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In 1974, the Cyprus War turned the seaside resort of Varosha into a derelict and decaying town, captured by the Turkish army and held for subsequent decades as a political bargaining chip in the peace negotiations of the unresolved reconflict. In 2020, the city partially opened to public visits, allowing its former residents to tour a landscape of ruination. This paper explores the contested narratives of the city's future revival that have emerged in the wake of this opening. In particular, the paper describes forcibly displaced Varoshians' narratives as discursive practices that reclaim the lost 'homeplace' and insist on the right to return. These narratives, the paper shows, become a mnemonic means of communicative meaning-making, with four main themes: loss, threshold, transformation , and the future. The paper uses these themes to show how such narratives may enable refugees to maintain hope even in the ruins of hoped-for futures. The thematic analysis also shows how place attachment narratives transmitting memories of home may transform with a vibrant present-ness related to people's imaginations of a future Varosha. Speaking to the possibilities of return, this study calls for further explorations towards the narrative of restitution beyond legal property and political territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The guardianship of unaccompanied asylum-seeker children is a contentious aspect of Australian asylum-seeker law and policy. The current legislative framework for guardianship is curtailed by migration legislation and policy and is ineffective for realizing the rights of these children under international law. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on guardianship by critically examining political discourse on child asylum seekers. It combines the discourse-historical approach with doctrinal analysis to uncover the historical and political context and outcomes of the legislation. Critical discourse analysis examines statements made by politicians from both major Australian political parties and the parliamentary report rejecting the most recent attempt at reform. This paper reveals that, to reject reform and justify maintaining the status quo, the government has rationalized the detention of child asylum-seekers as essential to the success of deterrence measures, and moralized these measures by framing them as necessary to protect the lives of those attempting to reach Australia by boat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees spend an average of 17 years living in limbo. This time is usually seen by refugees and scholars as 'lost' or 'wasted' time. Pierre Bourdieu theorized time as critical in accumulating social and cultural capital; foundations of socio-economic status. Families with greater economic capital can provide their offspring with more 'time free from economic necessity', enabling activities that will enhance their status. Time and economic capital are often de-linked by refugee journeys, stripping refugees of economic capital, but leaving an over-abundance of time. This paper uses Bourdieu's work on time and capital to examine how refugees in one community use time during multi-year transit. Based on fieldwork with a single community, this paper argues that, rather than 'wasting' time, members of this community are using refugee time to accumulate social and cultural capital, which some then convert to migration capital and hasten their refugee journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent migration waves from countries ruled by leaders with autocratic tendencies or under war regimes included also the forced migration of academics who have become targets of widening severe attacks against academic-scientific values, institutions, and students/scholars (GCP EA). Based on empirical research, this paper studies the forced migration of scholars from such countries to Germany after 2015. While putting theoretical concepts deriving from distinct study fields (such as forced migration and exile studies) into a dialog, the paper perceives the migration of these scholars as forced due to risks they encountered in their home countries. It also addresses the complexity of their forced migration as a multidimensional and relational process involving various structural and subjective push-pull drives. In line with the empirical data and post-structuralist theories on migration and forced migration, the paper pursues the following theses: Risks and responses against risks are varied and involve the agency of migrants. Although forced migration is a regulated process concerning migration regimes and laws, it calls for the performance/agency of exiled scholars and other actors' governing activities. As a complex and transformative process, forced migration results in different exilic positions. It is not a predetermined linear process in time and space, but a process with unexpected outcomes, since it entails the ongoing struggle of exiled scholars over/through their academic and social networks and capitals, which function as mediating-pulling drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the idea of refugee 'journeys to health' (Newbold and McKeary, 2018) as a point of departure this paper examines the case of Chilean exiles in the UK. Reflecting on interviews conducted with Chilean exiles the analysis highlights how the health-related challenges that many people have experienced change over time. For some the passing of time has enabled people to make sense of what happened to them following the military coup in Chile in 1979 and this has helped them to 'move on'. For others, on-going challenges remain, for example a number of people still experienced PTSD. The paper also reflects on the difficulties encountered by refugees when dealing with formal health providers. While all of the respondents had full entitlements to NHS services the paper reflects on the informal barriers that continue to shape refugees' engagement with health care providers and limit their ability to address health concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assisted return (AR) is a widespread policy tool offering financial support and counselling to returning migrants. Policymakers present it as a durable solution vis-à-vis undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers. However, AR has been proven to display the concurrence of care and control typical of contested humanitarianism. This concurrence takes different shapes across nation states. Our paper looks at how Sweden, Finland, the UK, Italy, Spain, and Portugal concretely configure care and control in their AR programmes, by focusing particularly on accessibility criteria, the landscape of the actors implementing the measure and their main implementation strategies. We finally find that the care and control balance of a particular layer within the AR national system can hardly be appreciated without