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Book Review: Life in Crisis: The ethical journey of Doctors Without Borders
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, remains the gold standard of medical relief. Fiercely independent, highly self-critical, resolutely professional, and able to mobilize at a moment’s notice, for many people it represents the best of the humanitarian ideal. The organization is surrounded by a number of myths and stereotypes: the oppositional spirit of ‘medical hippies’, the rebellion against the Red Cross, the heroic doctors in Biafra, the ‘unshaven, cigarette-smoking Frenchmen’ moving from crisis to crisis surrounded by fag ash and disruption. But despite a smattering of academic articles and a number of edited collections from MSF’s own think-tank, the story of MSF has not been examined in a lengthy scholarly study, at least not in the English language. With the publication of Peter Redfield’s book, which has been over ten years in the making, our knowledge of this influential organization and the literature on humanitarian aid has been significantly enhanced. A glance at the book’s subtitle would seem to suggest a work of moral philosophy or intellectual history, but this text is embedded in anthropology. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, it contains ethnographic sketches that cover key themes in MSF’s history. Chapter Three, for example, studies MSF’s famed logistical capacity, examining how it maintains global reach through …
How projects rise and fall: the lifecycle of a dietary modernisation scheme
How do projects grow? How do they fail? What accounts for their changing fortunes? This paper uses the archives of a 1970s modernisation scheme to explore the life cycle of a long-running project, concerning the production of leaf protein in Nigeria. It argues that archives can be very useful for understanding success and failure, and encourages practitioners to take an interest in the story of past projects, even those that failed. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, it argues that alliances are key to understanding project lifecycles, suggesting that practitioners focus on strengthening local relationships, rather than seeking answers in universal management templates.
Control and biopower in contemporary humanitarian aid: the case of supplementary feeding
The concept of biopower is often used in the analysis of contemporary aid. Referring to a power that is exercised over life and that operates through self-government, it seems very appropriate for the operations of humanitarian agencies, particularly in refugee contexts. This article critiques the application of biopower in studies of humanitarianism, arguing that many aid operations are based on top-down control, rather than self-government and the internalization of norms. As an illustration, I examine a supplementary feeding programme in South Sudan, looking at how food was provided, how hunger was measured, and pointing out the hierarchical and paternalistic control involved. As well as suggesting that biopower often lacks relevance in refugee contexts, I also argue it has been applied too broadly. By being associated with a vast array of humanitarian practices, it risks losing any analytical utility, becoming a substitute for detailed descriptions of power. This article seeks to return to that detail, describing a humanitarian programme and pointing out some discrepancies with the ever-popular notion of biopower, which, I argue, has a tendency to be applied without an adequate definition.
Beyond the 'raw' and the 'cooked': a history of fortified blended foods
This paper offers a history of fortified blended foods, a humanitarian product that first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Tracing its emergence and development, the paper argues that this food was the product of four key historical trends: (i) the search for a compact and efficient diet in the wake of the Second World War; (ii) the high modernist movement that saw science and technology as a way to improve on traditional foods; (iii) the state-led industrialisation of the development decades oriented around the notion of a worldwide 'protein gap'; and (iv) the legacy of 'productivist' agriculture in the United States, generating massive surpluses in certain crops that had to be adapted creatively for a multitude of uses. The paper positions fortified blended foods in these broader historical processes, and asserts that humanitarian techniques are very much rooted in cultural, political, and social conditions.
Sustainable Refugee Return: Triggers, constraints and lessons on addressing the development challenges of forced displacement
By the end of 2014 the total worldwide displaced population of concern to UNHCR stood at an unprecedented 57.7 million persons, and of these 19.5 million were refugees and 38.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Significant in the context of the present study is that the number of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate had increased by 23% on the previous year, 45% of the refugees are in a protracted displacement situation, and 86% of the world’s refugees are hosted by developing regions. Moreover, in 2014 only 126,800 refugees returned to their country of origin, a thirty year low and significantly lower than even one year earlier. The aim of this study is to identify the conditions that influence the decisions by refugees in protracted displacement regarding return to their home country - when, why, and by whom are decisions on return or other coping strategies made, and how are these decisions affected both by life in exile and by the situation in the country of origin. The primary purpose of the study is to inform the World Bank’s country and regional strategies, as well as its operational approaches on ways to address forced displacement by showing that well thought out development actions that are responsive to the circumstances of specific displacement situations can contribute to the sustainable return and reintegration of the displaced people. In addition to the World Bank, the wider audience for this analysis is the community of development and humanitarian actors together with the governments of refugee origin and refugee hosting countries. All these actors need to better take into consideration the development dimension of displacement and return, as well as the concerns and coping strategies of the refugees themselves both while in displacement and upon return in order to promote sustainable solutions.
