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South African Department of Home Affairs (DHA) officials 'seem to get angry with honest people', shared a Congolese immigrant from the Kivu region who now resides in Cape Town. Some DHA officials get money through illicit transactions for 'papers' and they become visibly frustrated with immigrants who try to obtain documents by lawful means. While there has been much focus on xenophobia associated with immigration in South Africa, there has been little attention paid to the illicit market in immigrant papers such as asylum seeker permits (Section 22 permits), refugee status permits (Section 24 permits), and work permits. These immigrant documents assist individuals--namely those who otherwise lack status, or 'papers', or both--to obtain abilities to work, travel safely, register themselves or their children for school, access non-emergency healthcare, and gain banking privileges. In providing an account of the market in immigrant papers, the article focuses on how these documents relate to status and survival. By purchasing papers in Cape Town, immigrants (referring to asylum seekers, refugees, and cross border migrants) aim to secure their legal status and gain productive agency in their lives. This paper is based on an ethnographic research methodology and participant observation, and shows how immigration challenges South Africa's post-apartheid, constitutionally-mandated socio-economic rights and democratic aims and has fostered an illicit market in immigrant documents. This work furthers debates on immigration governance in the global south, corruption in state institutions, and the vulnerability of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/objective Some refugee and migrant populations globally showed lower uptake of COVID-19 vaccines and are also considered to be an under-immunized group for routine vaccinations. These communities may experience a range of barriers to vaccination systems, yet there is a need to better explore drivers of under-immunization and vaccine hesitancy in these mobile groups. Methods We did a global rapid review to explore drivers of under-immunization and vaccine hesitancy to define strategies to strengthen both COVID-19 and routine vaccination uptake, searching MEDLINE, Embase, Global Health PsycINFO and grey literature. Qualitative data were analysed thematically to identify drivers of under-immunization and vaccine hesitancy, and then categorized using the 'Increasing Vaccination Model'. Results Sixty-three papers were included, reporting data on diverse population groups, including refugees, asylum seekers, labour migrants and undocumented migrants in 22 countries. Drivers of under-immunization and vaccine hesitancy pertaining to a wide range of vaccines were covered, including COVID-19 (n  = 27), human papillomavirus (13), measles or Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) (3), influenza (3), tetanus (1) and vaccination in general. We found a range of factors driving under-immunization and hesitancy in refugee and migrant groups, including unique awareness and access factors that need to be better considered in policy and service delivery. Acceptability of vaccination was often deeply rooted in social and historical context and influenced by personal risk perception. Conclusions These findings hold direct relevance to current efforts to ensure high levels of global coverage for a range of vaccines and to ensure that marginalized refugee and migrant populations are included in the national vaccination plans of low-, middle- and high-income countries. We found a stark lack of research from low- and middle-income and humanitarian contexts on vaccination in mobile groups. This needs to be urgently rectified if we are to design and deliver effective programmes that ensure high coverage for COVID-19 and routine vaccinations. [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]

This paper explores the communicative architecture of reception at the peak of Europe's 2015-2016 'migration crisis.' Drawing on fieldwork at one of Europe's outer borders-the Greek island of Chios-the paper examines the border as a site where refugee and migrant reception takes place and where the parameters of Europe's ethico-political response to the 'crisis' are set. The paper demonstrates that the continent's double requirement of security and care produces a new and highly ambivalent moral order, hospitability. Constituted through techno-symbolic networks of mediation, hospitability reaffirms dominant theorizations of the border as an order of power and exclusion but goes beyond these in highlighting micro-connections of solidarity that simultaneously coexist with and attempt to challenge this order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enormous refugee crisis bequeathed by the cumulative events of the "Arab Spring", the ongoing Syrian Civil War and the multiple collapses of civil authority across parts of Africa and the Middle East over the last decade challenges us, as professional historians of Germany and as politically sentient citizens, to respond. This Virtual Special Issue of German History, which focuses on some of the refugee and migration histories of the most recent German past, is animated by the belief that such a sense of powerlessness, while understandable, is misplaced. Above all, by foregrounding papers that focus on the humanity of historical refugees and migrants we are asserting that History, as a discipline, has a valuable role to play in reminding us of the obligations that come with our own. [Extracted from the article]

