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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Due to the Syrian civil war, millions of Syrians have fled the country since 2011. Several issues have inhibited their successful resettlement, but few studies have examined the development of the healthcare needs of Syrian forced migrants in Europe. This study examined Syrian forced migrants' healthcare needs in Switzerland, and whether migration type and family functioning affect their mental health. Our sample included 108 individuals from 14 families from the usual asylum process and 19 from the Swiss Resettlement Program (SRP). Each family member was surveyed thrice in 1 year. Several participants reported symptoms of major depressive and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, their general mental health was similar to that of the Western populations. Swiss Resettlement Program participants reported higher overall mental health scores than non-SRP participants, while the two groups showed different progression over time. Children and fathers reported similar levels of mental health, whereas mothers' mental health scores worsened over time. Family functioning was important for mental health in both groups. Overall, considering the structural and family contexts is important when studying forced migrants' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to discussions on the politics of (non-)deportability by focusing on the case of Afghans, the largest migrant community without a right to protection in Turkey, itself the country hosting the most refugees. This article examines how the politics of (non-)deportation is shaped and practiced for Afghans and the types of everyday strategies they employ to deal with deportability. We first argue that the politics of deportation in Turkey is predominantly shaped by the needs of the informal labour market, which accounts for one-third of the total labour force. Our findings suggest that forced labour and the hypermobility of Afghans is both tolerated and hidden by the state, while Afghans' fear of deportability operates as a disciplining apparatus. Second, we argue that, when spectacles of deportation are performed, three crucial factors help Afghans avoid deportation, namely their qawm-based (ethnic or kinship) background, the involvement of Afghan associations, and street-level negotiations with the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These field reflections contribute to the discussion on durable solutions to displacement by providing empirical evidence of how intended spillover effects of carefully designed interventions and hybrid settlements can facilitate local integration and return and reintegration. A comparison between Dadaab and Kismayo reveals humanitarian and development aid's influence and spillover effects on economic, social, cultural, and political life beyond the borders of refugee camps and returnee settlements. We argue for leveraging such spillover—in particular in the form of hybrid settlements—for achieving durable solutions to displacement cost-effectively and inclusively. Our observations show that several local stakeholders have recognized the potential of spillover, too and are actively embracing it to drive local socio-economic development. Lastly, we highlight the need for further research into the factors that enable or prevent spillover effects and hybrid settlements from reaching their full potential: the achievement of durable solutions for displacement-affected communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a proliferation of readmission agreements and voluntary return programmes between the EU, its members and third countries, in which non-state actors play an increasing role. Based on the case of return to Nigeria, this article develops a discursive account of human security conditions in Nigeria to identify the changes and continuities over time in the diverse representations of what constitutes conditions suitable for a safe, dignified return. Our study shows that discourses in favour of return to Nigeria, despite nuances and shifts over time, have remained predominantly and persistently focused on economic, political, individual and community security and entirely overlook the growing challenges of food and environmental (in)security—hence failing to fully consider conditions constituting 'safe return' or nonrefoulement. Our findings challenge what is discursively constructed as 'safe' in return policies and practices and suggest that durable policy solutions require paying attention to multidimensional human security conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referring to the theoretical reflection on securitization in the area of forced migration and applying Barak Kalir's concept of Departheid, we investigate policies and practices deployed by the Polish authorities to deal with humanitarian migrants. In particular between 2015 and 2021, in the Polish context, humanitarian migrants were usually equated with 'bogus' asylum seekers, 'undeserving' of protection or even the right to apply for it. With the increasing presence of Belarusian and, more recently, Ukrainian asylum seekers in Poland, two completely different state attitudes towards asylum seekers reaching Poland's borders became visible. People directly fleeing Belarus and Ukraine were seen as deserving protection and support, and faced no obstacles in entering Poland through its eastern border. At the same time, non-White people forced to leave Asian or African regions in crisis, attempting to cross the border and to enter Poland remained 'unwanted'—to be deterred or deported, and thus illegalized at some stage of their mobility, usually already at the point of entrance. Based on the analysis of empirical data gathered between 2018 and 