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The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation
In recent years states across the world have boosted their legal and institutional capacity to deport noncitizens residing on their territory, including failed asylum seekers, “illegal” migrants, and convicted criminals. Scholars have analyzed this development primarily through the lens of immigration control. Deportation has been viewed as one amongst a range of measures designed to control entrance, distinguished primarily by the fact that it is exercised inside the territory of the state. But deportation also has broader social and political effects. It provides a powerful way through which the state reminds noncitizens that their presence in the polity is contingent upon acceptable behavior. Furthermore, in liberal democratic states immunity from deportation is one of the key privileges that citizens enjoy that distinguishes them from permanent residents. This book examines the historical, institutional and social dimensions of the relationship between deportation and citizenship in liberal democracies. Contributions also include analysis of the formal and informal functions of administrative immigration detention, and the role of the European Parliament in the area of irregular immigration and borders. The book also develops an analytical framework that identifies and critically appraises grassroots and sub national responses to migration policy in liberal democratic societies, and considers how groups form after deportation and the employment of citizenship in this particular context, making it of interest to scholars and international policy makers alike.
Protracted refugee situations and the regional dynamics of peacebuilding
The international community's approach to refugees focuses largely on mass influx situations and high profile refugee emergencies, delivering humanitarian assistance to refugees and war-affected populations, and encouraging large-scale repatriation programmes. In stark contrast, of the total number of refugees in the world (which exceeds 10 million) some 70%—or 7.7 million—are not in emergencies, but trapped in protracted refugee situations. Such situations, often characterised by long periods of exile, stretching to decades for some groups, constitute a growing challenge for the international refugee protection regime and the international community. While global refugee populations have fallen to their lowest in many years, the number of protracted refugee situations and their duration continue to increase. There are now well over 30 protracted refugee situations in the world, and the average duration of these refugee situations has nearly doubled over the past decade: from an average of nine years in 1993 to 17 years in 2004.
Burma: refugees and regional relations
For nearly sixty years, the regime in Rangoon has remained in power by preventing democratic change and waging war against the country's numerous ethnic nationality parties. This is the oldest ongoing conflict in the world. At the end of May, in response to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's appeal to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize winning prodemocracy activist, the military regime extended her house arrest for at least another year. This step is the latest demonstration of the unwillingness of the military regime to share power. As a direct consequence of the fighting and in response to sustained and widespread human rights violations throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced and huge numbers of refugees have fled to neighbouring countries.
The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path
Over fifty years ago governments established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to protect the world's refugees. The UNHCR was created to be a human rights and advocacy organization. But governments also created the agency to promote regional and international stability and to serve the interests of states. Consequently, the UNHCR has always trod a perilous path between its mandate to protect refugees and asylum seekers and the demands placed upon it by states to be a relevant actor in world politics. This is the first independent history of the UNHCR. Gil Loescher, one of the world's leading experts on refugee affairs, draws upon decades of personal experience and research to examine the origins and evolution of the UNHCR as well as to identify many of the major challenges facing the organization in the years ahead. A key focus is to examine the extent to which the evolution of the UNHCR has been framed by the crucial events of international politics during the past half century and how, in turn, the actions of the eight past High Commissioners have helped shape the course of world history.
Forced migration in the post-Cold War era: the need for a comprehensive approach
Book description: The present international migration system is failing to respond to the new challenges and opportunities that movements of people now present. Rising levels of migration and its increasingly complex patternDSmarked by economic globalisation, a widening variety of source countries and unpredictable and intense flowsDSis making migration management more and more difficult. Fears have been expressed that a breakdown of the migration system, already under heavy strain, could spell political and economic disaster, creating in its wake a major setback in human progress. Not surprisingly, there have been calls in recent years for the establishment of a more robust and comprehensive multilateral framework to help revamp the present fragmentary and predominantly reactive arrangements. But little systematic work has been done to develop this idea. The study takes up this challenge. In this ground-breaking study, the issues and prospects of a multilateral response to the challenge of movements of people is explored. It presents, within a single, cohesive framework, the views, perceptions, and critical analyses of a group of eminent specialists drawn from different disciplines but with an in-depth knowledge of migration issues. It argues, that if a co-ordinated multilateral response is indeed necessary, what should be its exact configuration? In addressing this critical question, the book introduces the concept of an internationally harmonized migration regime, based on the principle of regulated openness - commonalty of policy objectives, harmonized normative principles and co-ordinated institutional arrangements.
Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis
With more than 18 million refugees worldwide, the refugee problem tops the agenda in intergovernmental meetings and has fostered an intense debate regarding what political changes are necessary in the international system to provide effective solutions in the 1990s and beyond. In the past, refugees have been perceived largely as a problem of international charity, but as the end of the Cold War triggers new refugee movements across the globe, governments are being forced to develop a more systematic approach to the refugee problem. Beyond Charity provides the first extensive overview of the world refugee crisis today, asserting that refugees are a political issue and must be dealt with as such. Gil Loescher argues persuasively that a central challenge in the post Cold-War era is to develop a comprehensive refugee policy that preserves the right of asylum while promoting greater political and diplomatic efforts to address the causes of flight. He presents the contemporary crisis in a historical framework and explores the changing role of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. Loescher suggests short-term and long-term reforms that address both the current refugee crisis and its underlying causes. The book also details the ways governmental structures and international organizations could be strengthened to assume more effective assistance, protection, and political mediation functions. Beyond Charity clarifies the complex issues surrounding the global refugee crisis and offers directions for more effective approaches to refugee problems at present and in the future.
