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Issue addressed: This article describes the Refugee Health Volunteer Program; a Monash Health initiative that aimed to promote social inclusion among asylum seekers and refugees within the south‐eastern region of Melbourne, Australia. This article also presents the evaluation findings of this strategy. Methods: This mixed‐methods evaluation aimed to determine the impact of the Volunteer Program at both an individual and organisational level. Volunteers completed a survey (n = 39) and participated in interviews (n = 14), and staff working alongside volunteers at Monash Health Community completed a survey (n = 82). Results: Volunteers attributed a range personal benefits to their involvement in the Refugee Health Volunteer Program; reporting improvements across all survey domains, including "Personal development," "Skill development," "Health and wellbeing," "Sense of trust and inclusion," "Social development." Further, within the interviews participants discussed that through volunteering they had made friends, developed new skills and felt their emotional wellbeing had improved. Staff members (n = 82) working at Monash Health Community also reflected positively on the program, reporting that volunteers increased organisational capacity and enhanced their personal understanding of asylum seeker and refugee issues. Conclusions: This program has successfully responded to an emerging need within the local asylum seeker and refugee community. Applying a social determinants framework acknowledges the fundamental impact of social connectivity on wellbeing. So what?: Many of the factors that adversely impact the wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees sit beyond both individual and organisational control. However, this article defines an effective volunteering model that fosters social inclusion and promotes emotional wellbeing among humanitarian arrivals in Australia, within the confines of the existing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Escaping war and persecution during the twenty-tens, over two-million displacees made life-risking journeys into Europe. Trauma continued for those who managed to cross borders and reach new havens: grappling with migration systems, searching for decent housing, and striving for social integration. This article presents empirical findings of a multi-modal participatory mapping project conducted with refugees and asylum seekers in Southwest England, and highlights the impact of memory and deep creative mapping on the spatial practice of making-home in forced displacement. The resulting maps embody spaces of recovery; memoryscapes revealing synergies between the constructs of memory and the concept of home in exile. The project asks how a creative participatory method of mapping home through memory reconsolidation can ameliorate the trauma of displacement and aid the re-making of home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how deportability structures the experiences of lesbian refugees and asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. The first part of the article considers the racial and gendered processes through which the UK asylum system transforms lesbian migrants into detainable and deportable subjects. Part two then examines lesbian migrant protests that are emerging to contest the United Kingdom's participation in the global deportation regime. The final part of the article discusses how deportation has become absorbed into the cycle of lesbian migration and asylum. The article concludes by calling for a feminist, queer, and anti-racist understanding of the processes through which lesbian migrant deportability is produced and experienced in 21st century Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the role of external actors is essential to understanding the United Kingdom's (UK) securitization agenda in the field of asylum. Whilst the internal dynamics of securitization in migration and asylum and its links to the Brexit referendum have been extensively analysed, the externalization of asylum and its connection to the so-called 'hostile environment' policy have received less attention. This article addresses this gap, and focuses on how the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the UK–Rwanda Memorandum of Understanding for the relocation of asylum seekers advance the externalization of asylum post-Brexit. It examines how these reforms reinforce the securitization that characterizes the UK's asylum and migration policy and evaluates how they exclude asylum seekers from access to basic human rights, in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its origins in the 1980s, the concept of safe third country (STC) has increasingly been used to deter and curb 'irregular migrant' arrivals. A burgeoning body of research has considered these measures throughout the world, particularly in the European Union (EU), Canada, Australia, and the United States. While much STC scholarship has been doctrinal in nature and has focused on the protection standards required in a third State, some of the literature has also examined more theoretical questions. Against this background, this article explores the consequences of the STC concept for refugees and their (in)ability to seek and enjoy asylum by drawing on critical border studies literature. The article first conceptualizes this concept with reference to theories of bordering, dissecting the STC concept as a bordering tool which constructs subjects as worthy and unworthy of protection, and decides where the latter are to be protected. It then explores how this concept has been operationalized within the EU's Common European Asylum System and the implications of this phenomenon for refugees, using the Greek–Turkish context as a case study. The article particularly considers the developments after the EU–Türkiye Statement of 18 March 2016 and a joint ministerial decision of 8 June 2021 by which Greece formally designated Türkiye as a STC. It reveals that while these measures came in response to the so-called irregular arrivals at the Greek–Turkish border, thousands of refugees affected by these measures have been either removed from the Greek territory and returned to Türkiye without protection, or trapped in limbo in Greece because of their removal from the EU asylum system. The article demonstrates that the STC concept, which is increasingly used as a bordering practice, spatially and temporally prevents certain people from being recognized and treated as refugees in accordance with the Refugee Convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores externalization schemes