New Articles – Journal of Refugee Studies 01/29/2014

• Human Rights, Migration, and Social Conflict: Toward a Decolonized Global Justice. By Ariadna Estévez.

  “The main argument presented in Ariadna Estévez’s critical analysis of the causal relationship between globalization, migration, and social conflict is as follows: since failure to respect the universal human rights of immigrants generates conflict in receiving and transit nations, recognizing human rights would be in the best interest of sending, receiving and transit countries alike. Estévez’s analysis is based on a comparison of certain elements of North American (the three NAFTA countries of the USA, Canada and Mexico) and European (European Union and individual member states) immigration policy that result from discrimination against immigrants, in particular the securitization of cooperation for development and borders, the use of temporary detention centres, the toughening of asylum policy, the criminalization of migration and the social marginalization of immigrants. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• The Global Economic Crisis and the Future of Migration: Issues and Prospects. What Will Migration Look Like in 2045? By Bimal Ghosh.

  “Bimal Ghosh has worked as a senior director for the United Nations for many years, and was responsible for initiating a novel approach to migration under the label of ‘migration management’. In the early 1990s, his project on a ‘New International Regime for Orderly Movement of People’ (NIROMP) brought together some of today’s key stakeholders in the debate on migration management, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other international institutions, in addition to states interested in identifying new solutions to ‘manage’ migration. The NIROMP project, devised on the basis of Ghosh’s recommendations in 1995 to the Commission on Global Governance, lobbied for a fundamental change in how to govern migration via a new ‘balanced’ and pragmatic approach. ‘Migration management’ also became rooted in the principle of developing a ‘regulated openness’ of states towards migrants and the goal of making migration work for all parties involved—not only for the benefit of the economy in receiving states but also for the development of countries of origin … “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Displaced: the Human Cost of Development and Resettlement. By Olivia Bennett and Christopher McDowell.

  “Displaced is a valuable addition to the body of literature on development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR), especially given the limited number of studies which have been published in this area over the past decade. The book’s main strength lies in its rigorous application of an oral history methodology to the collection and presentation of displaced people’s experiences. This is in part due to one of the author’s (Bennett’s) experience in developing and leading the oral testimony programme at Panos London, an organization dedicated to enabling poor and marginalized people in developing countries to communicate their own development agendas. Consequently, the book’s conceptual and methodological approach is largely shaped by the core commitment of Panos London to giving voices to affected people—a feature uncommon in DIDR discourse. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Fragmented State Power and Forced Migration: A Study on Non-State Actors in Refugee Law. By Eeva Nykänen.

  “Non-state actors such as religious groups, terrorist organizations, militias, or armed insurgent groups have frequently secured positions in which they exercise powers traditionally assigned to states. This situation has not only fragmented the exercise of power, but has also fundamentally impacted on the reasons forcing people to migrate in search of a safe haven. As Kälin speculated over a decade ago, ‘it is highly likely that the majority of today’s refugees are fleeing dangers emanating from non-state agents’ (citation on p. 4). Moreover, a need for protection may also arise from situations involving sexual or domestic violence by private persons, which for some countries used to be considered to fall outside the concept of refugee protection. Nykänen’s book explores the implications of these developments for the law of forced migration. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• History, Memory and Migration: Perceptions of the Past and the Politics of Incorporation. Edited by Irial Glynn and J. Olaf Kleist.

  “Earlier models of assimilation assumed that immigrants endorse a shared collective memory, and yet the emergence of multicultural societies, with a greater acceptance of cultural and ethnic diversity, has led to the constitution of a new model of understanding the ways in which migration memories are incorporated and negotiated throughout different stages of migration. The academic status of ‘memory’ in turn changed, from being perceived to be an inconvenient noise in the production of unitary narratives, to a key aspect of a process that turns diversity into a societal ensemble. Glynn and Kleist’s collection explores this evolution and the frictions it implies in a series of 12 chapters which draw on studies of immigration and asylum from various parts of the world, thus showing that the issue has, indeed, a universal outreach. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction. By Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay.