considering the (lack of) life opportunities available to the potential beneficiaries of the measure, both within the confines and outside of it. Therefore, our comparative research ultimately conveys that what we call the intrinsic humanitarianism of AR—or its internal care-control balance—can give insight into the durability of the measure only when associated with what we term the extrinsic humanitarianism of AR—namely its broader relationship with forced return. In order words, AR ultimately appears migration control in disguise if it is not coupled with the enlargement of dignified life chances for migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries with limited resources available for aid distribution, community-based organizations have been pivotal in providing emergency relief to marginalized groups during the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent lockdown(s). Using the theory of power–dependence relations and resource dependency theory, this paper explores the realities of refugee-led community-based organizations (RLOs) in Malaysia and their relationships with internal and external agents. Utilizing qualitative data from 38 leaders and followers, we conducted a thematic analysis to understand the experiences of RLOs since March 2020, finding that during the pandemic: (1) a significant burden fell on a few leaders to distribute aid from external parties; (2) leaders and followers experienced the pandemic very differently; and (3) leaders became disseminators of public health information. Given the power structures, dependencies and findings identified in this paper, we propose a more cohesive aid distribution strategy for different actors to engage with RLOs, allowing them to maximize the reach of disbursed funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of forced repatriation, this study investigates the conditions under which Syrian refugees face the spectacle of detention and deportation in Türkiye. As the largest group of Temporary Protection holders within a single country (currently 3.7 million), this case provides a unique lens to examine how asylum policies' increased emphasis on the temporariness of protection and the eventual return leads to the production of illegality , and consequently of the deportable refugee. Based on qualitative data collected between September and December 2019 in Istanbul, Türkiye, this paper argues that the escalating fear of deportability is built on three pillars: (1) exploitation in the informal labour market, (2) quotidian police surveillance and factory raids, and (3) discrimination in public life. The study contributes to the discussion of temporality and deportability in refugee studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the alignment of refugee aid interventions with Cameroon's national policy of emergence, shedding light on an authoritarian government's utilization of international assistance. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it investigates how international policies aiming at turning refugees into a development opportunity for their host states are managed by an aid-receiving country and strategically leveraged by Cameroonian authorities to strengthen their political apparatus. It explores how the government integrates humanitarian responses with large-scale development policies, while retaining control over strategic sectors. Implementing the emergence policy enables Cameroon to reappropriate international standards, navigating complex donor relations to establish new legitimacy. The analysis highlights the power dynamics and implications of aid interventions within an authoritarian context, demonstrating the state's capacity to transform internal crises into productive forces. This research contributes to a better understanding of the links between refugee aid, host states' domestic and international politics, and migration diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the tactical changes made by the asylum seeker community in Hong Kong in negotiating local refugee assistance policies and practices. The analysis presented in this paper is grounded in my ethnographic fieldwork with an asylum seeker-led organization and supplemented by archival study and informal interviews. In recent years, the asylum seeker community has adopted a pragmatic approach to advocacy, increasingly asking the local community for support in providing humanitarian aid rather than calling for changes to the assistance system, a tactic that this group used in the past. I argue that these tactical changes cannot be separated from the social and political contexts of Hong Kong. The presence of stimulating events, particularly those involving local and global refugee and migrant communities, the space available for voicing dissent, and the level of institutional responsiveness, all affect how the asylum seeker community in Hong Kong participates in policy discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the refugee phenomenon is not new and refugee camps are rarely temporary, in most cases, the procedures implemented within refugee camps have failed to apply principles of sustainability to ensure refugees' dignity and improve their quality of life, thereby helping them become independent and self-reliant. This improvement, in turn, may help them return to their homes in the future or may, at least, reduce the high cost and negative coping strategies associated with refugee camps and instead increase refugees' social integration within the host community. This paper discusses the procedures applied in both the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya and provides evidence regarding the extent to which they meet the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development without leaving refugees behind. Furthermore, this paper shows how sustainable development goals (SDGs) are interconnected in a refugee camp setting. This study concludes that refugee camps not only failed to align with 2030 agenda but failed to ensure refugees' basic rights where a more inclusive and sustainable approach is required to improve the refugees' quality of life and to help them live in dignity and reach self-reliance that can benefit both refugees and their host communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to intensive conflict, a significant amount of Syrian capital flight has funnelled to Turkey since 2011. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in five major Turkish cities which have hosted the highest number of Syrian business people, this paper first reveals the convergence of the interests of the host state and of the displaced capital owners, as well as the increasing transnationalization of Syrian economic practices. It then assesses the capacity and/or willingness of the Syrian business people to organize themselves as an interest group regarding their interests in Turkey and to assist the process of conflict resolution in Syria. Finally, the paper reflects upon whether a hybrid identity is in the making within the Syrian business diaspora in Turkey. Our findings suggest that the Syrian business diaspora in Turkey is evolving itself into a transnational business community, and developing hybrid socio-economic practices. Yet, we delineate this flourishing community as 'shy' because the issues concerning both domestic and Syrian politics are carefully being avoided to keep stability and unity within. This consequently hinders the Syrian business community to form itself as an interest group in Turkey focused on conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction in Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the 'ideal' refugee is conceptualized in discussions about Australia's humanitarian policies. Critical Discourse Analysis of semi-structured interviews with 24 Western Australians revealed strong themes of assimilation alongside the neoliberal concept of 'market citizenship', where the 'ideal' refugee is positioned as achieving economic success through contributions to Australia's labour market. These discourses served competing ends—they were voiced both in support of, and opposition to, Australia's acceptance of refugees. I argue that by constructing refugees' deservingness of protection along market citizenship lines, their belonging becomes contingent upon their adherence to a narrowly defined ideal. Consequently, refugees who do not fit within this ideal face continued exclusion, with their 'human capital' prioritized over their safety and human rights. This article calls for a reconsideration of arguments that focus on refugees' capacity to 'fit in' and 'give back' as these narratives may exacerbate their experiences of exclusion and stigmatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting a survey with refugee populations involves particular challenges. Among these challenges, sampling, implementation and survey translation are crucial. This becomes even more obvious when trying to access hard-to-survey subgroups of a larger refugee population. This paper demonstrates possible ways of addressing sampling, implementation and translation problems and some of the associated pitfalls based on the example of a quantitative survey intended for refugee parents in the state of Lower Saxony/Germany. First, we argue that based on the need to collect representative data, adjusting the target population may be one way to respond to the lack of a sampling frame for the original target population. Second, we reason that under unforeseen circumstances, such as an ongoing pandemic, ad-hoc changes may be needed in implementation strategies, and we shed light on some disadvantages of self-administered web-based surveys in refugee studies. Third, we claim that surveys involving linguistically and culturally diverse refugee populations benefit to large extent from using a modified variant of the team translation approach (TRAPD). In our conclusion, we critically reflect on adaptable strategies for ensuring well-defined samples, a reasoned implementation and translation practice that meet the challenges of representing a distinct refugee population's diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the unique health and behavioral health needs of refugees is critical to developing culturally sensitive interventions and services for this vulnerable population. This paper highlights the process of recruiting participants for a study exploring these needs for resettled refugee women from their own perspectives and the perspectives of resettlement service providers. We recruited 14 resettled refugee women and seven service providers to participate in a semi-structured interview, which included open-ended questions and culturally-relevant vignettes designed to stimulate discussion about health and behavioral health issues. Participating women were receptive to the vignettes and were highly engaged in the study. With respect to methods, we found that it is feasible and practical to collect qualitative data using vignettes coupled with semi-structured interview questions. With respect to recruiting strategies, participants were more responsive to personal connections rather than to advertisements for recruitment. This paper reports the methodology; study results are reported separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing need for representative data on refugee health, refugees are underrepresented in health research in Germany and other European countries. Researchers often describe refugees as a hard-to-survey (or hard-to-reach) population. Labelling refugee populations with this phrase reflects the perspective of mainly local European researchers on a population they do not belong to. Moreover, refugees may not describe themselves with this phrase. Drawing upon my fieldwork experience as a member of the Syrian community in Germany who has conducted research with Syrian refugees, this practice paper challenges a common narrative among researchers in Europe in regard to refugee populations. I strongly recommend that researchers who are interested in conducting research with refugee populations involve them in all research design and implementation stages. I further call upon researchers to refrain from using the label 'hard-to-survey' to describe refugee populations before ensuring that they have done enough to engage with and involve their target population in their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within humanitarian systems and refugee spaces, energy technologies are often invisible and unrecognized. Beyond basic UN and emergency interventions to supply solar lanterns, lie vibrant systems of connection underpinning refugee electricity and cooking access: a world of energy needs and provision exist within refugee camps in East Africa. The article frames energy within forced migration debates on technology: contributing to the social anthropology and migration studies literature by exploring the material culture of energy in humanitarian contexts. The article argues that some forms of energy are highly visible—for example, solar lanterns and cookstoves—while others remain invisible. Certain objects are in danger of becoming fetishized by the humanitarian system while others are neglected and ignored. Analysis for this article reveals the invisibility of energy as a marginalized topic, highlights the methodological challenges of revealing the energy needs of displaced people, and explores institutional ignorance on the importance of energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced migration scholars have increasingly documented the agency of displaced persons. However, this scholarship has attended primarily to the positive or constructive dimensions of agency, documenting migrants' capacities for resilience, resistance, and problem-solving. In this paper, I argue that forced migration scholarship should extend to recognize the darker dimensions of agency, such as complicity in