Exploring "refuge" and "refugee" as concepts that shape Canadian nation-building both within and beyond national borders, Refugee States takes an interdisciplinary and critical approach to describing how refugees articulate their relation to and defiance of official discourses. Through close examinations of refugee movements, contexts, and subjectivities, this collection reveals how Canada has relied upon the rejection and inclusion of refugees as a crucial means of statecraft. Bringing together renowned and emerging scholars from multiple disciplines, Nguyen and Phu illuminate the historical, political, and cultural conditions that produce refugees as well as the narrative of humanitarian benevolence that persists nationally and internationally. Highlighting landmark cases, the editors and contributors together develop critical refugee studies as a framework for understanding, nuancing, and critiquing the production of Canadian humanitarian exceptionalism - the international image and discourse of Canada as a liberal, tolerant, and welcoming haven for people fleeing oppression, persecution, and unfreedom. In doing so, Refugee States offers alternative modes of understanding past and present refugee passages to and within Canada, and brings to light the many ways in which refugee subjects navigate displacement, migration, and resettlement.

The refugee crisis that began in 2015 has seen thousands of refugees attempting to reach Europe, principally from Syria. The dangers and difficulties of this journey have been highlighted in the media, as have the political disagreements within Europe over the way to deal with the problem. However, despite the increasing number of women making this journey, there has been little or no analysis of women's experiences or of the particular difficulties and dangers they may face. A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis examines women's experience at all stages of forced migration, from the conflict in Syria, to refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, on the journey to the European Union and on arrival in an EU member state. The book deals with women's experiences, the changing nature of gender relations during forced migration, gendered representations of refugees, and the ways in which EU policies may impact differently on men and women. The book provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the refugee crisis, and shows the importance of analysing differences within the refugee population. Students and scholars of development studies, gender studies, security studies, politics and middle eastern studies will find this book an important guide to the evolving crisis.

The experience of border crossing for refugees and irregular migrants challenges global border and migration controls in multiple contexts. Using qualitative field research in Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and Australia, Heather L. Johnson asks how a global regime of migration management and control can be perceived through the dynamics of particular border spaces: refugee camps, border zones and detention centres. She explores how irregular migrants are impacted by the increasingly security-oriented practices of border control, and how they confront these practices. Johnson rejects the characterization of border spaces as exceptional, abject and exclusionary, arguing instead for an understanding of politics as everyday contestation that reveals a radical political agency, re-imagining the global non-citizen as a transgressive and powerful figure. Building on recent scholarship that rethinks irregularity and non-citizenship, her conclusions have broad implications for how we understand irregular migration from a position of dialogue and solidarity.

Shirin has just arrived from war-stricken Iran to Sweden - her new home. Her and her family must learn to acclimatise to the weather, culture and socialisation of Sweden whilst still staying in touch with their Iranian heritage. Along with her response to such things as a traditional Swedish Christmas lunch, the dating rituals of European teenagers or the social dynamics of an unfamiliar and not always friendly classroom are fascinating glimpses into the lives of a varied community of refugees, eccentrics and drop-outs. These are interspersed with traditional Persian fairy tales and nostalgic memories of her beloved grandmother, which sustain her in her new life. Once Upon A Time in Uppsala is a remarkable, candid and moving account of a sensitive child on the verge of adolescence transplanted from her beloved but suffering homeland into a country which, although politically safe, offers unexpected challenges of its own.

This book will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of fields, reaching from contemporary politics in the Middle East (with relation to the experiences in Afghanistan and Syria and how refugees from these countries are rebuilding their lives and political identities in Germany); to refugee and migration studies; contemporary European and German history and politics. The book develops an oral history approach, currently very much in vogue in both academic and general interest circles. The author is a leading mid-career scholar on the UK academic History scene

For a century, Jews were an unmistakable and prominent feature of Shanghai life. They built hotels and stood in bread lines, hobnobbed with the British and Chinese elites and were confined to a wartime ghetto. Jews taught at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, sold Viennese pastries, and shared the worst slum with native Shanghainese. Three waves of Jews, representing three religious and ethnic communities, landed in Shanghai, remained separate for decades, but faced the calamity of World War II and ultimate dissolution together.In this book, we hear their own words and the words of modern scholars explaining how Baghdadi, Russian and Central European Jews found their way to Shanghai, created lives in the world's most cosmopolitan city, and were forced to find new homes in the late 1940s.