Enhancing the Common European Asylum System and Alternatives to Dublin
Upon request by the LIBE committee, this study examines the reasons why the Dublin system of allocation of responsibility for asylum seekers does not work effectively from the viewpoint of Member States or asylum-seekers. It argues that as long as it is based on the use of coercion against asylum seekers, it cannot serve as an effective tool to address existing imbalances in the allocation of responsibilities among Member States. The EU is faced with two substantial challenges: first, how to prevent unsafe journeys and risks to the lives of people seeking international protection in the EU; and secondly, how to organise the distribution of related responsibilities and costs among the Member States. This study addresses these issues with recommendations aimed at resolving current practical, legal and policy problems.
Refugee Innovation: Humanitarian innovation that starts with communities
Even under the most challenging constraints, people find ways to engage in creative problem solving. Refugees, displaced persons, and others caught in crisis often have skills, talents, and aspirations that they draw upon to adapt to difficult circumstances. Although ‘humanitarian innovation’ has been increasingly embraced by the humanitarian world, this kind of ‘bottom-up’ innovation by crisis-affected communities is often neglected in favour of a sector-wide focus on improving the effectiveness of organisational response to crisis. This oversight disregards the capabilities and adaptive resourcefulness that people and communities affected by conflict and disaster often demonstrate. This report focuses on examples and case studies of ‘bottom-up innovation’ among different refugee populations. Whether in the immediate aftermath of displacement or in long-term protracted situations, in both urban and rural areas, refugees frequently engage in innovation. By definition displaced across international borders, refugees face new markets, a new regulatory environment, and new social and economic networks in their host countries. Being adaptive and creative is often necessary in order to meet basic needs, to develop income-generating activities, or to keep long-term aspirations alive. Even where there are legal constraints on the right to work or freedom of movement, the capacity of refugee populations to engage in iterative problem-solving is nearly always evident.
The Recast Asylum Procedures Directive 2013/32/EU: Caught between the stereotypes of the abusive asylum seeker and the vulnerable refugee
Forthcoming in V. Chetail, P. De Bruycker & F. Maiani (eds) 'Reforming the Common European Asylum System: The New European Refugee Law' (Martinus Nijhoff, 2015). Available at SSRN:- This piece provides a detailed analysis of the Recast Asylum Procedures Directive (Recast APD). Although we are now two decades into harmonization of asylum procedures at the European Union (EU) level, we begin in Part 2 by revisiting the rationale for this process. We contend that the most persuasive rationale for procedural harmonization, in an EU legally committed to refugee protection, is to ensure fair procedures, and to prevent a race to the bottom in procedural standards. Efficiency must serve fairness, not vice versa. The original Asylum Procedures Directive (APD) failed to meet this aim by a long margin. The Recast APD is the product of the new, post-Lisbon legislative environment, so as Part 3 suggests, it comes with high hopes for improvement, particularly given the Parliament’s relatively new role as co-legislator on asylum matters. Our analysis reveals that the Recast APD contains many improvements on its predecessor, but overall our assessment is mixed, particularly if we assess it in terms of the objective of setting clear basic minimum standards of fairness. We attempt to explain this ambivalent outcome by suggesting that the Directive reflects two competing stereotypical views of the asylum seeker. On the one hand, there is a strong notion that asylum procedures must work to weed out ‘abusive’ claims. In contrast, there is also a strong acknowledgement that some asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable or have special needs (as will be seen, different terminologies are used in different contexts). As we argue, these stereotypes create complexity, and crowd out the basic notion of refugee status determination (RSD) as a process for recognising refugees, on the assumption that many (although of course not all) of those who apply will be so recognised.
Refugees and justice between states
Abstract: In this article, I consider the neglected question of justice between states in the distribution of responsibility for refugees. I argue that a just distribution of refugees across states is an important normative goal and, accordingly, I attempt to rethink the normative foundations of the global refugee regime. I show that because dismantling the restrictive measures currently used by states in the global South to prevent the arrival of refugees will not suffice to ensure a just distribution of refugees between states, a more detailed account of how responsibilities should be shared between states is required. To this end, I make three claims. First, I argue that the definition of ‘refugee’ must be broadened beyond those subjected to persecution to include harms of action or omission by states that seriously jeopardise personal security or subsistence needs. Second, I argue that allocating a fair share of refugees to states should be based on state’s integrative capacities. Finally, I argue that distributive justice between states must be balanced against the legitimate interests of refugees in their destination country and the duty of states to ensure they are settled in places where they are likely to flourish.