2021, we look for durable solutions for the latter category of migrants and investigate the reasons for the selectivity observed in the Polish practices towards asylum seekers. We conclude that the governmental approach perpetuated towards keeping humanitarian migrants away from Polish territory, especially in the post-2015 context, builds on xenophobic sentiments, making the concept of Departheid applicable to the realities of forced migration management in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elaborates on the activities developed by various actors from the civil society in favour of non-deported refused asylum seekers (NDRAS) through the lens of 'de-bordering solidarity'. Drawing on qualitative data collected in two small Italian cities ruled by anti-immigrant coalitions, this study explores the rationales and outcomes of migrant supporters' actions in providing help to NDRAS, thus deepening the action of pro-immigrant civil society in small urban centres. The findings show that, while civil society's engagement in the provision of basic needs to vulnerable people is unconditional, legal advice and practical help for access to regular status can be more selective and reflect lack of human and financial resources available, the low probability of a part of NDRAS to achieve legal status, low demand in local labour markets, and social workers' and volunteers' subjectivities. Despite recognizing such limits in solidarity activities, this article shows that civil society in practice challenges deportation policies through practical and daily solidarity that assumes political and cultural meanings. Based on these findings, this article suggests durable solutions for addressing the issues connected with the presence of NDRAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several years, Australia has been regarded by some politicians and observers in Europe as a model for hard-line policies towards refugees. At the same time, Australia's implementation of refugee externalization measures has been subject to considerable scholarly attention and critique. Although the Australian approach has featured prominently in political debates in several European states, this article analyses the implications of a possible adoption of the Australian offshore detention approach for refugee policy-making in the UK, and the consequences this will have for the integrity of the international refugee protection regime. The article considers how states might influence each other's policies—both directly and indirectly—by focusing on a case study of offshore detention and processing with regard to Australia's influence on—and similarity to—the UK, to the extent that we observe policy parallels, as the article brings to light substantial policy convergence of detrimental practice of these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of asylum seekers across Europe have created heightened pressure on governments to employ technologies to assist immigration systems in meeting humanitarian standards of international law. This article analyses the potential of hybrid intelligence (HI)—a machine learning (ML) utility supervised by and supervising human intelligence—for assisting both asylum seekers and immigration officers in performing fair and just assessments, while addressing theoretical underpinnings of what hybridity entails from the perspective of stakeholders and humanitarian systems. While aspects of ML demonstrate promise in reducing bias in immigration decisions, such technology itself suffers from various inherent biases. In addition, technological mediation poses several unforeseen, unintended, and subtle threats to humanitarian missions. By analysing ML algorithms currently employed in refugee status determination pilot programs and immigration control, this article synthesizes universal complications of using assistive technology in Refugee Status Determinations, with special focus on evaluating resultant theoretical refugee identity reconfigurations. Conceptually, this article expands on the theoretical model of what has been termed 'ID entity' by biometrics researchers and ethnographers by analysing potential latent consequences from technological mediation in asylum cases, while addressing use cases such as German and Canadian immigration services' pilot programs, along with automated pilot border screening projects such as Iborderctrl, among others. In addition, several hypothetical scenarios are presented to concretize and further theoretical inquiry of using HI in asylum seeker interviews, with special focus on the requisite criterion of possessing a well-founded fear of persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, political, and media debates, all too often the image of forcibly displaced persons is that of voiceless victims and the structural causes behind their trauma are overlooked. The article works to disrupt this problematic visualization through an original study of walking tours offered by refugees and internally displaced persons in Berlin and Jaffa. It utilizes walking as the method and theme of research, mapping the potential of walking as a collaborative pedagogy and a subaltern design tactic to claim political participation and belonging in the city. Through this, the article offers a new analytical perspective concerning the agency of discalced persons to navigate the politics of their (im)mobility and (in)visibility. The main argument is that these guided tours or 'autotopographies' of forced displacement hold the political capacity to alter the public visibility of displaced people, but also to illuminate aspects that are overlooked or erased within the city's official display of memory. The article therefore advances debates about the politics of urban space and heritage sites and contributes