acts of violence. Drawing on emerging work on 'complex victimhood' in conflict studies scholarship, which grapples with the difficult simultaneity of victimhood and complicity, I begin to articulate a figure of the 'complex migrant'. As a case study, I draw on fieldwork with Bosnian Serb women who were part of the 1996 displacement of Serbs from Sarajevo, when the divided city was re-unified following nearly four years of siege by Bosnian Serb forces. Against the figure of the ideal refugee/victim, I outline the numerous deviations that made Serbs illegible as refugees. I also demonstrate how my interlocutors asserted the qualities of the ideal victim in their narratives to make their losses legible. I argue that a complex victimhood framework is useful for analysing other understudied retributive displacements. I also suggest that it can work to gradually disempower discourses that blame migrants when they fail to live up to the ideal of the good victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms striving to bridge the humanitarian–development divide in refugee-hosting countries can alter the status quo related to refugee management and service provision. Such changes can result in obstacles to sustainable refugee inclusion when they challenge vested interests. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework outlining the conditions under which government bureaucracies are likely to cooperate in donor-initiated refugee integration reforms as well as when and how they resist with a focus on the role of governance structures. We draw on archival data, observation, and key informant interviews to apply our framework to the case of Ethiopia as the government and international partners engage in reform efforts to include refugees in the national education system and to move from a humanitarian- to development-oriented model of financing. In this case, we find that reforms backed by international donors fundamentally challenged the vested interests of existing bureaucracies and that the resulting resistance substantially narrowed the original policy goals and will likely have implications for bridging the humanitarian–development divide going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The refugee crisis of 2015 became a major issue of both national and pan-European debate. Behavioral reactions among natives in the form of support for radical-right parties or leaving neighborhoods following influxes of non-Westerners are well documented, but a detailed account of how asylum seekers contribute to these dynamics remains elusive. In this paper, I study how asylum centers and refugees choosing their own residences prompt each of these two behavioral outcomes using register data for the whole of Sweden (2013–2018). The analyses show a divergence depending on the particular type of refugee exposure experienced and the specific behavior under analysis. Only increased radical-right support is observed following the establishment of a new asylum center, whereas greater native out-mobility is found following refugees self-selecting into native-based areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address gender differences in the host language proficiency of humanitarian migrants. Prior research has produced inconclusive results with regard to women's host language proficiency relative to that of men: sometimes women's proficiency exceeds that of men, sometimes women lag behind men, and sometimes there are no substantial differences. Using data on recent humanitarian migrants in Germany, we investigate factors contributing to similarities and differences in men's and women's language proficiency. We consider gender differences with respect to the family-related factors: marital status, children's ages and children's childcare situations are important for women but not for men. These findings point to the continued relevance of a gendered division of work. It also becomes clear that gendered role expectations are particularly consequential for mothers and wives. Moreover, we find evidence that women are more efficient learners than men are, while they have fewer learning opportunities than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper, building on qualitative research for refugees' return migration, endeavours to provide an empirical evaluation of return migration. More specifically, this study focuses on the effect of political and economic stimuli on refugees' choice to return. We conducted a quantitative analysis using a negative binomial model with fixed effects on a longitudinal dataset for more than 150 countries for the period 1991–2018. Our results reveal that the strongest predictors of return migration are political factors. Notably, a reduction in human rights violations, the elimination of genocides/politicides, the termination of wars and peace agreements are the most influential variables. Economic incentives are relatively weak, indicating that economic motives are not the principal factor for refugee returnees' decision-making. The most robust economic covariate, educational access, is a conglomerate of economic and social factors; consequently, it is more influential within its group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border crossing migration always includes (re-)negotiation of world views, home and the meaning of arrival. This negotiation of arrival takes place within the broader societal contexts of the countries of origin and of arrival but is also a mediation with oneself and with social networks. This holds true especially for refugees and émigrés who have to leave their habitual places of living involuntarily. This paper examines the lives of Yazidi women, who survived captivity and sexual enslavement by the self-declared Islamic State and subsequently decided to resettle from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to Germany. First, the study addresses the complex processes of managing and re-establishing social belongings with a sociological concept of arrival and outlines some lessons from historical forced migration research. It then presents the findings and analysis of five face-to-face narrative interviews with Yazidi survivors. What similarities and differences exist between these individuals and historical cases of forced migrants and their arrival? Are there different patterns of coping with their individual and collective experiences and of developing new life projects? Our findings show how Yazidi émigrés continue to experience and negotiate the complexities of migration between weak and strong belonging to social spaces of origin and of arrival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing numbers of refugee students being integrated into the national school system of host countries globally, the necessity of inclusive school environments for these students is growing. Yet schools may not be well prepared and supported to meet the unique needs of refugee students, who may struggle to adjust