Panel: The good citizen in refugee settings: displacement, hospitality and citizenship – Part 1

Maria Jumbert Gabrielsen, PRIO  and Elisa Pascucci, University of Tampere

Citizen responses to the refugee crisis: interactions between new volunteers, humanitarian organizations and state responses. Case of Norway and Greece 

The humanitarian spaces emerging from the confluence of border security mandates of ‘control’ and humanitarian concerns of ‘rescue’ have become new sites of intervention, for traditional humanitarian actors, but also for European and governmental agencies providing rescue and assistance services, as well as volunteer initiatives instigated by European citizens, who in the process have reconstituted their identity as humanitarian. The starting point for this project is that whereas humanitarian regimes of intervention have historically responded to situations where the state is unable or unwilling to assist crisis-affected communities, whether due to armed conflicts or natural disasters; the emergence of humanitarian spaces inside and alongside Europe’s borders unfolds, as hypothesized in this project, as a result of a security apparatus set up to ‘protect the borders’. This poses the question of not only states’ responsibility towards citizens and non-citizens in distress, but also how responsibilities of ‘regular’ citizens are shaped and understood, responding to situations of distress – out of moral or ethical concerns, or out of a sense of obligation when other official responses seem to be absent.

 

The first case takes the new ‘spontaneous’ volunteers as a focal point, to understand both the triggers of such initiatives, and how they operate alongside public authorities and more established humanitarian organizations. The latter also come with more established sets of rules, principles and procedures, where the spontaneous volunteers, with less experience, are less committed to these principles. At the same time, the spontaneous ‘new humanitarians’ were able to recruit more new volunteers than anyone else, and, it might be argued, respond more effectively to humanitarian needs. It will study in particular the Norway-based initiative Refugees Welcome to Norway (RWTN) and the Norwegian-initiated initiative of ‘Dråpen i Havet’, conducting first reception of boat migrants on the beaches in Greece.

 

Dorothea Hilhorst, ISS and LSE

From beneficiary to citizen. Exploring the magnification of labelling in humanitarian aid

Humanitarian has always had a complicated relation with the communities it serves, which has been apparent in the unhappy history of how aid speaks about and names refugees and crisis-affected populations. This paper revisits the debate about ‘the political in the apparently non-political’ (Wood 1985) labelling practices, and elaborates on the concept of citizen as perhaps a more appropriate label than current shorthands for crisis-affected people.

Humanitarian aid has been extensively criticized for its use of othering and distancing labels, such as case-load and target groups. It has also been criticized for using the terms victim and beneficiary, which implies stripping off people from their identities, boxing them into a passive recipient, and essentially reducing people to their relationship with aid providers. Attributing a dependency syndrome to people has been a powerful manifestation of this view of people, and the dogged reference to dependency syndromes, despite the abundant counter-evidence, points to the political implications of labelling practices.

This language of humanitarianism has undergone substantive change in recent years. Notions of resilience, a focus on capacities of communities and refugees, consistent reference to participation and accountability has affected the ways aid actors view affects populations. IFRC will refer to people as the first responders, conveying more active agency to people and recognizing their crucial role in their own survival. Lately, we see references to clients of aid, to recognize the rights to be informed and receive quality assistance. While these labels may be seen as a major step ahead, the paper will focus on a number of persistent problems with these labelling practices.

 

The second part of the paper proposes to view affected populations primarily as citizens. Although the formal citizen status of refugees may be in question, current theorizing on citizenship emphasizes its performative aspects and recognizes horizontal as well as vertical forms of citizenship, which makes the concept a great analytical tool. It enables us to analyze the manifold ways in which crisis-affected populations not only organize their individual survival but also affect – through their desires, their everyday survival and focused action – the public space in which they live.

 

María Hernández Carretero, University of Oslo

Refugees, hospitality and citizenship

This paper explores views on refugee reception and incorporation among host populations in Norway and Sweden, based on preliminary findings from an ethnographic study of citizen reactions and responses to the upsurge in refugee and migrant arrivals to both countries from 2015. I analyze how individuals express and justify their respective positions and, where relevant, their motivation to mobilize through civil society initiatives, and in which ways these relate to dominant political discourses in their respective countries. I explore how individuals see their views and actions with respect to state positions and (in)action – for instance whether they at all view them as supporting, complementing or contesting official policy and practice. I explore how, in practice, attitudes to refugee reception and inclusion and related activities serve to continuously delineate, reinforce or challenge previously existing boundaries of citizenship, of host and guest, insider and outsider, and whether individuals see themselves and their actions as having a role in actively shaping how such categories and boundaries are crafted. I approach these questions through the theoretical lens of the anthropological concept of hospitality, which has traditionally been concerned with how social groups deal with outsiders.