to research which seeks to theorize the multiple geo-temporal colonial entanglement of forced displacement regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding on a new body of literature on cultural self-selection, the present study investigates how refugees who arrived in Germany since 2013 relate to the general population of their countries of origin in terms of liberal democratic values. The cultural self-selection literature suggests that more liberal individuals may be more likely to flee to Germany. To trace cultural self-selection amongst refugees, a series of analyses is conducted: first, refugees of Iraqi, Russian, and Pakistani descent in Germany (IAB-BAMF-SOEP) and the general populations of their origin countries (World Values Survey) are statistically matched on socio-demographic characteristics and their democratic values are compared. After matching the samples, refugees express significantly higher support for liberal democratic values than the general population of their countries of origin. Second, a series of regression models is calculated, tracing three potential mechanisms for the observable differences: (1) acculturation effects in Germany, (2) the experience of being forcibly displaced, and (3) cultural self-selection. The results speak to the theoretical conjectures of the cultural self-selection literature. Liberal democratic values are not correlated with the time spent in Germany (acculturation), flight reasons, and past traumatic experiences (flight experience) but are positively correlated with a critical stance towards the government in the country of origin as well as with positive feelings towards Germany as the receiving society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article ethnographically explores ways that young Palestinian refugees seek to strengthen their claims to residency in Jerusalem. It describes the complex layers of colonial subjugation faced by these young people and the ways they attune their everyday life choices in this context of long-term insecurity. I argue that through situations forced upon them in efforts by the Israeli government to reduce the Palestinian demographic of the city, young people are re-making the categories they live under, away from their bureaucratic and assumed political meaning. This article explores different examples of engagement with Israeli state institutions as tactics undertaken to mitigate the increasing uncertainty surrounding residency revocation and subsequent forcible transfer of Palestinians from Jerusalem. I argue that the reason young people are re-attributing meaning of these categories is to safeguard their futures, in light of the failure of international frameworks to do the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States has always prided itself as providing safe haven to those who are persecuted. Yet, the United States did not develop policy for admitting and resettling refugees until 1980. Unlike Asians and Europeans, African refugees in the 1980s were chosen primarily based on skill, but no research thus far examines whether this strategy led to greater long-term economic success for African refugees. This article examines racial differences in refugees' likelihood of living in poverty, receiving welfare income, engaging in full-time employment and wages between 1990 and 2019. I find that refugees show improvement in all four outcomes. African refugees, however, earn less than nearly all other groups in all time periods suggesting blocked mobility, particularly among men. Analyses focus on the 1982–1987 entry cohort of refugees who had access to more assistance than future cohorts. Consequently, these findings likely show the best-case scenario for refugees' long-term economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much prior research has focused on understanding how host nationals' negative opinions of the impact of migration and arriving communities affect their attitudes towards newcomers. Yet, the role of host nationals' positive opinions has remained largely underinvestigated. The present study aims to move beyond the negative intergroup paradigm and contribute to the literature by examining whether positive opinions of refugees' impact on the host society are related to host nationals' positive behavioural intentions towards them. Specifically, the study investigated (1) the mediating role of social proximity in the relationship between positive opinions of refugees' impact and readiness to assist them and (2) symbolic and realistic threats as potential moderators that might influence this direct/indirect relationship. The results provide initial evidence of the important role of positive opinions of refugees' impact on the host community in promoting positive behavioural intentions towards newcomers via indirect association with closer social proximity. Moreover, our findings suggest that this relationship might be particularly beneficial for host nationals who perceive immigrants as imposing a realistic threat to their lives and to society as a whole—individuals who tend to be amongst the most prejudice-prone and resistant to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative media representations such as framing refugees as criminals may increase concerns among the general audience about the arrival of asylum seekers. At the same time, these media representations may also create anxiety among the refugees themselves and negatively impact on their sense of belonging. In this article, we explicitly focus on media representations of arrival infrastructures for refugees and how these representations shape their climate of arrival. We zoom in on the regulatory-administrative dimension consisting of all formal structures involved in the arrival of refugees, the everyday practical dimension