Taking Things Personally,and Publicising the Private: Encountering Erasure on the Frontlines of Academia

To understand the purpose of the Kunene hydro‐electic schemes in Angola one must examine the pattern of land settlement in Namibia established during the Herero‐German war of 1904–1908. At that time the White groups settled on the rich central pastoral land and also controlled the coast line. However the White south has three missing commodities which must be imported from the north: water, electricity, and labour. Thus it is the White groups who benefit most from the Kunene schemes. The profits from mining are accumulated in Johannesburg, New York, and London, while White mine workers receive high returns and Black workers receive low returns. The White farmers no longer face competition from the mines for water. The fishing and secondary industries receive relatively cheap power and water. Black farmers and herdsmen receive water, but the problem of irrigated farming in the ‘home‐lands’ has still to be solved.     

Best practices: intercultural integration of Arabic refugees in Berlin

Abstract

The paper presents the work of a Berlin-based NGO (ANE) in Germany, which works with migrants and Arab refugees. The organisation has a strong record publishing a Parents Newsletter and conducting family counselling for migrants and refugees in Berlin. One of the major activities of the organisation in 2016 was an international conference with different German NGOs working with refugees. The conference was dedicated to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and developmental traumatic stress disorder (DTSD) of refugee children.     

Making sense of collective identity and trauma through drawing: the case study of a Palestinian refugee student

Abstract

Identity construction can be very complex for refugee children, especially for Palestinian refugee children. For refugee children, organised violence and immigration are important parts of their life experience that can lead to trauma, which in turn influences how they construct their collective identity. Schools have to consider this specific experience as the development of a meaningful identity is an important factor in refugee students’ well-being and school adjustment. School-based activities centred on creative expression can help refugee students in expressing trauma and in making sense of their identity and migration experience. This paper presents the case study of a 9-year-old Palestinian refugee boy in Canada and explores how he expressed and made sense of his multiple identities in his drawings. Many features of the boy’s drawings evoked a wounded identity, especially spatial disorganisation and enmeshment. Data analysis revealed that the boy might have been experiencing collective identity trauma and that he used drawing and a peer as props to heal his wounded identity. Both drawing and the space offered by his teacher to safely explore and experiment with different identities contributed to the integration of his multiple identities into a meaningful whole, which contributed to his school adjustment.     

‘Closure’ at Manus Island and carceral expansion in the open air prison

ABSTRACT

Manus prison was officially closed in 2017 following Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Supreme Court decision that the existence of the camp breached the PNG Constitution. The ‘Namah’ decision was significant in signalling and seeking to curb the imperial reach of Australian law but insufficient in resolving the question of refugee imprisonment. Far from ending the imprisonment of refugees, the closure following the judicial ruling has facilitated the expansion of the imperial carcerality that has characterized Australia’s immigration detention policy since 1992. By revealing how refugee incarceration has been extended and offshore processing instantiated following the closure of Woomera camp in 2003, we argue that official closures of refugee camps Woomera and Manus have been constitutive of carceral expansion that is imperial in form and that reiterates patterns of colonial violence. After tracking imperial expansion, we make a call for prison abolition in the refugee incarceration arena as this is a critical decolonizing strategy.     

Immigrants,blacklegs and ‘unpatriotic employers’: The London stonemasons’ strike of 1877–78

This case study gives a detailed account of this labour struggle with special emphasis on the importation and immigration of workmen from North America and the Continent as well as from England and Scotland to London during the dispute. Placed in this international perspective and in the context of German immigration to Britain, particular consideration is given to stonemasons coming from Northern and Southern Germany. While a considerable number of the workers who arrived in the British capital, in solidarity with the men on strike, refused to work for the employers and left London aided by the stonemasons’ union, a majority acted as strike‐breakers and was thus instrumental in bringing about the defeat of the local workers in their struggle for shorter hours and higher wages.     

Reviews

‘Mirror Opposites’. Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. xxxi + 331pp. Bibliography. Illustrations. Notes. Index. ISBN: 0–299–09110–4

Hoping to Live in Harmony. Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute and Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, 1999, xxi + 255pp. Bibl. Index. Illus. $34.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper)

A Jewish‐Russian Hybrid. Dovid Knut, Sobranniye sochineniia (Collected Works) (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Vol. 1. 1997, 417pp.; Vol. 2, 1998, 719pp. Compiled by Vladimir Khazan. Appendices. Index

Russian Jewish Intellectuals in America. Steven Cassedy, To the Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came to America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. xxiii + 197 pp. Illus. Index. ISBN: 0691–02975‐X.     