  “Many publications have dealt with the expulsion of Palestinian refugees from Palestine in 1947–1949, which has been described as a process of ‘ethnic cleansing’ by armed Zionist groups (Pappe 2006). Unfree in Palestine, however, explores a relatively new field in studies of Palestinian experiences: denationalization rather than displacement or dispossession. It also offers particular insights into the ways in which the Israeli state has pursued expansionist policies and has implemented a comprehensive system of population control via registration mechanisms, identity documentation, and restrictions of movement.

  It is an ambitious endeavour as the subject is wide and has never been addressed in one book before. Although scholars such as Cattan, Gilmour, Abu-Lughod, Robinson, Masalha, Morris, Pappe, Korn, and Zureik have indirectly and briefly touched upon the book’s overarching theme, major gaps in knowledge have remained. The authors attempt to fill these gaps by drawing on a wide range of sources including articles, reports by media outlets and human rights organizations and interviews. ”

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution. By Anneke Smit.

  “Anneke Smit has undertaken a difficult task. She has written a book which contests the dominant practice regarding property restitution for the displaced in post-conflict settings, with the goal of moving policy-makers towards a range of responses. In detailing the problems of post-conflict property restitution and suggesting more nuanced options, her book shifts the concept from the desirable, yet unreal, goal of restoring communities to what they were before a conflict, to dealing with the real consequences of violent displacement.

  The book consists of two parts: the first describes current policy measures for post-conflict property restitution and their legal basis, and the second suggests potential alternative options. Smit begins with the three durable solutions for refugees and internally displaced people (RDPs): resettlement, local integration and sustainable return.”

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Refugee Repatriation: Justice, Responsibility and Redress. By Megan Bradley.

  “In this powerfully argued book, Megan Bradley demonstrates the ways in which refugee repatriation raises fundamental issues of justice, responsibility and redress, which have remained underexplored by scholars and policy-makers alike. Combining sophisticated moral, legal and political analysis, Bradley develops a convincing theory of ‘just return’, and applies it to case studies of recent repatriation processes. The result will not only be illuminating for scholars with interests in displacement, repatriation, citizenship, transitional justice and reparations for past injustice; it will also provide a valuable basis on which policies concerning refugee repatriation and redress can be both formulated and reflected upon.

  In her introduction, Bradley sets the stage for her argument and launches an incisive critique of Hannah Arendt’s highly influential view of refugees as stateless, contending that the recent role of repatriating refugees as political actors who forge new relationships with their states of origin renders Arendt’s vision largely anachronistic.”

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Asylum, Identity Management and Biometric Control

  “The article addresses a particular aspect of the relationship between asylum issues and information and communication technologies (ICTs), namely the deployment and ‘function creep’ of biometrics within the field of asylum management. Current debates on this issue have been largely restricted to a technologically determinist approach that reduces the focus to problems of data misuse and privacy, precluding other pertinent ethical and political concerns. In response, the article engages with Giorgio Agamben’s elaborations on the concepts of biopolitics and exception as an alternative way of analysing the use of biometric technology in the governance of forced migrants. It begins with a critical overview of Agamben’s conceptualization of biopolitics and the state of exception. It then considers the Eurodac database and the UK’s asylum Application Registration Cards as examples to demonstrate how current policies of immigration control and border management are implicated in the logic of exception. It argues that illiberal practices, such as biometric profiling and fingerprinting of asylum seekers and their incarceration in detention centres, are being enforced upon certain groups in ways that render their exclusion from the official juridico-political structure as an ‘inclusive exclusion’. Importantly, the function creep of biometrics is not to be understood as the turning of exception into the rule in a somewhat homogenous way, but more as a polysemic process, which involves different forms of discipline and control that are irreducible to one singular paradigm. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Digital Escapes? ICTs, Settlement and Belonging among Karen Youth in Melbourne, Australia

  “What does it mean to become ‘at home’ in a settlement context while at the same time remaining connected to global networks? And what does this tell us about how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are transforming the experiences and opportunities of young people in a settlement context? These are some of the key questions underpinning Home Lands, a digital media project that explored the proposition that, if resettled refugee young people are able to maintain their connections to family and friends around the world, then this might enhance their sense of being at home in Melbourne. Analysing films and photographs produced during the programme by Karen Burmese youth, we describe three articulations of belonging that we have called settlement ‘escapes’. We demonstrate how ICTs can open up new possibilities for becoming at home in a new country and as a citizen of a more global, deterritorialized world. Our research demonstrates that settlement in a networked world is fundamentally tied to the resources and opportunities afforded to youth in making a life in their new country both on-line and off-line. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Precarity, Affect and Problem Solving with Mobile Phones by Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Migrants in Naples, Italy

