Generation,Displacement, and Deservedness among Karen Refugees in California

In this article, we draw on ethnographic interviews with sixteen Karen refugees living in San Diego, California to explore how experiences of exile, displacement, and resettlement differ along generational lines and complicate straightforward dichotomies between “involuntary refugees” and “economic migrants”. While older‐generation Karen experienced political violence and displacement first‐hand, younger‐generation Karen were born in refugee camps in Thailand and usually experienced violence and displacement through its impacts on extended families. Across both generations, Karen exerted agency in exile, displacement, and diaspora. The older generation used stays in refugee camps strategically as a means of economically supporting family members in Burma, while the younger generation view resettlement in the US as a way of achieving educational aspirations. This research points to the importance of generation as a dimension of refugee experience and to the problem of reinforcing victimhood within refugee communities rather than acknowledging refugee agency and resilience.     

The Politics of IDP Education Provision: Negotiating identity and schooling in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

The expansion of Islamic State control in Iraq led to massive internal displacement. Iraq now has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world. Many families found relative safety in government‐controlled towns throughout the country; a large proportion sought refuge in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), having fled from its northern territories where Arabs, Kurds, Yezidis, Assyrians and Turkmen each claimed demographic dominance. Consequently, the KRI has become a sanctuary to almost a million Iraqi IDPs of varying ethnic backgrounds and cultures. This article draws on extensive regional fieldwork to explore the relationship between education provision for displaced populations and broader ethno‐sectarian and socio‐political influences. The article will unpack the research question: “In what ways does education for IDPs in KRI exacerbate or mitigate conflict?” and will highlight key areas in which misunderstanding of identity politics has resulted in reduced quality education for displaced populations.     

The social implications of population displacement and resettlement: an overview with a focus on the Arab Middle East

Involuntary migration is broadly defined as displacement due to development projects, due to war or political upheaval or persecution, or due to natural disasters. The Middle East is considered as having its share of displacement. Migration of an involuntary nature is not covered very well in the literature. This article focuses on Sudanese or Nubian experiences, the Lebanese civil war, the Palestinian diaspora, and relief efforts. The literature review merges studies of refugee populations, victims of disasters, and relocation into a common theoretical orientation and examines the implications for displacement. Initial studies of population movements are identified as having a focus on the necessity and inevitability of dislocation resulting from development and modernization. Relief efforts receive more attention than group movements, and certain populations are at greater risk of migration. Migration is considered to be a demographic regulator as well as part of a natural process of adaptation. Movement within modernization theory is viewed as healthy and based on Western experiences. Case studies of displaced populations refute some of the assumed beneficial effects. Hansen and Oliver-Smith's articles reveal some of the problems with displacement theories. Attention is drawn to involuntary migration as a social event rather than a passive reaction to events, and several distinctions are made about types of migration and resettlement as a process. A new term for displacement from natural disasters is added (environmental refugees). A number of good case studies on involuntary migration are noted. The author posits that the relationship between push forces and strategies of adaptation should be analyzed as an interactive process that continuously informs decision making on national and local levels. Geographers are recognized by Oliver-Smith as among the first to clarify the role of development in creating environmental hazards. The analyses point to underdevelopment as a condition that forces the poor and most vulnerable to move into vulnerable and hazardous economic and geographic circumstances. The Middle East experience emphasize war refugees. The Nubian experience reflects the unnoticed impact of development and the role of the state. The crossover between labor migration and displacement and the pastoral economy is not adequately addressed.     

When peace breaks out--Mozambican refugees: a study in socio-economic reintegration

The author discusses the reintegration of returning migrants who fled Mozambique or were internally displaced during the past two decades of war. The need for the development of national programs and policies to facilitate migrant resettlement is emphasized, with a focus on the creation of employment opportunities, vocational programs, and rural development strategies. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Climate‐Change Adaptation and Mitigation: Implications for Land Acquisition and Population Relocation

In response to the challenge of climate change developing‐country governments are evolving adaptation and mitigation programmes for which they are seeking international financing. This article presents the findings of a review of national action programmes and other interventions to assess their likely societal impacts with an emphasis on land‐use change, future land acquisitions, population displacement and resettlement. It considers the policy and development challenges involuntary resettlement in particular will pose, and assesses the robustness of current governance arrangements to manage them and cautions that at present the financing arrangements do not prioritise the legal protection of affected populations.     

Trans‐Local Communities in the Age of Transnationalism: Bosnians in Diaspora

Today, Bosnians represent one of the newly emerging and the most widely dispersed diasporic communities from the Balkans. There are large communities of Bosnians living in almost every European country, as well as throughout North America and Australia. Most were displaced during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war, in which 2.2 million people were forced to leave their homes, 1.6 million of whom looked for refuge abroad. In contrast with, and in response to, the enforced displacement, many members of the Bosnian diaspora have retained strong family and other “informal” social ties with both Bosnians in other countries and those still living in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH, or Bosnia). Such ties – focused on preservation of cultural memory and performance of distinct local identities – form the basis of the global network of the Bosnian diaspora and its link with the original home (land). In this paper, I briefly outline the links and networks that constitute diaspora, and then go on to explore the extent to which recent scholarly literature is able to “capture” the uniqueness and complexity of the Bosnian diasporic communities in Australia, the United States (U.S.) and Europe. Finally, I attempt to define the concept of “trans‐localism” and how it is (per)formed, and suggest that the predominantly “transnational” conceptual framework within the migration studies needs to be expanded to include “trans‐local” diasporic identity formation among displaced Bosnians and similar diaspora groups.     