Refugees and the Asylum Dilemma in the West
This study presents an examination of the historical background and contemporary significance of the asylum and refugee issue confronting Western governments that draws lessons for future policy-making. This is the first study of the asylum-refugee problems to examine not only the history of policies of receiving nations in the West but also some of the underlying causes of refugee movements. Past studies of the asylum problem have focused narrowly on the conditions in receiving countries and have failed to see the global interconnectedness of the refugee problem. The authors argue that resolving the asylum problem in the West requires policy makers to direct their attention toward the conditions outside the industrialized countries that cause mass movements of populations as well as toward the improvement of their own asylum procedures. The present increase in the number of asylum-seekers and refugees is neither a temporary phenomenon nor a random product of chance events. It is the predictable consequence of fundamental political, demographic, economic, and ecological crises occurring throughout the Third World and Eastern Europe. However, Western governments did not until relatively recently envisage a large-scale movement of the poor countries northward to Western Europe and North America. Actual migratory pressures from the South and perceived threats of exodus from the East have only served to reinforce a restrictive attitude toward asylum. The refugee problem has reached such a critical point that the very institution of asylum is being threatened. These articles address the underlying causes of the current crisis, assess present policies, and define the considerations necessary for future policy-making.
Environmentalism in the Syrian Badia: the assumptions of degradation, protection and Bedouin misuse (In: Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege)
Anthropologists know that conservation often disempowers already under-privileged groups, and that it also fails to protect environments. Through a series of ethnographic studies, this book argues that the real problem is not the disappearance of "pristine nature" or even the land-use practices of uneducated people. Rather, what we know about culturally determined patterns of consumption, production and unequal distribution, suggests that critical attention would be better turned on discourses of "primitiveness" and "pristine nature" so prevalent within conservation ideology, and on the historically formed power and exchange relationships that they help perpetuate.
Participatory processes towards co-management of natural resources in pastoral areas of the Middle East
This training sourcebook has come into being at the special request of an FAO - Italian government initiative in the Syrian desert. The project to which much of this sourcebook owes its existence is the " Range Rehabilitation and Establishment of a Wildlife Reserve in the Syrian Steppe" project. The request for it was initiated after a series of participatory workshops - four in all between 1997 and 2000 - had been conducted in the project area. It is, therefore, very much based on the activities field-tested in the Syrian workshops and on the lessons learned from that process. It also draws on the experiences of the authors, and others, in a variety of pastoral regions of the world. Over the course of the four years during which time these participatory workshops were run, an incremental, step-by-step process was developed to complement the project’s field implementation process by introducing and integrating the concepts and principles of participatory work into the thinking, planning and management of the project. This ‘learning by doing’ strategy and the emphasis on shifting between class room theoretical work and active, practice in the field with project staff and local facilitators were a key elements contributing to the success of the endeavour. The consolidated sourcebook provides guidance how participatory processes in co-management of natural resources might be encouraged and promoted at the field level. Building on the specific and organic experience of introducing participatory processes in an environment previously inexperienced in these contemporary concepts, the sourcebook outlines a progressive and sequential set of skills which proved to be useful in promoting both technical and sociological skills required to enhance a participatory process. The approach described combines the introduction of different sets of techniques and exercises (related to participatory attitudes, PRA methods and tools, planning skills, facilitation, forming groups, and managing conflict) with the idea of process guidance and coaching of project staff in their daily work of creating a process of participatory and collaborative management of natural resources.
Palestinian refuges
Book description: Across a 20th century marked by world wars, regional conflicts, rising and collapsing empires, and the dawn of globalization, the flow of immigrants and asylum seekers reached unprecedented levels. And though America was by far the most popular destination, immigration (voluntary and otherwise) affected virtually every corner of the globe and continues in record numbers today. A comprehensive and timely examination of the history and current status of immigrants and refugees—their stories, the events that led to their movement, and the place of these movements in contemporary history and politics. Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present is an accessible and up-to-date introduction to the key concepts, terms, personalities, and real-world issues associated with the surge of immigration from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It focuses on the United States, but is also the first encyclopedic work on the subject that reflects a truly global perspective. With contributions from the world's foremost authorities on the subject, Immigration and Asylum offers nearly 200 entries organized around four themes: immigration and asylum; the major migrating groups around the world; expulsions and other forced population movements; and the politics of migration. In addition to basic entries, the work includes in-depth essays on important trends, events, and current conditions. There is no better resource for exploring just how profoundly the voluntary and forced movement of asylum seekers and refugees has transformed the world—and what that transformation means to us today.
Assumptions of degradation and misuse: the Bedouin in the Syrian Badia
Book description: A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.
Multinational oil exploitation and social investment: mobile pastoralists in the Sultanate of Oman
Book description: A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.
Introduction
Book description: A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.
Building schools for mobile people: the Harasiis in the Sultanate of Oman
Book description: Educational provision for nomadic peoples is a highly complex, as well as controversial and emotive, issue. For centuries, nomadic peoples educated their children by passing on from generation to generation the socio-cultural and economic knowledge required to pursue their traditional occupations. But over the last few decades, nomadic peoples have had to contend with rapid changes to their ways of life, often as a consequence of global patterns of development that are highly unsympathetic to spatially mobile groups. The need to provide modern education for nomadic groups is evident and urgent to all those concerned with achieving Education For All; yet how they can be included is highly controversial. This volume provides a series of international case studies, prefaced by a comprehensive literature review and concluding with an end note drawing themes together, that sets out key issues in relation to educational services for nomadic groups around the world.
Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa Entering the 21st Century
A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.