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In memory of Stephen Castles: Studying migration as part of social transformation

Stephen Castles' scholarship examines the dynamics of international migration, always in relation to broader trends in the political economy of the countries and regions in concern. In this short piece, I reflect on his scholarship, particularly since the 2000s and 2010s—a period I had the chance to work with him. Throughout the 2000s, Stephen Castles worked at the University of Oxford, as the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), and later as the Director of the International Migration Institute (IMI). These were also the years he started advocating to study (forced) migration as not a standalone subject but as part of broader processes of social transformation. He (Castles, 2015, 4) conceptualized social transformation as ‘[a] shift in social relationships so profound that it affects virtually all forms of social interaction, and all individuals and communities simultaneously.’

"Like Handing My Whole Life Over": The German Federal Administrative Court’s landmark ruling on mobile phone data extraction in asylum procedures

On 16 February 2023, the German Federal Administrative Court (BVerwG) ruled that the practice of regularly analysing data carriers, including mobile phones, by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) when registering asylum applicants is illegal (BVerwG 1 C 19.21). The judgement arrives after the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte’s (GFF) efforts to reveal this practice’s details and take legal action against its use in the asylum procedure. In this post, we briefly overview this practice and analyse this judgement and its implications. We argue that although this judgement represents an important victory for asylum seekers’ and refugees’ data protection and privacy, some controversial aspects of this practice still require clarification.

‘In London, I Am a European Citizen’: Brexit, Emotions, and the Politics of Belonging

London hosts by far the largest population of non-national EU citizens in Europe. It is also home to roughly one-third of the entire EU citizen population living in the UK. London’s population changed rapidly following EU enlargement in the 2000s in terms of its size, the variety and number of nationalities it hosts, and its socio-demographic profile (Lessard-Phillips & Sigona, 2018). These changes have intensified and shaped the process of ‘diversification of diversity’ captured in the late 2000s by anthropologist Steve Vertovec in his seminal work on superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007). Despite Britain’s exit from the EU, its new geopolitical orientation (towards a more ‘Global Britain’) and the new immigration regime that has come to replace the EU’s freedom of movement, this diversification process has continued. For example, between 2016 and 2020, live births among EU mothers in London have roughly stayed the same - only marginally declined from 17.52 to 17.18 per cent of the total number of live births in London, with Poland, Romania, Germany and Lithuania among the top 10 countries of birth for non-UK mothers in the city (ONS, 2021; see also Lessard-Phillips & Sigona, 2019).

UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees: Protecting refugee rights while structurally addressing the agency’s financially unsustainable modus operandi