'All Doors are Closed to Us': a social model analysis of the experiences of disabled refugees and asylum seekers in Britain

In this article we undertake a social model analysis of the experiences of disabled refugees and asylum seekers, who are among the most socially and economically disadvantaged members of society in the UK today. The statuses of disability, refugee and minority ethnic group are each linked to discrimination and oppression (Oliver, M. (1990) The Politics of Disablement (London, Macmillan Press); Robinson, V. (1999) Journal of Refugee Studies, 12(1), pp. 78-87; Vernon, A. (1996) in: J. Morris (Ed.) Disability Studies: past, present and future (London, Womens Press), yet little consideration has been paid to the particular cumulative constellation of oppressions experienced by disabled refugees and asylum seekers.

In this article, several models are presented that demonstrate that disabled refugees and asylum seekers experience barriers to health and safety in their country of origin, such as impairment-creation through torture and war. Once in the UK barriers to social services, benefits and social contact prove similarly insurmountable.     

Subjectivation,agency and the schooling of raced and dis/abled asylum-seeking children in the Italian context

Abstract

This paper intends to address the challenges that the Italian education system is facing in terms of policies and practices relating to dis/abled asylum-seeking and refugee children, in order to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and the network of social services for forced migrants, and to pay renewed attention to the notion of ‘social and educational integration’. The starting point of this paper is the idea that the current model of schooling for asylum-seeking and refugee children is implicated in the making of particular sorts of ‘subjects’, as well as the creation of educational and social exclusions and inequalities. Schools, refugee organisations as well as the work of educators and social workers can be important sites of ‘counter-politics’. Borrowing from the theoretical tools offered by Dis/Ability Critical Race Studies (Dis/Crit) framework and engaging with Judith Butler’s understanding of processes of subjectivation, the paper explores how asylum-seeking and refugee students can be rendered subjects outside the educational endeavour, or indeed outside studenthood. Data from an ongoing constructivist grounded theory doctoral research project, interviews with asylum-seeking children and with professionals working in different refugee services in Rome, are offered to substantiate the argument presented in this paper.     

Reconsidering identity: the ethnic and political dimensions of hybridity among majority and Turkish youth in Germany and England1

Sociological research has hitherto largely focused on majority ² and minority ethnic identities or citizenship identities. However, the social connections between youth are not simply ethnic dynamics but also political dynamics involving citizenship categories. This article argues that in postmodern societies, it is important to reconsider the ways we think about youth identities. Drawing upon qualitative data from a study into the political identities of majority (German and British) youth and Turkish youth, educated in two Stuttgart and two London secondary schools, the research found that fifteen‐year‐olds had no singular identity but hybrid ethno‐national, ethno‐local and national‐European identities as a result of governmental policies, their schooling and community experience, social class positioning, ethnicity and migration history. In working‐class educational contexts, many majority and Turkish youth privileged the ethnic dimension of hybridity whereas majority and Turkish youth in the two middle‐class dominated schools emphasized the political dimension of hybridity. The article demonstrates that social class and schooling (e.g. ethos and peer cultures) have a considerable role to play in who can afford to take on the more hybridized cosmopolitan identities on offer.     

Hayek and the Methodenstreit at the LSE

ABSTRACT

Friedrich Hayek’s Inaugural Address at the London School of Economics (LSE), ‘The Trend of Economic Thinking’ (1 March 1933), has been recognized as of particular importance for the understanding of his work. In it, Hayek argues that economics has a key role of showing what we cannot achieve: of showing that some attractive ideals are utopian. In developing this theme, Hayek referred to Mises’ arguments about the problems of economic calculation under socialism; but the idea – which I suggest might be seen as a theory about the structural constraints imposed by a flourishing market economy – becomes a more general motif in Hayek’s work. In the lecture, Hayek’s ideas are developed through engagement with the younger German Historical School of economics, which is criticized for espousing methodological ideas that would call the idea of such constraints into question. In this article, I suggest that there were also local targets at the LSE. I discuss the way in which William Beveridge, the Director of the LSE, and Lancelot Hogben, who held a Chair in Social Biology there, were engaged in an extended empiricist critique of the methodological ideas of the LSE economists and of theoretical economists more generally in ways close to the younger German historical school.     

Writing Exile

ABSTRACT

Atiq Rahimi accepted the invitation to present his keynote Ecrire l’exile at the 2018 international workshop ‘Refugees in Literature, Film, Art and Media: Perspective on the Past and Present’ in Liverpool. His speech, closing the event, was accompanied by its translation, ‘Writing Exile’, prepared by the organiser, Lida Amiri. In his keynote, Rahimi artistically contemplates the perilous route of refuge, and the implications for writers of a life in exile. In his brief but poignant essay, Rahimi traces his personal experience walking from Afghanistan to Pakistan.     

