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Must refugees be grateful?
The idea that refugees should be grateful is pervasive in popular culture and is also evident in political theory, most notably in discussing whether refugees have an obligation to obey the law in their state of asylum. We examine the normative argument that refugees have a duty to be grateful to their host society, arguing that when the workings of the system of refugee protection are examined, it becomes clear that no such duty exists. Our main concern is that state-imposed barriers and hardships that refugees must endure to access asylum undermine any gratitude to the asylum state. Indeed, if any gratitude duties are owed by refugees, it is to those social actors who help them evade state restrictions. We conclude by suggesting that, once we take account of those features, resentment rather than gratitude often seems a more apt response by refugees to their asylum state.
Reviewing the contribution of the private sector to economic and labour market development in forced displacement contexts
There has been an increasing shift away from hallmarking refugees based on their persecution experience and instead viewing them as economic actors and agents of development. This is particularly the case in protracted refugee situations where historically the humanitarian response system is not designed or funded to understand livelihood strategies that displaced persons are pursuing and the general development opportunities that may be available to them. As a result, different actors have been welcomed into the fold such as the private sector, which is well positioned to expand markets, deploy a variety of business models, create employment opportunities and integrate into value chains in forced displacement contexts. This study primarily uses a mixed methodology and charts the burgeoning literature that defines the private sector, its emerging role and, in some cases, its concrete contribution. It considers the current barriers faced by refugees in accessing economic systems and the conditions required for the private sector to enter this sphere. The paper also reviews overarching themes and identifies key questions that might advance our understanding of the most recent trends in relation to private sector development in refugee settings. In particular, the capacity of multi-national corporations and international financial institutions to provide solutions to displacement, and the emerging role of private sector actors in the digital economy which may help us reconsider opportunities for refugee inclusion. Finally, the paper highlights some examples of concrete access for refugees to labour markets and avenues for refugee entrepreneurship. Despite the growing literature on the private sector’s contribution in forced displacement contexts, there remain additional questions which the authors highlight in the hope that it may inspire others to pursue further research in this area.
“Against the Flow”: Exile and “Willful Subjects” in Malika Mokeddem’s Mes Hommes and Kim Thúy’s Vi
Exile is a move away from one’s homogeneous cultural background, and the exile constantly experiences “both the old and the new environment” as “vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally” (Said186). While exile might be a rift, it can also be chosen as a mode of interior movement away from repressions and oppressive values. I contend that the indeterminacy of the notion of willfulness (Ahmed, Willful Subjects) and the implied dissent involved are a productive lens through which to analyze Malika Mokeddem’s Mes hommes (2005) and Kim Thúy’s Vi (2016). In both texts, I investigate how willfulness is conducive to freedom along with subjectivation, demonstrating how postcolonial migrant women recuperate not only their individuality but also showcase the different changes that operate within their family due to their exilic experiences.
Forward to the Special Issue Fragile Selves
In March 2022, I gave a keynote address at the PhD Symposium on Fragile Selves at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The focus of my talk was to examine the extraordinary efforts of Circassian forced migrants to maintain their culture, their language, and their traditions, during their involuntary migration to new lands. Although I did not use the term ‘fragile’, what I was examining was indeed a delicate balancing act to identify and maintain what many regarded as special and evocative of their native land and culture.
The Global Compact on Refugees: inadequate substitute or useful complement?
The Global Compact on Refugees is touted by its supporters as a soft law instrument that advances solutions for refugees in a way that complements the fundamental human rights protections afforded by the hard law Refugee Convention. In practice, however, the Global Compact appears to have replaced the Refugee Convention as the centerpiece of multilateral dialogue about states' actions vis-à-vis refugees. This paper argues that the substitution of the Global Compact for the Refugee Convention is problematic from a human rights perspective because the Global Compact makes very little provision for refugees' rights and interests, instead focusing on the rights and interests of states. The Compact thus exerts a gravitational pull that distances the forced displacement response sector from the objective of realizing refugees' human rights. To counter this, the paper suggests a need for increased attention and deeper investment in bolstering the use of human rights treaty mechanisms and processes to enforce refugees' human rights.