Displacement risk: Unpacking a problematic concept for disaster risk reduction

“Displacement risk” is increasingly central to global policy discourse on disaster risk reduction (DRR), despite its vague formulation and inconsistent use. Different understandings of displacement, its complex relationship with vulnerability, and its ambiguous role as a necessary survival strategy for people in harm's way that also creates or exacerbates risk, hinder its clear conceptualization. This limits the clarity and value of recommendations to “reduce displacement risk” for DRR. The explicit consideration of two complementary aspects of risk related to displacement could support more comprehensive, actionable discourses: (1) the “risk stemming from displacement”, that is, any negative impact people might experience due to displacement, and (2) the “risk of remaining displaced”, that is, of people being displaced for a long time. Consideration of these aspects would allow to better include protection and durable solution perspectives within DRR, integrate displacement in disaster risk and loss assessments and add value to existing DRR efforts.     

Gendered Aspects of Conflict,Displacement and Peace Process in Turkey

The peace process in Turkey, since its inception, has not paid any attention to internal displacement or its gendered aspects. This study analyses how displaced women remember the gendered aspects of displacement and perceive reconciliation and peace. The analysis, based on interviews with 42 internally displaced women, shows that changing domestic and international contexts have substantive impact on how displaced women remember their stories and the meaning they attach to their ethnic identities. Consequently, it suggests that if the peace process is re‐initiated, leaders need to take into consideration that each component of reconciliation (justice, peace, trust towards the state, intergroup relations and truth‐telling) has different difficulties to be overcome when the gendered aspect of displacement is taken into account and consider return not only as a realistic demand but also as a political wish.     

Principles of Protection for Internally Displaced Persons

For forced migrants who have not left their country but are internally displaced persons, human rights law provides an important framework through which to analyse and address their plight. Two principal reasons underpin this assertion.
First, owing to the compelling need: human rights violations cut across all phases of internal displacement, causing its occurrence, characterizing the conditions of physical insecurity and material deprivation in which the internally displaced often find themselves, and impeding equitable and lasting solutions.
Second, as internally displaced persons remain within the territory of their state, refugee law does not apply and, instead, human rights law provides the fundamental basis for addressing their plight. In addition to human rights law, other standards of international law are also relevant, namely international humanitarian law when displacement occurs in situations of armed conflict and refugee law by analogy.
Drawing on these three standards of international law, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement have been developed which set out what protection should mean for internally displaced persons in all phases of displacement. This article traces the origins and provides an overview of the content of the Guiding Principles, the text of which is reproduced in full in the Appendix.     

Globalized Hopes and Disillusions

In contrast to the common tendency to see war as the result of leadership decisions based on risk assessments, and political and economic considerations about gains or losses, we use a constructivist and institutional perspective to historicize and politicize the way “nation‐state interests” and “nation‐state preferences” even in a decision to go to war are socially constructed and culturally embedded. We maintain that with the end of the Cold War, many societies found themselves at a crossroads where they had to resolve internal conflicts in regards to neoliberal globalization. These internal conflicts and a crisis of identity, between those who supported the principle of globalization and regarded it as a promise for democracy, openness, liberty and peace, and those who saw it as a danger to their exceptionality and distinctiveness, ended in wars (either internal wars or external wars) when the objectors of neoliberal globalization succeeded in creating an institutional turn which presented war as the “efficient,” “necessary,” “legitimate”, or “desired” solution to the new threatening reality. We demonstrate the validity of this argument by using Israel as a test case, examining how institutional changes in the 1990s, arising from internal societal conflicts around the Oslo Agreements, led the state to move from the brink of peace to new wars despite exogenous objections to its policy.     

A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism? From Working‐Class “Ethnics” To a “Multicultural Middle‐Class”

This article analyses the changing socio‐economic profile of the “multicultural” section of the Australian population, in the past officially referred to as people of “non‐English‐speaking background” (NESB). After importing low‐skilled NESB labor to service the manufacturing boom of the post‐war decades, at the end of the 1970s, following economic restructuring, the Australian immigration program was refocused on skilled intake which resulted in immigrants increasingly becoming a middle‐class demographic. Over the past three decades, a “multicultural middle class” (MMC) has been created from two sources: the intake of highly skilled NESB immigrants and upwardly mobile second and third migrant generations. The article documents this demographic change using census and immigration data, and discusses what it may mean for the future of Australian multiculturalism, which, according to many analysts, is in crisis and requires re‐articulation.     