 

Panel: The good citizen in refugee settings: displacement, hospitality and citizenship – Part 2

Zoe Jordan, Oxford Brookes University and Cathrine Brun, Oxford Brookes University

Hosting in protracted displacement

Since Chamber’s proposal in 1986 that hosts are at best a secondary concern and often taken for granted in refugee responses, humanitarian policy documents have maintained the important role of hosts, while simultaneously revealing hosts and hosting practices to be an understudied part of a displacement process. In this paper we discuss different meanings of hosts and hosting found in the literature and add to this literature by analysing two cases of hosting in the context of Islamic and Muslim practices: the historical case of internally displaced Muslims during the civil war in Sri Lanka that ended in 2009, and the contemporary case of Syrian refugees in Jordan. By way of analysing the two cases, we explore the different meanings of hosts and the diversity of hosting practices with a particular focus on how these change over time in a particular displacement crisis. We also consider the role of the humanitarian and government responses in these developments. This analysis leads to a discussion of the representations of hosting practices and host and refugee identities during displacement, and the particular politics of changing identities and group formation for both hosts and refugees that emerges from protracted displacement crises.

 

Oliver Bakewell, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

The Citizen Refugee

Drawing on research among the Congolese population in Kampala this paper explores the extent to which people’s ability to navigate life in the city is shaped by their perceived, actual, or potential legal status. The majority of respondents identified themselves as refugees, while acknowledging their Congolese citizenship; only a handful referred to themselves as Ugandan. It seems that the combination of refugee status, the associated dream of resettlement and the rejection of ‘local integration’ (or citizenship) by the Ugandan government generates a negative cycle which makes it very difficult to see constructive ways forward. From the perspective of Congolese, they have neither desire to return to Congo nor do they see a future in Kampala despite having lived there for many years. However, some respondents gave glimpses of other possibilities, when they made it clear that they would prefer to have some formal status in Uganda as regular citizens but they struggle to see a route to citizenship. Despite the relative openness of Uganda’s refugee policy, the question of citizenship remains a continued challenge to the idea of refugee integration.

 

Olga Demetriou, PRIO Cyprus Centre

Forced migration and citizenship in post-conflict settings

This paper will explore the links between citizenship regimes in post-conflict settings and the regulation of refugeehood. Taking as examples the cases of Greece and Cyprus, it will argue that local conflict contexts matter to the governance of refugeehood today. The paper will build on Voutira’s analysis of –emic and –etic concepts guiding such governance to argue that in the context of multiple crises this intersection becomes ever more relevant. The focus of the analysis are the legal regimes guiding ‘refugee’ identification, their connections to the Greco-Turkish conflict, and their effects on different refugee populations.

 

Cindy Horst, PRIO

Refugees as ‘Vanguard’ Citizens

The radical uncertainty that refugees face because of war, flight and exile often shapes their participation in society in dramatic ways. Violent conflict and human rights abuses are not just disproportionately experienced by, but also further create, political subjects. Such life events can transform the motivations, sense of responsibility, and political action of citizens with refugee backgrounds. In this paper, we explore the links between the civil-political engagement and the life-stories of such individuals. In what ways does the moral shock of political evil provide human beings with a sense of necessity of action long after such experiences? I highlight the possibility of refugees as ‘vanguard’ (Arendt 1943), playing a leading role in new developments and ideas in their new societies. Empirical research in Oslo, Norway, has shown how some of those with life-stories that include violent conflict and flight, play a central role in hosting practices for other refugees and are actively involved in challenging marginalizing trends in their new societies.

Panel: Citizenship, Belonging, and the Sanctuary City Movement across Canada.