to their new reality. In this paper, we present the results of a mixed methods case study that explored aspects of the social participation experiences of three Syrian refugee siblings in a public elementary school in Cyprus, as a telling case for the struggles of refugee children to socially participate with their peers in asylum-country public schools. Social network and interview data were collected to examine how effectively the three refugee siblings participate in school life and the factors that may hinder their social participation. The findings are fairly worrisome, as the three refugee siblings were found to maintain a lower social participation status than their non-refugee peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crisis-induced refugee migration raises questions of fair responsibility-sharing among political territories. This is relevant for nation states and for subnational territories alike. Theories addressing this problem have mainly been developed with regard to international responsibility-sharing. They assume collective action problems when it comes to organising intergovernmental transfer schemes, something which cannot be easily overcome. It is not well understood how effective transfer schemes can be institutionalised when no hierarchical decision-making is in place. Complementary to that perspective, this paper builds upon constructivist institutional theories that suggest paying more attention to guiding ideas, which can be called upon when intergovernmental transfer schemes are at stake, and to criteria of rationality that can legitimately claim to embody this idea. Legitimate criteria of rationality are typically the result of "investments in form", i.e. social practices which imbue material objects with certain qualities so that they stand for particular guiding ideas. The article tests this assumption empirically by tracing the institutionalisation process of the Königstein key (Königsteiner Schlüssel) as a dynamic formula for determining state quotas in Germany's refugee federalism. While important precedents of physical intergovernmental responsibility-sharing in refugee matters had already existed in West Germany, their translation to the territorial dispersal of non-German asylum seekers was highly controversial in the 1970s. In this case, resorting to the Königstein key proved to be feasible in part because, by then, the formula had already become a symbol of the idea of federal justice through its use in a variety of different and far less controversial policy fields. However, during the recent wave of refugee immigration it has increasingly become the object of critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been some exploration of labour mobility policies in the context of refugees as a way of local country integration that can help with refugee self-reliance, with some examples from Africa and Latin America. Building on these examples, this paper explores the opportunities the Global Compact for Refugees presents in the countries making up the Gulf Cooperation Council, specifically the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as related to expanding access to third-country solutions, refugee self-reliance, and responsibility-sharing. Many of the countries making up the Gulf Cooperation Council rely in large part on expatriate labour and are indeed made up of majority non-citizens. Many Syrians who have been able to obtain work visas have preferred to go to the UAE rather than seek refuge in other neighbouring countries. Some positive initiatives, such as a 2018 Amnesty Law in the UAE, which created a specific category of residency permits for those from countries suffering war and natural disasters, have ensured that de facto refugees are protected against refoulement in the event that they lose their residency. However, in order for labour migration in this context to work, there need to be better guarantees and minimum protections, such as schooling for children and healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ways in which restrictive asylum and migration regimes generate conditions that allow multidimensional precarities to flourish and surround lives of asylum seekers and refugees. The study employs the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey for an empirical analysis and draws on qualitative data, including policy analysis and in-depth interviews conducted with 52 Syrian refugees, employers who hire Syrians, humanitarian practitioners, and local authorities in three cities. The findings elucidate that the asylum law that delineates Syrians' socio-legal status in the country also defines their state of existence and precarity in the economic and social milieus. The multidimensional precarities Syrian refugees face start with the migration journey and continually grow during the settlement experiences of registration, finding housing, accessing social services, and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to solving the following research puzzle: When the influx of refugees from Syria and elsewhere to Germany significantly increased, German society and politics seemed to be rather robust in the face of xenophobic and right-wing populist movements; however, only 2years later, the Alternative fűr Deutschland made it into the Bundestag , and in late 2018 Chancellor Angela Merkel could solve a governmental crisis triggered by the 'refugee crisis' only by announcing her stepwise withdrawal from political offices. The making of the 'refugee crisis' was facilitated by a securitization policy. On three crucial cases of domestic politics — security, socio-economics, and socio-cultural politics — it is shown that right-wing populism proved to be capable of dominating the political agenda as it came up with argumentation figures that were — though not hegemonic — also prominent among leading politicians on the whole political spectrum in Germany from the right to the left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines asylum seekers' perceptions of the prohibition to work policy through the lens of burden(s). Drawing from individual interviews with asylum seekers and key informants and group discussions, the findings show the multiple—economic, social, and emotional—burdens that the prohibition to work inflicts on asylum seekers and problematizes the static understanding of burdens to reveal the processes of 'becoming' a burden on others. A comparison of enforced joblessness and undocumented work highlights the benefits of being able to work, even when this is risky, and the different burdens associated with the choice to not work, and consequently experience forced unemployment, or to break the rules and work in the undocumented sector. The concept of the burden paradox highlights the inconsistencies between the UK government's goal to minimize burdens for asylum seekers and the host society and its policy implementation that increases them for both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of