new archival research, this article argues that enhanced understandings of the historical development of repatriation contribute to the contemporary political theorization of repatriation. It demonstrates the long-standing liberal-international commitment to the ethical corollaries of ‘voluntariness’, ‘safety’ and ‘protection’ in repatriation, despite the manipulation of these terms by political émigré groups interested in resisting Soviet state power. This exposes the complex connections between the early 20th-century rise of the sovereign European nation-state and consequent refugee exodus. Repatriation was thus a fundamentally political project concerned with restoring the relations between state, nation and citizen: it ultimately failed in the Russian–Bulgarian case not because of any disagreement over repatriation's liberal corollaries, but because of disputes between the League of Nations, the Soviet State and the Russian refugees themselves regarding the nature of both inter-state and intra-state sovereignty. The article concludes by suggesting that it is these questions of political community which continue to pose the greatest challenge to repatriation as a durable solution to contemporary refugee crises.

Legal and Institutional Dimensions of Protecting and Assisting Internally Displaced Persons in Africa

Abebe, A. M. — 2009-06-10

Owing partly to changes at the international level and to humanitarian reform within the UN, an internationalization of the problem of internal displacement is now a reality and organizations such as UNHCR are operationally involved in providing assistance and protection to internally displaced persons (IDPs). Regional institutions including peacekeeping and peace building arrangements have become vital institutional responses. Relevant literature and policy guidelines may well be faulted for ignoring the role of regional organizations. In Africa, where a disproportionate number of IDPs are present, strengthening these mechanisms is urgent. This paper traces the normative and institutional evolution of the regional response to internal displacement in Africa, and argues that institution building and consolidation of standards should be made a priority. The African Union's current effort to craft the first ever binding regional IDP convention, though a salutary development, should not deflect such priority.

Masculinity on Unstable Ground: Young Refugee Men in Nairobi, Kenya

Jaji, R. — 2009-06-10

A gender perspective in refugee studies usually conjures up images of refugee women. Such images are an outcome of the association of vulnerability with women and children. Yet, it is not only refugee women who face monumental challenges in the country of asylum; refugee men also encounter a wide range of problems. Exile comes with obstacles for refugee men's quest to conform to culturally defined masculinity. This paper presents the nature of the challenges young refugee men predominantly from the Great Lakes region face in exile and the struggles they engage in as they seek to maintain and live up to their pre-flight notions of masculinity. The paper also shows how the men create alternative masculinities that are sustainable in a context that is largely characterized by existential uncertainties.

Constructing the Personal Narratives of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Asylum Claimants

Berg, L., Millbank, J. — 2009-06-10

This article draws upon psychological and sociological literature to explore the issues that arise in eliciting and presenting a refugee narrative when the claim is based upon sexual orientation. Rigid notions of homosexual identity may consciously or subconsciously shape decision-makers’ approaches in this field. First, we identify psycho-social issues of particular significance to lesbian, gay and bisexual claimants which may act as barriers to eliciting their narrative of self-identity, including: a reluctance to reveal group membership as the basis of a claim, the experience of passing or concealment strategies, the impact of shame and depression on memory, common experience of sexual assault, and sexualization of the identity narrative in the legal process. Secondly, we explore factors which inhibit the reception of such narratives in the legal process. In particular we explore the psychological ‘stage model’ of sexual identity development and examine the pervasive impact this model has had upon decision-makers’ ‘pre-understanding’ of sexual identity development as a uniform and linear trajectory.

A Rare Examination of Typically Unobservable Factors in US Asylum Decisions

Keith, L. C., Holmes, J. S. — 2009-06-10

The United States has obligations under international law and US statutory law to adhere to the legal principle of nonrefoulement to consider asylum claims. Under these laws, a person who qualifies as a refugee may be eligible for asylum and may avoid being deported to his or her country of origin if the applicant meets specific legal requirements. Because of congressional limitations to asylum case information, few studies have used individual level data and none have been able to include evidentiary factors or applicant characteristics. Using an original database of asylum applicants from a Dallas, Texas based NGO we examine individual, case and country factors to explore factors that affect the likelihood of receiving asylum in the immigration system in 1998–2005.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the Twenty-first Century. By Gil Loescher, Alexander Betts, and James Milner.