regarding asylum claims that have been proposed by Denmark and the United Kingdom in relation to Rwanda. Some of the details, issues and impediments that exist regarding implementing such schemes are examined here. It shall be seen that despite the fact that the countries in question are two independent states, their relationships to certain supranational and international structures means that there may potentially be complications and obstacles in their attempts to implement policies relating to border security and asylum which they believe are in their national interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in other Western countries asylum, refugees and deportations had become burning issues in Switzerland by the mid to late 1980s. The article analyses the attempt by radical left and feminist activists to overcome their "horror of social work" and fight against deportations on their own revolutionary terms. This meant that activists wanted to avoid the case-by-case approach of voluntary work to refugee solidarity. The attempt to build a new "International Red Aid" failed because the two central premises of acting politically as well as in partnership with the refugees collided. While the Swiss activists aimed to challenge the state and legality as such, the refugees' first priority was to obtain legal residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Migrant, internally displaced, asylum seeking and refugee women experience ongoing risks of having their reproductive healthcare rights violated. This ever-increasing population also has limited access to sexual and reproductive health services. We conducted a scoping review to identify the barriers and facilitating factors when accessing sexual and reproductive health services for this specific population. Methods: We searched the grey literature and queried eight bibliographic databases (Embase, Medline, Cinahl, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, Hinari, and Cochrane Library) to extract articles published between January, 2000, and October, 2021. The extracted data were organized in a framework adapted from Peters et al. and then categorized as facilitators or barriers. We followed the Arksey and O'Malley framework and wrote the report according to the PRISMA-Scr recommendations. Results: The search identified 4,722 records of which forty-two (42) met eligibility criteria and were retained for analysis. Ten (10) groups of factors facilitating and/or limiting access to sexual and reproductive health care emerged from the synthesis of the retained articles. The main barriers were lack of knowledge about services, cultural unacceptability of services, financial inaccessibility, and language barriers between patients and healthcare providers. Facilitators included mobile applications for translation and telehealth consultations, patients having a wide availability of information sources, the availability health promotion representatives, and healthcare providers being trained in cultural sensitivity, communication and person-centered care. Conclusion: Ensuring the sexual and reproductive rights of migrant, internally displaced, asylum-seeking and refugee women requires that policymakers and health authorities develop intervention strategies based on barriers and facilitators identified in this scoping review. Therefore, considering their mental health in future studies would enable a better understanding of the barriers and facilitators of access to sexual and reproductive health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community‐based peer volunteer interventions are increasingly used with people who are asylum seekers and refugees accessing health services. There is a dearth of evidence evaluating the benefits of volunteering for asylum seeking or refugee volunteers. Volunteers may have poor mental health and feel socially isolated due to their experiences as refugees and asylum seekers and may struggle or be unable to obtain paid employment. Volunteering in other contexts has been found to be beneficial to the health and well‐being of the volunteer. This paper reports on an aspect of a wider study evaluating the community‐based Health Access for Refugees Project, with the aim of exploring the impact of volunteering on the health and well‐being of the peer (asylum seeker or refugee) volunteer. In 2020, we conducted qualitative semistructured interviews by phone with 15 volunteers who were asylum seekers or refugees. The interviews were audio recorded, data were transcribed verbatim and the data set was thematically analysed. We found that the positive relationships which developed and the training received through volunteering boosted volunteers' mental well‐being. They felt motivated and confident in helping others, felt a sense of belonging and this reduced their social isolation. They also believed they benefited personally, helping their access to health services, and preparing them for future education, training or a career. In light of the beneficial nature of volunteering identified in this study, establishing more volunteering opportunities for this population and other marginalised groups with poor mental health is recommended. However, more research is needed to assess both the long‐term impact of the role in terms of the peer volunteer's health and well‐being, and the societal benefit of people moving on, integrating and contributing to society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sea is central to constructions of the refugee —maritime passage indelibly linked to political process —even as image-making and narrativization on water are inhibited by the otherness of the pelagic environment. Legally unauthorized maritime transit has informed condemnatory narratives of refugeeness in recent decades, and wealthy nations increasingly rely on extra-territorial and expulsive procedures to prevent the arrival of forced migrants. The central Mediterranean is unique for its maritime activist activity, whereby NGO vessels carry out a volume of migrant rescues. The self-fashioning of NGO vessels—the so-called Civil Fleet—highlights the link between constructions of refugees as disorderly collectives and neocolonial power structures. This discussion centres around the work of the NGO boat Louise Michel, funded by the pseudonymous British graffiti artist Banksy. The vessel's entry in 2020 into the domain of NGO search and rescue (SAR) activity in the Mediterranean increased the profile of this form of political humanitarian activism. As far as refugee processing is concerned, the Civil Fleet exemplifies intervention in its literal sense of coming between , using direct