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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Refugees & political asylum
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more
at www.luminosoa.org. What happens when refugees encounter
Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their
resettlement? From April to November 1975, the US military
processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated
territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted
asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn
Le Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she
calls the refugee settler condition: the fraught positionality of
refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is
predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population.
This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical geography:
first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is
linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of
Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous
resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and
Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the
Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping
modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers
tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between
refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.
The story of Raoul Wallenberg - the Swedish businessman who, at
immense personal risk, rescued many of Budapest's Jews from the
Holocaust and subsequently disappeared into the Soviet prison
system - is one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.
Yet the complete story of his life and fate can only be told now -
and for the first time in this book - following access to the
Russian and Swedish archival sources, previously not used. Born
into a wealthy Swedish family, Wallenberg was a moderately
successful businessman when he was recruited by the War Refugee
Board to manage the rescue mission of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Once in Budapest, he created and distributed so called 'protective
passports' (or Schutz-Pass) among the Jewish population, thus
managing to save up to 8,000 people. Through the 'safe houses' and
clandestine networks that he established around the city, many
thousands more were saved from the concentration camps. Yet, when
Budapest was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, Wallenberg
was arrested and taken to Moscow. One of the reasons for his arrest
was that the Soviets could not understand the nature of his
mission: formally he was a Swedish diplomat but he worked for an
American agency. On the basis of previously unseen Soviet sources,
Bengt Jangfeldt has been able to reconstruct the events surrounding
Wallenberg's arrest almost hour by hour and, for the first time, he
presents a highly plausible theory about the reasons why Wallenberg
was arrested and what happened to him after he disappeared. With
access to previously unpublished material, Jangfeldt provides the
first complete account of Wallenberg's life - from his childhood in
Sweden to his disappearance in a Russian jail - and sheds important
new light on one of the greatest heroes of World War II. This is a
thrilling tale of intrigue, espionage and heroism which will
captivate all readers of modern European history.
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.
In this age of uncertainty, there is the need for ideas that
transcend the limitations of party political, or left/right
thinking, in resolving the unprecedented problems of our time.
Technological Civilisation is here presented as a focal point for a
fresh perspective of both national and international issues. The
tensions between America and China indicate the possibility of a
new Cold War, and this would be disastrous for the planet in
diverting attention away from the cooperation needed in attending
to climate change and other threats to the environment. In the
countries of the West, democracy as we know it is beginning to
disintegrate. This is made evident through the collapse of voting
figures and party memberships, as well as a spirit of disillusion.
There are some topics which politicians are loathed to address, and
in the sphere of the approaching environmental crisis, the
population explosion is the most prominent. Leading scientists have
clearly demonstrated, that even if all efforts are put towards
reversing climate change through maximising renewable energy
sources, unless population control is achieved on a sufficient
level, all will be in vain. The population question is probably
pushed ahead to a greater degree in this book than will be found
elsewhere as a topic for public debate. In concentrating on
Technological Civilisation, it is possible to discern the
inter-connection of problems, and this leads to constructive
proposals for the regeneration of democracy, the reform of the
financial-industrial system, and the emergence of an upwardly
mobile and free egalitarian society.
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