Seymour, C. — 2009-06-10

Legitimizing Rejection: International Refugee Law in South East Asia. By Sara E. Davies.

Kneebone, S. — 2009-06-10

At the Margins of the World: The Refugee Experience Today. By Michel Agier. (Translated by David Fernbach).

Ager, A. — 2009-06-10

Not Born a Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices. Edited by Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed, Nazilla Khanlou and Helene Moussa.

Arratia, M.-I. — 2009-06-10

'Brothers' or Others? Propriety and Gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt. By Anita H. Fabos.

Samy, S. — 2009-06-10

Nuer American Passages: Globalizing Sudanese Migration. By Dianna J. Shandy.

DeLuca, L., Rhoades, L. — 2009-06-10

Refugees and Forced Migrants at the Crossroads: Forced Migration in a Changing World

Nassari, J. — 2009-03-05

The Birth of a 'Discipline': From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies

Chimni, B. S. — 2009-03-05

This essay seeks to understand and explain the birth of Forced Migration Studies. It argues that the turn from Refugee Studies to Forced Migration Studies must be viewed against the backdrop of the history and relationship of colonialism and humanitarianism, as a certain commonality binds the past and present eras. The move to Forced Migration Studies accompanies the inauguration of a phase of political humanitarianism with a distinct accent, albeit encapsulated in new forms and issues, on ‘civilizing’ the Other. In making this contention the paper distances itself from both the defenders and critics of the turn to Forced Migration Studies. It inter alia contends that Refugee Studies, like Forced Migration Studies, has served the geopolitics of hegemonic states. But since all knowledge is dual use, both have also had humanitarian effects. But a greater degree of disciplinary reflexivity would go a long way to ensure that the genuinely humanitarian strand in Forced Migration Studies prevails.

Trading Refugees for Land and Symbols: The Palestinian Negotiation Strategy in the Oslo Process

Hovdenak, A. — 2009-03-05

This article analyses the negotiation strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization regarding the refugee issue in the failed Israeli–Palestinian peace process from 1993 to 2001. It is argued that the PLO was on the brink of conceding the ‘right of return’ for the sake of territorial concessions from Israel. The author discusses the implications of this strategy for the domestic legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership, as giving up the right of return would violate a core tenet in Palestinian national mythology. The PLO negotiators tried to solve that dilemma by, first, separating the principle of return from its implementation—making it possible for the PLO to remain committed to the principle, while offering compromises on physical return—and, second, by demanding symbolic gestures from Israel, including acknowledgment of Israel's historic responsibility for the refugee problem. It is argued that Israel's refusal to offer a minimum of face-saving gestures prevented the PLO from formalizing its compromise proposal.

Widening the Protection Gap: The 'Politics of Citizenship' for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, 1948-2008

Knudsen, A. — 2009-03-05

Lebanon has been a reluctant host to Palestinian refugees since 1948. A mainstay of Lebanese policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian refugees has been preventing their permanent integration and settlement in the country. The question of naturalizing refugees is one of the most contentious political issues in Lebanon today. Palestinian refugees tend to live in conflict-ridden environments, often at the margins of the host society. This first of all applies to the camp-based refugees, who languish in dilapidated and overcrowded camps. Unable to return to Palestine and marginalized by the host society, they are caught in a legal limbo. In order to understand the complex legal regime that governs their refugee status, it is necessary to examine their rights as refugees in international law, regionally as hosted by Arab League states and nationally as residents of Lebanon. The rights regime is complex and contributes to a critical ‘protection gap’ for the refugees. This article demonstrates how this protection gap was created and widened by historically contingent, international, regional and national legal rights regimes.

