Forced Migration Online: Blog

Issue 34 of Forced Migration Review (FMR) is now available in the digital library. This issue focuses on the topic of “Urban Displacement”.

Articles explore the complexity of the challenges faced by those displaced into urban areas and by those seeking to protect and assist them, and argue for the need for a radical rethinking of approaches by the international community.

The issue also includes a spotlight on Haiti and the use of standards to shape response and recovery after the earthquake in January, plus a selection of articles on subjects such as Mauritania, South Africa, Timor-Leste, Colombia, Pakistan, the new Kampala Convention, family separation in the UK, cross-border mobility of Iraqi refugees, and maternal mortality among conflict-affected populations.

FMR is also published in French, Spanish and Arabic.

Forced Migration Online’s latest resource summary, which complements FMR 34, is also available to view online. It provides links to key resources, websites and documents exploring contemporary debate on these issues, as well as links to wider issues concerned with human rights and displacement.

Full Issue

• FMR 2010, No. 34:  Urban Displacement
  

Resource Summary

• Urban Displacement

Individual Articles

• Adapting to urban displacement
• Meeting humanitarian challenges in urban areas
• Protection challenges for persons of concern in urban settings
• Urban displacement and migration in Colombia
• Invisibility of urban IDPs in Europe
• Profiling urban IDPs
• Improving living conditions in Bossaso, Somalia
• The poor and the displaced in Khartoum
• The journey towards social exclusion in Colombia
• Desperate lives: urban refugee women in Malaysia and Egypt
• Urban refugee health: meeting the challenges
• Support systems among urban IDPs in Georgia
• Education and self-reliance in Egypt
• Urban shelter and the limits of humanitarian action
• Refugees and space in urban areas in Malaysia
• Urban IDPs in Uganda: victims of institutional convenience
• Transition, connection and uncertainty: IDPs in Kampala
• Urban Somali refugees in Yemen
• Displacement within the city: Colombia
• The role of municipal authorities
• Surviving in the city
• ATM cash assistance: does it work?
• Cities of Solidarity: local integration in Latin America
• City of Sanctuary – a UK initiative for hospitality
• Hosting ‘the enemy’
• “Legitimate” protection spaces: UNHCR’s 2009 policy
• Using standards to shape response and recovery in Haiti
• Beyond good intentions: implementing the Kampala Convention
• Norwegian Refugee Council: Shade netting: simple design – effective relief
• RAISE Initiative: The blind spot of the Millennium Development Goals
• International Displacement Monitoring Centre: Displacement in urban areas: implications for humanitarian action
• Cross-border mobility of Iraqi refugees
• Non-nationals displaced in South Africa
• Social mobilisation in IDP camps in Pakistan
• Flexible mandate for protection
• IDP camp closure and gender inequality in Timor-Leste
• Family breakdown in Bogotá
• Living death: separation in the UK
• Voluntary repatriation and the participation of Mauritanian refugees

This podcast was recorded at the Refugee Studies Centre’s Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture which was on Wednesday 18th November 2009 at the Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford. The Harrell-Bond Lecture is held annually in honour of Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, founding former director of the Centre and of the academic field of refugee studies or forced migration studies. Jan Egeland, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and currently director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs gave the 2009 lecture on the subject of political deals and durable solutions for the displaced.

• Podcast
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The Implications for Sustainable Peace and Democracy
Two-Day Workshop, University of Oxford. 21st – 22nd May 2009

This two-day workshop aims to examine how a ‘non-negotiated solution’ to the Colombian conflict might impact on the country’s political and economic future, and on the social fabric which has been so damaged by decades of violence.

Jointly organized by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford and the International Centre for Participation Studies at the University of Bradford, the workshop will bring together in Oxford prominent speakers from Colombia, the US and Europe.

Space is limited so please register early. Further details and registration forms can be obtained from Alexandra Abello Colak at: a.abellocolak@bradford.ac.uk

• Event on Forced Migration Online

This is a post about the new Spanish language version of ‘Guatemalan forced migration: The politics of care in representing refugees’

La exhibición fotográfica “Migración Forzada de Guatemaltecos: Las políticas de caridad en la representación de refugiados” explora los mecanismos de representación usados para migrantes forzados, mostrando identidades apropiadas de refugiados para justificar la necesidad de apoyo humanitario. La exhibición responde a estos cuestionamientos a través de un trabajo documental con fotografías de migrantes forzados indígenas procedentes de Guatemala, viviendo en el asentamiento de La Gloria, anteriormente un campamento de refugiados, en el estado de Chiapas en México. El proyecto es una colaboración entre el fotógrafo, Manuel Gil, y Candidato a Doctor en Sociología, Óscar F. Gil-García.

Las fotos y descripciones están disponibles para ver en La Revista Migraciones Forzadas. Las fotos son acompañadas por una entrevista (podcast) en donde Óscar F. Gil-García es entrevistado sobre su trabajo en el proyecto.

• Fotos y descripciones
• Podcast (en ingles)

‘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 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, Oscar 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 Oscar F. Gil-García is interviewed about his work on the project.

• Photos and descriptions
• Podcast

Between 21st April and 3 May 2008 the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) held a photographic exhibition looking at the subject of Forced Migration in Guatemala, the venue was The Gallery at Oxford Town Hall. The photographer Manuel Gil worked in collaboration with Oscar Gil, a Visiting Study Fellow at the RSC and doctoral candidate at the University of California at Santa Barbara. To find out more, you can download and view a PDF file of the RSC’s 2008 Programme of Events.

• Photos and descriptions
• Podcast

As part of the London International Documentary Film Festival (29th March – 5th April 2008) four films were screened on the topic of forced migration.

Saturday 29 March, 8.00pm Renoir Cinema

“La Americana” (The American)

Dir. Nicholas Bruckman/ Co-Dir. John Mattiuzzi, USA/Bolivia/Mexico, 2008, Special Preview

October 2000, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Carmen, a young single mother, faces a life-changing catastrophe when her nine-year-old daughter is badly injured in a bus accident.

Unable to pay the hospital bills and for specialized care, Carmen makes the dangerous journey to the US to work illegally, staying for 6 years to raise what she believes will be enough money to support her daughter for life.

But when she returns home to Bolivia she discovers her savings are nowhere near enough. Should she stay with her ailing daughter, or make the perilous journey back to the US for a second time?

A portrait of the human side of the current immigration crisis in America.

Tickets £7/£6 Curzon members
Box office: 0871 703 3991, Renoir Cinema

Saturday 5 April, 11.05pm Stevenson Theatre, British Museum

Next Station (Próxima Estación)

Director: Estela Ilárraz, 2007, Spain, 69min, UK Première

A group of Ecuadorean immigrants in Madrid. They came to Spain to work, to support their families, but they desperately want to go home.

But if they go to Ecuador to visit their families, they know they will never again be able to get back to Madrid to work.

Ya Oromia

Director: Amanda Walsh, 2006, Australia, 5min, European Première

In the overcrowded housing estates of North Melbourne lives a young African woman, an Oromo, forced to leave her beloved homeland and family in fear of persecution.

Now she is reunited with her daughters, after more than six years enforced separation. The family must adjust to living together again in a new country.

For My Children (Por Mis Hijos)

Director: Aymee Cruzaleguí, Spain, 2007, 16min, World Première

What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, struggles with the pain of solitude, forced to live away from her family in order to support them.

Tickets £3.00
Box office: 0207 323 8181, British Museum

For full programme see the LIDF08 website.

• London International Documentary Film Festival
• Forced migration films on FMO