More than 50 years ago, governments established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to protect the world's refugees. The UNHCR was created to be a human rights and advocacy organization, but governments also created the agency to promote regional and international stability and to serve the interests of states. Consequently, the UNHCR has always trod a perilous path between its mandate to protect refugees and asylum seekers and the demands placed upon it by states to be a relevant actor in world politics This is an independent history of the UNHCR. Gil Loescher, one of the world's leading experts on refugee affairs, draws upon decades of personal experience and research to examine the origins and evolution of the UNHCR as well as to identify many of the major challenges facing the organization in the years ahead. A key focus is to examine the extent to which the evolution of the UNHCR has been framed by the crucial events of international politics during the past half century and how, in turn, the actions of the eight past High Commissioners have helped shape the course of world history.

Growing numbers of people are displaced by war and violent conflict. In Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Syria, and elsewhere violence pushes civilian populations from their homes and sometimes from their countries, making them refugees. In previous decades, millions of refugees and displaced people returned to their place of origin after conflict or were resettled in countries in the Global North. Now displacements last longer, the number of people returning home is lower, and opportunities for resettlement are shrinking. More and more people spend decades in refugee camps or displaced within their own countries, raising their children away from their home communities and cultures. In this context, international policies encourage return to place of origin. Using case studies and first-person accounts from interviews and fieldwork in post-conflict settings such as Uganda, Liberia, and Kosovo, Sandra F. Joireman highlights the divergence between these policies and the preferences of conflict-displaced people. Rather than looking from the top down, at the rights that people have in international and domestic law, the perspective of this text is from the ground up-examining individual and household choices after conflict. Some refugees want to go home, some do not want to return, some want to return to their countries of origin but live in a different place, and others are repatriated against their will when they have no other options. Peace, Preference, and Property suggests alternative policies that would provide greater choice for displaced people in terms of property restitution and solutions to displacement.

Issues of displacement and dispossession have become defining characteristics of a globalised 21st century. People are moving within and across national borders, whether displaced, relocated or moving in search of better livelihoods. This book brings theoretical understandings of migration and displacement together with empirical illustrations of the creative, cultural ways in which communities reflect upon their experiences of change, and how they respond, including through poetry and story-telling, photography and other art forms, exploring the scope for building communities of solidarity and social justice. The concluding chapters identify potential implications for policy and professional practice to promote communities of solidarity, addressing the structural causes of widening inequalities, taking account of different interests, including those related to social class, gender, ethnicity, age, ability and faith.

The dispossession and forced migration of nearly 50 per cent of Syria's population has produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. This new book places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have indelibly marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harboured millions from its neighbouring lands, and Syrian society has been shaped by these diasporas. Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focusing first on the major forced migrations into Syria of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Iraqis. Drawing heavily on individual narratives and stories of integration, adaptation, and compromise, she shows that a local cosmopolitanism came to be seen as intrinsic to Syrian society. She examines the current outflow of people from Syria to neighbouring states as individuals and families seek survival with dignity, arguing that though the future remains uncertain, the resilience and strength of Syrian society both displaced internally within Syria and externally across borders bodes well for successful return and reintegration. If there is any hope to be found in the Syrian civil war, it is in this history.

The idea that a claim for international protection can be rejected on the basis that the claimant behave 'discreetly' in their country of origin has remained resilient in asylum claims based on sexual orientation, but also other grounds of claim. This is significant because requiring an asylum-seeker to forgo the reason for which they are persecuted questions the very rationale of refugee protection. This book represents the first principled examination of concealment in refugee law. Janna Wessels connects the different strands of the long-standing debate in both common and civil law jurisdictions and scholarship concerning the question of whether and under which circumstances a claimant must conceal to avoid persecution. In so doing, Wessels uncovers a fundamental tension at the core of the refugee concept. By using sexuality as a lens, this study breaks new ground regarding sexual orientation claims and wider issues surrounding the refugee definition.

The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe. In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship-a mutual responsibility and solidarity-to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today. Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.

