Humanitarian neophilia: the ‘innovation turn’ and its implications

This paper critically examines the ‘humanitarian innovation’ movement, arguing that it represents a departure from classical principles and the entry of a distinctive new ideology into the sector. Labelling this ‘humanitarian neophilia’, the paper argues that it has resonances of Barbrook and Cameron’s ‘Californian Ideology’, with its merging of New Left and New Right within the environs of Silicon Valley. Humanitarian neophilia, similarly, comes from a diverse ideological heritage, combining an optimistic faith in the possibilities of technology with a commitment to the power of markets. It both ‘understates the state’ and ‘overstates the object’, promoting a vision of self-reliant subjects rather than strong nation-states realising substantive socioeconomic rights.     

When ‘brothers and sisters’ become ‘foreigners’: Syrian refugees and the politics of healthcare in Jordan

Abstract

Does overseas development aid necessarily translate into more generous national policies for refugees? Evidence from Jordan suggests that this is not always the case. Since the arrival of an estimated 756,000 Syrian refugees, international funding has made Jordan one of the top seven recipients of foreign aid in the world. Despite sustained international financing, however, national policies towards refugees have become increasingly restrictive, especially when it comes to healthcare. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019, this paper argues that Jordan’s healthcare policies towards Syrian refugees are not necessarily correlated to international financing, but are rather the product of political considerations aimed at maintaining domestic stability, increasing bargaining power in the global policymaking arena and resisting international pressures to integrate Syrian refugees. This paper contributes to filling a gap in the literature on the complex and interdependent factors which influence the evolution of national healthcare policies towards refugees in a country not only highly dependent on foreign aid, but also at the geopolitical crossroads of international interests in the Middle East.     

‘State of exception’ or ‘state in exile’? The fallacy of appropriating Agamben on Palestinian refugee camps

To refer to Palestinian refugee camps as states of exception, appropriating the paradigm of Giorgio Agamben, is definitely tempting. Agamben argues that in times of crisis, individual rights of citizens are diminished and entire categories of people kept outside the political system. Nevertheless, there are flaws in applying Agamben’s perspective on Palestinian camps. It acquits the camp residents from the autonomy over their own political agency. Historically, in Lebanon, camp residents experienced an almost limitless access to free political organisation. But this access has not been converted into the development of representative, legitimate political structures.     

Migration diplomacy in the Global South: cooperation,coercion and issue linkage in Gaddafi’s Libya

Despite a recent resurgence in research on the politics of migration, foreign policy analysts have yet to approach cross-border population mobility as a distinct field of inquiry. Particularly within the Global South, scant work has theorised the interplay between migration and interstate bargaining. This article proposes the framework of migration diplomacy to examine how mobility features in states’ issue-linkage strategies, in both cooperative and coercive contexts. Drawing on Arabic, French and English primary sources, it empirically demonstrates the salience of its framework through an analysis of Libya’s migration diplomacy towards its Arab, African and European neighbours under Muammar Gaddafi.     

Immigration to Egypt

Abstract

With more than three million Egyptians abroad, Egypt is always regarded in the migration literature as a labor-sending country. Hundreds of articles and books were written on Egypt as a sending country, while few articles regarded Egypt as a receiving country. This paper is an attempt to shed light on the role of Egypt as a country of immigration, rather than emigration. Since most of the immigrant populations in Egypt are refugees, the main focus of this paper is the exploration of refugee communities in Egypt and their socioeconomic, juridical, and political situation. Key gaps in the literature are also identified.     

Social policy and conflict: the Gezi Park–Taksim demonstrations and uses of social policy for reimagining Turkey

This article argues that conflicts are productive forces within which new ideas are developed and new social relations are articulated. The critical issue here is the way in which such conflicts are managed and mediated. The paper analyses the Gezi Events of May–June 2013 in Istanbul and considers the way in which people’s reactions in these events are linked with the intersection of everyday lives and the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi – AKP) government’s social policy initiatives, which are increasingly framing these everyday lives. Social policy is considered to be the domain of this intersection, as the government uses policies to inform a particular way of orienting individuals’ everyday context.     

Trivial pursuits? Serious (video) games and the media representation of refugees

This article critically analyses the representational practices of serious (video) games that focus on refugees. It argues that the technological form of serious games can simulate the historical, political and socio-economic factors that shape why refugees leave their home country and their experiences when travelling to host countries. They are able to mobilise intellectual agendas which challenge the de-contextualised representations of refugees typical in traditional media. As such, they challenge players to critically reflect on the complexities of refugee experiences and politics, thereby presenting a potential to move away from grand emotional discourses of pity and compassion.     

Civil society in Mozambique: NGOs,religion, politics and witchcraft

Our aim is to problematise the dominant discourses and practices around civil society from a Southern perspective. We first examine critically, from a broadly Gramscian perspective, the way in which the concept of civil society has been deployed in development discourse. This highlights its highly normative and North-centric epistemology and perspectives. We also find it to be highly restrictive in a post-colonial Southern context insofar as it reads out much of the grassroots social interaction, deemed ‘uncivil’ and thus not part of duly recognised civil society. This is followed by a brief overview of some recent debates around civil society in Africa which emphasise the complexity of civil society and turn our attention to some of the broader issues surrounding state-society relations, democracy and representation in a Third World context, exemplified through our case study research in Mozambique, Inhassunge district (Zambézia Province). The privileging of Western-type Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as drivers of democracy and participatory development in Mozambique have considerable implications for current debates around good governance, civil society strengthening and social accountability programmes and strategies.     