Irregular Secondary Movements to Europe: Seeking Asylum beyond Refuge

Zimmermann, S. E. — 2009-03-05

This study examines the contrast between initial and secondary movements, and explores exile in relation to broader forms of security and need. It tests the assumption that safety is the most important consideration for refugees and looks at additional interests that they have and why. It contrasts conditions in initial places of exile (experienced or anticipated) with those expected of the UK and highlights reasons for subsequent movements, arguing that distinctions between stages are false and that each is part of what exile means. This study shows that initial and irregular secondary movements arise because of the interests people have in accessing safety, as well as quality of life and certainty in exile. It concludes that it is only by way of how refugees are defined that these are overlooked or are distrusted by host areas, and recommends that hosts should revisit expectations and properly respond to refugees’ needs.

Contemporary Compulsory Dispersal and the Absence of Space for the Restoration of Trust

Hynes, P. — 2009-03-05

This paper investigates the issue of trust, or mistrust, specifically in relation to single adult asylum seekers and asylum seeker families compulsorily dispersed across England. It draws upon doctoral research on the social exclusion of asylum seekers as a result of dispersal and their separation from mainstream welfare provision due to the creation of the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) following the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Trust is an ambiguous term and four forms of trust are delineated to assist conceptualizing the experience of forced migration: social, political, institutional and restorative trust. This paper provides an overview of the aims and each phase of the implementation of dispersal. It is argued that the dispersal system leaves little room for political or institutional trust to be restored and hinders the restoration of social trust. It is suggested that this lack of space for the restoration of trust has negative implications for the longer term resettlement process of asylum seekers who obtain refugee status. It is also suggested that trust is an essential component of UK government policies promoting social or community cohesion, community engagement and initiatives to combat trafficking, forced marriage and ‘honour’ based violence and that mistrust of asylum seekers as a group directly contradicts such policies and initiatives.

Conflict, Violence, and Displacement in Indonesia. Edited by Eva-Lotta E. Hedman.

Tirtosudarmo, R. — 2009-03-05

Development's Displacements: Economies, Ecologies, and Cultures at Risk.

Dey, I. — 2009-03-05

Internal Displacement: Conceptualization and its Consequences. By Thomas G. Weiss and David A. Korn.

Stavropoulou, M. — 2009-03-05

A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity. By Jan Egeland.

Cohen, R. — 2009-03-05

Sudanese Women Refugees: Transformations and Future Imaginings. By Jane Kani Edwards.

Grabska, K. — 2009-03-05

Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment? Reforming Resettlement through Investments and Benefit-Sharing. Edited by Michael M. Cernea and Hari Mohan Mathur.

McDowell, C. — 2009-03-05

Invisible Displacement

Polzer, T., Hammond, L. — 2008-11-23

Research Beyond the Categories: The Importance of Policy Irrelevant Research into Forced Migration

Bakewell, O. — 2008-11-23

Given that research into forced migration is looking at processes of enormous human suffering and often involves working with people who are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and physical harm, it seems difficult to justify if it has no relevance for policy. This article argues that the search for policy relevance has encouraged researchers to take the categories, concepts and priorities of policy makers and practitioners as their initial frame of reference for identifying their areas of study and formulating research questions. This privileges the worldview of the policy makers in constructing the research, constraining the questions asked, the objects of study and the methodologies and analysis adopted. In particular, it leaves large groups of forced migrants invisible in both research and policy. Drawing on a case study of self-settled refugees, the article explores how these limitations affect the research process, despite the efforts of the researcher to move beyond policy categories. In order to bring such ‘invisible’ forced migrants into view, the conclusion calls for more oblique approaches to research, which recognize the ‘normality’ within their situation rather than privileging their position as forced migrants as the primary explanatory factor. Such studies may help to bridge the gap between refugee studies and broader social scientific theories of social transformation and human mobility. By breaking away from policy relevance, it will be possible to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpins much practice and in due course bring much more significant changes to the lives of forced migrants.

Involuntary Immobility: On a Theoretical Invisibility in Forced Migration Studies

Lubkemann, S. C. — 2008-11-23

This study of two seemingly counter-intuitive phenomena—‘involuntary immobility’ and ‘socially fortuitous wartime migration’—seeks to reveal important limitations in the theoretical framing of the interdisciplinary field of forced migration/refugee studies. In the Mozambican context, I demonstrate that the forms of disruption and disempowerment usually attributed to wartime movement were more often produced by involuntary immobility than by migration per se; even while wartime migration paradoxically resulted in forms of empowerment for at least some social actors. I argue that the implicit conflation of migration with displacement that currently serves as the definitional point of departure in forced migration/refugee studies, not only renders invisible an entire category of people who suffer a form of ‘displacement in place’ through involuntary immobilization, but also distorts our analysis of the experience of wartime migrants themselves.