Graham Hudson, Ryerson University

Sanctuary City Policy in Toronto: Law, Custom, and Practice

The sanctuary city movement is a heterogeneous, urban response to exclusionary immigration laws. In the North American context, sanctuary consists in formal policies and procedures, which in some (but certainly not in all) cases are responsive to broad-based community mobilization.  In these ways, sanctuary challenges the claim that federal governments possess exclusive authority over citizenship, rights, and political membership. But this picture belies a more complicated social and political milieu that can both facilitate and impede the operation of formal laws. Numerous reports and studies in Canada and the United States show that access to services are conditional on a host of informal factors, including the discretionary power of city officials and variable conceptions of deservingness. More structural forces also paly a role, including the complementary logics of security and liberalism, which construct non-status migrants as dangerous, deceitful, illegal and, consequently, undeserving of services.

This paper adopts a legal pluralist approach to the study of sanctuary city policy in Toronto, Canada. It uses empirical research as a basis for identifying the informal factors that have shaped discretion over the provision of services in Toronto, while infusing a dose of realism about the efficacy of formal law. Particular attention will be paid to the collaborative and the competitive interplay of diverse laws, both within the state (e.g. municipal, provincial, federal) and between official law and the customs of particular institutions (e.g. police services). The examples of policing and education will be used as case studies.

 

Idil Atak, Ryerson University

Protecting the Undocumented Migrants: Sanctuary City Policies in Toronto and Montreal.

In 2014, Toronto, the first Canadian sanctuary city, reaffirmed its commitment to improving undocumented migrants’ access to programs and services in City-funded agencies. In February 2017, the City Council of Montreal unanimously adopted a declaration designating Montreal as a “sanctuary city”. The City Council asked the Government of Quebec to review its policies regarding provincially funded services for undocumented residents to promote their access to health care, emergency services, and community housing. In addition, both in Toronto and Montreal the sanctuary city policies strive for ensuring that undocumented migrants can have access to the local police without the risk of being reported to the immigration authorities or deported. However, research shows that official policies have not been consistently realized in practice. This paper provides a comparative critical analysis of the implementation of sanctuary city policy in Toronto and Montreal. Drawing on the results of an exploratory empirical research and using the theoretical framework of “local governance”, it maps the nature and extent to which formal policy effectively protects the human rights of undocumented migrants.

 

Sasha Kovalchuk, McMaster University

Sanctuary’s Sovereign Rule: Exceptional Private Power of Local Immigration Policy within Toronto’s Sanctuary Cit

Sanctuary City scholarship encounters a dilemma. Studies reveal Sanctuary Cities, wherein municipalities provide services regardless of immigration status, often result in a false sense of security for undocumented peoples living in constant threat of deportation. Yet scholars remain optimistic because Sanctuary Cities challenge the primacy of the state to police migration. I argue Sanctuary City literature dichotomizes policy effectiveness thus obscuring how state officials, business, and civil society actors each contest and can possess local sovereign control over citizenship. I develop the concept of private delegated sovereignty as a metric to trace the local political process and contest over enacting citizenship. Three overlapping theoretical methods reveal Sanctuary City local governance mechanisms. First, Sanctuary City policies utilize zoning technology described by post-development globalization theory (like by Murray and Ong) who show how local and subnational bodies configure exceptional territorial zones to benefit private business who gain degrees of sovereign power over citizenship, labour, and environmental regulation. Second, in cases of immigration federalism (like in Canada and the U.S.), decentralized and shared de facto jurisdictions over migration enables each level of government to partake in zoning technologies controlling migrants. Third, Toronto demonstrates how zoning technology operates within local immigration policy in cities capable to benefit migrants’ well-being. Sanctuary City policies are a zoning technology available for levels of government to configure jurisdictional bounds of local immigration governance. Sanctuary Cities reveals a contest between state, business, and civil society actors over delegated private sovereign zoning to administer citizenship powers within immigration federalism.

 

Panel: ‘Helping hands’ in a rebordering Europe

Conveners: Synnøve Bendixsen, University of Bergen, Marie Sandberg, University of Copenhagen, Dorte Jagetic Andersen, University of Southern Denmark

 

In 2015 Europe experienced an almost unprecedented refugee crisis as a consequence of people fleeing their home countries, especially Syria, and an increasing territorialisation of Islamic State. The response of the European Union was primarily to enforce its external borders using naval blockades and FRONTEX-led programmes to push back migrants even before they entered the European continent. Among European citizens, responses to the refugee crisis have differed. Concurrent to moral panics as well as outbursts of violence and discrimination, a plethora of counter movements can be observed, either organised in cooperation with refugee organisations and NGO’s, or in the shape of privately organized initiatives.