Sexual and gender-based violence among protracted refugees in Nakivale refugee settlement, Uganda: Addressing gaps in knowledge and responses
Uganda’s refugee settlements are characterized by protracted refugees due to prolonged conflicts in neighbouring countries and the inability to find a lasting solution for the refugees. In these settlements, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is widespread yet remains a silent affliction among women and girls, as well as men and boys, who are at an increased risk of multiple forms of SGBV as a result of protractedness. This empirical qualitative study carried out in Nakivale refugee settlement shows that prolonged stay has increased the vulnerability of the refugees to SGBV as it has created new forms of violence and exacerbated existing ones. The study findings further indicate that lack of durable solutions, especially the currently preferred resettlement, has contributed to protractedness and its related challenges. Sexual violence, intimate partner violence (IPV), and traditional harmful practices are the commonest forms of SGBV, and these have affected refugees’ health – physically, psychologically, and socially. Several interventions, including health, legal, psycho-social, safety and security, and economic empowerment, are reported to be in place to prevent and respond to the problem, but SGBV still exists, and many survivors and their families still conceal their SGBV experiences. The findings suggest that interventions aimed at creating awareness have helped in reducing SGBV cases. However, there are still gaps as some refugees are reluctant to report SGBV, and some still fabricate SGBV cases to meet the resettlement criteria. Protracted refugees should continuously be involved in measures for both prevention and response to SGBV for sustainability.
The antecedents of forced migration in the Middle East
The Ottoman Empire was challenged in the nineteenth century to address, organize, and manage the mass influx of peoples from its border lands with Imperial Russia into its southern provinces. The Refugee and Immigrant Code and Commission, together with the General Administration for Refugee Affairs established the first 'modern' systems of resettlement. This chapter examines the context and mechanisms which the Ottoman Sublime Porte implemented to address the humanitarian crises which unfolded along its borders with Czarist Russia between 1850 and the 1900s. Chatty engages with the significance of the Tanzimaat (Reforms) and the manner in which migrants (refugees and immigrants) were instrumentalized to revive the ailing agricultural sector of the Empire, as well dampen down local feuds among host communities. Many of the humanitarian practices established by the Ottomans continued into the Inter-War Era. However, twentieth and twenty-first-century humanitarianism exhibited ruptures with many of these established practices.
Forced migration
Chapter 54 in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Development.
Supreme Judgecraft: Non-Refoulement and the end of the UK-Rwanda ‘deal’?
In R (on the application of AAA (Syria) and others) the UK Supreme Court held that the Secretary of State’s policy to remove protection seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Rwanda is not, at present, a safe third country (‘STC’). There are, the Supreme Court found, “substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that asylum claims will not be determined properly, and that asylum seekers will in consequence be at risk of being returned directly or indirectly to their country of origin.” Should this occur “refugees will face a real risk of ill-treatment in circumstances where they should not have been returned at all” (para 105). We argue that the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning and evidential assessment are both impeccable, applying legal principles that are well-embedded in international and domestic law to very clear evidence. However, the UK government’s responses are deeply troubling, from the perspectives of refugee protection, international legality, and the rule of law in the UK.
Key informant interviews: a practical guide for refugee and displacement researchers
Interviews with key informants are an important component of any research project dealing with refugee, displacement and humanitarian issues. Whether you are talking to a politician, a government official, a UN or NGO employee or a civil society leader, they provide an invaluable means of gaining access to factual and topical information; an understanding of the historical context of your project; as well as ideas, insights and opinions that can shed a new and different light on the evidence you have collected by other means. In my experience, they can also be one of the most stimulating parts of the research process, more enjoyable in many ways than administering a survey, trawling through archival records or reading reams of secondary literature. Here I provide a set of 8 key guidelines, based on my own experience as an interviewer and interviewee over the past 40 years. While your approach will evidently have to be revised and adapted according to the person you are meeting and the context in which you are meeting them, I believe that these guidelines provide a solid basis for any key informant interviews that you undertake in the course of your research. Please note that these guidelines do not apply to interviews with refugees, displaced people and host population members.