action to disrupt expulsive state-sanctioned bordering regimes, visibly exposing the relational dynamics of asylum. The maritime rescue of refugees by European NGOs constructs a hospitable mode of refugee processing that is paradoxically both predicted and unsanctioned. The aestheticization of Louise Michel's interceptive acts is considered here in a dual sense: visually, as design, but also conceptually, as framed political dysfunction. The former renders rescue as image and narrative, while the latter reveals the limits of political humanitarianism itself within an ill-functioning asylum system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States treats asylum as exceptional, meaning that asylum is presumptively unavailable and is offered only in rare cases. This exceptionality conceit, combined with an exclusionary apparatus, creates a problematic cycle. The claims of asylum seekers arriving as part of wide-scale refugee flows are discounted, and restrictive policies are adopted to block these claims. When asylum claims nonetheless continue to mount, the United States asserts "crisis" and deploys new exclusionary measures. The problems created by the asylum system are not addressed but are instead deepened. This Article encourages a turn away from policies that have led down the same paths once and again. This Article first describes the development of the modern U.S. asylum system, highlighting data that demonstrates the extent to which exceptionality is a basic feature of the system. In doing so, this Article reconsiders an assumption underlying much scholarship and commentary--that the U.S. asylum system is fundamentally generous even if it has sometimes failed to live up to its promise. This Article then establishes that the emphasis on exceptionality has led to an exclusionary asylum process. Most asylum claims are adjudicated within deportation proceedings, and policymakers have imposed layers of additional procedural barriers. Next, this Article presents the problems created by the system. It documents how the system places genuine asylees in danger while causing violence at the border. Further, embedded bias in the system, resulting from the focus on exceptionality, favors asylum claims from far-flung nations such as China over commonly arising claims from nearby troubled countries. This bias creates a legitimacy problem. The system also violates U.S. law and international human rights and refugee law. This Article concludes by offering suggestions for more stable, effective, and humane policies to address asylum seekers in the United States. In addition to eliminating many existing substantive restrictions on asylum, the system should incorporate group-based eligibility for applicants from designated nations or situations that are sending significant refugee flows. Finally, the United States should adopt a specialified non-adversarial asylum system for all cases, apart from the deportation system and with genuine independent review of denials of asylum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas is the property of Centro de Investigacao e Estudos de Sociologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Current trends in refugee protection within the African continent expose the deep-seated manifestations of coloniality. The 20th-century Eurocentric approaches to the management of people of concern continue to guide refugee protection in Africa. The approaches that are arguably a triumph of 'European Universalism' or Eurocentrism in refugee protection, both in theory and praxis, continue to be questioned because of their unmistakable results - the formation of hierarchies between Africans based on nationality and territoriality. This has led to the categorisation of African people and power conflicts, clashes, and intense contests for co-existence. Such a status quo has been normalised to be natural, occasioning deplorable refugee situations in the continent. Against such a background, this article aims to augment and complement the broad swathe of literature in the quest for African Renaissance movements using a Decolonial approach to refugee protection. It departs from untangling the lived experiences of the forcibly displaced, particularly refugees and asylum seekers, to critique the Westerninfluenced system of refugeehood in Africa. The research argues that the modern approaches to refugeehood rooted in Eurocentrism have eliminated ways of acceptance and co-existence amongst Africans, disregarding some of the traditional ways of incorporation, inclusion and integration. Instead, the refugee regime has been ordering, othering and hierarchizing the forcibly displaced, making them typical subjects of coloniality. It suggests decolonising the asylum system, considering an African-driven refugee regime and the involvement of local communities in the management of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Riwayat: Educational Journal of History & Humanities is the property of Riwayat: Educational Journal of History & Humanities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article argues that historians might usefully contribute to public debates about forced migration by engaging critically with public memories and histories, highlighting dead ends of the past, and acting as champions of the losers of history. Drawing on German-language newspaper reports from February and March 2022 about refugees from Ukraine, the article demonstrates how attempts to make sense of the present tend to put forward particular interpretations of the past, and suggests that historians are well positioned to draw critical attention to such uses and abuses of history. Recounting the trajectory of the right to asylum envisaged by the architects of the 1948 Universal Declaration, the article advocates a strictly non-Whiggish history-writing that privileges the paths not taken in the past. Finally, the article introduces Jules Michelet's ideas about the historian as magistrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'flexible' interstate solidarity model envisaged by the 2020 'New Pact on Migration and Asylum' ('the Pact') allows European Union (EU) member states to choose how to do their share in the distribution of the costs connected to asylum. According to one of the proposals contained in the Pact, member states have the option to contribute to the distribution through return sponsorship, taking measures to facilitate the return of irregular migrants residing in other member states. This paper asks: should EU member states be allowed to discharge their solidarity obligations through return sponsorship as envisaged by the Pact? Scholars