This book tracks the conceptual journeying of the term 'transgender' from the Global North-where it originated-along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. This study centres on the experiences and narratives of people that can be usefully termed 'gender refugees', gathered through a series of life story interviews. It is the argument of this book that the departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of South Africa for gender refugees have been both enabled and constrained by the contested meanings and politics of this emergence of transgender. This book explores, through these narratives, the radical constitutional-legal possibilities for 'transgender' in South Africa, the dissonances between the possibilities of constitutional law, and the pervasive politics/logic of binary 'sex/gender' within South African society. In doing so, this book enriches the emergent field of Transgender Studies and challenges some of the current dominant theoretical and political perceptions of 'transgender'. It offers complex narratives from the African continent regarding sex, gender, sexuality and notions of home concerning particular geo-politically situated bodies.

This book examines the impact and effects of refugee externalisation policies in two regions: Australia's border control practices in Southeast Asia and the Pacific and the activities of the European Union and its member states in North Africa. The book assesses the underlying motivations, processes, policy frameworks and human rights violations of refugee externalisation practices. Case studies illuminate the funding, institutional partnerships, geopolitical impacts, financial costs and the human price of refugee externalisation. It provides the first truly comparative analysis of asylum externalisation and explores maritime interdiction, extraterritorial process, containment and third-country interception, and communication campaigns in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of refugee and asylum studies, law, politics and the arts, legal practitioners, non-governmental organisations and policymakers grappling with the issues of detention, refugee externalisation practices and the growing need to find safety for the world's most vulnerable.

The Migration Mobile offers an account of the very different technologies implicated in border crossing and migration management. Borders have been sites of contestations and struggles over who belongs and who does not, who is and is not allowed to move freely in transnational or national spaces. Embedded as they are in the bordering process, policing and security practices produce the irregularity and illegitimacy of the migrating subject. At the same time, border practices simultaneously imply processes of dissidence and resistance. Border infrastructures and resistance to bordering practices refer to dynamic and complex interactions between migrants and non-human others, technologies at the borderland and elsewhere. Border guards, EU officials, Frontex officers, activists, NGOs and solidarity networks configure both hybrid alliances of humans/nonhumans and new virtual and urban spaces in order to enforce or resist bordering. Through analyses of empirical cases drawing from the European border regimes the book investigates how technologies employed by states and EU border agencies configure the border regimes; how spaces of migration are configured through uses and re-uses of high-tech technologies; and finally on how the border regimes and 'the border industrial complex' are contested reconfigured by the use of ICT by migrants and solidarity networks.

'One the foremost writers and participants in the Kurdish women's movement' - Harsha Walia The Kurdish women's movement is at the heart of one of the most exciting revolutionary experiments in the world today: Rojava. Forged over decades of struggle, most recently in the fight against ISIS, Rojava embodies a radical commitment to ecology, democracy and women's liberation. But while striking images of Kurdish women in military fatigues proliferate, a true understanding of the women's movement remains elusive. Taking apart the superficial and Orientalist frameworks that dominate, Dilar Dirik offers instead an empirically rich account of the women's movement in Kurdistan. Drawing on original research and ethnographic fieldwork, she surveys the movement's historical origins, ideological evolution, and political practice over the past forty years. Going beyond abstract ideas, Dirik locates the movement's culture and ideology in its concrete work for women's revolution in the here and now. Taking the reader from the guerrilla camps in the mountains to radical women's academies and self-organised refugee camps, readers around the world can engage with the revolution in Kurdistan, both theoretically and practically, as a vital touchstone in the wider struggle for a militant anti-fascist, anti-capitalist feminist internationalism.

WHY PUBLISH: - The book provides new case studies of displaced families and children resettled in non-culturally diverse locations. - The book offers new ways to understand refugee resettlement experiences in the absence of support frameworks and multicultural communities. - The book is the only longitudinal study ever conducted that is based on refugee experiences in Queensland, Australia - a location that holds similarities to other regions worldwide.

