The Beauties of Kashmir: Nila Gupta's Representations of War from a Distance

Abstract: This essay examines Nila Gupta's literary representation of the conflict in Kashmir in her short story cycle The Sherpa and Other Fictions (2008). Born and raised in Canada, Gupta has a diasporic perspective and a feminist political stance that values women's solidarity and political involvement across borders. Her short stories explore the feminist thesis that the sexual crimes committed against girls and women at times of conflict are a direct consequence of the appropriation of women's bodies for symbolic uses within the dialectics of patriarchal nationalisms. However, her stories' restrained style and their publication in a small activist press preclude easy commodification in a global market avid for narratives of ethnic violence. By reading Gupta's creative texts in relation to academic studies of communal sexual violence and nationalism, humanitarian reports on refugees and gendered violence and journalistic accounts of the conflict, this essay attempts to assess the power of literature to offer nuanced and complex representations of violent conflict and its consequences. Special attention is paid to the representation of life in the officially designated ‘migrant camps’, to the difficult issue of the social stigmatization of rape victims and to the many ways in which women are implicated.     

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.     

Theoretical Perspectives on Post-Migration Adaptation and Psychological Well-Being among Refugees: Towards a Resource-Based Model

Research on the psychological well-being of refugees has focusedon deficiencies within individuals either in terms of psychiatricsymptoms or feelings of distress. To achieve a more holisticview of the life experiences of refugees, we need to look atthe limitations of our current theoretical models. This articlecritically examines some of the major theoretical approachesthat have guided research on the psychological well-being ofrefugees: the medical model, the psychosocial stress model andBerry's (1997) ‘acculturation framework’. It goeson to examine Hobfoll's (2001) Conservation of Resources stresstheory, a model which has important implications for refugeeresearch. Drawing upon the models reviewed, the last sectionoutlines a conceptual framework for adaptation among refugees.At the heart of it lies the concept of resources. However, resourcesmust be understood in terms of the individual's needs, personalgoals and the demands he or she encounters. Each of these conceptsmust be examined in the context of the pre-migration, flightand post-migration phases. The additional concept of constraintson the use of or access to resources is particularly relevantto the post-migration phase. Such a conceptual toolkit couldprove especially useful in going beyond quantitative data topresent the human stories of refugees. It could also sensitizeresearchers to the impact of host societies on the well-beingof refugees.     

Dislocated Masculinity: Adolescence and the Palestinian Nation-in-exile

Taking as its starting-point emerging discussion about genderand nationalism, this article considers the masculinities constructedby and for adolescent males born into a Palestinian refugeecamp in Jordan. I consider the relationship of these masculinitiesto the construction of the camp as a moral and socio-politicalspace. Through the employment of ethnographic material, thearticle demonstrates the ways in which young males—throughthe performance of a particular, dominant vision of masculinitytermed mukhayyamji—serve to reproduce the camp as authenticlocation of an exilic national community. The article also examinesthe implications for individual young men of this interplaybetween masculine performance and the reproduction of the campas a moral and socio-political space. It explores the consequencesboth for those who fail or choose not to uphold the idealized,mukhayyamji adolescent masculinity and for those who evincethe skills and qualities that this entails. It is argued that,while the former risk marginalization from the camp as a moraland socio-political community, the latter face marginalizationfrom the economic life of wider Jordanian society and, withthat, endanger the transition to social adulthood. Thus, a setof paradoxes emerges for young males that reflects the ambiguousposition of the Palestinian refugees in Jordan at a specificmoment in the history of Jordan and the Palestinian nationalstruggle.     

The “Somalinisation” of terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya: the case of refoulement

Kenya’s state discourse on terrorism and counterterrorism securitises Somali refugees and refugee camps. Using the securitisation theory, a perspective of social constructivism as a theoretical framework, the article attempts to establish the relationship between the securitisation of Somali refugees and refugee camps and refoulement as a measure to counter the securitisation. The arguments raised are the speech acts of Kenya’s securitising actors expressed in the terrorism discourse present Somali refugees and refugee camps as existential threats to peace and security in the country. Consequently, their speech acts expressed in the counterterrorism discourse present non-refoulement of the refugees as an existential threat to national security so as to justify, to the targeted audience, the adoption of refoulement, a norm-violating measure, to counter the fear of the threat of terrorism from Somali refugees and refugee camps. Terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya have, therefore, been “Somalinised”. The conclusion offers ways of preventing the “Somalinisation” of terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya.     

Baltic Refugees and Policy Formation in Sweden 1940–1950

The Baltic refugees of the Second World War, in Sweden, were part of the opening up of Sweden to immigration. New research, after the turn of the century, has shown how this change of policy was part of the emerging welfare state, embracing a wider geographical area. Still, the opening was conditioned by degrees of “Nordicness” and the conditions of neutrality toward Germany and not least the Soviet Union. This review article highlights some of the new insights of Swedish historiography.     

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.     

Humanitarianism,civil society and the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper reflects on responses to Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee crisis in the weeks that followed the increased numbers of Rohingya refugees who arrived from Myanmar after 24 August 2017. Drawing on literature on the local and international dimensions of humanitarianism, and the analytical lens of performance, it explores narratives of helping in relation to the shifting character of Bangladesh’s civil society, changing expressions of local and international religious sentiments, and the importance of understanding both formal and informal responses historically in the context of Bangladesh’s own experiences as a country born from a crisis in which citizens became refugees fleeing state-sponsored violence.     

From mosque to mosque: past and present images of Islamic space in Greece

This essay is an attempt to chart recent developments in the field of Modern Greek Studies, focusing on shifting perceptions regarding Islam and Muslims. To do so, the essay positions the relevant literature in its historical context, touching upon both accomplishments and limitations. Its main proposition is that the Greek case is distinct yet connected to contemporary global contingencies and broader long-term regional dynamics. Athens remains the only European capital without a mosque. Moreover, despite recent academic endeavors, there exists today no coherent Greek field of Islamic Studies. That these absences have been brought recently under political and academic scrutiny constitutes, however, a noteworthy change. Most important, the traditional exclusion of Islam from the field of Modern Greek Studies does not suggest lack of relevance between the two but, quite to the contrary, reveals a set of loaded and complex socieconomic, geopolitical, and historical links that deserve to be studied in their own right.     

The human right to marry: a refugee’s perspective

In the European Court of Human Rights cases of Muñoz Díaz v Spain in 2009 (Muñoz Díaz v Spain [2009], Application No. 49151/07) and Serife Yigit v Turkey in 2010 (Serife Yegit [2010], Application No. 3976/05), involving unregistered/informal ‘marriages’ of a Roma couple and a Muslim couple, respectively, the Grand Chamber took the position that civil marriages are available to all people in the state without distinction and therefore no breach of Article 12’s right to marry (nor Article 14’s prohibition of discrimination) had occurred when the respective states failed to recognise the informal marriages of the applicants. This article considers these two cases, and asks whether the court’s position is challenged by migrants/refugees, whose access to formal marriages maybe impeded due to a lack of identity and status documentation.