of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) have raised several doubts about this proposal, particularly regarding the feasibility of return sponsorship and the related risks for human rights. Although the proposal is pragmatic in some respects, these problematic aspects pose at least two questions for normative political theorists: first, should member states be allowed to choose their form of contribution in a solidarity scheme? And, if so, should return sponsorship be one of the contributions allowed? Building on normative theories of solidarity in the EU, this article will argue that return sponsorship should be rejected both because it does not further solidarity among member states and because the rights of rejected asylum seekers set a strong presumption against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing is an important part of building a new life for people from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. However, relatively little is known about how housing and neighbourhood experiences affect resettlement and integration. This paper explored experiences of housing and neighbourhood for refugees and asylum seekers in South Australia, Australia. A survey was completed by 423 participants, recruited through service providers, community networks and snowball sampling. Data was analysed using frequencies, chi-square analyses and multivariate logistic regression. The study identified aspects of housing and neighbourhood that were important to participants, as well as highlighting key problems. Housing satisfaction and neighbourhood satisfaction were positively associated, but housing satisfaction was lower than neighbourhood satisfaction. Both were significantly associated with overall satisfaction with life in Australia, although only neighbourhood satisfaction remained significant in the final multivariate model (alongside region of origin, visa and financial situation). Overall, the findings suggest that where housing is situated may be more important for resettlement satisfaction and integration than the housing itself. Policy and practice implications of the findings are discussed, alongside considerations for conceptualising integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the Italian government's failure to uphold the human rights of migrants and refugees. It discusses the implementation of policies that violate their rights, such as advocating for a naval blockade and collaborating with autocratic governments. International organizations and human rights watchdogs have criticized Italy's actions and filed complaints against them. The article emphasizes the contradiction between the government's actions and the principles outlined in the Italian constitution and international human rights law. It calls for the government to comply with these laws and take measures to protect the rights of migrants and refugees. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines online media reporting on asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong in 2015–2016. Studies of print media show that, during this period, there was a sudden surge of news stories about asylum seekers and refugees being involved in criminal activities and abusing the asylum system. This plethora of news stories subsided after 2016, when the Legislative Council election had taken place, and the pro-establishment bid to toughen up its policy on asylum seekers and refugees had failed. However, there has been less research into online media in the same period. This article therefore presents findings from a frame analysis conducted on all of Hong Kong's online news media between June 2015 and July 2016. The results show that online news coverage tends to focus less on alleged criminal activities and more on humanitarian issues. Online news coverage could thus be a source of access for the population to alternative information and perspectives on this marginalized group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley's 2008 documentary film Seaview and Melatu Uche Okorie's 2018 short-story collection This Hostel Life raise questions about Ireland's postcolonial position on the economic and geographic periphery of Europe amid the added complexity of emerging racial formations. These texts critically depict the racial and cultural barriers that produce a voyeuristic bifurcation between an implied white Irish citizen and a racialized non-citizen. Seaview invokes this voyeuristic bifurcation to critique the segregation and isolation of asylum seekers detained in Direct Provision (DP) centres from the rest of Irish society. Yet moments of ambiguity in filmic strategies of who is looking and who is seen emphasize ongoing colonial and neocolonial histories that continue to impact identity formations in Ireland. The possibilities and limitations of representing Afro-Irish self-determination arises as a site of contestation in Okorie's 2018 collection of three stories This Hostel Life. The second short story, "Under the Awning," is a frame narrative that reclaims the liminal elements of second-person narration to assert emerging forms of Afro-Irish self-determination. This story exposes layers of racialization as it also indicates multiple possible voices materializing across multiple possible Irelands. In the seemingly disparate genres and media of documentary film and the short story, Seaview and This Hostel Life structurally challenge Irish racial formations that conform to a default colonial white norm. Reading these texts together exposes connections between postcolonial national identity and colonial racial formations that postcolonial nations willingly or unwillingly inherit through globalized economies and internationally integrated immigration reforms. By critically challenging racializing contexts and narratives during and after the Celtic Tiger, Seaview and This Hostel Life expand the representational possibilities for Afro-Irish self-determination in twenty-first century Irish literature and film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores sanctuary policies and practices from a regional perspective. Following a declaration by the Welsh government in 2019, Wales became the first and only European region to explicitly connect to the wider sanctuary movement, with the stated intention of becoming a true 'Nation of Sanctuary' (NoS) (Welsh Government. 