A remarkable recounting of a human journey through an inhumane world. What does it mean to be a "refugee"? It is easy for those who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others' experiences when you haven't been in their shoes. In Hakim's Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home. This graphic novel is necessary reading for our time. Alternately hopeful and heartbreaking, Hakim's Odyssey is a story about what it means to be human in a world that sometimes fails to be humane.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence This ground breaking book presents the first evidence of forced labour among displaced migrants who seek refuge in the UK. Through a critical engagement with contemporary debates about precarity, unfreedom and socio-legal status, the book explores how asylum and forced labour are linked, and enmeshed in a broader picture of modern slavery produced through globalised working conditions. Drawing on original evidence generated in fieldwork with refugees and asylum seekers, this is important reading for students and academics in social policy, social geography, sociology, politics, refugee, labour and migration studies, and policy makers and practitioners working to support migrants and tackle forced labour.

In recent years, scholars in the fields of refugee studies and forced migration have extended their areas of interest and research into the phenomenon of displacement, human response to it, and ways to intervene to assist those affected, increasingly focusing on the emotional and social impact of displacement on refugees and their adjustment to the traumatic experiences. In the process, the positive concept of "psychosocial wellness" was developed as discussed in this volume. In it noted scholars address the strengths and limitations of their investigations, citing examples from their work with refugees from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Eastern Europe, Bosnia, and Chile. The authors discuss how they define "psychosocial wellness," as well as the issues of sample selection, measurement, reliability and validity, refugee narratives and "voices," and the ability to generalize findings and apply these to other populations. The key question that has guided many of these investigations and underlies the premise of this book is "what happens to an ordinary person who has experienced an extraordinary event?" This volume also highlights the fact that those involved in such research must also deal with their own emotional responses as they hear victims tell of killing, torture, humiliation, and dispossesion. The volume will therefore appeal to practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, and anthropology. However, its breadth and the evaluation of the strengths and disadvantages of both qualitative and quantitative methods also make it an excellent text for students.

Border walls, shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, separated families at the border, island detention camps: migration is at the centre of contemporary political and academic debates. This ground-breaking Handbook offers an exciting and original analysis of critical research on themes such as these, drawing on cutting-edge theories from an interdisciplinary and international group of leading scholars. With a focus on spatial analysis and geographical context, this volume highlights a range of theoretical, methodological and regional approaches to migration research, while remaining attuned to the underlying politics that bring critical scholars together. Divided into six thematic sections, including new areas in critical migration research, the book covers the key questions galvanizing migration scholars today, such as issues surrounding refugees and border militarization. Each chapter explores new themes, expanding on core theories to convey fresh insight to contemporary research. A key resource for migration, refugee and border studies this Handbook provides an in-depth analysis of the topic, covering a vast array of research ideas with a specific focus on the geographical aspects of migration. Scholars working on migration, refugees, asylum, transnationalism, humanitarianism and borders will find this an invaluable read. Contributors: J. Allsopp, I. Atac, N. Bagheri, A. Blunt, J. Bonnerjee, A. Burridge, M. Casas-Cortes, A. Chikanda, S. Cobarrubias, K. Coddington, M. Collyer, D. Conlon, J. Crush, T. Davies, S. Dhesi, P. Ehrkamp, J.L. Fluri, G. Garelli, N. Gill, M. Gilmartin, C. Goh, M. Griffiths, E. Ho, J. Hyndman, A. Isakjee, R. Jones, B. Kasparek, P. Kelly, S. Kok, A.-K. Kuusisto-Arponen, R.B. Lacy, J. Loyd, K. MacFarlane, C. Maharaj, L. Martin, D.E. Martinez, E. Mavroudi, C. Menjivar, K. Mitchell, B. Muller, P. Pallister-Wilkins, N. Paszkiewicz, T. Raeymaekers, R. Rogers, R. Rotter, A. Sabhlok, R. Sampson, M. Schmidt-Sembdner, A. Secor, J. Slack, E. Steinhilper, S.D. Walsh, H. van Houtum, M. Walton-Roberts, K. Wee, Y. Weima, B. Yeoh