refugees is increasing (UNHCR, 2019). The experiences of refugees are linked to impaired mental health yet, this population faces barriers to accessing mental health support (Shannon et al. 2016). Digital mental health interventions are increasingly recognised as an avenue for overcoming these barriers (WHO, 2017). The present paper begins by introducing the area of digital approaches to mental health and developments in this area targeted at refugee populations specifically. We then take a step back to look at the wider picture of refugee mental health and technology. Drawing on Toyama's Law of Amplification (2011; 2015) - that successful technical interventions amplify the intent and the capacity of the people involved - we discuss the importance of context, exploring the assumptions, possibilities and potential pitfalls in the use of digital technologies for addressing refugee mental health. We conclude that by collaborating with refugee populations, placing them at the centre of the design process for digital mental health interventions, we stand the greatest chance of creating the most useful tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cyprus conflict is usually described as one between a majority Greek Cypriot and minority Turkish Cypriot population, with their opposing visions of the island's future. In that conflict, more than 200,000 Cypriots from both these communities were displaced between 1958 and 1974. Lost in this standard narrative, however, are the conflict's other 'Others': the smaller Maronite, Armenian, Latin, and Roma populations, who also experienced displacement in the course of the conflict. This paper concerns the Maronite community's struggle to remain in or return to their historic lands in the island's northwest. We examine the acts of everyday diplomacy that, over the past decade, have resulted in a revival of the largest Maronite village, a removal of restrictions on their rights, and most recently the partial withdrawal of the Turkish military from another Maronite village so that it may be reopened to settlement. We use these as instances of what we term 'vernacular reconciliation', ways of rebuilding coexistence that suspend questions of sovereignty that remain at the heart of the Cyprus impasse. We argue that this pragmatic approach calls on cultural knowledge of past patterns of coexistence through performances that in turn produce deeply felt senses of responsibility and patterns of reciprocity. Such patterns of reciprocity, we show, are reappropriated in the context of ongoing conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the mechanisms in which, through the US family detention asylum process, neoliberal ideas of citizenship are reinforced and contested. Through ethnographic research, and using a Foucauldian lens, we take a closer look at the neoliberal processes involved within so-called family detention. Specifically, we focus on legal advocates who are helping detained women prepare for their legal interviews. This paper argues that humanitarian aid work becomes knowable through attention to microlevel details and forms of practice—on the ground and at the margins. This affords a recognition of not only areas of functional solidarity or symbiosis with the state, but also those less visible forms of contestation. We claim that while legal advocates play a role within the neoliberal regimes at work inside these centres, they also contest this system in various critical ways, ensuring both access to legal representation for all detainees and their eventual release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship has been advocated as a path to self-reliance for refugees, but little scholarship has been produced about refugee entrepreneurs operating in their country of origin during reintegration. In 2003–04, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) implemented a group of 'entrepreneurial ventures' in urban and peri-urban locations in Kambia, Sierra Leone. Fifteen years later, 20 per cent of these ventures were still operating—a figure comparable with the success of start-ups in the United States. This paper examines the reasons for the sustainability of some ventures and the limited lifespan of others, using five interrelated metrics: ownership, management, mission and activities, financing and physical capital. It will be argued that, in the start-up phase, the UNHCR had a positive impact on the formation of entrepreneurial ventures by negotiating rules about property rights and credit, and by adopting a bottom-up approach to promote innovation among returnees. In the transition phase, however, the UNHCR's planned handover to other UN agencies as part of the 4 R's process largely failed because of inadequate attention to transition funding. In the mature phase, refugee enterprises survived if they could secure property rights to their facilities and adapt their management structures, activities and financing, while still preserving their social missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we know whether a refugee household is self-reliant if this is not measured? Although self-reliance has been promoted as a critical assistance strategy for refugees in recent years, there have been limited attempts to rigorously measure the concept. This field report introduces a new measurement tool to assess the movement toward self-reliance among refugee households. The development and utility of a tool to measure self-reliance are described using the pilot studies conducted in Ecuador, Egypt and Lebanon over a 9- to 18-month period. This report utilized unique panel data from 167 refugee households in Egypt and 94 households in Ecuador. The panel data was collected at two points in time (baseline and endline) using paper and pencil or Open Data Kit forms on tablets during face-to-face interviews. This panel group was used to perform the change analysis to examine the movement of households along a self-reliance continuum. Findings show that, overall, 59.8% of households in Ecuador and 64.7% of households in Egypt moved upward in composite score in self-reliance while less than 30% of households regressed in both countries. Further examination is needed to refine and evaluate the tool. The results provide an important starting point and insights into measuring self-reliance using simple indicators and an opportunity to reframe assistance around self-reliance, neither of which had previously been a focus of refugee assistance or relevant literature. It is believed that this methodology will be of use to academics and practitioners seeking to study refugee self-reliance around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a sociology of knowledge perspective to analyse how former Bosnian refugees in Austria have integrated the experiences of ethnicized war and forced migration into their lives over the past three decades. The objective hermeneutical analysis of narrative interviews with