Forced Migration Online: Blog

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.”

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In this podcast Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond and Prof Roger Zetter discuss the evolution of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and of the academic field of refugee studies or forced migration studies. As the founding former director of the RSC and the current director respectively, and with a long shared history of collaboration since the centre was established, Harrell-Bond and Zetter are well placed to discuss its early years and the changes it has undergone. In this conversation, they also talk about the current state of refugee protection and the asylum process, and examine the responses of the international community, particularly UNHCR.

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