Re‐Thinking Migrants’ Networks and Social Capital: A Case Study of Iranians in Turkey

Existing research on international migration has focused on the importance of social networks and social capital in the countries of origin and destination. However, much less is known about the importance of social networks and associated social capital in transit countries. Drawing on ethnographic research on Iranian transit migrants in Turkey, this paper argues that migrant networks and social capital are equally important in transit countries. These networks, however, do not always generate positive social capital for Iranian migrants as there are scarce resources and there is no “enforceable trust”. Iranian migrant networks reorganized in a transit country like Turkey are not static structures and they are largely affected by macro‐variables such as current immigration and asylum policies of Turkey and Europe, transnationalism and globalization, and other place‐specific features like Turkey’s location bridging East and West, the existence of human smuggling networks, and its proximity to Iran. But Iranian migrant networks in Turkey are also affected by micro‐variables, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity of individual migrants.     

Averting Forced Migration in Countries in Transition

Many countries of emigration are in transition from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governments. Addressing population movements from these countries requires more than economic opportunities; equally important is the establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights, and, in countries recovering from conflict, reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and housing. Otherwise, fragile peace and democratization processes can easily break down, creating new waves of forced migrants and hampering efforts towards repatriation and reintegration of already displaced populations. This background paper discusses the nature of forced migration, pointing out that the end of the Cold War has produced new pressures and new opportunities to address these flows. While extremism, particularly rampant nationalism, has provoked massive forced migration in many parts of the world, the changing geopolitical relations has also led to peace settlements in some countries and humanitarian intervention to reduce suffering in others. Addressing forced migration pressures in countries in transition requires comprehensive policy approaches. Four types of best practices are considered in this paper. First, mechanisms to ameliorate the causes of forced movements, including the role that expatriate communities can play in strengthening the rule of law and respect for human rights, particularly minority rights. Second, mechanisms that enhance refugee protection while minimizing abuses of asylum systems, including enhanced respect for the refugee convention, adoption of complementary forms of protection when the refugee convention does not apply, strengthened regional protection, and the establishment of in–country processing of refugee claims. Third, mechanisms to resolve the longer–term status of forced migrants, including decisions on when to cease refugee status and temporary protection and encourage/permit return or integration. Fourth, mechanisms for more effective repatriation when return is possible, particularly programs to help returnees reintegrate and communities reconstruct themselves.     

Some Sort of Help for the Poor: Blurred Perspectives on Asylum

This article explores the distinction between economic and forced migration by following three Guatemalan day labourers in northern California who “discover” the possibility of asylum after coming to the US as undocumented migrants. Vaguely understood as “some sort of help for Guatemalans,” asylum acquires a confusing assortment of meanings for these men as they hear about it from other migrants and local NGOs. They thus face two problems that hinder their application. The first is that their own rendering of their reasons for migration can look both “forced” and “voluntary.” The second is that beyond the validity of their claims, their life in the US is embedded in the marginalization of the cohort of undocumented migrants they join. Whatever the outcome, the men thus continue to follow the logics of fear and mistrust that characterize undocumented day labourers in the United States.     

Constructing undesirables: A critical discourse analysis of ‘othering’ within the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

Immigration policy in Canada has recently shifted, reflecting changes in other Western countries. We studied the discursive constructions of forced migrants within Bill C‐31 “Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act” and its associated Backgrounder documents published by the Canadian Government. The documents were analysed using an approach to critical discourse analysis adapted from Bacchi's (2009) methodology and informed by a theoretical framework of “othering”. Particular groups of migrants were represented as posing threats to the economy, the integrity of the refugee system, and national security. The documents offered three solutions: the creation of specific categories of migrants, an emphasis upon efficiency of the system, and expanded powers to the government. The problematization of asylum seekers as posing multiple threats to Canadian society obfuscates governmental responsibilities to this population and reflects common strategies of neoliberal governance.     