  “This article examines mobile phone use among migrants in the Naples region to consider how this mediated technology enables them to mitigate or resolve uncertainties of everyday working life in relation with others. In particular, I am interested in precarity, which has been understood as both an analytical concept and an emergent subjective form of identification for citizens in Europe to express anxiety about work conditions and social alienation. Precarity emerges from the reconfigurations of political economies in neoliberal regimes that force flexible and temporary labour contracts, in contrast to the ‘certainties’ of welfare state labour markets and social arrangements. ICTs recently introduced in European states, such as biometric analysis tools and computer software and networks used to harmonize border entry across EU member states, can create an impediment to legal status and increase the surveillance and exclusion of others, but at the same time ICTs are vital to a forced migrant’s sense of security and wellbeing. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Bosnian Austrians: Accidental Migrants in Trans-local and Cyber Spaces

  “This article explores the on-site and online realities of Bosnian immigrants in Austria whose migration, at least initially, started as a forced displacement. It describes how their social networks—performed and sustained both in real and cyber space—are utilized in strengthening social cohesion and trans-local identities in relation to places in Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ultimately, the article attempts to challenge the established methodological and theoretical orthodoxies in migration studies and to deconstruct the myth about refugees as a ‘societal burden’ subject to charity, arguing that any strict division between different migration categories and paradigms will miss addressing the multiplicity of ever-changing relationships, meanings and opportunities especially as they are (re)imagined in the realm of cyberspace. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Remote Telephone Interpretation in Medical Consultations with Refugees: Meta-communications about Care, Survival and Selfhood

  “In Australia, interpreted consultations with refugees are frequently conducted using remote telephone interpretation (RTI). This article explores the meta-communication, or communication about communication (Bateson 1951), which occurs in these consultations. Consultations using RTI are framed by two types of meta-communication: one between patient and doctor about the state’s responsiveness to the refugee, and a second communication between refugee and interpreter about survival of the self through resettlement. The latter is established through the introductory chat of the interpreter, the everyday soundscapes of the interpreters’ lives heard in the background, and the more assertive speaking style used by remote interpreters. Together, they produce a meta-communication about the safe negotiation of identity through resettlement. A range of technological alternatives to RTI exist or are in development. We should be wary that newer technologies which make human-to-human interpreting redundant do not result in a more restricted communication environment for refugees. “

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

• Introduction

  A news story on the front page of the UNHCR website is anchored with a photograph of a young man holding a mobile phone, head turned away from the camera to conceal his identity (UNHCR 2013). The viewer is invited to go behind the photograph and read the story of Ahmed, a Syrian refugee who has fled to Colombia. Ahmed’s story highlights the plight of millions of Syrians who have been forcibly displaced, many of whom have also fled to faraway places like Colombia to seek asylum. Ahmed tells how he keeps in contact with family and friends via the internet but that he worries that contacting his relatives may place them in danger. The photograph and story feature two of the most common and ubiquitous Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) used by forced migrants—the mobile phone and the Internet—and focus attention on the benefits and the risks that these ICTs pose for their users. Indeed, the image and story on the front page of the UNHCR website underscore the ways in which ICTs have woven themselves into the everyday life of refugees. ICTs both provide new opportunities and introduce new risks for those who flee and those who stay behind.

  The articles in this special issue grapple with the complexities of ICTs with respect to the lives of forced migrants. They undertake an examination of a broad range of technologies, including biometrics, mobile phones, social media, websites and remote telephone interpreter services. Similarly, they take a broad approach to defining forced migrants, recognizing that classifications are subject to contestation and debate, and that diverse people situated in a variety of circumstances cannot easily be reduced to simple bureaucratic categories (Van Hear 2012; Zetter 2007).

  tags: newjournalarticles JournalRefugeeStudies

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