The 73-year-long failure to resolve the Palestinian refugee question, and the discourse around it, especially since Madrid and Oslo, combined with the unsustainability of UNRWA’s current modus operandi – essentially a means to manage the humanitarian dimension of the of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict – prompt a critical re-examination of the way the Palestinian refugee question has been approached and how UNRWA has interpreted and implemented its mandate over the past decades. This paper calls for a fundamental paradigm shift in the approach to protection of and solutions for the Palestinian refugees, comprised of three elements: (1) the search for solutions for Palestinian refugees must move from the essentially bilateral approach of the last decades, namely the Madrid/Oslo framework, back to the multilateral arena of the UN; (2) the discourse on solutions must move beyond the current constraints of perceptions or politics, and refocus on the rights of the Palestinian refugees that remain unfulfilled, including both historical rights (self-determination, return, restitution compensation) and the panoply of human rights that for many refugees, especially in UNRWA area of operation, remains suspended; (3) it is necessary to abandon the “politics of suffering”, namely the resisting belief that the refugees must continue to live in substandard conditions with limited advancement of rights and a clear residential status in host countries in order to assert and maintain their right to return. In fact, allowing refugees to have a dignified life may enable them to be political actors determining their present and future. The 2016 New York Declaration provides a unique opportunity to realize the above paradigm shift. Applicable to Palestinian refugees, it provides an UN-sanctioned mandate – with the broadest possible endorsement of the international community – for the elaboration of a comprehensive response framework (CRF) for Palestinian refugees, dealing with the various unresolved aspects of the Palestinian refugee situation, and developed through a multi-stakeholder approach. The authors propose a radical yet gradual evolution of UNRWA’s strategic direction, from providing humanitarian assistance and support for human development to a comprehensive response to all aspects of the Palestinian refugee question, including a more expanded focus on protection and durable solutions. By doing so, the agency would build on its existing mandate in protecting the rights of the Palestinian refugees and address the void left by the demise of the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), which critically complements the UN mandate toward them. Palestinian refugees need and deserve, like all other refugees, an international entity engaged not only in supporting their humanitarian needs but equally in upholding their human rights, including to return, restitution and compensation, as well as facilitating such other durable solutions as the refugees may want to pursue. These latter rights flow from the illegality of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestine and have only become stronger with the passing of time and the further advancement of international law. The development of a CRF for Palestinian refugees (CRF-PR) has the potential to reenergize the discourse in support of unmet Palestinian refugee rights, and reactivate a common front among host countries, refugees, and Palestinian leadership. By generating discussion and awareness, it would shift political attention towards the refugees and create important momentum to ‘federate’ and advocate jointly for a just and durable solution of the refugee question. Giving proper weight to a rights-based approach, centred on the refugees, and advancing the development of a CRF-PR through a multi-stakeholder platform under the aegis of the UN, has the potential to break the current impasse. Implementing the above shift – including by turning UNRWA’s registration system into a central repository of documentary evidence of the refugees’ historic claims – could gradually pave the way for a broader reconsideration of the agency’s modus operandi, moving away from parallel delivery of some services in some of its “fields” of operations. As a first step, UNRWA may wish to develop a note on its mandate as UNHCR did in 2013. The reforms and initiatives in this paper should also help inform the imminent development by UNRWA of its next Medium-Term Strategy (MTS).

Sister parties no more: explaining the refugee policy divergence of the Swedish and Danish Social Democratic parties

The Social Democratic parties of Sweden and Denmark share many things, operating in countries with shared history and culture. However, one thing not shared is refugee policy. This working paper seeks to understand why the Social Democratic parties of Sweden and Denmark have developed such different refugee policies despite their many similarities. While the gradual developments of both parties in opposite policy directions can be seen to take place over time, existing literature proposes several different explanations to what has caused this divergence. As such, this research aims at filling a gap in existing literature by gathering central explanations, assessing and reviewing their relative influence on policy divergence. This is done by exploring key changes in policy using three different hypotheses, all presenting a potential causal factor and mechanism for divergence. These three factors are party politics, leadership, and refugee inflow level. They are extracted from three strands of existing literature, namely from comparative politics of asylum in Scandinavia, comparative politics of asylum in general, as well as from the literature on comparative politics of Scandinavian social democratic parties. Examining key policy changes using categorization of factors based on causal role played, this research seeks to understand how divergence has emerged as a result of the chosen three factors. The resulting argument is that all extracted factors have played a part in policy change, but that the party-political factor constitutes the core explanation for policy divergence, even if the leadership factor has also contributed. The last factor, refugee inflow, is argued to not be causal for divergence.

Post-abyssal ethics in education research in settings of conflict and crisis: Stories from the field

This article draws heavily on the post-abyssal philosophy of Boaventura de Sousa Santos in order to theorise new ways of thinking about research ethics in settings affected by armed conflict and crisis, and to put them into practice. Our article explores the dilemmas and tensions faced by four graduate students and a supervisor across diverse international settings. For some of us, these are places we call home, for others these are places that provide refuge to our people: Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon and India. We seek to deepen standard understandings of ethics as institutionalised in university forms, arguing that tidy checklists for safety and risk mitigation do not adequately address the complex affective and socio-political struggles permeating research, and the bodies of researchers, in these settings. Our main focus here is on how we can synthesise our various experiences in order to offer something of value to others who may be about to go into the field in settings affected by armed conflict and crisis. The question that we address, then, is: how can researchers avoid the limitations, obfuscations and silences of traditional institutional ethics in order to adopt a situated, embodied, post-abyssal research ethic that might open up new spaces for emotion, encounter, and engagement with struggle, risk and voicing? We use an autoethnographic approach that enables congruence with the aims of this article, and that supports our aspirations for enhanced impact through powerful narrative. We end with discussion that contains suggestions for institutions, supervisors, researchers, and for funding and professional bodies.