Iraqi refugees in Jordan: lessons for practice with refugees internationally

Asylum seekers, refugees who are resettled in third countries or those who are forced into refugee camps, present new challenges to social work practitioners. In an attempt to advance theory and develop specialised practice in the area of refugee studies within social work as an international profession, we argue that whatever the flight context, the country of asylum or of resettlement, there is a process underlying what Malkki referred to as refugeeness. This article focuses on the situation of Iraqi refugees in Jordan as an example of the challenges that confront today's refugees. We show that salient issues raised in a local community centre's needs assessment mirror those elements that are central to integration processes that have been discussed in much of the refugee studies literature across the world. We show how these concerns are closely linked to processes that resettled refugees and asylum seekers face, regardless of the country of resettlement. We introduce a framework for analysing an individual refugee's situation and show how an international phenomenon is linked to local practice.     

Shortcomings and/or Missed Opportunities of the Global Compacts for the Protection of Forced Migrants

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) are norm‐creating exercises, in the sense of being international legal documents for a new framework that reinforces existing structures and attempt to renew migration governance globally. They were expected to further develop the protection of all migrants. However, despite some progress, there are shortcomings and/or missed opportunities in what they were able to achieve, especially in the case of the protection of forced migrants. Understanding these shortcomings and/or missed opportunities as being conceptual and institutional in nature, and to assess both these sets, this article presents the idea of forced migration and the lack of international protection of forced migrants (part 1), describes the protection of forced migrants achieved by the Compacts (part 2), and ends by assessing the shortcomings and/or missed opportunities in both Compacts (part 3).     

Ferry quarantine: The pandemic as a pretext to deny healthcare access to undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in Italy

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced national governments and health authorities worldwide to adopt measures aimed at protecting population health, most of which resulted in prolonged restrictions to individual freedom(s) and fundamental rights. In some cases, the pandemic represented a pretext for macroscopic and unjustified human rights violations, as in the case of the “ferry quarantine,” that is the use of commercial boats by the Italian Government to forcibly isolate migrants and asylum seekers from the rest of the population. Such a measure does not have any rationale at the epidemiological level and poses serious obstacles to the provision of adequate care to vulnerable people such as migrants and asylum seekers. The pandemic has been used as a pretext to implement discriminatory and disproportionate measures whose effect has been denying healthcare access to undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.     

Human Rights,Income and International Migration

This study contributes to the literature of migration studies by addressing the question: why does international migration persist despite welfare improvements in migrant‐sending countries? We propose that the human rights condition of the origin countries is an important determinant of global migration. Although the human rights issue is not new to researchers in migration studies, the concern is primarily about the rights of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or migrant workers in a host country. We undertake a bilateral panel data analysis to examine the pattern of global bilateral migration between 1995 and 2010. We find that international migration is positively associated with human rights conditions and income. Similar results are also obtained when we control for multilateral resistance and possible sample selection biases in a panel context. Our study implies that efforts to promote human rights may also be assessed in relation to their contribution to migration flows.     

Manufacturing Striated Space for Migrants: An Ethnography of Initial Reception Centers for Asylum Seekers in Germany

In the ongoing debates on migration, the subjectivities of migrants are often relegated to the background. Although critical research in refugee studies and forced migration puts a great emphasis on the unheard voices of migrants. This article strays momentarily from the focus on migrants subjectivities to interrogate the background of these voices, that is, the space that surrounds their narratives. Based on field observations conducted in two initial reception centers for asylum seekers in Germany, this article draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s geographic philosophy to explore the spatiality and temporality of these facilities. This article argues that these reception centers capture asylum seekers’ journey narratives through their reterritorialization, and thereby deletes their agency all the while they provide safety.     

“Infiltrators” or Refugees? An Analysis of Israel's Policy Towards African Asylum-Seekers

This article adopts a genealogical approach in examining Israeli immigration policy by focusing on the situation confronting African asylum seekers who have been forced back into Egypt, detained and deported but who have not had their asylum claims properly assessed. Based on immigration policies formulated at the time of Israeli independence, whose principle objective was to secure a Jewish majority state, we argue that Israel's treatment of African asylum seekers as ‘infiltrators’/economic migrants stems from an insistence on maintaining immigration as a sovereign issue formally isolated from other policy domains. Such an approach is not only in violation of Israel's commitment to the Refugee Convention, it directly contributes to policies which are ineffective and unduly harsh.     