A critical approach to the production of academic knowledge on refugee integration in the global North
As migration from the global South to increasingly multi-ethnic global North countries has accelerated in recent decades, questions of how belonging shapes social outcomes have permeated discussions of asylum policies, service provision, national security and other topics touching upon the relationship between birthplace and rights. Categorised most frequently as issues of integration, these debates generally assume the binary nature of belonging: one is either a member or an outsider. The narrower body of academic literature on refugee integration in global North resettlement countries is similarly beset by problems rooted in a false distinction between those with and without refugee status. In reviewing a set of self-selected case studies to explore the role this literature plays, this paper argues that the selection of the refugee as the subject of research on resettlement problems is in fact based on the researcher’s subjective determination of what is most important in shaping a refugee’s experiences: refugee status. The assumptions underlying this decision foster the conceptual ambiguity that marks these studies’ diverse and often inchoate understandings of the term 'integration', which in turn render a set of claims about refugee integration that is prohibitively complex and fails to contribute to a better understanding of resettlement. Since such work may in fact reinforce the problems that it seeks to understand, this paper advocates for a more reflexive exploration of how assumptions about belonging shape research on global North resettlement and on refugees more broadly.
The Deprivation of Citizenship in the United Kingdom: A Brief History
In February 2014, Middlesex University and the Refugee Studies Centre organised a seminar on Deprivation of Citizenship, bringing together leading scholars, legal practitioners and investigative journalists to highlight the disturbing increase in powers and use of deprivation of citizenship in the UK. The result was a fascinating set of papers and an animated discussion (the proceedings can be viewed on YouTube). Some of the papers from the seminar (and one other paper) have now been published in a special issue of Journal of Immigration Asylum and Nationality Law which as been made open access. At a glance: In this article, I trace the legislative development of denaturalisation (deprivation of citizenship) power in the United Kingdom. Beginning with its first emergence in the feverish environment prior to World War I, I discuss how legislation has evolved in the face of perceived security threats to the state and human right norms over the last century. I turn then to discuss the revitalisation of denaturalisation power since 2002, under Labour and coalition governments. I conclude by considering the novelty of recent legislative developments and their likely consequences for UK citizenship.
The rise and fall of the ERPUM pilot: tracing the European policy drive to deport unaccompanied minors
This working paper traces the institutional dynamics surrounding the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM), the first ever EU pilot attempting to organize the administrative deportation of unaccompanied minors. The first phase of ERPUM was initiated in January 2011, and its second stage began in December 2012 and was then discontinued in June 2014. Its core members were Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, and its observers were Denmark and Belgium. The pilot illustrates how bureaucratic networks in the European landscape of asylum policy interpreted the need to find “durable solutions” for unaccompanied minors as providing justification for institutionalizing their mass deportations. This paper is a follow-up to a workshop hosted by the RSC in 2013 on 'The Deportation of Unaccompanied Minors from the EU: Family Tracing and Government Accountability in the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM) Project'.
Protection in Crisis: Forced Migration and Protection in a Global Era
More than 51 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced today as refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons. According to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to be recognized legally as a refugee, an individual must be fleeing persecution on the basis of religion, race, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group, and must be outside the country of nationality. However, the contemporary drivers of displacement are complex and multilayered, making protection based on a strict definition of persecution increasingly problematic and challenging to implement. Many forced migrants now fall outside the recognized refugee and asylum apparatus. Much displacement today is driven by a combination of intrastate conflict, poor governance and political instability, environmental change, and resource scarcity. These conditions, while falling outside traditionally defined persecution, leave individuals highly vulnerable to danger and uncertain of the future, compelling them to leave their homes in search of greater security. In addition, the blurring of lines between voluntary and forced migration, as seen in mixed migration flows, together with the expansion of irregular migration, further complicates today's global displacement picture. This report details the increasing mismatch between the legal and normative frameworks that define the existing protection regime and the contemporary patterns of forced displacement. It analyzes contemporary drivers and emerging trends of population displacement, noting that the majority of forcibly displaced people – some 33.3 million – remain within their own countries, and that more than 50 percent of the displaced live in urban areas. The author then outlines and assesses key areas where the international protection system is under the most pressure, and finally examines the key implications of these trends for policymakers and the international community, outlining some possible policy directions for reform.