A clear and concise A-to-Z of keywords that echo our current human rights crisis As millions are forced to leave their nations of origin as a result of political, economic, and environmental peril, rising racism and xenophobia have led to increasingly harsh policies. A mass-mediated political circus obscures both histories of migration and longstanding definitions of words for people on the move, fomenting widespread linguistic confusion. Under this circus tent, there is no regard for history, legal advocacy, or jurisprudence. Yet in a world where the differences between "undocumented migrant" and "asylum seeker" can mean life or death, words have weighty consequences. A timely antidote to this circus, A is for Asylum Seeker reframes key words that describe people on the move. Written to correct the de-meaning of terms by rhetoric and policies based on dehumanization and profitable incarceration, this glossary provides an intersectional and historically grounded consideration of the words deployed in enflamed debate. Skipping some letters of the alphabet while repeating others, thirty terms cover everything from Asylum-seeker to Zero Tolerance Policy. Each entry begins with a contemporary or historical story for illustration and then proceeds to discuss the language politics of the word. The book balances terms affected by current political debates-such as "migrant," "refugee," and "illegal alien"-and terms that offer historical context to these controversies, such as "fugitive," "unhoused," and "vagrant." Rendered in both English and Spanish, this book offers a unique perspective on the journeys, histories, challenges, and aspirations of people on the move. Enhancing the book's utility as an educational and organizing resource, the author provides a list of works for further reading as well as a directory of immigration-advocacy organizations throughout the United States. ***** Un claro y breve abecedario de palabras clave que hacen eco en nuestra crisis humanitaria presente. Mientras millones son forzados de huir de sus naciones de origen debido a peligro politico, economico, y ecologico, racismo y xenofobia han llevado a politicas mas y mas severas. Un circo politico en los medios oculta a ambas las historias de inmigracion y las definiciones antiguas de palabras para personas en movimiento, creando confusion linguistica amplia. Bajo esta carpa de circo, no hay consideracion para historia, defensa legal, o jurisprudencia. Pero en un mundo donde las diferencias entre "migrante indocumentade" y "solicitante de asilo" pueden ser la diferencia entre vida y muerte, palabras tienen consecuencias graves. Un antidoto oportuno a este circo, A de Asilo re-enmarca palabras claves que describen a personas en movimiento. Escrito para corregir la de-significacion de terminos por retorica y politicas basadas en deshumanizacion y encarcelacion lucrosa, este glosario provee una consideracion interseccional e historica de las palabras usadas en debate inflamado. Brincando a unas letras del alfabeto mientras repite a otras, treinta terminos cubren todo desde Asilo a Tolerancia Cero. Cada articulo empieza con una historia contemporanea u historica para ilustrar, y despues discute la politica alrededor de la palabra. El libro balancea terminos impactados por debates politicos contemporaneos-como "migrante," "refugiado" y "extranjero ilegal"-y terminos que ofrecen contexto historico a estas controversias, como "fugitivo" "sin casa" y "vagante." Escrito en ingles y espanol, este libro ofrece una perspectiva unica en las jornadas, historias, retos, y aspiraciones de personas en movimiento. Aumentando la utilidad del libro como un recurso educacional y organizacional, la autora provee una lista de obras para mas lectura, igual que un directorio de organizaciones de defensa de inmigrantes a traves de los Estados Unidos.

Dervla Murphy's first epic journey from Ireland to India by bicycle, "Full Tilt", is a complete adventure in itself. It is also the first volume of a trilogy of experience that continues with Tibetan Foothold. For the young Irish woman, once she had got herself to India by July 1963, immersed herself in the life of the sub-continent, working for six months in an orphanage for Tibetan children in the refugee camps of Northern India. Here, she fell in love with the 'Tiblets' - the cheerful, tough, uncomplaining, independent and affectionate children of the new Tibet-in-exile. Dervla vividly describes day-to-day life in the camps where hundreds of children are living in squalor while a handful of dedicated volunteers do their best to feed and care for them, attempting to keep disease at bay with limited resources. She pitches in with a helping hand wherever it is needed and finds time to visit the Dalai Lama and his entourage. Dervla's heart-rending account is interwoven with her own observations on the particular cultural and social problems associated with trying to help a people who have lived in isolation from the rest of the world and she becomes a perceptive witness to the inner realities and sometime inadequacies of aid-work. First published in 1966, "Tibetan Foothold" not only confirmed Dervla's status as a traveller, but also revealed her to be a truly independent voice and an acute observer of politics and society.