 

This panel will discuss the different ways in which people of everyday life Europe choose to ‘give a helping hand’, doing their own aiding work in support of refugees coming to Europe. Papers will discuss various forms of citizen mobilization and engagements, from self-organized fundraising to illegal smuggling of single individuals across borders. By ethnographically investigating the rationales, aspirations and experiences of the private initiatives and activism, the panel aims at enhancing our understanding of how everyday ‘aiding practices’ can be seen as ways of enacting the European citizen. Are some of these practices representing new forms of humanitarianism? What can these practices tell us about the Europeanisation process? Are the aiding practices are a critique or a distancing from the European project? Or can some of the practices also be understood as signaling new kinds of European citizen awareness and ‘everyday life Europeanisation’?

 

The panel is organised by the interdisciplinary research network: Helping Hands. Research Network on the Everyday Border Work of European Citizens.

 

Kolar Aparna, Olivier Thomas Kramsch, Joris Schapendonk/Nijmegen Centre for Border Research (NCBR)/Department of Human Geography/Radboud Universiteit

 Can Europe be ‘Helped?’

In the context of a widely perceived ’Willkommen fatigue’, we begin by asking: who has the luxury of having tired hands to help? Implicit in this question is the ‘who’ or ‘what’ of helping hands, and the specific relationship of those ‘hands’ with the ‘hands’ of others apparently not in a position to help themselves. Resonating with the ‘White Man’s Burden’ of the European imperial 19th century, ‘helping hands fatigue’ implies a burden assumed by a White, liberal, tolerant and humane Europe helping according to the principles of Christian charity. What this perspective blends out is the self-organizing capacity of migrants and refugees themselves, their ability to construct ‘worlds’ in relation to their host societies. In the current European Union context these worlds, we argue, are often cross-border in nature. Migrants cross and re-cross the intra-European borders of nation-states to secure for themselves material resources and rights not available within the confines of individual nations.  Drawing on our own dilemmas and confrontations in creating a ‘space of refuge’ in everyday practices of university life (co-writing, co-producing research and classroom debates, co-travelling with refugee comrades and those involved in refugee-support, to name some) we propose the contemporary European border as a dynamic site of experimentation for subverting ‘help’ and ‘hospitality’. We argue, based on the same, that refugees become ‘hands’ that are in the process of ‘helping’ Europe awaken to Other political possibilities for action and solidarity which remain hidden.

 

Line Steen Bygballe Jensen, University of Copenhagen and Lydia Maria Kirchner,  University of Copenhagen

Volunteering for Change. A cultural analysis of grassroots volunteer networks in support of refugees in Berlin and Copenhagen

Taking the point of departure in the complex socio-political landscape marked by tensions and disunity in the wake of the refugee crisis in Europe, this presentation explores the grassroots volunteer networks that formed to support and welcome the refugees arriving to Europe. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the two urban settings of Berlin and Copenhagen and consisting of 14 interviews and 23 participant observations, insights on grassroots volunteer networks for refugees across borders are presented from our thesis research in 2017. This includes a discussion of how the networks work and what motivations and aspirations they build on, as well as their potential and vulnerabilities. The analysis draws theoretical inspiration from the performative multiplicity approach within Actor-Network Theory and with a focus on the everyday life in the researched networks. Through the research themes of social movements, conviviality and active citizenship, the paper elucidates how contemporary forms of engagement are enacted in the grassroots volunteer network of Moabit hilft and Wedding hilft in Berlin and Venligbohus and Solbjerggruppen in Copenhagen in their day-to-day activities. The analysis and discussion shows how the grassroots volunteer networks function as cultural laboratories with loose organisational structures that seek to create relational spaces that can accommodate difference and have the ambition to create alternative structures of political participation. Thereby the networks emerge as local manifestations of and answers to global challenges, that find their expression in the refugee crisis.