2019. "Nation of Sanctuary: Refugee and Asylum Seeker Plan." Cardiff: Welsh Government). We argue that the Welsh government's approach to sanctuary is richly symbolic and is used strategically to compensate for the lack of formal legislative competencies in the field of immigration, and to position itself in opposition to the UK government. The article highlights the potential of symbolic policies to underpin a regional form of sanctuary, along with their limitations. We show that regions can use symbolic policies to overcome their lack of legislative competency in asylum policies and argue that symbolic policies allow regional governments to position themselves as allies to those supporting refugees and asylum seekers, and as an opponent of the state. In addition, we illustrate how a regional government's symbolic commitment facilitates concerted action on the part of relevant actors within the region. However, we also highlight the fragility and inconsistency of symbolic sanctuary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal democratic states can respond to the presence of irregular migrants in three basic ways: by attempting to deport all migrants without legal status, by ignoring their irregular presence without providing them with rights or legal status, or by attempting to include them in the host society. This epilogue to a special issue on sanctuary discusses three inclusive responses to unauthorised immigration: sanctuaries, firewalls and regularizations. We describe their characteristic features by examining their specific benefits for migrants (protection from deportation, access to public services, and pathways to membership), the types of actors promoting or providing these responses (subnational or national governments, civil society actors), and the challenges to national immigration control they raise (contestations over jurisdiction, division of competencies, and determination of legal status). We acknowledge overlaps and ambiguities between the three responses and discuss whether asylum can be considered as sanctuary within the international state system and whether not only regularizations, but also sanctuaries and firewalls can promote inclusive membership. Finally, we lay the ground for empirical and normative analyses of justifications for each of the three responses by showing that these invoke specific claims about contestation rights, benefits for migrants, and benefits for the wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on comparative evidence from four American and European cities – San Francisco, Houston, Barcelona, and Milan – to develop a framework for explaining variation in the types of sanctuary policies that city officials have adopted to protect and integrate undocumented immigrants into aspects of city life. While prior scholarship has focused on explaining whether cities adopt sanctuary policies at all, this article instead explains whether adopted policies bring symbolic or substantive benefits to undocumented immigrants and whether adopted policies conform to or confront the goals of national immigration policies. To explain the observed variation in adopted sanctuary policies across these four Global North cities, this article combines existing theoretical approaches to local immigration policymaking that emphasise the relevance of either city-specific contextual factors or the supra-local context in which different cities are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to scholarly discussions about sanctuary enactments. We analyse transversal sanctuary enactments, i.e. when migrants in search of protection are provided with basic welfare and an opportunity to remain, in contestation of the state's migration politics. The study draws on empirical data collected through a transdisciplinary research initiative in Sweden, the Asylum Commission. The analysis is based on interviews with 90 people, asylum seekers and people voluntarily or professionally involved in support work. The article explores bottom-up transversal processes paralleled and intertwined with a growing institutional disenchantment. By analysing practices and challenges in sanctuary enactments and their implications for individuals and institutions, we argue that such disenchantment may have broader societal implications in terms of fundamental changes in relationships between public institutions and civil society actors. Furthermore, our study points to the importance of seeing beyond the city as sites for sanctuary enactments and acknowledging sanctuary enactments initiated in Sweden's rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interprets sanctuary cities as mobilising metaphors, which are given significance at particular moments to ameliorate frictions in urban governance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article presents the first UK city to self-designate as a 'City of Sanctuary', Sheffield, to shed new light on the meaning and effects of contemporary sanctuary cities. Inspired by the anthropology of policy, I shift attention from definitions of 'sanctuary' to trace how and why the 'City of Sanctuary' term emerged, who labelled the city in this way, for what purpose and with what effects. An ethnographically informed reading of sanctuary cities is crucial to tease out sanctuary's possibilities but also the complex processes through which governing systems use the term 'City of Sanctuary' to extinguish practices animated by radical potential. The article contributes to sanctuary scholarship by demonstrating that sanctuary cities are not necessarily antagonistic to national exclusionary policies. The article also builds on urban migration governance literature by exploring the challenges of shifting the meaning of local migration policy from 'welcome' to 'non-cooperation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when restrictive immigration policies are high on the political agenda of many states, resistance to such policies is emerging from below. One form of resistance is the provision of sanctuary by civil society and subnational administrations. Sanctuary can be understood as the creation of a safe space for immigrants where they are beyond reach for immigration law enforcement. Research on sanctuary has been proliferating in the last few years. Nevertheless, a common definition and analytical framework are still missing. This article aims to fill this gap. In it, we provide a definition of sanctuary which identifies four key features that all sanctuary initiatives have in common, and that distinguish them from other forms of social and political action. Further, we distinguish between three spheres in which sanctuary can be enacted – the territorial, social and discursive spheres – and develop a typology that identifies the spaces, modes of enactment, and types of actors associated with each sphere. We show how our typology can be used to address both empirical and normative questions that require comparing different types of sanctuary. Our aim is to provide new impulses to the growing research agenda on the contentious politics and practices of sanctuary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 220,000 asylum seekers and refugees (ASR) lived in the United Kingdom in 2021. Traumatic experiences lived during the different phases of the migration process make people seeking asylum vulnerable to mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress and depression. Assessments conducted by various local authorities since 2016 stress the need to improve ASR's access to appropriate mental health support, but lack clarity on how to achieve this. This article explores perceptions of mental health support needs for ASR, and contrasts them to service provision. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with nine ASR and six individuals who provide wellbeing support to ASR living in Brighton and Hove, and were analysed via thematic analysis using NVivo. Three main themes emerged, relating to the need for holistic mental health support for ASR, the disjunctive between perceived needs and the available support, and the barriers to accessing existing services. Findings highlight the need for holistic, specialised, culturally sensitive and sustainable mental health support for ASR, and illustrate how training healthcare receptionists on the rights and entitlements of ASR and greater support services coordination can help strengthen ASR's access to the available support services and their mental wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, there were 4.6 million asylum claims pending globally. How does the state determine that someone qualifies for refugee status? To understand refugee status determination, scholarship has focused on the characteristics of asylum seekers, their applications, and adjudicating officials. Relatively less is known about how officials make sense of asylum seekers and their claims. Building from a cognitive sociological approach, this article details frames of perception and evaluation at work in refugee status determination, cognitive prisms through which asylum officials make legible those seeking safe haven before the state. In doing so, it turns analytical focus from 'what' to 'how' officials interpret. It is based on an ethnography of the asylum-screening process in Brazil, including fieldwork, official interviews, and case files. It delineates four cognitive frames: credibility, gravity, affinity, and novelty. Such frames coexist, and they can also interact through frame configuration or competition. This article contributes to asylum scholarship by turning to the operative cognitive structures through which officials process information and evaluate asylum claims, and their variable development and operations in situated context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee and asylum seeker women face a variety of health challenges. However, little is known globally about health problems in these women at midlife and beyond, including menopausal symptoms, sexual dysfunctions and pelvic floor disorders. This scoping review aimed to understand these neglected health issues with respect to prevalence and risk factors. Eight databases were searched in August 2022 without the limit of publication year. Data were analyzed narratively. A total of 10 reports from seven studies were included with 945 women living in Australia, Canada, the USA and Pakistan. Three reports were addressing menopause, seven addressed sexual dysfunctions and one addressed pelvic floor disorders. There were no data regarding menopause symptoms; however, perceptions of menopause varied widely across studies. Few studies reported a high prevalence of sexual dysfunctions and pelvic organ prolapses, but none of them used a validated questionnaire. Taboos and cultural factors, lack of knowledge and education, lack of family support, language insufficiency and financial problems were common barriers to not seeking care for these health issues. This review demonstrates lack of evidence of these neglected health issues in refugee and asylum seeker women at midlife, and further studies with validated questionnaires and larger samples are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has forced millions of people to flee the erupting armed conflict. Some of them were displaced within Ukrainian territory, others crossed the border and sought refuge in neighbouring countries and others further abroad. This article explores the limits of international refugee law in addressing this situation, which are of two kinds. First, people fleeing armed conflict are not considered refugees under the Refugee Convention if they are 'merely' fleeing armed conflict. Furthermore, the large number of persons arriving is also a limit. These limitations of international refugee law are filled by regional protection statuses (including temporary protection in European Union law) and the procedural ways in which protection can be granted. This article focuses on whether the current legislation in EU law is a sufficient response to the situation created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political trust matters for citizens' policy preferences but existing research has not fully understood how this effect depends on policy design. To advance this research area, we theorise that policy controls that limit or condition policy provision can function as safeguards against uncertainty, thereby compensating for a person's lack of trust in generating support. Focusing on public preferences for asylum and refugee policy, we conduct an original conjoint experiment in eight European countries. We find that individuals with lower levels of trust in European political institutions are less supportive of policies providing unlimited or unconditional protection and more supportive of restrictive policies. We also show that policy design features such as limits and conditions can mitigate perceived uncertainty for individuals who are less trusting in European political institutions. These findings have important implications for the theoretical understanding of how political trust pertains to citizens' preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Potentially traumatic experiences and post-migration living difficulties (PMLDs) undoubtedly leave marks on mental health and psychosocial functioning. While PMLDs are recognised as a risk factor for posttraumatic stress disorder and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (described together here as C/PTSD), recent investigations have found that C/PTSD symptoms might also influence the experience of PMLDs. The