Scholarship on immigration to America is a coin with two sides: it asks both how America changed immigrants, and how they changed America. Were the immigrants uprooted from their ancestral homes, leaving everything behind, or were they transplanted, bringing many aspects of their culture with them? Although historians agree with the transplantation concept, the notion of the melting pot, which suggests a complete loss of the immigrant culture, persists in the public mind. The Oxford Handbook of American Immigration and Ethnicity bridges this gap and offers a comprehensive and nuanced survey of American racial and ethnic development, assessing the current status of historical research and simultaneously setting the goals for future investigation. Early immigration historians focused on the European migration model, and the ethnic appeal of politicians such as Fiorello La Guardia and James Michael Curley in cities with strong ethno-political histories like New York and Boston. But the story of American ethnicity goes far beyond Ellis Island. Only after the 1965 Immigration Act and the increasing influx of non-Caucasian immigrants, scholars turned more fully to the study of African, Asian and Latino migrants to America. This Handbook brings together thirty eminent scholars to describe the themes, methodologies, and trends that characterize the history and current debates on American immigration. The Handbook's trenchant chapters provide compelling analyses of cutting-edge issues including identity, whiteness, borders and undocumented migration, immigration legislation, intermarriage, assimilation, bilingualism, new American religions, ethnicity-related crime, and pan-ethnic trends. They also explore the myth of "model minorities" and the contemporary resurgence of anti-immigrant feelings. A unique contribution to the field of immigration studies, this volume considers the full racial and ethnic unfolding of the United States in its historical context.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, signed on 12th August 1949, defines necessary humanitarian protections for civilians during armed conflict and occupation. One-hundred-and-ninety-six countries are signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and this particular facet has laid the foundations for all subsequent humanitarian global law. How did the world - against seemingly insurmountable odds - draft and legislate this landmark in humanitarian international law? The Fourth Geneva Convention for Civilians draws on archival research across seven countries to bring together the Cold War interventions, founding motives and global idealisms that shaped its conception. Gilad Ben-Nun draws on the three key principles that the convention brought about to consider the recent events where its application has either been successfully applied or circumvented, from the 2009 Gaza War, the war crimes tribunal in the former Yugoslavia and Nicaragua vs. the United States to the contemporary conflict in Syria. Weaving historical archival research, a grounding in the concepts of international law, and insightful analysis of recent events, this book will appeal to a broad range of students, academics and legal practitioners.

"Understanding the Stranger" presents case studies of innovative initiatives from across the UK that aim to mediate tension and build bridges between local host communities and asylum seekers and refugees, with examples drawn from statutory and non-statutory sectors, including very small-scale grassroots projects. The common messages revealed by these initiatives as well as by other relevant research and projects are explored in an introduction from the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees in the UK (ICAR)."Understanding the Strange"r provides an invaluable resource of ideas, guidance, and contacts for practitioners to assist them in their work and to make lessons learnt in one neighbourhood available to others. The messages it offers will also be of vital interest to policymakers and funders when making decisions about strategy and the kinds of initiatives that should be supported in the future.

The international refugee regime is fundamentally broken. Designed in the wake of World War II to provide protection and assistance, the system is unable to address the record numbers of persons displaced by conflict and violence today. States have put up fences and adopted policies to deny, deter, and detain asylum seekers. People recognized as refugees are routinely denied rights guaranteed by international law. The results are dismal for the millions of refugees around the world who are left with slender prospects to rebuild their lives or contribute to host communities. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore lay bare the underlying global crisis of responsibility. The Arc of Protection adopts a revisionist and critical perspective that examines the original premises of the international refugee regime. Aleinikoff and Zamore identify compromises at the founding of the system that attempted to balance humanitarian ideals and sovereign control of their borders by states. This book offers a way out of the current international morass through refocusing on responsibility-sharing, seeing the humanitarian-development divide in a new light, and putting refugee rights front and center.

The early part of the 21st century has been marked by widespread social upheaval and geographical displacement of people. This book examines how refugees, asylum-seekers, locals and professional refugee workers make sense of asylum and refuge in the context of current UK asylum policies.