Realities of school ‘integration’: insights from Syrian refugee students in Jordan’s double-shift schools

Recent agendas have sought to encourage governments to integrate refugees into national education systems. However, clearer nuances of integration and examples of positive and negative approaches are necessary to help understand the effects of policies on students’ learning and well-being. This article explores the perceptions of Syrian refugee students who have been integrated into Jordan’s schools through the double-shift system. Drawing on a broader study which explored students’ perceptions through semi-structured interviews, this article illustrates how educational settings have shaped students’ perceptions of their spaces, learning, and aspirations. It portrays the issues that arise from a system that formally integrates refugee students in formal school while keeping them physically and socially segregated from native students. By shedding light on the ways in which educational spaces enhance or reduce differences between societies, this article argues that harmonized policies, structures, and practices are essential for inclusive and equal learning opportunities.

Refugee mobilities in East Africa: understanding secondary movements

There is significant policy interest in refugee migration, particularly in relation to ‘secondary movements’ – the movement of refugees from the first country in which they arrive. Yet, there is very little theoretical or empirical research on refugee mobilities in the Global South, where the overwhelming majority of refugees reside. Existing literature on refugee migration focuses mainly on people who have already selected onward migration to the Global North. This leaves a gap in terms of describing, understanding, and explaining refugee migration patterns within and from low and middle-income regions of the world. Drawing upon cross-sectional data for Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda, we describe aspirations relating to mobility; and drawing upon panel data for refugees based in Kenya, we describe actual patterns of mobility. While a majority of refugees ‘hope’ to migrate inter-regionally and a smaller majority ‘expect’ to migrate inter-regionally, actual mobility patterns are very different. Whereas refugees are highly mobile, the overwhelming majority of their mobility is internal and most international migration is intra-regional. By describing these patterns for one region, the article challenges policy assumptions relating to secondary movement and offers a starting point for further comparative research on refugee mobilities.

The Mediating Role of Education: Learning as Syrian Refugee Young People in Jordan

Chapter in A. North & E. Chase (eds) Education, Migration and Development: Critical Perspectives in a Moving World

Protection in refugee education: teachers’ socio‐political practices in classrooms in Jordan

This article examines why and how teachers of refugees enact protection by engaging with local forms of harm facing their refugee students. Through portraits of two classrooms in Jordan, we describe the relationships that form between Jordanian teachers and Syrian students, and the protection practices teachers develop in response. We propose a more comprehensive conceptualization of protection in refugee education that layers socio-political protection on legal and rights-based protection commonly embedded in humanitarian activities.

Quality and social justice in refugee education: Syrian refugee students’ experiences of integration into national education systems in Jordan

The past decade has seen a policy shift from separate and parallel education systems for refugees to integration into national education systems. The benefits from integration, including longer-term planning, more sustainable funding and opportunities to improve the quality of education are highlighted in the literature. However, there has been less attention to how integration is implemented in practice, how different models of integration are experienced by refugee students, and the extent to which they provide quality education and advance social justice for refugee students. This paper draws on Nancy Fraser’s principle of parity of participation and integration theory to examine Syrian refugee students’ perspectives across three models of integration in Jordan (camp, second shift and host community schools). Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, we highlight how each model gives rise to social arrangements which, in different ways, impede socially just and equitable education.

Automating Immigration and Asylum: The Uses of New Technologies in Migration and Asylum Governance in Europe

This report maps out the existing uses of new technologies across European immigration and asylum systems both at the national and the EU level. This is the first mapping report under the AFAR project.

(Some) refugees welcome: When is differentiating between refugees unlawful discrimination?

Europe’s extraordinary response to those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has prompted many criticisms of Europe’s treatment of other refugees, and indeed people of colour and members of ethnic minorities fleeing Ukraine. While stark, this differentiated response in not unusual: The global refugee regime treats different refugees differently, as a matter of course. Refugees often encounter racialized migration controls, and systems which privilege some refugees over others. The article seeks to clarify when these practices violate the international legal prohibitions on discrimination on grounds of race and nationality. To do so, it focuses on race discrimination in general international human rights law, clarifying the interaction between general human rights principles and instruments, and the specialist instrument in the field, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. We identify how differences in treatment on grounds of nationality may engage the prohibition on race discrimination both directly (in particular when nationality equates to national origin) or indirectly. Concerning nationality discrimination, the article focuses in particular on the added value of Article 3 of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which obliges states to ‘apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin.’ We examine Article 3 both within the overall scheme of the Refugee Convention and as a source to guide interpretation of international human rights norms.