Innovation spaces: transforming humanitarian practice in the United Nations
Since 2009 there has been a growing interest in defining and operationalising innovation for use in the humanitarian context. The increase in scale of new crises, the urbanisation of many displaced populations, and stretched financing for humanitarian assistance are forcing international aid agencies to think and act in new ways. Along with other international humanitarian actors, several United Nations (UN) bodies are engaging with new tools and practices to bring innovation to the forefront of their work. Within these agencies, there has been a growing movement to establish ‘innovation spaces’ or ‘innovation labs’. These labs take different forms – some virtual, others physical – and each is created with its own motivations unique to the context in which it operates. Despite the variation, there is a growing trend in the UN system, and more broadly in the international humanitarian community, to create labs as a way to engage in and facilitate innovation practice. This research seeks to understand the way in which innovation labs across several UN agencies are being used to foster new ways of operating within the UN’s bureaucratic structures. We ask four key questions: What form do innovation labs in UN agencies take? What motivated their initiation? What are their aims and objectives? What impact have they had and how is the impact being measured? As innovation practice gains momentum, we reflect on the future of innovation spaces as a way to foster innovation within the UN system. We conclude with six key recommendations.
Book Review Symposium on "Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement"
This review symposium in the journal European Political Science contains three reviews of Alexander Betts’ book "Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement". The reviews, by Alexandra Délano, Catherine Weaver and James Milner, respectively, are followed by a response from Alexander Betts. Abstract from the symposium introduction by Lasse Thomassen: "This review symposium contains three reviews of Alexander Betts’ Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement by Alexandra Délano, Catherine Weaver and James Milner, respectively, as well as a reply by Alexander Betts. Survival Migration addresses an issue of great and growing importance: the precarious status of refugees who flee their country to survive environmental changes, food insecurity and generalized violence – that is, people who seek refuge in another state with the aim of survival. Their status is precarious because they often fall between existing legal categories, and because they often flee to states that are unwilling or unable to protect them. Betts uses the concept of survival migration to highlight this crisis. He introduces another concept – regime stretching – to show how states adapt, or stretch, existing international frameworks and structures to the situation they face. The analytical and normative advantages of the concepts of survival migration and regime stretching are at the centre of the exchange between Betts and the reviewers of his book."
Beware states piercing holes into citizenship
This debate piece is part of a EUDO CITIZENSHIP Forum Debate working paper edited by Audrey Macklin and Rainer Baubock, and titled 'The return of banishment: do the new denationalisation policies weaken citizenship?'. In this debate, several authors discuss the growing trend in Europe and North America of using denationalisation of citizens as a counter-terrorism strategy. The deprivation of citizenship status, alongside passport revocation, and denial of re-admission to citizens returning from abroad, manifest the securitisation of citizenship. Britain leads in citizenship deprivation, but in 2014, Canada passed new citizenship-stripping legislation and France’s Conseil Constitutionnel recently upheld denaturalisation of dual citizens convicted of terrorism-related offences. In the wake of the ongoing crisis in Iraq and Syria, assorted legislators in Austria, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States have expressed interest in enacting (or reviving) similar legislation. The contributors to the Forum Debate consider the normative justification for citizenship deprivation from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. There is relatively little disagreement among commentators about the limited instrumental value of citizenship revocation in enhancing national security, and more diversity in viewpoint about its significance for citizenship itself. The contributors discuss the characterisation of citizenship as right versus privilege, the relevance of statelessness and dual nationality, the relative merits of citizenship versus human rights as normative framework, and the expansiveness of banishment itself as a concept. Kickoff contribution and rejoinder by Audrey Macklin. Comments by Peter Spiro, Peter H. Schuck, Christian Joppke, Vesco Paskalev, Bronwen Manby, Kay Hailbronner, Rainer Bauböck, Linda Bosniak, Daniel Kanstroom, Matthew J. Gibney, Ruvi Ziegler, Saskia Sassen and Jo Shaw. Type of Access: openAccess
Protecting Forced Migrants: A State of the Art Report of Concepts, Challenges and Ways Forward
This study, commissioned by the Swiss Federal Commission on Migration, investigates how the complex and multi-causal nature of forced displacement in the contemporary world has contributed to an increasing range of protection gaps and to the diminution of protection space for refugees, and especially the increasing number of people who fall outside the recognised refugee and asylum apparatus. The study explores the current and future challenges to the provision of protection, and makes recommendations on how these challenges might be met and how protection can be enhanced. The study report is available from the Commission in both English and French.
