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Refugee mobility and livelihoods in Uganda
Refugees in Uganda predominantly reside in rural settlements, but they are free to move within the country and engage in income-generating activities. Given the limited availability of farmland and livelihood opportunities within settlements and the gradual reductions in the humanitarian aid provided to refugees, freedom of movement can play an important role in their economic lives. To evaluate how freedom of movement contributes to the livelihoods of settlement-based refugees in Uganda, the Refugee Economies Programme conducted mixed-method research among South Sudanese and Congolese refugees in two refugee settlements in Uganda’s borderlands: Pagirinya and Kyangwali. Across communities and sites, movement between settlements and urban areas is uncommon and very rarely undertaken in order to engage in income-generating activities. Trips to urban areas are mostly undertaken to access health or education services. In some cases, refugees are more likely to undertake trips to their country of origin than to urban areas in Uganda. Short-distance, daily movements around the settlements are common, with most refugees reporting leaving the settlement several times in the past month. However, such movements are undertaken almost exclusively in order to exploit resources such as vegetation and land, engage in low-paying and irregular casual labour, and, to a more limited extent, engage in small-scale, informal trade. Settlement-based refugees mostly move in order to survive under conditions of extreme precarity. Maintaining humanitarian aid while providing sustained and tangible support to agricultural and off-farm enterprises that target customers and markets outside the settlements are essential for promoting more sustainable and dignified livelihoods for refugees.
A Dangerous Journey?: The Good Character Requirement, Naturalisation, Trafficking, and Discrimination against Women
Following the Home Office’s change to immigration staff guidance on assessing the good character requirement in nationality applications, this post explains how the new guidance disadvantages women.
Social Science: A Very Short Introduction
Social Science: A Very Short Introduction examines social science as the study of human behaviour. Social science provides tools to understand and explain people’s choices and actions while also considering how they live together in communities. The VSI explains how methods and theories from different disciplines can be applied and combined to address major global challenges. It further highlights how social scientists can have real-world impact and change the world for the better. It examines cutting-edge themes such as behavioural science, human data science, and the ways social science can work in collaboration with natural sciences and humanities.
Returning to fund refugeehood: dispersal and survival between Uganda and South Sudan
Return movements of refugees, even when gradual or temporary, are typically understood as part of a process of full repatriation or as a ‘strategy’ for leveraging socio-economic opportunities across borders. However, for some refugees, return is neither a step towards repatriation nor an empowering strategy. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from Uganda and South Sudan, this article shows how, due to gradual reductions in aid and the lack of livelihood opportunities in Uganda, South Sudanese refugees travel back to their homeland in order to financially support their relatives who remain in exile. These return movements and the phenomenon of split households among South Sudanese are responses to severe hardship and, paradoxically, are deployed to sustain their life in Uganda. While cross-border migration enables refugees to access subsistence opportunities, this article argues that it underscores how refugees must now find their own means to ‘fund’ their refugeehood, given ongoing reductions in international assistance for protracted displacement.
Analysing archives to write migration histories
Chapter 7 in 'Handbook of Research Methods in Migration': Second Edition, edited by William Allen and Carlos Vargas-Silva
Refugee Memoirs: Kouamé’s Revenu des ténèbres (2018) and Dina Nayeri’s The Ungrateful Refugee (2019) and the challenge of refugee narratives
In their introduction to Values of Literature, Hanna Meretoja and Pyro Lyytikäinen argue that ‘little attention has been paid to the ethical relevance of different literary genres and to the very different functions of literary texts that make literature valuable’.1 Literature has several ‘uses’ according to Rita Felski (2008), amongst which are the ‘knowledge’ and ‘shock’ elements insofar as they enable readers to change their perception of the world. Examining what I term ‘refugee memoirs’ as an emergent genre and its uses in enabling readers to interrogate dominant discourses about refugees in the UK, Europe and North America, I argue that refugee memoirs contest right-wing narratives that seek to shape society’s view of asylum-seekers and refugees and enable readers to see refugees' lived experiences through new perspective. Thereby, these narratives also permit a rehumanization of refugees and a comprehension of their losses and positions.
Encountering Nations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Introduction to the special issue: 'Encountering Nations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives'
Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter
Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of glinting metal. Others have hosted them in renovated office blocks and disused warehouses. They often end up in prefabricated shelters flown in from abroad. This book focuses on seven examples of emergency shelter, from Germany to Jordan, which emerged after the great "summer of migration" in 2015. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research into these shelters, the book reflects on their political implications and opens up much bigger questions about humanitarian action. By exploring how aid agencies and architects approached this basic human need, Tom Scott-Smith demonstrates how shelter has many elements that are hard to reconcile or combine; shelter is always partial and incomplete, producing mere fragments of home. Ultimately, he argues that current approaches to emergency shelter have led to destructive forms of paternalism and concludes that the principle of autonomy can offer a more fruitful approach to sensitive and inclusive housing.