Understanding Transit Asylum Migration: Evidence from Serbia

Due to its geographic location and borders along the European Union (EU), in recent years, the Republic of Serbia has faced an increased number of irregular migrants from third‐world countries claiming asylum on their way into a western EU member state. Some of these migrants stay for a while in asylum centres in Serbia to rest or renew contacts. In order to explore the main socio‐demographic features of the study population, their migration history and intentions, a questionnaire‐based research was conducted in Banja Kovilja?a asylum centre. The results also give insights into the underlying question “how” and the role of social networks in migration. Most of asylum seekers are unmarried males at peak working age, from countries affected by war and political turmoil. The results indicate this is a transit migration where, besides fleeing to safety, economic status and migration networks have a significant impact on migration flows.     

Colonialism,Decolonisation, and the Right to be Human: Britain and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees

The Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees is central to scholarship on refugee and asylum issues. It is the primary basis upon which asylum seekers make their claims to the majority of host states today and, as a key text of the human rights framework, has come to be associated with the very idea of a universalised rights-bearing human being. Yet British asylum policy today is characterized by efforts to limit access to the right to asylum. Many scholars believe this is because asylum seekers today are different, in character and number, to previous cohorts of applicants. This article goes back to the founding of the refugee rights regime and investigates the exclusions of colonized peoples from access to the right to asylum. Using Chimni's concept of the “myth of difference”, the article demonstrates that asylum seekers have long existed outside of Europe, and that their exclusion from international rights has been both longstanding and intentional. This historical sociology suggests that the basis for critical work on the issue of asylum policy today must be one which takes colonial histories into account.     

New Approaches to Asylum?

Since its inception 50 years ago, the international asylum regime has shifted through a series of discernibly different approaches. The most recent approach has been characterized by restrictions on asylum-seekers, manifested initially through a reluctance to grant asylum, and today through a reluctance even to admit asylum-seekers.
There is now a growing consensus that this approach is unsustainable. States are recognizing that restrictions have not fulfilled their original aims of reducing the number of asylum-seekers, and furthermore have had unintended consequences that include the growth of human smuggling and trafficking.
UNHCR is concerned about the erosion of the entire concept of asylum. Asylum advocates, NGOs and human rights activists argue that restrictions have impacted as heavily on those who need international protection as on those who do not. As a result, a wide range of new initiatives are being proposed, which may pave the way for the evolution of a new approach to asylum.
This article analyses the evolution of restrictions in the asylum regime, explains the failing of this approach, and finally reviews possible ways forward.     

International Migration and the Demographic Transition: A Two‐Way Interaction

The paper explores the relationship between the demographic transition and international migration, that is, between population dynamics and direct connectivity between peoples. The first part examines how ideas conveyed by migrants to non‐migrants of their community of origin are susceptible to impact on practices that lead to the reduction of birth rates in source countries of migration and concludes that international migration may be one of the mechanisms through which demographic transition is disseminated. The second part shows that declining birth rates in origin countries generate a new profile of the migrant and suggests that future migrants will typically leave no spouses or children in the home country and therefore their objective will no longer be to improve the family’s standing at home for the mere reason that there is no longer such a family, but to increase opportunities for themselves. Migration policies of origin countries on remittances as well as those of destination countries on family reunification will have to be reconsidered.     

Refugees,not Economic Migrants ‐ Why do Asylum‐Seekers Register in Hungary?

The article analyses why asylum‐seekers choose Hungary as an entry point to the European Union. Among the Central and Eastern European countries Hungary has been by far the most popular choice for asylum‐seekers between 2002 and 2016, yet surprisingly, it has been neglected by the literature. Using a panel dataset and fixed effects regressions, the article finds that beyond being ‘conveniently’ located on the Balkans migration route, variables related to Hungary's immigration policy are the most significant determinants of asylum‐seeker choices. The article finds no evidence to support recent claims by the Hungarian government that arrivals to the country are actually economic migrants and not asylum‐seekers; quite the contrary, the results indicate that on average asylum‐seekers entering Hungary are fleeing violent conflict in their countries of origin.     