Social support networks,instant messaging,and gender equity in refugee education

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the role of instant messaging chat groups to support teacher training and gender equity initiatives in Kenyan refugee camps. Our findings are based on survey data with refugee teachers in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps (n?=?203), group interviews with refugee teachers in Kakuma (n?=?21), and interviews with international instructors of teacher training programs in Nairobi, Toronto, and Vancouver (n?=?14). In our analysis, we apply amplification theory, feminist science and technology studies paradigms, and considerations of transnational approaches to understand the use of instant messaging among refugee teacher communities. Our framework explores how social and cultural norms are amplified through transnational text and instant messaging related to teacher training and in support of gender equity. Peer-to-peer group chats draw on transnational learning opportunities and expand these engagements through group chats between men and women refugee teachers across camps as well as through community engagement about gender equity initiatives in education. International instructors identify both value and hesitation in navigating the quantity and content of these communications, such as learning more about refugee teachers’ daily lives in the camps and concern about following and managing the amount of communication that can ensue over chat groups. Our work has practical implications for transnational teacher training programs in refugee camps, illuminates how mobile technology and chat groups allow women and men in the community to engage and support girls’ education, and questions how text messaging affects the lived and day-to-day experiences of women refugee teachers.     

Books received

A Wider Perspective Needed Avraham Greenbaum (ed.), Minority Problems in Eastern Europe Between the World Wars, with Emphasis on the Jewish Minority, introduced by Edward Allworth, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Institute of Advanced Studies. Jerusalem, 1988. pp.viii, 163.

The Jokes of Oppression David A. Harris and Izrail Rabinovich, The Jokes of Oppression: The Humour of Soviet Jews. Northvale, NJ and London: Jason Aronson, 1988. 275pp. $22.50.

A Pleasant Surprise Franti?ek Mi?eje, Revolu?nou Cestou. Spomienky na roky 1938–1948 (On the Path of Revolution: Reminiscences of the Years 1938–1948.) Bratislava: Pravda publishers on behalf of the Institute of Marxism‐Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia, 1988. 232 pp. Illus. Bibl. Index. Kcs 19.00.     

Human Security Perspectives on Refugee Children in Germany

This research identifies challenges and solutions for the situation of accompanied children in German refugee accommodations along the seven human security dimensions (economy, environment, food, health, personal, community and political rights). It analyses existing binding and non‐binding standards for the protection of refugee children at federal, state and municipal level, and their development since 2014. In particular, the United Nations Children's Fund's role for the development of voluntary protection standards is discussed as a role model to enhance the awareness for the protection of refugee children in Germany.     

‘Black holes in the fabric of the nation’: refugees in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

ABSTRACT

This article explores the representation of refugees in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a novel which has been widely celebrated for its response to the refugee crisis of its contemporary moment. In a distinct echo of Salman Rushdie’s claim, thirty-five years earlier, that it ‘may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated’, Hamid’s novel similarly claims that ‘we are all migrants through time.’ Moreover, like Rushdie’s fiction, Hamid’s novel incorporates elements of magical realism: its protagonists escape their unnamed war-torn city through a ‘door’ that instantaneously transports them to Mykonos, and they subsequently travel through other such ‘doors’ to London and California. Their story is interspersed with a series of vignettes in which other migrants also find themselves magically transported across national borders. As well as considering the ways in which Hamid’s novel seeks to humanise refugees, this article considers the novel’s evocation of a world in which human beings – like capital, images, and (mis)information – have gained access to largely ungovernable networks of instantaneous travel across vast distances. It argues that Hamid’s novel is not just ‘about’ refugees but also constitutes a reflection on how they and their journeys are represented and mediated by actually-existing technologies.     

Hyper-Segmentation and Exclusion in Financial Services in the U.S.

Abstract

The last twenty years has been a period of major structural change for the financial services sector in the United States. Some of this restructuring has been prompted by technological change, but public policy has actively facilitated the increased mobility of capital to places where it brings the highest short-term private return but not necessarily the greatest long-term social return. While deregulation and technology have combined to provide a wider choice of services and increased price pressure in the lucrative segments of different financial markets, the pursuit of affluent customers has left lower-income consumers and very small firms at a disadvantage. The sector overall has moved toward a hyper-segmentation of customer bases by income and race, leaving many communities served primarily by higher-cost and sometimes abusive financial services firms.     

The fate of Belarusian and Yiddish in the Soviet and Post‐Soviet periods

A New ‘Tsar Liberator'?. Seweryn Bialer, Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev's Russia. Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1989. xv +241pp. Bibl. Index.

Michael Rywkin, Soviet Society Today. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1989. xii +234pp. Bibl. Index.

Glasnost on Latvian Jewry. Literatūra un Māksla (Literature and Art), no. 48 (2294), Riga, November 1988.

Openness or Concealment?. Raymond Hutchings. Soviet Secrecy and Non‐Secrecy. London: Mac‐millan Press, 1987. 292pp. Bibl. Index. £29.50.

The Making of Czech Jewry. Hillel J. Kieval. The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia 1870–1918. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. x + 279pp. Notes. Bibl. Index. $25.00.