Today, there are over 40 million conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally, almost double the number of refugees. Yet, IDPs are protected only by the soft-law Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement at the global level. Instead of a dedicated international organization, IDPs receive protection and assistance only through the UN's cluster approach. Orchard argues that while an international IDP protection regime exists, many aspects of it are informal, with IDP issues bound up in a humanitarian regime complex that divides the mandates of key organizations and even the question of IDP status itself. While the Guiding Principles mark an important step forward, implementation of laws and policies based on them at the domestic level remains haphazard. Action at the international level similarly reflects an all-too-often ad hoc approach to IDP issues. Through an in-depth examination of IDP efforts at the international level and across the forty states which have adopted IDP laws and policies, Orchard argues that while progress has been made, new and greater monitoring and accountability mechanisms at both the domestic and international levels are critical. This work will be valuable to scholars, students, and practitioners of forced migration, international relations theory, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Ignorance and Change analyses the European refugee crisis of 2015-2016 from the perspective of ignorance studies showing how the media, decision-makers and academics engaged in the projection and reification of the future in relation to the crisis, the asylum system, and the solutions that were proposed. Why do recent crises fail to bring meaningful change? Why do we often see replication of the regimes of ignorance, inefficient knowledge and expertise practices? This book answers these questions by shifting the focus from the issue of change to our projections and expectations of what change will look like. Building on three comprehensive case studies, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, it demonstrates how ignorance and projectivity were essential for new Member States not only for managing the crisis but also for reaching a higher level of autonomy in relation to the EU. Employing an innovative interactional approach to ignorance, it bridges ignorance studies with sociology of future and migration research. Challenging the dominant interest in defining ignorance, it moves the focus from what ignorance is to what ignorance does. It incorporates the concept of future into ignorance studies and develops notions such as "projective agency," "reification of the future," "projection by proxy," and "projectors of EU asylum policies." The book provides an erudite background, comprehensive empirical research, and original tools of analysis for graduate students, researchers, and policy makers interested in crisis studies, public policy, ignorance studies, social theory, migration studies, and sociology of the future.

In The Immigration Crisis in Europe and the U.S.-Mexico Border in the New Era of Heightened Nativism, Victoria Carty compares the immigration crises in the European Union and the United States. Beginning in 2014, the Arab Spring upheavals and failed states in Northern Africa and the Middle East overwhelmed many European countries which the European Union system was not prepared for. In the Americas, failed states in Central America such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador also led to an unexpected influx of immigrants to the United States, many of them unaccompanied minors, fleeing gangs, violence and poverty. In The Immigration Crisis in Europe and the U.S.-Mexico Border, Carty studies theories of immigration, social movements, and critical race theory to provide a better understanding of the current immigration crises in Europe and the United States. Carty shows that the high volume of immigration in both the EU and the United States has led to a resurgence of nativist sentiments and white supremacy groups.

Through narrative analysis of the memoirs of six holocaust survivors from a single extended family, Trauma and Resilience in Holocaust Memoir: Strategies of Self-Preservation and Inter-Generational Encounter with Narrative examines strategies of self-preservation of young people exposed to violence and persecution at different ages and life stages. Through the lens of studying resilience in child development, this book describes the striking diversity of holocaust-era experiences and traces the arc of a remarkable global diaspora. Birnbaum argues that stories from the past can enhance understanding of the internal lives of today's young refugees and survivors of violent conflict. Exploring the socio-politics of narrative and memory, this book considers the ways that children of holocaust survivors may honor the past while also allowing a new generation to engage family history in a conversation with contemporary concerns.

Bosnian Refugees in Chicago: Gender, Performance, and Post-War Economies studies refugee migration through the experiences of survivors of the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia as they rebuild home, family, and social lives in the wake of their displacement. Ana Croegaert explores post-1970s Yugoslav-era socialism, American neoliberal capitalism, and anti-Muslim geopolitics to examine women's varied perspectives on their postwar lives in the United States. Based on more than a decade of fieldwork, Croegaert takes readers into staged performances, coffee rituals, protests, memorials, homes, and non-governmental organizations to shine a light on the pressures women contend with in their efforts to make a living and to narrate their wartime injuries. Ultimately, Croegaert argues that refugee women insist on understanding their wartime losses as simultaneously social and material, a form of personhood she labels "injured life." At a time of mass displacement and heated political debates concerning refugees, Croegaert provides an engaging portrait of a lively and diverse group of women whose opinions on citizenship and belonging are needed now more than ever.

Using ethnographic research, Willful Ignorance: Overcoming the Limitations of (Christian) Love for Refugees Seeking Asylum examines the attitudes of clergy and lay leaders regarding their (in)attention to racism as it intersects with the harsh reality of U.S. immigration policies and practices. This multi-faceted work begins with a reality check on the scope of forced migration and its intersection with the historical legacy of racism in America, including testimonies from displaced migrants and immigration advocates who help to alleviate state-inflicted suffering at the U.S.-Mexico border. Helen T. Boursier examines the rationales Christian leaders use to justify the local church's nominal response, including the discursive buffers and stall tactics they use to deflect their lack of preaching, teaching, leadership and/or ministry with displaced migrants who are their near neighbors. The Christian church's firm foundation to embody love as social justice provides a historical rebuttal, while case studies of congregations that offer displaced migrants compassionate hospitality model exemplary contemporary response. Closing with practical suggestions for how to begin building bridges with migrants, Boursier argues for a philosophy of religion that embraces resistance to racism and exclusion from asylum, through a missiology of compassion that exemplifies an ecclesiology of love.