Smuggled migrant or migrant smuggler: erosion of sea-borne asylum seekers’ access to refugee protection in Canada
This paper argues that the criminalisation of smuggling has undermined refugee protection for sea-borne asylum seekers. It is pivotal to consider the categorical differentiation of sea-borne asylum seekers in the Canadian refugee system because, although there have been only seven notable cases of boat arrivals in Canada from 1986 to the present, they have triggered significant reforms in Canadian refugee law. At the intersection of international criminal law, Canadian criminal law and Canadian refugee law, the criminalisation of smuggling has resulted in an inability of sea-borne asylum seekers to access refugee status because they have assisted other presumptive refugees during a voyage. This paper argues that the broad grounds of 'ineligibility' for refugee status in Canadian refugee law and the broad concept of smuggling in Canadian criminal law erode access to refugee protection for sea-borne asylum seekers allegedly implicated in the smuggling of refugees. Moreover, interpretive contestation of sea-borne asylum seekers’ complicity in smuggling in Canadian refugee law and the flawed assumption of the static identity of smugglers in international criminal law further undermine sea-borne asylum seekers’ access to refugee protection in Canada. Sea-borne asylum seekers who do not align with the assumption of passivity of smuggled migrants are discursively framed as smugglers. International refugee law may fail to provide protection for bona fide refugees because of the artificial distinction between the smuggler and the migrant in international and national criminal frameworks on smuggling.
Reflections on Reading Tarakhel
Tarakhel v Switzerland is the latest Grand Chamber ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on Dublin returns. Its contribution to human rights protection is to reassert well-established principles, quite minimal ones the authors would suggest, which prevent states from returning asylum-seekers where there are substantial grounds to believe there is a real risk of inhuman and degrading treatment. The contribution of the case is to reject erroneous approaches which developed under both ECHR and EU law, in particular in the wake of the NS/ME3 judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as to the significance of the reference to ‘systemic deficiencies’, and what sorts of evidence was required to rebut the presumption of safety accorded to Dublin states. The Tarakhel judgment of the ECtHR has put an end to that uncertainty. The ECtHR holds that there is no additional requirement of ‘systemic deficiencies’. Instead, we find reasserted the duty to do ‘thorough and individualised’ assessment, and suspend removal if there are substantial grounds to believe there is a real risk of inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition, we argue for a fundamental rethink of the Dublin Regulation. Moving away from coercion in the allocation of responsibility for refugee claims is imperative.
Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law
There is a highly significant and under-considered intersection and interaction between migration law and labour law. Labour lawyers have tended to regard migration law as generally speaking outside their purview, and migration lawyers have somewhat similarly tended to neglect labour law. The culmination of a collaborative project on 'Migrants at Work' funded by the John Fell Fund, the Society of Legal Scholars, and the Research Centre at St John's College, Oxford, this volume brings together distinguished legal and migration scholars to examine the impact of migration law on labour rights and how the regulation of migration increasingly impacts upon employment and labour relations. Examining and clarifying the interactions between migration, migration law, and labour law, contributors to the volume identify the many ways that migration law, as currently designed, divides the objectives of labour law, privileging concerns about the labour supply and demand over worker-protective concerns. In addition, migration law creates particular forms of status, which affect employment relations, thereby dividing the subjects of labour law. Chapters cover the labour laws of the UK, Australia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the US. References are also made to discrete practices in Brazil, France, Greece, New Zealand, Mexico, Poland, and South Africa. These countries all host migrants and have developed systems of migration law reflecting very different trajectories. Some are traditional countries of immigration and settlement migration, while others have traditionally been countries of emigration but now import many workers. There are, nonetheless, common features in their immigration law which have a profound impact on labour law, for instance in their shared contemporary shift to using temporary labour migration programmes. Further chapters examine EU and international law on migration, labour rights, human rights, and human trafficking and smuggling, developing cross-jurisdictional and multi-level perspectives. Written by leading scholars of labour law, migration law, and migration studies, this book provides a diverse and multidisciplinary approach to this field of legal interaction, of interest to academics, policymakers, legal practitioners, trade unions, and migrants' groups alike. [Receive a discount of 30% when you order from the OUP website using the promotional code ALAUTH16.]