Forced Migration Online: Blog

Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that the environment, people’s lives and livelihoods are being transformed as a result of climate change. This has been linked to increased levels of environmental and weather-related disasters and higher levels of displacement. The RSC has produced a set of resources which debate the issues - including numbers, definitions and modalities - and the tension between the need for research and the need to act. Prepared to complement Forced Migration Review 31 and the FMO Research Guide on Climate Change and Displacement, FMO also hosts a new Resource Summary on the topic which provides links to many key resources, websites and documents related to climate change, environmental change, disasters and forced migration.

• Resource Summary
• Research Guide
• Forced Migration Review 31

‘The State, Nation, Citizen: rethinking repatriation’ by Katy Long, the latest in the series of Refugee Studies Centre Working Papers, is now available online.

This paper offers a recontextualisation of the problems posed by the idea of repatriation within the structures of the liberal-democratic international community by providing a historical contextualisation for the political concepts underpinning repatriation. This demonstrates that the essential difficulty in understanding refugee repatriation as a “solution” to displacement is a result of the fundamental problems of attempting to reconcile a political philosophy of universal human rights with the principle of nation-state sovereignty. The paper then argues that post-1985 attempts to reconceptualise repatriation were fundamentally flawed not only because they were largely prompted by a narrowing of the political space for asylum and the need to find alternative practical solutions rather than any foundational approach, but because in reducing theory to practice, repatriation was depoliticised into “return”, reducing the likelihood of durable solutions based on citizenship and the remaking of state-citizen bonds which required an explicitly political context. Examining empirical evidence, in particular from the case of Guatemalan “organised and collective” return from January 1993, the paper makes clear that refugee groups are often highly-organised political communities, whose decision-making abilities have long-been recognised (particularly in studies of unassisted repatriation)8 but rarely encompassed within official pathways to return. It argues that as demonstrated in Guatemala, recognition of this more direct and politicised refugee engagement in displacement resolution offers an opportunity to strengthen both concepts of refugee dignity and the durability of return.

• State, Nation, Citizen: rethinking repatriation (PDF file 328 KB)
• Refugee Studies Centre Working Papers

The film ‘Iraqis in Egypt: Time is Running Out’ is now available to view online. The documentary looks at the lives of six Iraqi families who have been forced to flee their homes and are now living as refugees in the massive urban sprawl of Cairo. As the years pass by, their situations are becoming increasingly desperate, with little or no rights in their country of first asylum.

• Iraqis in Egypt: Time is Running Out

UPDATE: Visit iraqisinegypt.org for the latest media releases, films, podcasts and more.

The photographic exhibition Guatemalan forced migration: the politics of care in representing refugees explores the mechanisms of representation used for forced migrants that stage appropriate refugee identities to justify the need for humanitarian care. The exhibition explores these issues through photo-documentary work with indigenous Guatemalan forced migrants living in the former refugee camp of La Gloria in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. The project is a collaboration between photographer, Manuel Gil, and doctoral research student in Sociology, Óscar F. Gil-García.

The photos and descriptions are now available to view on Forced Migration Online. The photos are complemented with a podcast in which Óscar F. Gil-García is interviewed about his work on the project.

• Photos and descriptions
• Podcast

This podcast was recorded at a lecture organised by the Refugee Studies Centre and sponsored by Clifford Chance, the event was held on Wednesday 18th June 2008 at the offices of Clifford Chance, London. Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN gave the lecture which was entitled ‘Reputational Hazard: Rescuing Refugees in the Era of Illegal Immigration and Terrorism’.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

This podcast was recorded at the Refugee Studies Centre’s Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture which was on Wednesday 21st May 2008 at Somerville College, University of Oxford. The Elizabeth Colson Lecture is held annually in honour of Professor Elizabeth Colson, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University gave this years lecture on the subject of Zomia.

“Zomia is a shorthand reference to the huge, massif of mainland Southeast Asia, running from the Central Highlands of Vietnam westward all the way to northeastern India and including the southwest Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and western Guangxi.”

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

This podcast was recorded by Radio Netherlands Worldwide at the first of The Hague Debates on Thursday, 22 May 2008 in the Peace Palace and is entitled ‘When home gets too hot: Human Displacement and Climate Change in International Law’. The debate features Professor Roger Zetter, Director of the Refugee Studies Centre.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

The film ‘3 Years On’ is now available to view online. The film presents the views and experiences of representatives from NGOs working in Aceh on tsunami reconstruction in 2007. By this stage the majority of reconstruction and resettlement of residents of Aceh has taken place or was close to completion. The interviews offer reflections on the completion of this process and problems that still need to be overcome.

• 3 Years On

The film ‘Forgotten in the Mountains‘ is now available to view online. The film looks at the issue of forced displacement of indigenous Papuans in (West) Papua, Indonesia.

Papuan fears for their future have recently become focused on the issue of migration from the rest of Indonesia into their homeland. Following the failure of special autonomy since 2001 to deliver health, education and infrastructure benefits to Papuan villagers, or even a small measure of indigenous autonomy in key security and political matters, Papuans have come to feel that divide and rule sums up Jakarta’s approach across the board. Jakarta has been busily creating unwanted new regencies and provinces in Papua as well as pouring booming mineral revenues into the region. But this has merely succeeded in creating a few new elite Papuan beneficiaries of Indonesia’s endemic corruption and setting Papuans against Papuans for control of this corruption. More seriously it has been the pretext and occasion for bringing even more potential settlers—both bureaucrats and soldiers—into Papua as new military commands as well as bureaucracies proliferate. The new demographic balance in Papua pits a large minority of settlers—both “old”, officially sponsored transmigrasi ones and ongoing “spontaneous” ones (mostly traders and small bisnis people from eastern Indonesia)—against an almost dwindling Papuan one, beset by discriminatory birth control policies, an unchecked HIV-AIDS pandemic and 45 years of repression and displacement.

• Forgotten in the Mountains

Issue 30 of Forced Migration Review with its feature theme on Burma is now in the digital library. FMR is one of five journals available.

With the ‘Saffron revolution’ of September 2007, Burma was catapulted into the centre of international attention. It was briefly headline news as people monitored the regime’s response and watched for hints of progress towards democracy and the restoration of rights. With little action on either front (and no visible resurgence of violence or protest), interest has since waned. This issue of FMR aims to help bring the crisis of forced displacement of Burmese people back into the international spotlight.

The feature section on Burma includes 29 articles exploring the extent of the displacement crisis, factors affecting displaced people and the search for solutions. The issue also includes 19 articles on other aspects of forced migration.

• FMR 30: Burma’s displaced people