This book addresses the relationship between International Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law. Using international refugee law's analytical turn to human rights as its object of inquiry, it represents a critical intervention into the revisionism that has led to conceptual fragmentation and restrictive practices. Mainstream literature in refugee law reflects a mood of celebration, a narrative of progress which praises the discipline's rescue from obsolescence. This is commonly ascribed to its repositioning alongside human rights law, its veritable rediscovery as an arm of this far greater edifice. By using human rights logic to construct the current legal paradigm and inform us of who qualifies as a refugee, this purportedly lent areas of conceptual uncertainty a set of objective, modern criteria and increased enfranchisement to new, non-traditional claimants. The present work challenges this dominant position by finding the untold limits of its current paradigm. It stands alone in this orientation and hereby represents one of the most comprehensive, heterodox and structurally detailed reviews of this connection. The exploration of the gap between modern approaches and the unsatisfactory realities of seeking asylum forms the substance of this book. It asserts, by contrast, the existence of revolution rather than evolution. Human rights law has erased the founding tenets of the Refugee Convention, enabling powerful states to contain refugees in their region of origin. The book will be essential reading for those interested in Refugee Law, Refugee Studies, Postcolonial Legal Studies, Postmodern Critiques and Critical Legal Theory. Additionally, given its relevance for the adjudication of refugee claims, it will be an important resource for solicitors, barristers and judges.

Tony Smith CBE spent his career managing our UK border controls, from junior immigration officer to Head of the UK Border Force. He spent more than four decades in the front line of the conflict between those who argue for open borders and free movement and those whose focus is on building barriers. He played a prominent role in managing security on both sides of the Atlantic after the 9/11 attacks in North America. Along the way he has worked constantly to make controls more efficient, better informed and fairer, yet less vulnerable to abuse. After retirement in 2013, he became a prominent media spokesman on border control issues, from tackling legal immigration crime, human smuggling and terrorist travel to managing borders through Brexit and beyond. This is his story.

How can we understand the plight of refugees in Africa? Why are refugees now spending an average of 17 years in exile? Why have African states required refugees to remain in isolated and insecure camps? Is there a better approach to the needs of refugees in Africa?
This book answers these questions by examining the history and politics of asylum in Africa and the response of key African states to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees. By situating the question of refugees within the broader context of African politics, the book outlines the broad range of factors that influence the asylum policies of African states. Building from these lessons, the book outlines the politics of asylum in Africa and proposes a new approach to addressing the needs of the continent's refugees.
This approach leads to important lessons not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of refugee protection in Africa.

This book overcomes the dichotomies, generalizations and empirical shortcomings that surround the understanding of return migration within the migration-development-peace-building nexus. Using the concept of multidimensional embeddedness, it provides an encompassing view of returnees' identification with and participation in one or multiple spaces of belonging. It introduces Afghan return migration from Europe as a relevant case study, since the country's protracted history of conflict and migration shows how the globally changing political discourses of recent decades have shaped migration strategies. The author's findings highlight the fact that policy is responding inadequately to complex issues of migration, conflict, development and return, since the expectations on which it is based only account for a small minority of returnees. This thought-provoking book will appeal to scholars of migration and refugee studies, as well as a wider audience of sociologists, anthropologists, demographers and policy makers.

More than 130,000 South Vietnamese fled their homeland at the end of the Vietnam War. Tens of thousands landed on the island of Guam on their way to the U.S. Many remained there. Guamanians and U.S. military personnel welcomed them. Funded by a $405 million Congressional appropriation, Operation New Life was among the most intensive humanitarian efforts ever accomplished by the U.S. government, with the help of the people of Guam. Without it, many evacuees would have died somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. This book chronicles a part of the first mass migration of Vietnamese "boat people," before and after the fall of Saigon in April 1975-a story still unfolding almost half a century later.

Questioning what shelter is and how we can define it, this volume brings together essays on different forms of refugee shelter, with a view to widening public understanding about the lives of forced migrants and developing theoretical understanding of this oft-neglected facet of the refugee experience. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, law, architecture, and history, each of the chapters describes a particular shelter and uses this to open up theoretical reflections on the relationship between architecture, place, politics, design and displacement.