Bosnian-Austrians reveals significant differences between former child refugees and those who experienced war and migration as adolescents. From a sociology of knowledge perspective, these differences can be attributed to varying 'stratifications of experience': The central crisis in the adolescents' lives was triggered by experiencing the destruction of their Yugoslavian life-world, which significantly eroded their trust in their social reality's stability and in their belonging. The former child refugees, however, particularly struggle with their double marginalization. While the former typically manage this crisis through an exaggerated adherence to the ideal of personal performance, the latter draw on collective imaginations of ethnic/national affiliation and try to comply with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies of western countries link negative media stereotyping of refugees to support for restrictive policies. However, less is known about Japan, an Asian country that has been widely criticized for its strict refugee policy. Our study addresses this gap by exploring, first, trends in Japanese news media coverage of different refugee populations and second, whether left-leaning news outlets cover refugees differently than right-leaning ones. Using quantitative deductive frame analysis of 3372 Japanese newspaper articles published between 1985 and 2017, we find that despite some consistency in the frequency with which certain frames appear, media coverage reflects contextual differences of specific refugee populations. The results also show that Japanese newspapers generally use sympathetic frames at higher frequencies than negative ones and left-leaning newspapers cover refugees more often and more sympathetically than right-leaning newspapers. Our findings suggest that there may be no direct linkage between negative media coverage and strict policies in host countries with small and less publicly visible refugee populations, such as Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the unintended consequences of the US refugee resettlement program is that it separates extended families through the resettlement process. Although the Trump administration has focused on what types of familial relationships 'count' as family in resettlement and family reunification, extended families have long been a point of contention and difficult to navigate under US resettlement policy. The policy and consequent debates draw upon US-normative assumptions about refugees, family, and what it means to live apart from family. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of a Somali Zigula refugee community in the US and their loved ones in Tanzania and Kenya, this paper examines how refugees negotiate and maintain extended familial relationships after US resettlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of asylum requests in the Netherlands in 2015 was relatively high but comparable to 20 years ago. This article compares the social, political and cultural factors in mental health professionals' ethical dilemmas and reflections in both periods. The data consists of papers from an expert meeting in 1995 on Medical Ethical Standards in Mental Health Care for Refugees, and interviews and focus groups with health professionals on ethical dilemmas in mental health care for asylum seekers in 2015. Using a discursive approach to analyse the data, we found that, in 1995, as well as in 2015, the deliberations of mental health professionals reveal medical, social, cultural and judicial paradigms. In 2015, political factors tend to weigh more heavily than in 1995. We conclude that, in both periods, mental health professionals experience conflicts of values but the context of care for asylum seekers changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global, regional and national refugee law and policy present important sites for contestation, agenda setting, normative pronouncements and symbolic action. But international and even domestic legislation seldom realize the promises of protection. In the kind of weakly legalized environments in which many selfsettled refugees reside, progressive protection regimes may be far removed from the realities of refugees' lives. Drawing primarily on research from South Africa, this paper makes a two-part argument. The first highlights the narrow practical and analytical value of focusing on legal reforms and formal 'refugee' policy as determinants of protection, given that legal status and documentation have only limited practical protection effects. The second argument is that even in analysing refugee policy, we must grant considerable space for bureaucratic autonomy. The paper concludes with a dual call: first, to broaden our focus of refugee law and policy to include a range of other social and political policy fields so that formal commitments to refugee protection can be translated into practical protection; second, it asks analysts to take sub-national bureaucracies far more seriously as sites of policy formation and practice. Such a perspective requires introducing a spatialized, socialized and politicized understanding of institutional incentives and operations. Together these will offer a more realistic understanding of protection possibilities through policy and illuminate the practices associated with state actions relating to the displaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the civil war in Syria, refugees immigrated into Turkey between May 2011 and December 2012. We analyse the impact of this phenomenon on prices by searching for endogenous structural breaks. Our method differs from difference-in-differences models where an a priori explicit break date is imposed. Although immigration could lead to higher demand, thus higher prices, at least initially, in immigration regions, it results in arbitrage between regions, eliminating the initial price impact. Our findings suggest that the impact of Syrian immigration on Turkish prices is moderate and does not display a substantial difference between control and treatment regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is relative invisibility and silence around the presence, management and support of queer people in mainstream refugee organizations in the United Kingdom. Institutional silencing exists, particularly where visibility or acknowledgement has the potential to disrupt existing structures. At the same time, queer refugees face the risk of exclusion, and may also undertake self-censoring. Drawing on empirical data from an innovative, cross-disciplinary, community-based participatory research project between a United Kingdom-based refugee organization and two universities, this article explores the viability, complexities and tensions inherent in making queer identities visible. While highlighting the potential of arts-based methods to explore inclusive approaches to sexuality, we discuss the limits of this work and the resistance it created. This