Much of the existing research literature on the health of immigrant populations does not address the health care experiences of refugees, even though they likely experience unique and different health care needs relative to economic or family class immigrants. The objective of this paper is to explore the systemic barriers to health care access experienced by Canada’s refugee populations. The paper focuses on understanding these challenges as expressed by health and social service providers at the local level in Hamilton, Ontario. Data from interviews illustrate the impact of these systemic barriers for both refugees and providers. The paper examines issues of interpretation/language, cultural competency, health care coverage, isolation, poverty, and transportation in terms of health care and availability of services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper shows how successfully integrated refugees are often made invisible to institutions, academics and within social contexts. It argues that certain elements of social and institutional categorization processes—including partiality, functionality, conflation, immutability, self-confirmation and negotiability—tend to obscure people who are integrated. The paper presents a case study which juxtaposes the ways in which three different kinds of categorization have been applied to people of Mozambican birth who settled in a rural South African border area after fleeing the Mozambican civil war in the 1980s. The three cases of categorization come from the South African government for the purpose of legal regularization; from an academic unit of the University of the Witwatersrand for the purpose of demographic and public health research; and from residents of Bushbuckridge District to describe and manage their relationships with each other. The paper demonstrates how each of these different perspectives obscures the experiences of integrated Mozambican refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon major ongoing work into the experiences of new migrants seeking to construct new lives in the UK (Aldridge and Waddington 2002; Goodson and Phillimore 2005; Goodson et al. 2005; Phillimore et a!. 2003; 2004; Phillimore and Goodson 2002; Robinson et a!. 2003; Zetter et a!. 2003) and focuses upon the experiences of refugees who have arrived in Birmingham since the early 1990s. The paper outlines the indicators of integration proposed by Ager and Strang (2004) for the United Kingdom's Home Office. It then uses data from household surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted in the West Midlands to explore how useful indicators might be in evaluating progress towards integration within new migrant communities. The paper specifically examines the efficacy of functional indicators, which in Ager and Strang's (2004) framework are represented as 'means and markers' and include employment, housing, education and health. It aims to consider the usefulness of these functional indicators as a measure of integration and the ways in which the indicators might be shaped to help policy makers work towards promoting integration in a multi-cultural global city such as Birmingham. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the complex security and economic dynamics that influence the lives and opportunities of self-settled refugees living in Uganda. It focuses on the opportunities and problems faced by self-settled refugees, and questions the assumption that Uganda's current local settlement policy is best suited to the country's social, economic and political realities. It suggests that far from being passive victims, self-settled refugees are taking control of their lives without any additional external assistance and are planning for the day they can return to their homeland. Consequently, the paper argues that there is reason to believe that local integration is likely to succeed where other models have failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the ways in which ‘textbook’ survey research methods need to be adapted and refined for research with forced migrants, and the ways in which cross-national contexts, as well as research within one national context with forced migrants from different communities, affect the utilization of survey methods. Linked to this, the ways in which survey design issues need to be sensitive to the diversity between and within countries and communities will be explored. The paper will draw on two surveys, one a UK national survey and the other a multi-sited comparative survey in the UK and South Africa, to explore access to forced migrants in different contexts and the appropriateness of different modes of data collection between and within countries and communities (e.g. paper self-completion, face-to-face interviews and web-based surveys). The impact of politics, language and literacy, gender, and immigration status, especially irregular and insecure