Invisible Integration: How Bureaucratic, Academic and Social Categories Obscure Integrated Refugees

Polzer, T. — 2008-11-23

This paper shows how successfully integrated refugees are often made invisible to institutions, academics and within social contexts. It argues that certain elements of social and institutional categorization processes—including partiality, functionality, conflation, immutability, self-confirmation and negotiability—tend to obscure people who are integrated. The paper presents a case study which juxtaposes the ways in which three different kinds of categorization have been applied to people of Mozambican birth who settled in a rural South African border area after fleeing the Mozambican civil war in the 1980s. The three cases of categorization come from the South African government for the purpose of legal regularization; from an academic unit of the University of the Witwatersrand for the purpose of demographic and public health research; and from residents of Bushbuckridge District to describe and manage their relationships with each other. The paper demonstrates how each of these different perspectives obscures the experiences of integrated Mozambican refugees.

Refusing Invisibility: Documentation and Memorialization in Palestinian Refugee Claims

Feldman, I. — 2008-11-23

This essay explores the means through which Palestinian refugees have sought to make themselves and their claims visible, both within their community and to the ‘international community’. The principal site for this exploration is the Gaza Strip under Egyptian Administration (1948–1967). Because Gaza is home to both a large refugee population and a significant native population that was also dispossessed in the aftermath of 1948, it is an illuminating site for this investigation. In mapping the visibility field, the essay looks at both the monumental and the mundane, at both the bureaucratic and the symbolic, and at both the instrumental and the affective. Particular attention is given to identification documents, whether issued by governments or humanitarian organizations, as visible markers of existence and continued claims. The essay illuminates ways that a humanitarian apparatus can incidentally offer tools for ordinary people to demand that they and their community be recognized.

Strategies of Invisibilization: How Ethiopia's Resettlement Programme Hides the Poorest of the Poor

Hammond, L. — 2008-11-23

This paper examines the process by which the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia's food insecure regions are made invisible through their very participation in a programme whose explicit aim is to help deliver them from vulnerability. Those targeted for support progressively lose their status and agency as ‘people of concern’ to governmental welfare bodies as well as international humanitarian organizations as they are resettled in a scheme that renders many people more needy than they were before they left their areas of origin. Inadequate planning and resourcing of resettlement on a massive scale and rushed timeframe, blocking of NGO and other independent monitors’ access, and careful control at the federal level over information relating to conditions in settlement areas makes it possible for this space of invisibility to be created, into which an estimated one million people have already been moved since 2003. Invisibilization occurs through coinciding processes of forced recruitment and displacement as well as false and misleading representations of the resettlement programme, but also through a limited degree of voluntary engagement that enables government and international agencies to brand the operation voluntary—hence less a matter of concern—and thus to look away from a population that is far from self-sufficient. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2003 and 2004 in sending and receiving sites, I argue that invisibility is a function of governmentality in Ethiopia that has enabled inaction on the part of a wide range of stakeholders.

The Invisible Refugee Camp: Durable Solutions for Boreah 'Residuals' in Guinea

Gale, L. A. — 2008-11-23

What happens when refugees do not repatriate post-conflict? For those who remain in refugee camps, the remaining, durable solutions of resettlement and local integration may be neither feasible nor desirable. This study of Boreah camp in Guinea illustrates how refugees and refugee camps become invisible from the perspective of the host government and non-governmental organizations once assistance is rescinded and refugees refuse to avail themselves of the durable solutions offered. While refugees may cease to exist at the institutional level, ethnographic research reveals that those who continue to reside in defunct camps and/or continue to claim refugee status have eminently visible challenges. This article examines durable solutions—local integration in particular—from the perspective of refugees as well as the perspective of humanitarian actors.

JRS Reviewers

2008-11-23