that refers to infrastructuring practices outside the regulatory-administrative framework related to refugees, as well as the normative-discursive dimension that consists of ideas and debates around arrival and arrival infrastructures. By taking arrival infrastructures as our centre of attention, we move beyond a refugee-centred approach. This allows us to uncover the different layers of the climate of arrival brought to light by national and local media representations as well as to nuance the rather uniform and dominant image of refugees in the media. Our findings show the responsibility of media to represent a more diverse image of refugees as well as the need for migration and media scholars to move beyond a sole focus on how refugees are represented in the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of entrepreneurship for migrants' integration. Nonetheless, the impact of entrepreneurship on refugees' inclusion and sense of belonging has been largely overlooked. This article explores how entrepreneurship contributes to the inclusion of Iranian refugee entrepreneurs, considering the different aspects of a refugee's identity components such as ethnicity, age, class, gender, and religion. The life stories of 14 Iranian refugee entrepreneurs, who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s are analysed. We illustrate how different dimensions of their identity shape entrepreneurial motivations, resources, and entrepreneurial strategies. The results show that intersecting identity components impact Iranian refugee entrepreneurs' sense of belonging. Notwithstanding the diverse ways in which individuals experience belonging, our study identifies three particular modes of belonging: hybrid, cosmopolitan, and transnational belonging. Drawing on interviews with individual refugee entrepreneurs, we conclude that entrepreneurship is a vehicle for greater acceptance and inclusion within the host society. Our study points to an urgent need to go beyond the integration paradigm by applying the concept of inclusion. The notion of inclusion enables us to gain a deeper understanding of refugees' position in the labour market and the receiving society more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking its point of departure in two historically separate legal cases involving the right to care for kin this article compares the perception and treatment of two groups subjected to forced migration—enslaved Africans and their descendants in the former Danish West Indian colonial society and African refugees in present-day Danish welfare society. Drawing on Balibar's notion of 'internal borders' it demonstrates the key role of 'the Other' in the management of displaced people in contexts of structural inequality and their contradictory position of being legally embedded but socially detached in the society in which they are placed. This comparative historical lens illuminates how, across time and place, family and kin ties can figure as sites of contention between universal, ideal, morally accepted human rights and the actual rights bestowed by local authorities, whether in colonial plantation societies based on enslavement or in modern welfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of trusting relationships with coethnics is identified as a step towards refugee integration. However, coethnic trust has been considered primordial, and empirical explorations on restoring refugees' capacities to trust their coethnics have remained limited. This study addresses the gap by considering in-group trust decisions as a situational product shaped by contextual conditions using social network data on North Korean refugees settled in London. The network analyses test the effects of contextual arrangements, while accounting for network-level covariates affecting trust decisions. Findings demonstrate that social conditions within the host country support the emergence of trust ties despite the unfavourable pre-migration experiences of refugees. More specifically, a sense of belonging in the host society and placing trust in host government are associated with trusting impulse towards coethnics. The implications from the findings suggest that features of the post-migration environment signal trustworthiness of interactional partners, including coethnics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the creation of the National Screening Mechanism (NSM) to classify forcibly displaced persons in Thailand, a non-signatory state to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. It argues that the drafting of the NSM as Thailand's first refugee law resulted from policy entrepreneurship by officials in the Department of International Organizations (DIO), who promoted innovations in urban refugee management. The global refugee events of 2016 provided windows of opportunity for DIO officials to structure the need for creating the NSM and convince ruling generals to commit to new policy directions. However, bureaucrats in other agencies, who endorsed the status quo, leveraged their power to amend the initial conceptualization of the NSM and made it less progressive. Policy entrepreneurship offers another perspective for exploring changes in non-signatory states' refugee policies that can also be applied more broadly to the context of signatory countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carceral institutions are not only places of oppression and domination but also sites of negotiation, compromise, and resistance. Everyday practices like eating are part of this picture. Institutional power extends to and manifests in the food that prisoners eat. Equally, meals can be a locus of everyday resistance, where prisoners assert autonomy and symbolically circumvent the institution's control over their bodies. Drawing on more than 70 