Guest Editor Introduction: Contesting and Undoing Discriminatory Borders

Humanitarian assistance as performance? Expectations and mismatches between aid agencies and refugee beneficiaries

When relief organisations provide assistance for refugees, aid providers expect particular responses from their beneficiaries that align with the desired outcomes of a given intervention. Yet, in practice, refugees often do not ‘perform’ to the script prepared by the organisations. When refugees’ responses to aid interventions fall outside of expectations, some aid workers struggle to understand the causes of mismatches, leading to the creation of labels such as ‘refugee syndrome’. Drawing upon two case studies in refugee camps in East and West Africa, this article examines the roots of such disjuncture between refugees and relief agencies through a lens of performance. While shedding light on dramaturgical setting in refugee assistance, the article particularly explores the social and political dynamics between different actors in the humanitarian sector and offers a theoretical approach to describe why such gaps emerge and endure in implementation of aid programmes.

Pour une redéfinition de la notion de “retour”: Le cas des diasporas congolaise et rwandaise de Belgique

The issue of the return of African migrants settled in Europe is far from new, with work focusing essentially on the aspirations to return, and the processes of its realisation. As relevant as it may be, this focus is based on a limited approach, due to the privilege given to the spatiality of the phenomenon, which betrays a normative conception inherited from immigration and development policies. Submitting our understanding of return, to a category that is inseparable from the management of migratory flows, does not allow us to adequately consider return as a spatial, but also political, cultural and identity-based displacement, that must be resituated in the long history of this Afro-European space. This change of temporal scale implies a change of epistemological regime that we wish to explore from the point of view of people of Congolese and Rwandan descent who were born, socialised, or both, in Belgium.

The freedom to choose: Theory and quasi-experimental evidence on cash transfer restrictions

Should cash transfer programmes restrict consumer choice? For example, should food assistance delivered in cash be restricted to food and exclude temptation goods? Theoretically, restrictions induce (1) a substitution effect away from restricted goods and (2) a negative wealth effect if transfers are extra-marginal and the resale of goods is costly. The welfare impact on transfer recipients is negative. We test these predictions by exploiting a natural experiment in a refugee settlement in Kenya, where some refugees receive monthly cash transfers restricted to food while others receive unrestricted transfers. In line with theory, we find that restricted transfers increase participation in a shadow resale market and negatively affect non-food expenditure, temptation-goods spending, and subjective well-being. Consistent with theory, restrictions have no significant effect on food consumption. Our results show that policy-makers should avoid restrictions to maximise positive impacts on transfer beneficiaries, especially when extreme poverty implies that transfers are extra-marginal.

Book review: ‘Difficult life in a refugee camp: Gender, violence and coping in Uganda’, by Ulrike Krause, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp.250.

Refugee camps are established sites of protection for people fleeing from violent conflict and persecution. Yet, paradoxically, violence frequently occurs inside these refuges. In Difficult Life in a Refugee Camp, Krause offers compelling and nuanced insights into gender-related violence amongst refugees who escaped conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). The book is based on her extensive research in Kyaka II refugee camp in Uganda in 2014.

Rohingya in South East Asia: Opportunities for engagement

Including Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, this report maps the policy making environment and institutional architecture of Asian civil society organisations (CSOs) and communities engaged in issues of Rohingya statelessness and in supporting Rohingya refugees. The report documents and assesses the interests and capacities of these CSOs, and provides conclusions and recommendations to support development of stronger and more representative ADSP policy engagement and regional advocacy strategy.

Refugees and their return home: Unsettling matters

‘Return in safety and dignity’ is promoted as the optimum durable solution to refugee displacement. This paper explores the concepts of home and territory as dominant variables in refugee return, with their implicit suggestion of people ‘belonging’ to a defined territory and ‘remixed’ in a restoration of the status quo ante.