Financial capacity and sustainability of ordinary nonprofits

This article divides financial issues into capacity and sustainability in two time frames: long and short. Long term emphasizes maintaining services; short term emphasizes resiliency. An organization's long‐term financial capacity is sustainable if its rate of change is sufficient to maintain assets at their replacement cost. A key contribution of this study is a sustainability principle that gives managers short‐term budget surplus targets needed to achieve this objective. The formulas are applied to national data to give a picture of the sector and establish benchmarks for “normal” practice. “Ordinary nonprofits” are active public charities without endowments that are not primarily membership associations or grant makers.     

Broken Promises and Lost Dreams: Navigating Asylum in the United States

Nearly 65 million people around the world have been displaced by war, conflict, and persecution since 2014 (UNHCR; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2015). This yields an average of 42,000 people refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced every day. Displacement has adverse and disruptive consequences, including mental health problems (e.g., anxiety, depression), impaired interpersonal relationships, and heightened conflict. These consequences are compounded by profound ambiguity associated with navigating asylum in the United States. In this article, we describe the treatment of a couple from Syria who is seeking asylum in the United States. Informed by personal and professional experience, this case illustrates how ambiguous loss theory and awareness of relevant legal processes enhance our understanding of working with asylum seekers.     

Posttraumatic Psychological Distress and Resettlement: The Need for a Different Practice in Assisting Refugee Families

Social work practitioners are increasingly confronted with couples and families who have come from war-torn countries. Refugees may have experienced genocide, organized violence, ethnic wars, displacement, and losses of various kinds. Such experiences will often be carried through the post-migratory period and obscure legitimate individual and family processes that are often evaluated through a psychopathology lens. In this context, there is a pressing need to be attentive to refugee situations around the world and to issues related to forced migration and its impact on families. In an attempt to fill the gap in the literature on intervention with refugee families, this article presents two of the most compelling aspects of the refugee experience that can have a lasting impact on families and couples: premigration traumatic events and their potential impact on the refugee resettlement experience, and postmigration social and psychological experiences. The concept of “trauma” is presented within the context of resettlement of asylum seekers and refugees. Key stressors documented as having an impact on the long-term well-being of individuals, families, and communities who have been touched by war and conflict are outlined. Multiple-family group intervention is discussed as one of the promising approaches for helping families cope with pre- and postmigration trauma.     

Connecting Tenure Security with Durable Solutions to Internal Displacement: From Restitution of Property Rights to the Right to Adequate Housing

The end of displacement is a main goal of international peacebuilding strategies, with increasing financial and human resources committed to it. Nevertheless, protracted internal displacement remains unabated, necessitating a review of the responses provided thus far. Durable solutions to internal displacement require a safe, permanent and secure place to settle, which puts security of tenure at the centre of any sustainable option. This article emphasizes the limited understanding of the factors that contribute to secure tenure as one of the main flaws in a predominantly legal approach to the right to restitution and the right to adequate housing in responses to internal displacement. It calls for the design of contextualized and inclusive strategies to align the de jure, de facto and perception dimensions of tenure security to support the sustainable settlement of internally displaced persons as well as the construction of peace.     

Putting the Post‐Human in the Loop: Future Combat Systems and Post‐Disciplinary Training

The US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) is a large‐scale procurement program that will introduce a number of “manned” and “unmanned” platforms, all of which will be completely interconnected into one layered network. Hailed as revolutionary, all of the FCS platforms, in addition to being networked, will include on‐board or embedded training systems. This article contends that the integration of embedded training systems into the US Army’s Future Combat Systems exemplifies a form of Deleuzean post‐disciplinary control that is endemic to contemporary discourses of strategic virtuosity.     

The future of refugee flows and policies

"The number of forced migrants...is estimated today to exceed 40 million [worldwide]. The changed international climate of the 1990s...has shifted the focus from the asylum and resettlement countries to the countries of origin: there is today a greater willingness to intervene in other countries' affairs either to avert the creation of new flows of focused migrants or to assist internally displaced populations, and there is the expectation of large-scale voluntary returns of refugees in asylum. This article discusses these and other policy issues concerning forced migration in this new international environment."     

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so‐called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety‐ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three‐dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non‐consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid‐2002, however, a resource‐intensive, government‐sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being‐in‐the‐world.     

‘There it will be better … ’: Southern Sudanese in Khartoum imagining a new ‘home’ away from ‘home’

At the time of the research, Khartoum was a multi-ethnic and multinational metropolis of 8 million people. A considerable part of the population consists of Southern Sudanese migrants and displaced persons that came during the 20 years plus of civil war in South Sudan to the capital. These people were categorised after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), as displaced people regardless as to whether they come to the capital as labour migrants, students or because of the war to the capital. The notion of displacement assumes that they are people who are ‘out of place’: thereby assuming a former situation of being in place, a place that can be called ‘home’. After the CPA from 2005, this frequently only imagined home became a real place for the IDP’s to which they are supposed to go back. Yet, many migrants and displaced people are reluctant to move to Southern Sudan. Their decision about going to the South or staying in Khartoum depends not only on the opportunities and perspectives in their respective ‘home’ areas but also on the perceptions of belonging and identity. The imaginations and aspirations about the future life in South Sudan, which I analyse in this article, reflect this ambivalent positioning.