subjective experience of and coping with PMLDs in the context of C/PTSD symptoms has not yet been explored. Methods: Semi-structured, interpreter-assisted interviews exploring the subjective experience of post-migration living difficulties were conducted with treatment-seeking Afghan refugees and asylum seekers (N = 24) and transcribed verbatim. Participants were screened using the International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) and allocated to a C/PTSD group or non-C/PTSD group. We analysed the qualitative interviews using content analysis and then compared the results of the two groups. Results: Over half of the participants (58.3%) met the criteria for C/PTSD. While the two groups addressed numerous similar themes, the C/PTSD group more frequently mentioned themes associated with C/PTSD symptoms (e.g., intrusions, avoidance, sleep disturbances, affective dysregulation) that influenced their responses to PMLDs. The non-C/PTSD group more often experienced positive emotions such as gratitude and optimism, and showed more active, solution-oriented behaviour as well as positive self-verbalisation. Conclusion: To achieve a deeper understanding of PMLDs, post-traumatic psychopathology should be taken into account, as C/PTSD symptoms influence the experience of and coping with PMLDs. The specifics of individual experiences need to be considered in order to promote adaptive coping with PMLDs and to set individual trauma-focused and transdiagnostic treatment targets. In addition, psychological interventions should incorporate psychoeducation to improve the understanding of the impact of C/PTSD on the current experience of PMLDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how informal, citizen-led solidarity with migrants is practised digitally and discusses how we can conceptualise such acts. The study draws on digital observations, semi-structured interviews and one field visit. Citizen humanitarians, who are informants in this study, supported migrants from Afghanistan who had been rejected asylum in Norway. Support included facilitating unauthorised migration, transit, residency within the Schengen area, financial help, and caregiving. By analysing these acts, the article discusses scholarly debates on citizenship regarding who enjoys the right to stay and access social rights in Europe and humanitarian ideals of 'saving lives' of migrants threatened by deportation. The article show that citizen humanitarians use digital acts to carry out borderwork that were depended on and enabled by weak social ties. These practices fostered communities between citizen humanitarians and enabled them to claim rights for themselves and others. Based on the analysis, I develop the term 'digital citizen humanitarianism', which allows us to be more precise about different forms of citizen humanitarianism facilitated by the digital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reveal three classes of asylum seeker sentiment in the Australian population. The first group are pro-asylum seekers who think Australians should help refugees, that government agencies should not be turning back boats carrying people seeking asylum, that immigration levels are low, and that current government policy is too tough. The second group are anti-asylum seekers who strongly disagree with helping refugees and people seeking asylum, and support a tough border policy. A third group are pro-government policy but largely sympathetic to refugees and people seeking asylum. We explain the demography and attitudes of these three groups using the theory on border securitisation. The securitisation actions and discourse position people seeking asylum as a threat. This has received widespread public endorsement. This is an empirical reflection of over two decades of influential Australian government discourse of antipathy towards refugees and asylum seekers. Successive Australian governments have tied those seeking asylum who arrive by boat with strict border enforcement policies that target people seeking asylum as a security threat to be repelled from the Australian mainland. This largely negative discourse has supported the merits of tough border controls. However, this discursive campaign has not entirely eradicated sympathy towards refugees and asylum seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of Hugo Grotius in shaping the concepts of asylum and exile in relation to ancient and medieval ideas and modern legal and political concepts. The author argues that Grotius' writings bridge the gap between ancient and medieval ideas of asylum and exile and more modern notions. The author explores Grotius' theories on asylum and exile, particularly focusing on the idea of asylum as an individual, subjective right against the host state. The article also touches on the ongoing debate surrounding the existence and scope of the right to asylum in international law. However, the author acknowledges that Grotius' writings do not provide a clear and singular concept encompassing both expulsi and those convicted of crimes. The article concludes that while Grotius' ideas are valuable in the discussion of asylum and exile, constructing a novel theory requires new means and cannot be directly based on Grotius' existing work. [Extracted from the article]

Refugees and asylum seekers face several obstacles in enjoying their right to work, including bars under host States' domestic law and situations of substantive discrimination. Despite the existence of norms protecting the right to work under international refugee and human rights law, they are usually abstract and leave considerable discretion to States regarding the extent to which refugees and asylum seekers may access the labour market. Nevertheless, recent case-law of the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights has set out more protective standards concerning the right to work and the principle that non-discrimination towards marginalised groups. This article aims to demonstrate that these standards can effectively be applied to refugees and asylum seekers, thus curtailing States' discretion in limiting their access to the labour market and offering more concrete protection of the right to work. In so doing, the article will analyse the extent to which these groups' right to work is protected under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights, drawing from relevant statements and decisions of human rights bodies on how these instruments have been interpreted. Then it will delve deeper into the Inter-American case-law, showing the potential of the standards developed therein to the protection of refugees' and asylum