Refuge in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean: Spaces of containment or places of choice?
After the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the European Union became fixated on keeping refugees from the Middle East out of Europe. By 2015, with the mass influx of Syrians, Iraqis, and others, seeking safety across the Balkans, the European response was an extraordinary effort to push back and contain these displaced people within the Eastern Mediterranean region through physical barriers, bilateral agreements, and the establishment of refugee camps. This paper suggests that Europe’s efforts to keep displaced Syrians and Iraqis out of Europe were misguided. That is, contrary to what much of the European main media reported at the time, relatively few of those displaced Syrians and Iraqis had a strong desire to seek asylum in Europe. Rather, depending upon socio-economic and kinship networks, and historical ties developed over 500 years of Ottoman suzerainty, they preferred to remain in the region following long-established transnational socio-economic networks and kinship ties.
Refugee Afterlives: Home, Hauntings, and Hunger
This book compares fiction and non-fiction written by two generations of the Vietnamese diaspora, the so-called 1.5 and second generation in France and Canada, namely, Kim Thúy, Doan Bui, Clément Baloup, Hoai Huong Nguyen and Viet Thanh Nguyen (USA) as they grapple with their positionality as refugee(s’) children and the attendant problematics of loss. How they recuperate this loss by deploying notions such as home, hauntings and hunger is central to this analysis. Refugee Afterlives identifies the tools deployed by the 1.5 and second generation, tests their limits while understanding that these writers’ creations are constantly changing and shifting paradigms and will continue to be so over the next decades. Each writer is finding their own voice and pathway(s) and while these may sometimes overlap and contain commonalities, afterlives by default imply plurality and differences. This book offers ways of examining these texts, juxtaposing them, contrasting them, putting them in dialogue with each other, underlining their differences, but ultimately demonstrating that there is much to be gained in seeing how 1.5ers and the so-called second generation Vietnamese refugee writers contribute to a wider discussion of Vietnamese refugee(s’) children and what happens to them after resettlement.
The economic lives of refugees
The economic lives of refugees are often viewed as relatively homogeneous, and sources of within-group variation remain largely unexplored. We describe the socio-economic diversity of refugees in one particular region: East Africa. Drawing upon first-hand quantitative and qualitative data collected in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia (n = 8,996), the article systematically compares 12 refugee subpopulations living in seven refugee camps and the three capital cities. In order to identify sources of variation, we examine three main questions: (1) What variation is there in socio-economic outcomes? (2) What strategies and resources do refugees rely upon, and how do these vary? (3) How are opportunities and constraints shaped by differences in institutions and identity? Overall, we show that, although the economic lives of refugees have some distinguishing and common features, they are also heterogeneous by host country, urban/camp context, nationality, and household. We explain why describing and understanding sources of within-group variation matters for research and policy.
Refugee Debt and Livelihoods in Northern Kenya
While humanitarian assistance to refugees has increasingly focused on fostering self-reliance, refugees are highly exposed to economic shocks that make self-reliance difficult to achieve. With limited access to employment and low wages, refugees are rarely able to put aside savings in case of emergency. Those who have recently fled their country of origin may have no assets to sell if needed. Informal social protection mechanisms may be unavailable or less effective in contexts of mass displacement where existing networks are disrupted and vulnerability becomes widespread. Given these constraints, borrowing is often the only coping strategy available to refugees. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected over a one-year period, this report studies how debt is used as a coping strategy by refugees living in Kakuma refugee camp and the Kalobeyei settlement in Kenya, which, together, constitute one of the largest refugee camps in Africa, hosting more than 270,000 refugees in October 2023 (UNHCR, 2023).
Ambivalent encounters in Calais
‘The term encounter has been used in various disciplines to indicate a bringing together of difference (people, groups, ideas, etc.) with an aim of some form of positive or beneficial outcome’ [Standish, K., 2021. Encounter Theory. Peacebuilding, 9 (1), 1–14.]. Allport [Allport, G.W., 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books] suggests that contact between different groups might lead to a positive change and the reduction in stereotypes, but later research shows that often conflict is more likely to arise. Nonetheless, while contact might presuppose co-existence and thereby, the enduring presence of conflict, encounter ‘is much more than that and involves a space where being with is the outcome itself’ (Standish 2021: 40). It is my contention that the ambivalent nature of the encounters that occur in the Calaisian space generates a layered level of dislocation for those who are entering this space. By definition 'ambivalent’ implies that feelings and reactions are mixed or contradictory. It argues that the ambivalence of these encounters shape not only people of the move’s experiences but also the discourses around them, leading to constant tensions and shifting allegiances, and ultimately the maintenance of the status quo.