interviews with visitors to Australian immigration detention facilities, this article adds to this discussion of prison fare by exploring how visitor–detainee commensality shapes institutional dynamics of power and resistance. It shows that visitor–detainee meals have the potential to disrupt the carceral machine by affording detainees access to psychological nourishment and escape. Equally, it argues that the realization of this potential depends on detainees and their visitors building relationships that challenge, rather than reproduce, orthodox hierarchies between 'hosts' and 'guests', caregivers and care receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy literature on the incentives of international actors during humanitarian crises has cast international aid coordination inefficiencies during humanitarian crises as a product of vertical principal–agent problems with informational asymmetries, divergent interests, and inter-agent competition. However, horizontal coordination between international actors represents an important and understudied dimension of the political economy of international aid during refugee responses. Horizontal coordination structures, while offering a potential solution to the principal–agent problem of humanitarian responses, can either result in coordination in practice or coordination in performance. I argue that the incentives of coordinating actors, the level of donor monitoring, and the risk of elimination of some organizations or material opportunities as a result of effective coordination all factor into international organization and international non-governmental organization coordination behaviour. I examine the relationships between stakeholders during the Syrian refugee response in Jordan and the differential take-up of coordination technologies to test my theory with policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 3 Hyndman J. (2000) Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism. The book shows how fleeting the interest of the outside world is to the lives of refugees in Dadaab, how distant and inapproachable outside help can seem, and how alone refugees can feel. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 4 Krause U. (2022) ' The Powerful (Vagueness of) Numbers?. [Extracted from the article]

Canada has received worldwide recognition for its implementation of the Canada Chairperson's Guideline 3: Child Refugee Claimants. This informal immigration rights policy, statutorily authorized by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act , instructs immigration officials to provide special considerations to accompanied and unaccompanied child migrants. Our analysis examines the language of Guideline 3 to understand how the social construction of age influences the provision of protections. Our findings demonstrate that, although chronological age is prominently featured throughout Guideline 3 , other factors known to impact the social construction of age, such as gender and cultural background, are only superficially discussed. The homogenized discourse of children within Guideline 3 illustrates the protection of an idealized conception of childhood, which does not accurately reflect the heterogeneity of migrant and asylum-seeking children. The implications of such an idealized notion of childhood in informal immigration rights policies delineates children worthy of protections, and children who are excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the shame that forced migrants bear because of experiences of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Using data from the UK, Turkey, Sweden, and Australia, we focus on shame experienced by women and LGBTQIA+ forced migrants throughout their journey, across borders and cultures. We propose three key ways to understand the complexities of shame from an experiential, temporal, and spatial perspective. First, we discuss how shame, often relating to family honour and stemming from survivors' experiences in their home country, travels with them over time and space. We then move on to illustrate how prolonged and/or delayed feelings of shame impact on survivors' self-confidence, self-worth, and trust in people and institutions. Finally, we consider the specific challenges LGBTQIA+ individuals face and how shame affected their settlement prospects. We argue that the SGBV experiences of forced migrants and the associated shame transcend time and space, forming landscapes of transnational and diachronic shame. Our analysis underlines the need for gender and sexuality-sensitive services for forced migrants in countries of refuge, which take into account potential ongoing effects of experiences of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ageing as a refugee in an unsettled life situation increases the need for identity management due to dramatic life changes. This qualitative study, influenced by phenomenology, focuses on the stories of older adults in protracted intra-African refugee situations and the continuity and discontinuity of their identities. In line with identity process theory, we portray identities as situationally accomplished through the interplay of how one defines oneself internally and how others define one from the outside. The data, analysed by using abductive thematic analysis, consist of five semi-structured interviews with refugees in protracted refugee situations in Nairobi. We argue that older age combined with protracted migratory experiences resulted in the study participants possessing a wide array of experiences, including many losses. These, including their pre-migratory experiences, formed a large repertoire of intra-psychic, interpersonal and intergroup coping strategies to rely on when reworking their identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]