 

Katerina Rozakou, University of Amsterdam

Visits to the “forgotten”: Sociality behind bars between solidarians and deportable women

Drawing upon a group of solidarians who visited detained migrant women in a pre-removal center in Athens, I will here explore elements of this “sociality behind bars”. Gift-giving in the form of basic goods, telephone cards, medicine etc. was only one part of this complex relationship. The solidarians clearly distinguished their visits from any form of humanitarian or institutionalized NGO assistance. The principles of egalitarianism and anti-statism predominated in the ways in which they conceptualized their activities. The constant confrontation with the state -personified in the police officers in charge of the detention center- was constant and took the form of kraximo (“slating”). Kraximo is a culturally informed way of political demonstration that involves the unanticipated disturbance of the workings of the detention center or any other form of public facility. At the same time the solidarians often resorted to agreements and mediated between the deportable/detained women and the police officers who guarded the detention center. Both in their confrontation moments and in moments of unforeseen cooperation, their interactions with police officers drew upon particular moral understandings of personhood.

 

Daniela DeBono, Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare, Malmö University and Cetta Mainwaring, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

Solidarity at Sea: How NGOs sustain and disrupt the humanitarian border spectacle in the Mediterranean

Non-governmental organizations rescued 40,000 people in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016. In 2017, these organizations were increasingly criminalized by EU member states and agencies, accused of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy increased cooperation with Libya to stop migrants from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This paper explores the search and rescue efforts of NGOs in the central Mediterranean Sea in the 21st century, between 2014 and 2017. Drawing on Agamben, scholars have characterized the Sea as a ‘state of exception’ where monitoring is limited and migrants are reduced to ‘bare life’, subject to the law but with little access to rights. Others have contended that migrants demonstrate agency even at sea. Here we examine how the Sea is a contested space and how the ‘state of exception’ fluctuates, contracting and expanding as these contestations take place. In particular, we examine how solidarity and humanitarian work is understood and operationalized by NGOs on the high seas, and how their work contributes to and disrupts the humanitarian border spectacle in the Mediterranean.

 

Antigone Lyberaki, SolidarityNow and Panteion University

From Sanctuaries to Hotspots – Where Next for Forced Migration? A bottom-up view from Greece, through the lens of SolidarityNow

Images of solidarity and humanitarianism in Greece have been changing through time. From Delphi to Moria, the road is long and winding. The broader European picture is also fraught with contradictions and clashing versions of the ‘true meaning’ of European citizenship. This is often characterized as “willkommen fatigue” among hosting societies, which is often paralleled in a mirror “uncertainty fatigue” among communities of newcomers who are trapped in first asylum countries during prolonged limbo periods. Beyond the surface of changing and fragile economies, there are other deeper issues of concern, such as population ageing and silent gaps in care provision, but also the sweeping winds of populism and the policies of “fortress Europe”. In this paper I intend to present the experience of SolidarityNow from its various projects (Solidarity Centers, Accommodation, Campaigns and networking) in order to outline a version of activism based on humanitarian values and aiming at the emergence and reinforcement of open societies.

 

Panel: Challenging new forms of activism and social accountability: different perspectives from Sudan, Germany, and Canada

Through different case studies, this panel will address and critically analyze emerging forms of activism and social accountability on four continents. While adopting distinct approaches of analysis, including through policy, institutions, and civil society actors, the presentations focus on the significance of these forms of activism and mobilization.

 

Rai Barbosa de Oliveira, European Master in Migration & Intercultural Relations (EMMIR)

Persons of Concern Institutionalized Activism in Sudan

As new forms and modes of activism are sparked across the globe, it is important to recognize the right and the propensity of Persons of Concern to act politically in order to seek their goals. This paper aims at shedding some light on the issue of refugee activism in Sudan, through the institutionalization of the role of Community Volunteers under the Community based Protection vindicated by UNHCR in Sudan. As it is a new project, many lessons are being drawn, including the extent to which Persons of Concern of UNHCR actually perceive themselves as bridges between the institution and their national communities upon taking the role of Community Volunteer. It is important to reflect upon the level of (mis)trust that is engendered in these relationships and the level of ownership attained by Community Volunteers through urban outreach programs in Khartoum. How do the communities attached to these volunteers by national principles feel about their role? Moreover, what are the internal dynamics of such volunteer programs amongst volunteers themselves and how does that positively or negatively impact on the constituency of urban outreach effectiveness in Sudan? Prior to the beginning of the program of community volunteers, there were informal Committees composed by Persons of Concern of UNHCR from different nationalities that met regularly with UNHCR to express community concerns. Now with fewer, yet institutionalized members of community volunteers, how have the changes to these structures impacted the capacity of Persons of Concern to express their voices?