article is co-authored by members of RX—a collective of young people with refugee backgrounds; two community researchers; a humanities researcher; and a peace-studies researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by efforts to recognize the agency of refugees and thus the importance of their participation in research about their lives, refugees are increasingly being engaged to work as collaborators and assistants during research in refugee camps and settlements. Yet whilst academic research attends to the ethics of research with refugees, existing guidance fails to recognize or attempt to mitigate the specific ways in which refugees working as research assistants may be impacted by taking on this role. This is a particularly important issue for consideration in research within camps and settlements, where refugee researchers are embedded within complex relations of power that include communities, governance structures, and humanitarian agencies. Drawing on our experiences of carrying out research in Nakivale settlement in Uganda in 2017, we show some of the challenges that refugee researchers experience and reflect on the practical implications for efforts to undertake more ethical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the mass mobilities of refugees, many from Syria, towards Western Europe, were presented as a crisis threatening the integrity of nation-states. Whilst governments along the so-called 'Balkan route' increasingly responded with exclusionary measures, large-scale solidarity movements emerged and played a key role in assisting refugees in their journeys and settlement. All along the route, activists and volunteers (sometimes in loose collaboration with official relief organizations) established solidarity communities that tasked themselves with assisting people on the move. Their activities have been underpinned by discourses of solidarity and hospitality reflecting deep-seated popular beliefs about displacement, sanctuary and refuge—alternative narratives of what is today called asylum. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with solidarity and refugee groups in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I examine the practices and discourses of refugees and those mobilized to support them along the 'Balkan route'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using narrative methodology this paper analyses the life stories of 25 former refugees from two African countries, resettled in Australia. Study findings demonstrated a salient divergence between the stories of the two communities; within which there were also individual differences in structure and content of participants' narratives. Five narrative types were identified along a continuum from detailed disclosure to near-complete silence about traumatic events and experiences. They were: (1) avoiding narratives; (2) struggling narratives; (3) prompted narratives; (4) narratives exceeding demarcated boundaries of disclosure; and (5) returning narratives. We discuss these differences in narrative structure, narrated experience, identity reconstruction, and meaning-making within the context of the personal, interpersonal, sociocultural and historical influences that have shaped the lives of participants. Findings were supported by interviews with 25 resettlement agency staff. Broader implications of the study's findings for therapists and researchers working with refugees are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the literature review and background paper prepared for the 30th Anniversary Conference of the Refugee Studies Centre titled "Global Refugee Policy," is presented.

As the Thirty Years' War was the greatest demographic crisis in Europe between the Black Death and the two World Wars, it is unsurprising that the conflict created the greatest number of refugees in the continent's history prior to the twentieth century. However, the limited scholarship on displaced persons between 1618 and 1648 has been exclusively based on micro-level eyewitness accounts, diaries, and memoirs. This article broadens the scope of studies on refugees during the Thirty Years' War beyond such individualistic sources through an examination of their treatment in newsprint, a source base which has hitherto been entirely overlooked. A case study based on over 200 newspaper reports allows this article to examine how the frequency of appearances of refugees in newsprint, as well as the language and vocabulary used to describe them, can provide a valuable insight into the experiences of displaced persons and the attitudes of contemporaries in mid-seventeenth century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For both political and ideological reasons, return is the most favoured future imagined for refugees by policy makers and protection actors. This article analyses how humanitarian migrants in a context of limited durable solutions can be supported to reclaim ownership of their futures, as well as how this can result in deeper insights for social scientists and policy makers. For the case of Syrians, this study deploys futures literacy labs as a participatory and capability-based research methodology that allows participants to become researchers of their own lives. Based on two futures literacy labs with two Syrian families in Lebanon in 2020 and 2021, the article demonstrates that a futures capability-based approach provides humanitarian migrants with the cognitive space and agency needed to go beyond foreclosed decision-making processes. The research methodology allows researchers to become witnesses to intimate reappropriation and learning processes by humanitarian migrants themselves. As a result, we are able to argue that 'returns' as a durable solution are essentially about a return to a state of well-being and possibilities, which may or not entail a spatial return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue, we seek explanations for international- and local-level variations in policy approaches to 'irregularized humanitarian migrants', who left their country of citizenship in hopes of finding protection abroad but do not, or no longer, hold a permanent legal status. We shed light on different policy responses and experiences across Europe, Africa, and the wider Middle East by drawing on a wide array of political systems and migration patterns and different groups of humanitarian migrants. We explore to what extent the outcomes of various policies and practices can be regarded as better and more durable solutions, defined as increasingly taking into account the interests of migrants and the communities they live in. Ultimately, we stress the importance of gaining deeper and more comprehensive understandings of the historically informed context-specific circumstances that irregularized humanitarian migrants find themselves in, as well as the patterns that we see emerging in the comparison of these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]