statuses, will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the involvement of refugees in the production and reproduction of knowledge of which they are ultimately meant to be beneficiaries. By using examples from research with Central American refugees and Rwandan displaced children, it considers forced migrants' roles as participants in research, their position in ‘participatory’ research, and the representation of refugees' voices in refugee-centred research. Power is intimately connected to the diverse ways in which participation unfolds, and the last part of the paper examines refugees' participation in research in terms of ‘power that circulates’ (Foucault) to show that they are not more or less powerful but vehicles for the circulation of power, simultaneously undergoing and exercising it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the early history of refugee research and shows how, from originally being prime movers in the research, refugees today have largely been reduced to invisibility. In the South, access to refugees held in camps is controlled by local government bureaucracies and by lead agencies, and may be severely restricted or completely denied; in the North, refugees held in detention centres are equally difficult to access and even more disempowered. Examples are given of studies carried out in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Egypt, Kenya, Greece and the Former Soviet Union. The paper also considers barriers to disseminating refugee research, and concludes that now more than ever the duty of the researcher is to speak on behalf of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the concept of refugee labelling I elaborated nearly two decades ago. In radically different conditions, the contemporary relevance and utility of the concept are re-examined and re-established. Formulated at a time of regionally contained, mass refugee migration in the south during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the paper argues that the concept still offers vital insights into the impacts of institutional and bureaucratic power on the lives of refugees in a globalized era of transnational social transformations, mixed migration flows, and the continuing presence of large scale refugee migration. The core of the paper argues that the `convenient images' of refugees, labelled within a co-opting humanitarian discourse in the past, have been displaced by a fractioning of the label which is driven by the need to manage globalized processes and patterns of migration and forced migration in particular. The paper re-evaluates the concept using the three original axioms—forming, transforming and politicizing the label ‘refugee’. The core argument is that in the contemporary era: a) the formation of the refugee label reflects causes and patterns of forced migration which are much more complex than in the past, contrasting with an essentially homogeneous connotation in the past; b) responding to this complexity, the refugee label is transformed by an institutional ‘fractioning’ in order to manage the new migration; c) governments, rather than NGOs as in the past, are the pre-eminent agency in the contemporary processes of transforming the refugee label, a process driven by northern interests; d) the refugee label has become politicized by the reproduction of institutional fractioning and by embedding the wider political discourse of resistance to migrants and refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the first visit ‘back home’ is important for refugees because it acts as a catalyst for renewed engagements with host country and country of origin. The study shows that conditions in both countries impact on decision-making and ultimately that integration and return can coexist. The first reconnection with ‘home’ is described as a memorable event in and of itself. Marked by an awareness of the passing of time, it provides both an end to waiting and worrying and a measure of one's progress (or lack of) in life, thus enabling participants to move on. Establishment of safety nets in both host and home countries as a condition for permanent return distinguishes the predicament of these refugees from that of other migrants. As the meeting between imagination and reality, the first visit contributes to the re-examination of the refugee cycle, the myth of return and the meaning of home in a context where return encompasses one discrete experience, the visit, and subsequent events. Overall, the paper provides a link between the literature on return as imagined while in exile and accounts of the reality of post-return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ways in which the legal status of Liberian immigrants affects their relationship with the U.S. government. By using observational data obtained from a Liberian immigrant community and literature on immigrant incorporation, claims making, and citizenship, the author urges that being labeled a refugee defines an individual’s views and expectations of their host government. Refugee status also allegedly affects the ways in which an individual interacts with the educational, medical, and social service institutions they encounter. The paper examines how this pertains to the welfare state and U.S. race relations.