The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Monitoring Elections: Lessons Learned for the New Egypt

The purpose of this research article is to contribute to a better future for a New Egypt, after the January 25, Revolution of 2011, by focusing on how best to monitor elections by domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) through adopting an output, outcome, and impact model. It assesses comparatively the role of CSOs in monitoring elections in Ethiopia, Ukraine, and Nigeria, and derives lessons learned for Egypt. Through analyzing Egyptian CSOs websites and qualitative discussions and surveys with activists, proposed strategies for enhancing effectiveness are identified, including building wider coalitions and more use of new technology.     

Whose feminism counts? Gender(ed) knowledge and professionalisation in development

Gender and development (GAD) has become a transnational discourse and has, as a result, generated its own elite elements. This elitism has tended to be attributed to a Northern hegemony in how feminism has been articulated and then subsequently professionalised and bureaucratised. What has received less attention, and what this paper highlights empirically, is how Southern-based feminisms might themselves be sites of discursive exclusion. The paper interrogates these concerns through an analysis of how professionalisation is evidenced in feminist engagement among civil society organisations working on gender in New Delhi. The analysis suggests that efforts to create spaces for subaltern voices are constrained not only by the disciplining effects of neoliberal frameworks but also – and in tandem – by Southern elite feminist priorities. The implications of these findings are significant: processes of professionalisation and the elitism they engender may have the effect of potentially precluding the engagement of those people on the margins whose voices are so sought after as part of efforts to facilitate inclusive development.     

Can Islamists be secularized? Religion and politics in urban Bangladesh

As in many other Muslim majority states, the Islamist parties play a significant role in the body politic of Bangladesh. Because of their counter-hegemonic modus operandi, the question arises regarding the ability of the Islamists to cohabit democratically in a secular or a quasi-secular political system. The literature on secularization, secularism, and Islam relies on a grand narrative of the reasons to address the question and provides us with polarized answers regarding the Islamists’ ability to accommodate the principle of secularism. However, almost all of the works have been done on the abstract, theoretical level and do not address the interplay of social and political factors in Muslim societies. None of the research on Islamism in Bangladesh addresses Islamist parties’ ability or inability to participate in a quasi-secular, democratic system through acclimating to secularism in the rubric of their political ideology, Islamism. This study therefore examines the grassroots-level socio-political interplays of the Islamist activists with the non-Islamists and analyzes their willingness and ability to accommodate secularism in order to democratically participate in a quasi-secular political system.     

The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’

This article examines the origins and evolution of the concepts of ‘failed’ and ‘failing’ states, arguing that the terms have come to be used in such widely divergent and problematic ways that they have lost any utility. The article details six serious problems with the term ‘state failure’ and related terms like ‘fragile’ or ‘troubled’ states, concluding that analysts should abandon these terms. It concludes with a modest attempt to develop alternative concepts and principles for thinking about diverse states that pose varied challenges for academic analysis and policy makers.     

Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers in ‘Aidland’

This paper discusses practices and paradigms that expatriate and national humanitarian aid workers use to deal with major problems they encounter in their daily work. It views ‘Aidland’ as an arena where different actors encounter, negotiate and shape the outcome of aid. One of the main findings is that there are consistent differences in the way expatriate and national aid actors perceive problems in their field, as well as in the way they respond to these issues. The paper shows that these perceptions often translate into heterogeneous paradigms and practices between expatriate and national staff, particularly around remote control aid, partnerships and donor reporting. These findings are highly relevant in the current context of ‘localisation’, suggesting that the so-called North/South divide continues to exist and more explicit attention should be given in aid research to the heterogeneous strategies of different actors working in the aid sector. The paper is based on analysis of data derived from a multiple-round Delphi expert panel study involving 30 highly experienced humanitarian aid practitioners.     

The politics of return: exploring the future of Syrian refugees in Jordan,Lebanon and Turkey

Abstract

Although the Syrian conflict continues, local and global stakeholders have already begun to consider the return of the six million refugees, especially as neither the option of local integration in the countries of first asylum nor that of resettlement to third countries is seen as a realistic possibility. Elaborating on the return debates in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, we relate the politicisation of this question to the growing acceptance of the option of voluntary and involuntary repatriation in the international refugee regime as well as to policies and public opinion. We argue, based on empirical fieldwork, that any debate about the return of Syrian refugees is problematic, since the conditions of safety, voluntariness and sustainability are not fulfilled. Further, returns should not be left entirely to the individual hosting states and actors in the region but should be carried out in collaboration with representative authorities in Syria and the mediation of international organisations upon full resolution of conflict.     

Local Government at the Nexus?

The modernisation of local government in the UK, pursued by Labour governments since 1997, has covered many, often conflicting elements. Councils have been encouraged to be both strategic ‘place shapers’ and also involved in the nurturing of democratic engagement. This latter theme of ‘democratic renewal’ has in itself contained paradoxical elements, but has been a consistent focus of attention. This debate around democratic renewal has also taken place in the context of a broader ‘rethinking’ of local governments’ role, in an era of partnerships, governance and new models of service delivery. Normatively and practically new justifications for local government have been sought. One such normative foundation has drawn on a range of theoretical perspectives to reimagine the place of local government in the democratic polity, seeing local authorities and local councilors as facilitators or nurturers of democratic health. In particular, broad theoretical developments in communicative and deliberative democracy, and also, more recently, on work based in ‘second generation’ governance theory, have been drawn upon to place local government at the nexus of state and civil society. This paper will examine the possibilities for such a role, from a normative standpoint, to argue that local government can have only limited success in this role, particularly in the context of New Labour's restructuring of the local state.