Population displacement in the baltic region in the twentieth century: from ‘refugee studies’ to refugee history

This article explores how Baltic migration, and particularly the experience of forced migration, relates to broader comparative and methodological issues and debates in the emerging field of refugee history. Attention is given to the impact of two world wars and their aftermath in the Baltic, with particular emphasis on the ways in which refugees from the Baltic and elsewhere have related their experiences. The article concludes by drawing attention to the multiple readings of population displacement that historians need to entertain.     

Whitehall and the Refugees: The 1930s and the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper, originally presented on the occasion of the launch of her book concerning British immigration policy towards Jewish refugees from 1933 to 1948, London compares that past with present British immigration policy and attitudes towards it. She argues, above all, that the same worry about the long-term effects of immigration—that is, that refugees would settle in the country and not return home or move on—that very much influenced the tendency to inhibit aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, is still very much alive today. While the legal situation of refugees and the kinds of persecution from which they seek refuge are different in the two periods in question, the 1930s and the 1990s—there are now, for instance, international conventions on refugees to which Britain is a signatory—British immigration policies of both periods are marked by many of the same priorities and many of the same attitudes towards and perceptions of refugees. In closing, she sounds a warning that an understanding of the past, crucial as it is, should not be mistakenly used to justify a lack of humanity in the present.     

Negotiating Refugee Empowerment(s) in Resettlement Organizations

In-depth interviews with both organizational staff and refugee clients in two American refugee resettlement organizations explore how empowerment is communicated to and understood by refugees being “empowered.” This study found that while organizational staff professed empowerment focused on self-sufficiency as self-determination, in practice their communication to clients defined self-sufficiency a priori in economic terms. Refugee clients instead constructed empowerment(s) in economic, educational, personal, and family terms. These findings highlight the need for changes in U.S. resettlement policy and for theoretical and practical understandings of refugee empowerment to recognize polysemic and conflicting empowerments in different life arenas and from different positionalities.     

The Microphysics of Participation in Refugee Research

This paper examines the involvement of refugees in the productionand reproduction of knowledge of which they are ultimately meantto be beneficiaries. By using examples from research with CentralAmerican refugees and Rwandan displaced children, it considersforced migrants’ roles as participants in research, theirposition in ‘participatory’ research, and the representationof refugees’ voices in refugee-centred research. Poweris intimately connected to the diverse ways in which participationunfolds, and the last part of the paper examines refugees’participation in research in terms of ‘power that circulates’(Foucault) to show that they are not more or less powerful butvehicles for the circulation of power, simultaneously undergoingand exercising it.     

Refugee Return Migration: Return Migration from Sweden to Chile, Iran and Poland 1973 1996

In this paper, return migration from Sweden to three sourcesof refugee immigration is analysed, with a focus on the effectof political change in 1990. Chilean immigrants reacted morestrongly to political liberalization in the home country thanPolish immigrants did, primarily due to more favourable economiccircumstances in Chile compared to Poland in the 1990s. In fact,the increase in Polish return migration propensity after 1990is not statistically different from the Iranian increase, inspite of the absence of political liberalization in Iran. Thereare significant cohort differences within the Chilean group,indicating an element of economically motivated migration withinthe last waves of Chilean refugee immigration in the late 1980s.Hence, successful implementation of schemes of voluntary returnmigration for refugees will not only be dependent on an improvedpolitical situation in the source country, but will also behighly dependent on economic circumstances.     

Reviews

Book reviews: Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow)     

Sudanese refugees in Victoria: An analysis of their treatment by the Australian Government

Following a brief historical account documenting developments in Australian Immigration politics and refugee and asylum seeker policies, this paper seeks to explain why Sudanese refugees in Victoria have recently been implicated in an increased involvement in crime by politicians and the media. It will be argued that the alleged increase involvement in crime has been constructed by the Government and the media – in order to justify the Australian Government's policy responses to the refugee crisis, to create public acceptance of such policies, and additionally for political gain. These policies were part of the Australian Government's wider policies on maintaining a homogenous Australian identity and have negatively impacted minority groups. Ultimately such policies encouraged racism and segregation in local communities, thus tarnishing Australia's multicultural standing.     

Leveraging liminality: how San Diego taxi drivers used their precarious status to win reform

ABSTRACT

Using a case study in San Diego, California, we explore the complexities of precarious employment for taxi drivers. We seek to answer the following question: how do the ambiguities of taxi drivers’ status as independent contractors shape drivers’ work conditions and opportunities for resistance? Our study is based on 331 surveys, 20 in-depth interviews, participant observation, and policy analysis over two years. While drivers were objectively disempowered by the independent contracting designation, lacking both the protections granted employees and the prerogatives of ownership, they were empowered by the alliances this duality facilitated. Drivers used their marginal identities as workers and as entrepreneurs to their advantage in their campaign for reform. This case presents an alternative narrative to previous research, which generally highlights how independent contractors either accept their status in exchange for flexibility or resist by claiming misclassification. The immigrant taxi drivers in our case study actively resisted, not by pursuing recognition as employees, but rather by successfully seeking the full rights of business owners.     

‘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.     

Refugees,Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claim to being an Islamic country. This article charts a history of the refugee engagement Malaysia has had based mainly on a shared regional and/or shared religious affiliation (Sunni Islam). I argue that the recent Malaysian history of refugee treatment presents a case for Muslim solidarity, but one tempered by a prevalent racism in Malaysia against people from the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, Islam provides an alternative history for providing protection to people in need. The UNHCR has pursued this approach in Muslim majority countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention in the hope of carving out a complementary protection space based on Islamic law and practice. This article traces these attempts and situates them within the Malaysian sociopolitical terrain, drawing out the possibilities and limits to such an approach.