The coerced displacement of people within the borders of their own countries by armed conflicts, internal strife, and systematic violations of human rights has become a pervasive feature of the post Cold War era. The plight of the displaced poses a challenge that is not only humanitarian but a threat to the security and stability of countries, regions, and, through a chain effect, the international system. This book contains case studies of ten countries that have suffered severe problems of internal displacement: Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, and the Sudan in Africa; the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus in Europe; Tajikistan and Sri Lanka in Asia; and Colombia and Peru in the Americas. The contributors are Thomas Greene, Randolph C. Kent, Jennifer McLean, Larry Minear, Liliana Obreg?n, Amir Pasic, Hiram A. Ruiz, Colin Scott, H.L. Seneviratne, Maria Stavropoulou, and Thomas G. Weiss. Additionally, the contributors and editors offer recommendations for further action.

This book tells the story of how families separated across borders write-and learn new ways of writing-in pursuit of love and money. According to the UN, 244 million people currently live outside their countries of birth. The human drama behind these numbers is that parents are often separated from children, brothers from sisters, lovers from each other. Migration, undertaken in response to problems of the wallet, also poses problems for the heart. Writing for Love and Money shows how families separated across borders turn to writing to address these problems. Based on research with transnational families in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and North America, it describes how people write to sustain meaningful relationships across distance and to better their often impoverished circumstances. Despite policy makers' concerns about "brain drain," the book reveals that immigrants' departures do not leave homelands wholly educationally hobbled. Instead, migration promotes experiences of literacy learning in transnational families as they write to reach the two life goals that globalization consistently threatens: economic solvency and familial intimacy.

Issues of displacement and dispossession have become defining characteristics of a globalised 21st century. People are moving within and across national borders, whether displaced, relocated or moving in search of better livelihoods. This book brings theoretical understandings of migration and displacement together with empirical illustrations of the creative, cultural ways in which communities reflect upon their experiences of change, and how they respond, including through poetry and story-telling, photography and other art forms, exploring the scope for building communities of solidarity and social justice. The concluding chapters identify potential implications for policy and professional practice to promote communities of solidarity, addressing the structural causes of widening inequalities, taking account of different interests, including those related to social class, gender, ethnicity, age, ability and faith.

This book explores the roles of religion in the current refugee crisis of Europe. Combining sociological, philosophical, and theological accounts of this crisis, renowned scholars from across Europe examine how religion has been employed to call either for eliminating or for enforcing the walls around "Fortress Europe." Religion, they argue, is radically ambiguous, simultaneously causing social conflict and social cohesion in times of turmoil. Charting the constellations, the conflicts, and the consequences of the current refugee crisis, this book thus answers the need for succinct but sustained accounts of the intersections of religion and migration.

This book explores the challenges and opportunities involved in conducting research with members of immigrant, refugee and other minoritized communities. Through first-hand reflective accounts, contributors explore community-based collaborative work, and suggest important implications for applied linguistics, educational research and anthropological investigations of language, literacy and culture. By critically reflecting on the power and limits of university-based research conducted on behalf of, or in collaboration with, members of local communities and by exploring the complicated relationships, dynamics and understandings that emerge, the chapters collectively demonstrate the value of reflecting on the possibilities and challenges of the research process, including the ethical and emotional dimensions of participating in collaborative research.

The global political economy is currently in the midst of a refugee crisis, one that is complex and that remains poorly researched and under-theorized within both economics and political science. There is little understanding of the many diverse political, economic and geographical situations that led to it, and refugees are all too often included in the category of forced migrants. Refugee Crisis and Third-World Economies provides a much-needed corrective to such blind spots and oversimplifications. The ten chapters written by eminent scholars offer a unique interdisciplinary investigation into the complicated ramifications of the refugee crisis. It identifies the major socio-political factors that create refugee crises, including political instability, unemployment, a lack of GDP growth, and a lack of medical facilities. It offers unique insights into the crisis's economic impact on asylum countries. It discusses how relevant states, UN agencies, NGOs, and refugees themselves can work together to improve the lot of refugees. And perhaps most importantly, it provides detailed empirical investigations into specific refugee groups and their struggle for legal assistance, socio-political recognition, and personal stability. For its theoretical rigor and granular empirical insights, this book is essential reading for both researchers and policymakers working on refugee crises worldwide.