Skilled Worker Visas for Refugees: An Evaluation of the UK's Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot (DTMP)
There has been growing recognition of labour migration as a complementary solution for refugees and displaced people in recent years. Several pilots and programmes have emerged to match displaced people in the Global South with employers in the Global North in need of their skills and then facilitate their movement to these countries. One such example is the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot (DTMP) announced in July 2021 by the Home Office, in partnership with the charity Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB). TBB was established in 2016 out of the simple idea that displaced people do not need to be a burden for host societies. They have skills and talents, and can positively contribute to companies and communities globally when barriers to their mobility are removed. TBB uses the Talent Catalog, with over 100,000 registered people, to match skilled people in displacement with public-service providers or private companies and then works with employers, governments, and civil society to facilitate displaced people’s migration. The DTMP was launched in October 2021 and the first candidate arrived in the UK in December 2021. Initially, the DTMP aimed to move 50–100 displaced persons and their family members from Jordan and Lebanon to the UK as skilled migrants in non-healthcare roles by the end of October 2023. The pilot has since been extended until 1 November 2024. Utilising the Skilled Worker migration route, it will continue to provide a pathway for up to 200 skilled displaced people to come to the UK. Refugees and displaced people of any nationality or location are now eligible to benefit from the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot. This report assesses the achievements, impacts, and sustainability of the DTMP. It draws on qualitative research, including interviews with individuals who moved through the pilot, as well as staff from employing organisations, TBB, the Home Office, and partner organisations. The research highlights that the DTMP achieved most of its stated objectives (e.g. number of employers expressing interest and number of sectors recruiting displaced talent) but fell short of meeting the expected numbers of displaced people relocated. As of 1 September 2023, only 17 displaced individuals received job offers, of which only 12 had moved to the UK. The relatively low take-up of the pilot can largely be attributed to demand-side barriers and challenges in engaging employers, including the significant cost of recruiting internationally and the economic and political environment. The report also highlights the strong positive impacts of the pilot on candidates and their employers. Candidates relocating to the UK experience transformative changes in their livelihoods, safety, and overall well-being. Employers similarly report high levels of satisfaction with the programme as new hires fill skill gaps and bring wider benefits to the office through their past experiences. The report unpacks the challenges and lessons learnt until September 2023 to make recommendations for how the programme should continue in the future. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this independent report are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UK Home Office, TBB, or other stakeholders involved in the DTMP.
Refuge in Syria: Where Duty Outweighs Human Rights Based Approaches
Chapter in Urban Displacement: Syria’s Refugees in the Middle East (Are Knudsen and Sarah Tobin, eds). About the book: Syria’s massive displacement (from 2012 onwards) is one of the largest, most complex and intractable humanitarian emergencies of today. More than 5.7 million Syrian refugees live mainly in cities and urban areas throughout the Middle East. Urban Displacement examines multiple dimensions of this crisis from political and socioeconomic predicaments to questions of social belonging, the complexity of the international, regional and national responses and how they affect urban spaces. The volume brings together experts in the field of forced migration studies and displacement in the Middle East and presents a range of in-depth ethnographic data, cross-sectional surveys and policy analyses.
Resisting domestic violence
This article analyses the jurisprudence on domestic violence in international refugee and human rights law. It identifies and offers an original response to shortcomings in both bodies of law. Drawing on the work of Michelle Madden Dempsey, its focus is on domestic violence in its ‘strong’ sense: violence that sustains or perpetuates patriarchy. Decisions on women’s claims for international protection from domestic violence have generated strands of case law which contradict each other, as well as the Refugee Convention’s object and purpose. Decision makers have delineated overly restrictive social groups and ignored, identified, or imputed a range of political opinions. A disproportionate focus on ‘private’ motives has also obscured the nexus between persecution and the Convention ground(s). Similarly, issues left unresolved by the European Court of Human Rights have resulted in the European Convention on Human Rights’ prohibition of discrimination being applied inconsistently, and recently, not at all, in cases involving domestic violence. These deficiencies are traced to a lack of conceptual and legal clarity as to the nature of domestic violence. A response is offered that understands such violence as political and discriminatory. The article concludes by arguing that victims of domestic violence, properly understood, have experienced unlawful discrimination and are members of the ‘simple’ particular social group of ‘women’. It also answers calls within the literature for gender-sensitive approaches to the political opinion ground, offering an analysis that recognizes women’s resistance to violence, including in cases where commitments to gender equality are not expressed. Overall, the article contributes an improved understanding of domestic violence that could be relied on to ground principled decision making on discrimination, persecution, and the Convention grounds.