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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.]
‘We Need to Talk about Dublin’: responsibility under the Dublin System as a blockage to asylum burden-sharing in the European Union
The possibility of burden-sharing in the distribution of responsibility for processing asylum claims across the European Union (EU) seems to come up against a blockage when weighed against the principles and institutional practice underlying the Dublin system, the EU mechanism laying down the criteria determining the Member State responsible for processing an asylum claim. Understanding that blockage invites one to critically engage with the reasons why Member States have been reluctant to question Dublin as a policy option throughout the evolution of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This paper explores this question by evaluating the Dublin system as a carrier of embedded interests which make it less likely for Member States to allocate processing responsibility on the basis of burden-sharing. It examines the Dublin system’s objectives, and its appropriateness in delivering them, under three tenets: deflection, efficiency and control. The paper submits that the mechanism’s peculiar interpretation of processing responsibility accounts for its failure to deflect asylum claims by creating incentives for defection from the allocation criteria, as well as by prompting courts to halt transfers to external border Member States intended to receive the bulk of applications. The efficiency objectives of rapid processing of asylum claims and prevention of multiple applications and ‘asylum shopping’ are also not appropriately met, as the Dublin system causes significant delays in the processing of applications and provides asylum seekers with incentives to engage in irregular secondary movement. This built-in failure seems to reveal the symbolic objective of asserting control over entrants in their territory as the primary interest behind Member States’ support for Dublin.
Faith and responses to displacement
The role of faith in the humanitarian sector is not easy to measure. Faiths generally advocate welcoming the stranger and there are many organisations and individuals inspired by their faith or religion to provide protection and assistance. Yet it is easier to measure the activities inspired by faith than to measure the difference that having that faith makes, and secularly inspired standards for such activities can appear to be in tension with the faith inspiration. FMR 48 includes 36 articles on ‘Faith’ plus seven ‘general’ articles.
Repatriation through a trust-based lens: refugee-state trust relations on the Thai-Burma border and beyond
This paper puts forward the argument that substantive attention to the phenomenon of ‘trust’ constitutes a surprising missing chapter in contemporary repatriation policy and theory. In particular, the paper highlights the need for repatriation theorists and policy-makers to foreground trust relations between refugees and their states of origin in dominant frameworks. It argues that emphasis on these refugee-state trust relations presents a logical development, both of contemporary theory on the political content of repatriation and of due consideration of the formidable barrier to repatriation posed by refugees’ distrust of their state of origin. The paper puts forward a trust-based lens, suggesting that we recognise repatriation as, at least in part, a process of trust-building between refugee-citizens and their state of origin. This lens is then applied to the possible future repatriation of Karen refugees in the Thai-Burma border camps, drawing directly on the broad framework developed, and also on historical and cultural dimensions of trust specific to this case. The paper concludes that in this context dominant strategies currently undermine prospects for successful refugee-state trust-building, emphasising the need for fundamental political reform of the Burmese state in terms of its ethnic minority political representation if refugee-state trust is to be won.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12-25 years): a mapping exercise (Arabic)
Arabic translation of the original report published in September 2014. The Syrian crisis has uprooted the largest number of refugees in recent history. Half of the refugee population are children and young people forced to flee from home and rebuild their lives not knowing if or when return may be possible. It is clear that the initial emergency relief initiatives for Syria’s refugee crisis must now evolve to develop longer-term strategies. This mapping exercise focuses in on refugee youth education, a crucial yet often overlooked element in Syria’s humanitarian response. This report addresses the educational status of refugees from Syria aged 12–25 years. It determines their needs and maps some of the services provided by various organisations since the beginning of the Syria crisis in 2011, outlining gaps and challenges as well as progress and successful initiatives. In so doing, it is hoped the report may contribute to help key actors, from NGOs to international donors, to improve educational assistance through a better understanding of the needs of refugees.
Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art
The humanitarian system faces grave challenges, as record numbers of people are displaced for longer periods by natural disasters and escalating conflicts. At the same time new technologies, partners, and concepts allow humanitarian actors to understand and address problems quickly and effectively. To contend with these growing, and changing, demands, organizations are increasingly exploring the idea of “humanitarian innovation”, which draws upon concepts from the private sector to adapt and improve the humanitarian system. As a sign of its importance, “Transformation through Innovation” will be one of four themes of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. Humanitarians have used the term “innovation” to refer to the role of technology, products and processes from other sectors, new forms of partnership, and the use of the ideas and coping capacities of crisis-affected people. However, as with many emerging ideas, use of the term in the humanitarian system has lacked conceptual clarity, leading to misuse, overuse, and the risk that it may become hollow rhetoric. A better understanding of the potential and purpose of the innovation cycle and an innovation mindset can bring great benefits to the humanitarian system. This paper sets out to develop a common language and framework as a basis for dialogue, debate, and collaboration. The purpose is not to provide a definitive or comprehensive account but to offer ideas and examples to inspire further discussion. Each section of the paper highlights an aspect of the concept: 1) the rise of humanitarian innovation and the innovation ecosystem; 2) the unique challenges of humanitarian innovation; 3) the innovation cycle in practice; 4) the role of crisis-affected people; and 5) advancing the debate.
New approaches, alternative avenues and means of access to asylum procedures for persons seeking international protection
Upon request by the LIBE committee, this study examines the workings of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), in order to assess the need and potential for new approaches to ensure access to protection for people seeking it in the EU, including joint processing and distribution of asylum seekers. Rather than advocating the addition of further complexity and coercion to the CEAS, the study proposes a focus on front-line reception and streamlined refugee status determination, in order to mitigate the asylum challenges facing Member States, and guarantee the rights of asylum seekers and refugees according to the EU acquis and international legal standards.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12-25 years): a mapping exercise (summary)
This policy note provides an executive summary of the RSC research report, 'Ensuring Quality Education for Young Refugees from Syria (12-25 years): A mapping exercise'. This research focuses on access to education by refugee youth, a crucial yet often overlooked element in the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. Outlining educational demand and supply, the report analyses good practice and gaps in education services for refugee youth from Syria (including Palestinian, Kurdish and Turkmen refugee youth) in Jordan, Lebanon, Northern Iraq/Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Turkey. This publication was supervised by Professor Dawn Chatty.
Ensuring quality education for young refugees from Syria (12–25 years): a mapping exercise
The Syrian crisis has uprooted the largest number of refugees in recent history. Half of the refugee population are children and young people forced to flee from home and rebuild their lives not knowing if or when return may be possible. It is clear that the initial emergency relief initiatives for Syria’s refugee crisis must now evolve to develop longer-term strategies. This mapping exercise focuses in on refugee youth education, a crucial yet often overlooked element in Syria’s humanitarian response. This report addresses the educational status of refugees from Syria aged 12–25 years. It determines their needs and maps some of the services provided by various organisations since the beginning of the Syria crisis in 2011, outlining gaps and challenges as well as progress and successful initiatives. In so doing, it is hoped the report may contribute to help key actors, from NGOs to international donors, to improve educational assistance through a better understanding of the needs of refugees.
Introduction: refugees and innovation
Doing innovation well presents challenges for how we can work better together as organisations and with displaced people, and how we can break down traditional barriers between actors – all while upholding ethical principles and protection standards relating to displacement. Innovation is not the same thing as invention; it need not involve the creation of something novel but often takes the form of adapting something to a different context. It may be incremental (step by step) or disruptive (breaking the mould). It may relate to change in a product, a process or a paradigm. And it may involve technology or it may not. The innovation cycle can be thought of as a four-stage process, although the stages do not need to be linear: 1) defining a problem or identifying an opportunity; 2) finding potential solutions; 3) testing, adapting and implementing a solution; and 4) appropriate scaling up of the solution. The term ‘innovation’ is often poorly understood in humanitarian circles or is viewed sceptically as a buzzword brought in from the private sector. It is often used broadly as an umbrella term to cover the roles of technology, partnership and business. However, more precisely, it can be understood generally as a process for adaptation and improvement.
The end of refugee life?
Refugees are people who were forced to flee from their country of origin due to potential or imminent threats to their physical safety, security, liberty, or dignity. These displaced people seek international protection and are rendered refugee status to stay in exile because they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country due to such threats. Their refugee status, however, is not permanently granted. According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, when the circumstances under which they were recognized as refugees no longer exist, the “cessation clause” of the refugee status is invoked by the international refugee regime. For example, the cessation clause has been invoked for refugees from Angola, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda in recent years. Nevertheless, little is known about what actually happens to refugees and how they respond when their refugee status comes to an end.