Social capital,NGOs, and development: a Guatemalan case study

Social researchers continue to grasp for critical factors that foster or impede the development of social capital. This article highlights some of these factors based on an investigation of a low‐income urban settlement in Guatemala. Community activists and leaders, elected representatives, regional government service providers, local residents, NGO directors and staff, and other key informants living and working within the designated locality indicated a complex and diverse range of social, cultural, political, and economic issues that contributed to low levels of ‘broad‐based’ social capital. Long‐standing fears related to violence and corruption within a historically top‐down authoritarian state were the most significant factors impeding social capital, social organising, and civic participation. Northern‐led service‐providing NGOs in the area also curbed ‘broad‐based’ social capital by fostering dependency through intervention strategies that were external, top down, non‐participatory, and not community based.     

Urban Refugees in Nairobi: Problems of Protection, Mechanisms of Survival, and Possibilities for Integration

This article examines the legal status and economic livelihoodsof refugees in Nairobi, focusing on Somalis, the largest urbanpopulation residing in the city. The results of the study challengethe Government of Kenya's (GOK) official position and the popularlocal perception that refugees are an economic burden, and showinstead that these urban refugees are economically self-sufficient.Despite this economic independence, conditions for most refugeesin Nairobi are extremely difficult. Urban refugees live largelywithout material assistance or legal protection from the GOKor UNHCR, are vulnerable to police arrest at any time and facehigh levels of xenophobia from the local population. By highlightingrefugee self-sufficiency in Nairobi, this article lends supportto the idea of local integration as a viable, durable solutionto their situation of protracted exile.     

Refugees in Russia: the Law on Refugees and its Implementation

Since the adoption of a new Russian Law on Refugees in 1997,the number of recognized refugees has dropped drastically. TheLaw has a definition of the term ‘refugee’ almostidentical to that of the 1951 Convention. But many provisionsof the Law are contradictory to Russia's international obligations.After a short look at the background to the issue, the Law onRefugees is examined. Then the implementation of the Law iscompared with the situation before its entry into force. Thedifficult life conditions of refugees and asylum seekers areconsidered to be partly a result of the legal provisions andtheir realization. The factors that contribute to the presentsituation are discussed. While certain provisions of the existingLaw need to be amended, it has to be implemented in order toprovide international protection to asylum seekers.     

智利和墨西哥社会保障法比较及其启示

本文比较了智利和墨西哥两国的社会保障立法,重点分析了两国社会保险法律制度的立法历程、保障待遇、融资、基金投资运营以及社会保障管理监督体制等方面的情况。借鉴两国的立法经验,立足我国基本国情,提出了当前我国社会保障立法应坚持的基本原则和目标:社会保障法律应当编织覆盖全民的社会安全网,社会保障工作应当有机管理、独立监督,对养老保险基金应当进行富有成效的投资运营。     

'I Find Myself as Someone Who is in the Forest': Urban Refugees as Agents of Social Change in Kampala, Uganda

An in-depth investigation of the Kampala Urban Refugee Children'sEducation Centre (KURCEC), a refugee-initiated community-basedorganization in Uganda, allows for detailed exploration of thelivelihood strategies employed by urban refugees in the sphereof education and of the ways in which these strategies can promoteself-reliance and individual and community development in urbansituations. Urban refugees' development of KURCEC challengesperceived notions of refugees as burdens or as passive recipientsin a system that fosters dependency and shows that they areagents of social change within their own and their host communities.The focus on what works in the midst of crisis, desperation,and uncertainty is a deliberate attempt to promote researchand policy-setting that is forward-looking and productive ratherthan reactionary and regressive in the context of new developmentsin policy and practice relating to urban refugees worldwide.     

Refugees, Institutional Invisibility, and Self-Help Strategies: Evaluating Kurdish Experience in Rome

The article investigates the way in which asylum reception hasbeen organized in Italy in response to Kurdish refugees. Theanalysis suggests that Italy, as compared to northern Europeancountries, has failed to develop a public system of reception,which has been counterbalanced by the parallel development ofa private one. The abandonment of the vast majority of asylumseekers to their own survival strategies should read as an institutionalfailure to develop adequate reception policies and serious protectionplans. The ‘Kurdish crisis’ has exposed the importanceof state intervention in providing reception, which could nolonger be left to local NGOs, self-help strategies and migrants'networks. In particular, the article looks at the way in whichItaly, during the 1990s, has organized refugee reception; the(non) reception system in the municipality of Rome; and finallysome private survival strategies that Kurdish asylum seekershave resorted to once no public help was made available to them.