TESTIMONIO AND SPACES OF RISK

Asylum seekers and refugees tend to be marginalized in physical and discursive spaces, especially in times that are orchestrated as socially, politically, financially and environmentally risky. This article explores the interrelationship between genre and social space from the perspective of asylum seekers and refugees, and how refugees and asylum seekers in the USA, Germany and Hong Kong exposed spaces of risk through testimonio (testimonio is a genre term used throughout the paper and will be explained later). Asylum seekers and refugees testified to social practices like lengthy asylum processes, immobility, criminalization of asylum seekers, or distrust by locals in virtual space and in face-to-face encounters. Testimonio, thus, reflected on social practices and through this reflection, exposed spaces of risk that threatened the well-being of forced migrants. However, asylum seekers did not dwell in those spaces of risk. By publishing testimonios in virtual environments, some asylum seekers became agents of their biographies and created spaces in which they could voice themselves on their own terms.     

A Qualitative Exploration of the Premigration Victimization Experiences of Sexual and Gender Minority Refugees and Asylees in the United States and Canada

Progress in analyzing and interpreting the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity in the context of refugee law has contributed to a rise in individuals seeking asylum in such countries as the United States and Canada. However, few studies have examined the victimization experiences of sexual- and gender-identity forced migrants prior to their arrival in North America. This qualitative study used thematic analysis to explore the premigration adult victimization experiences of 26 lesbian, gay, and transgender individuals who obtained refugee, asylee, or withholding-of-removal status in the United States or Canada based on persecution for their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Participants originated from countries in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Analysis revealed the following themes: living on the edge, adopting concealment strategies, routine victimization, and protectors as perpetrators. Participants described living in a constant state of hypervigilance, and they adopted numerous strategies to protect themselves from victimization. Despite the use of such strategies, participants experienced victimization by community members and state actors, leaving them no choice but to flee to ensure their safety and well-being. Findings are discussed using the ecological framework outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO). The discussion concludes with implications for international policy and clinical practice.     

Migration to Israel: the mythology of "uniqueness"

The article explores the widespread assumption that immigration to Israel is a unique phenomenon which differs structurally from migration to other places. This assumption stems from the view that migrants to other destinations generally leave a place they consider home to find a new home. In terms of the Israeli construction, Jews have been "strangers" in their countries of origin and seek to find a new home by means of migration.
The Law of Return (1950), which established an open-door policy for Jews and extensive support benefits for immigrants in a context of presumed social consensus, has generally been thought to be sui generis . The article considers evidence that shows that in the 1980s and 1990s, Israel is becoming more like other Western countries which admit large numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, foreign workers, persons seeking family unification and diaspora migrants.
As in other migration societies, multi-ethnicity poses problems of cultural integration and some groups seek actively to retain major elements of their earlier cultural heritage.
Immigrants have become an identifiable political force to be reckoned with. There is more overt questioning within the society of the open-door policy for Jewish immigrants than in previous years. Nevertheless, the tradition of "uniqueness" remains strong in the sociology of migration in Israel. Consideration of the empirical reality at the end of the 1990s suggests that the sociology of migration in the Israel context has many important parallels in other societies and is best understood in a global context of theory and practice.     

The human right to health: exploring disability,migration and health

Across the globe, an estimated one billion people are on the move today, of whom 244 million are international migrants. Not only have global horizons expanded in the realm of work and study; global conflict and exploitation have resulted in forced migration. Migration is a political issue, which raises questions of identity, citizenship, diversity and integration and is utilised to play upon the fear of the stranger, the ‘Other’ and difference in contemporary society. Disabled migrants are a hidden population whose experiences are often overlooked or subsumed within wider debates around disability and ethnicity. This article considers the intersection of disability and migration in contemporary society through the lens of healthcare access. Reflecting on the impact of citizenship rights on the realisation of human rights in the context of contemporary migration, using health as an example, the article considers the implications for disabled migrants, focusing primarily on the European Union.