seekers' right to work. It concludes that these standards can and ought to be taken into account more seriously when assessing States' discretion to limit refugees' and asylum seekers' access to the labour market and can be used as a basis to require positive and proactive measures from States in furthering this access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the legal frameworks of Hungary and Indonesia in dealing with the massive influx of refugees in their respective countries. While Hungary has successfully reduced the number of asylum seekers through a “ fortress” approach using its Asylum Act of 2007, Indonesia’s legal framework, as seen in Presidential Regulation 125/2016, lacks the procedures for converting asylum seekers into refugees. This is compounded by the absence of a refugee status determination process in Indonesia, making it challenging to provide assistance to increasing numbers of asylum seekers entering the state yearly. To address this problem, Indonesia must first make national legal changes that reflect its sociopolitical realities before ratifying the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocols. In contrast, Hungary’s legal framework, while effective in reducing the number of asylum seekers, has been criticized for being restrictive and failing to respect human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the micro-powers of Swedish "cruel" and "non-cruel" bureaucrats using various logics of control, "tiny acts" enacted with pens, computers, and imposed assignments to condition asylum-seeking peoples' lives and fragment their hope. Based on interviews with asylum-seeking Afghans and observations of their meetings with authorities, I argue that the bureaucratic treatment of Afghans in Sweden is a form of state-sanctioned racist violence and "departheid" executed to exclude discredited people from the welfare state. The article draws attention to a rapid downhill slide regarding asylum rights in Sweden since 2015 and the harm caused to asylum-seeking people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the understanding of why international organisations' attempts to transfer policies frequently fail or lead to only partial practical change in the target states. It sheds light on legislative resistance by analysing how Ukrainian lawmakers reacted to attempts to impose international asylum norms on them. Instead of overtly opposing the import of international norms, Ukrainian lawmakers resisted in a subtle way, frequently by making the implementation of the adopted norms impossible. As international normative texts contain vague formulations of certain norms, lawmakers benefited from a certain leeway when translating these norms into domestic law. They also adopted laws in a shallow way, integrating a particular norm into a very prominent law, often in a vague way, but failing to adapt other laws necessary for implementation. Finally, lawmakers delayed adoption or implementation, only making good on their commitment many years later when the pressure from international actors or incentives became too strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the legislative proposals presented as the New Pact on Migration and Asylum on 23 September 2020, the European Commission sought to overcome the political impasse in reform efforts of the Common European Asylum System. A key element of this legislative package is the broader use of border procedures. The rationale is that by 'keeping' certain asylum seekers at the borders or in transit zones, return policies would become more effective. This paper undertakes a legal assessment of the proposed border procedures in light of legal obligations arising from the Human Rights to liberty and freedom movement. It argues that the qualification of asylum seekers' entry as unauthorised seemingly pushes into a gap in human rights law, allowing for detention and area-based restrictions. However, a reconstruction of the applicable human rights standards shows that the blanket use of such measures is in fact unlawful, such that the proposal will have to be amended in that regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the trends and challenges of the asylum system in Mexico, which has experienced a significant increase in requests for refugee status since 2011. The high volume of requests has posed a challenge for the Mexican asylum system, which seeks to protect the human rights of individuals in need of international protection. The article examines the legal figures of asylum and humanitarian visitor cards, as well as the figures of asylum seekers and individuals recognized as refugees in relation to the functioning of the asylum system. It highlights the increase in the number of asylum requests in Mexico from 2013 to 2021, with a peak in 2022, due to factors such as the arrival of more migrants, greater dissemination of the legal pathway to obtain permanent residency, and migration policies in the United States and Mexico. Honduras is the country with the most requests, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti. The Mexican asylum system is more favorable and open than that of the United States. The increase in the granting of humanitarian visitor cards is mentioned, especially to Haitian, Honduran, Cuban, and Venezuelan migrants. The article raises the possibility that some applicants may be unaware of the option to apply for these cards and highlights their importance for the integration of asylum seekers. The obstacles and slowness of the asylum system in Mexico are also mentioned, as well as the pressure from the United States on Mexico to contain migration northward. [Extracted from the article]

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This paper discusses a poetic output of a research project at the intersection of linguistic ethnography (LE) and poetic inquiry (PI) which explores the barriers experienced by refugee and asylum seekers, seeking access to Higher Education. The research draws on Jan Blommaert's applied ethnopoetics (AEP) work to reconstruct silenced voices (Blommaert, 2006). AEP as a 'means of recognition' of marginalised voices is explored. The paper goes on to explore the transformative possibilities for knowledge production offered by combining AEP with PI. This innovative approach and output are presented as act of resistance to normative expectations within academia which freeze conditions for voice (Blommaert, 2008). Questions are then offered to consider how we might advance the approach and its emancipatory potential further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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