Refugee burden-and-responsibility sharing: Revisiting the debate on the right to compensation to refugee-hosting states
Much of the world’s rising refugee population is situated in developing countries most of which struggle to fulfil their developmental obligations towards their own citizens, while the better financially-placed countries are increasingly changing their asylum policies to avoid most of the obligations that come with the admission of high numbers of impromptu refugees and asylum seekers. The refugee-burden and responsibility-sharing landscape is evidently uneven and inequitable. Even as the more recent adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees seeks to address the global imbalances in refugee burden- and responsibility-sharing and re-affirms states’ commitments to refugee protection and support for host countries and communities, its strategy remains grounded in the traditional durable solutions. It does not address the issue of the responsibility of refugee-producing states. Scholarship in this regard, particularly in the late 1980s and 1990s argued that refugee-producing states that engaged in internationally wrongful acts resulting into refugee outflows that in turn created a refugee burden for other states should bear responsibility and pay compensation to the refugee-hosting states. This article aims to develop this argument further with a specific focus on the African region. The African region has in the last three decades seen significant development not only in its normative framework but also in regional cooperation schemes that would provide a strong basis and framework for the implementation of the obligation for refugee-producing states in breach of their international obligations to compensate refugee-hosting states. While the right to compensation, as it were, would not be a panacea to the global refugee crises, it could perhaps have a deterrent effect on states that may act with impunity and make them responsible for their share in causing the refugee situation. It could also incentivize reluctant states to uphold their obligations towards refugees in accordance with international law.
The end of the Rwanda Scheme? R (AAA) v SSHD [2023]
Introduction: On 29 June 2023 a majority of the Court of Appeal ruled that the Government’s plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Rwanda is not currently a safe third country. Instead, there are substantial grounds for thinking that protection-seekers sent there would not have their claims determined properly and would be returned by Rwanda to situations where they would face persecution and other forms of serious harm (refoulement). You can watch the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, give a summary of the decision here. You can read a summary of the judgement here and the full judgment here. Overall, this judgment upholds the UK’s international legal obligations, affirms the centrality of the prohibition of refoulement, and demonstrates the importance of scrutinising the conditions that protection-seekers will actually face in countries deemed ‘safe’.
Refugees, Deportation and Detention: The Illegal Migration Bill
The first reading of the Illegal Migration Bill took place in the House of Commons on 7th March 2023. The Bill, in its current form, creates a group of people who will be subject to a duty to deport and a power to detain. Refugees, and others within this group with international protection needs, are denied the ability to be recognised and protected as such. The Bill also removes rights from those who have been trafficked and subjected to modern slavery. The post is in two parts. First, a summary of the Bill’s main clauses, second, an initial analysis from an international legal perspective. As will become apparent, the Bill, if passed, denies protection contrary to UK’s international legal obligations. Both this denial of protection, and the distress and violence that the envisaged deportations and detentions will entail, are legally and morally wrong.
Education, ontological security, and preserving hope in liminality: learning from the daily strategies exercised by Syrian refugee youth in Jordan
This article draws on a study with Syrian refugee youth and their teachers to examine how young people, holding liminal social and legal statuses in Jordan, manage uncertainty. Through an analysis of students' experiences, this article describes the varying strategies that they developed to protect their sense of hope across time by maintaining ontological security, or an understanding of self. These findings suggested that refugee youth, unable to navigate uncertainty through their educational spaces, explored alternative ways to actively build hope and sustain a sense of control in their lives. They nurtured hope by constructing a continuous narrative of their experiences, exploring their skills and potential, and forming attachments to ideas of place and possibility. Buildings on these findings, this article argues for the importance of integrating practices within education which respond to refugee youths’ needs to maintain ontological security and hope in the face of uncertainty.