In this paper we examine the Australian government's response to West Papuan asylum-seekers during the period 1962–2009. We argue that, throughout this period, the Australian government has attempted to appease the sensitivities of its powerful northern neighbour, Indonesia, as far as it can without outraging a domestic public sympathetic to West Papuans or drawing international condemnation by too obviously breaching international law. For the most part, it has done so by trying to avoid accommodating refugees from Indonesia, liaising closely with the Indonesian government in relation to asylum-seekers, and assuring the Indonesian government of its unequivocal support for Indonesian territorial integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a longitudinal quantitative and qualitative analysis of textual and visual references to age in UNHCR's annual appeals and reports published from 1999 to 2008. In contrast to an assumed over-representation of children in refugee imagery, this study reveals that adults are present in the greatest number of photographs across the time period studied. However, children, particularly girls, are mentioned much more frequently than adults in the texts, primarily in reference to ‘vulnerability’ and protection, education and health. Indeed, efforts towards gender- and age-sensitivity have instead reinforced a discourse that presents ‘women, children and the elderly’ as problematic ‘vulnerable’ groups and overlooks the complex power relations of gender and social age. The article concludes with some recommendations for re-presenting refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Integration has become both a key policy objective related to the resettlement of refugees and other migrants, and a matter of significant public discussion. Coherent policy development and productive public debate are, however, both threatened by the fact that the concept of integration is used with widely differing meanings. Based on review of attempted definitions of the term, related literature and primary fieldwork in settings of refugee settlement in the UK, the paper identifies elements central to perceptions of what constitutes 'successful' integration. Key domains of integration are proposed related to four overall themes: achievement and access across the sectors of employment, housing, education and health; assumptions and practice regarding citizenship and rights; processes of social connection within and between groups within the community; and structural barriers to such connection related to language, culture and the local environment. A framework linking these domains is presented as a tool to foster debate and definition regarding normative conceptions of integration in resettlement settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The category of refugee has been problematic for both practitioners and social scientists because it is difficult to define an objective category that satisfactorily brings the real world, ethics, and theory into harmony. In recent years many critiques have been made of the assumptions built into the legal refugee framework and efforts have been made to refine the concept from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This paper examines several underlying assumptions of these discussions, including the category of forced migration, through a discussion of the example of Salvadorans in the United States in the 1980s. One assumption has been noted but insufficiently theorized: the centrality of the individual. The person assumed by both the refugee and human rights regimes of the United Nations is a culturally-specific construct defining the relationship between the individual and society in a way that precludes an adequate understanding of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the development of mutually beneficial relationships between refugees and students. A deficit model constructs refugees as a burden on the host community rather than an asset. Services provided to refugee communities often reflect this view and ignore the substantial resources within them. A case study of work between students and refugees which builds on the strengths of refugee communities demonstrated significant gains for both students and refugees. Key theoretical concepts in exploring this approach are those of risk, status and continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about a paper discussed at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) fifty-third general assembly's Agenda For Protection in 2009 is presented. It focuses on suggested activities which would strengthen international protection of asylum-seekers and refugees and improve implementation of the1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees on International Protection and its 1967 protocol.

Refugee determination is one of the most complex adjudication functions in industrialized societies. In Canada, despite a relatively broad recognition rate and a teleological interpretation of the international refugee definition, dissatisfaction with the decision‐making process at the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) has been expressed by numerous actors. This paper documents the influence of legal, psychological and cultural factors on the process of refugee determination. Forty problematic cases referred to the research team by professionals were studied using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results indicate numerous problems affecting the role and behaviour of all actors: difficulties in evaluating evidence, assessing credibility, and conducting hearings; problems in coping with vicarious traumatization and uncontrolled emotional reactions; poor knowledge of the political context, false representations of war, and cultural misunderstandings or insensitivity. In a majority of cases, these legal, psychological and cultural dimensions interact together, often impacting negatively upon Board Members' ability to evaluate credibility and upon the overall conduct of hearings. These findings suggest that the refugee determination process might benefit from revised selection criteria for Board Members and refugee claim officers, as well as improved training and support for all actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A conference paper about the Platform for European Red Cross Co-operation on Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants (PERCO) is presented. It presents a brief history of PERCO which was established in 1997 by several National Societies. It explains the social dimension of cooperation and the requirements of cooperation. It also discusses factors to the success of PERCO.

A conference paper about the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Global Consultations is presented. It discusses the general aim of the consultations which is the revitalization of the international protection regime. It also highlights how the participation of global, academic, non-governmental organization (NGO) and refugee communities is critical to the success of the global consultations.