 

Linda Becht, Laura Boucsein, Katharina Mayr, European Master in Migration & Intercultural Relations, EMMIR

The Dynamics of Othering in Activism as Part of Germany’s Post-2015 “Willkommenskultur”

In the context of Germany’s Willkommenskultur (culture of welcome) and the aftermath of Germany’s increased reception of refugees, this paper critically evaluates the involvement of activists with refugees and analyses to what extent and in what ways they otherise the refugees with whom they are engaged.

 

For this purpose, the article draws on humanitarianism and a distinction between exclusionary and inclusionary Othering. The analysis of eight semi-structured interviews with a heterogeneous group of refugee and non-refugee activists involved in Germany’s Willkommenskultur showed that Othering was omnipresent in the speech patterns of the activists. Exclusionary Othering took the form of infantilisation, victimisation, paternalism, the distinction between good and bad refugees, objectification, and culturalisation. Activists who had had a flight experience and/or were sensitised to power hierarchies tended to make more use of inclusionary Othering, which includes the attempt to connect as allies and on equal terms, role-taking, an awareness of one’s own situation and the rejection of exclusionary Othering. Furthermore, the creation of a collective Self was identified as a means to break the strong binary between refugees and non-refugees.

 

Awareness-raising training among activists as well as increased involvement of activists with flight experience might thus contribute to breaking this binary and reducing exclusionary Othering as well as its impact of reinforcing unequal power relations. An effort towards increased self-awareness not only needs to be made by activists but also the research community.

 

Erika Massoud, European Master in Migration & Intercultural Relations (EMMIR)

Decolonizing Solidarity within Migrant Justice Activism

This paper explores solidarity ties between migrant justice activism and indigenous movements on Turtle Island, commonly referred to as North America. Bringing together theory and practice, led by these movements, this paper analyzes the ways in which their self-organization challenges, on the one hand, settler colonial states, and on the other, dominant understandings of belonging to a community. Indigenous peoples have been forcefully and violently expelled from their lands in the process of settler colonial states asserting sovereignty. Equally, these states continue to expel non-status persons and others who are constructed as outsiders. Thus, asserting sovereign power over whom is considered foreign or unwelcome continues to (re)produce a colonial discourse on who belongs to the ‘imagined community’ of the nation.

 

Historical experiences of displacement of indigenous and migrant communities have reinforced solidarity ties between activist movements in certain contexts. Yet, critiques from indigenous activists on ‘allyship’ have highlighted how migrant-led movements can further reinforce settler colonialism, by rendering visible migrant struggles within state structures and ignoring indigenous sovereignty and world views. This paper questions how migrant justice movements position themselves within decolonization and in relation to indigenous movements. How can migrant-led movements transform the principles around which they organize to decolonize their struggles and solidarity with indigenous activism? Adopting an approach which combines theory and practice in research can articulate ways of knowing that are shaped by activism. Ultimately, solidarity ties between migrant justice activism and indigenous movements can challenge and re-conceptualize the relationship between territory, sovereignty, and belonging.

 

Regional Perspectives: Australia and Asia

 

Susan Banki, University of Sydney

Homeland Activists Without a Home: The Why of Precarious Activism for Burmese and Bhutanese refugees

While precarious populations are often active in efforts to reform the countries from which they come, engaging in a variety of contentious politics to push for democratic reforms or regime change, it is also true that populations without valid passports (refugees, stateless, undocumented) are empirically among the most powerless and precarious of actors, particularly regarding their potential to influence state behaviour. The literature offers both perspectives: refugees as pawns in larger geo-political systems, and refugees as active participants in their own social and political lives. How do we resolve these two perspectives around refugee agency? The first part of this paper employs the literatures of precarity, social movements, transnationalism, and diaspora studies to develop a set of hypotheses about the factors that explain precarious homeland activism. The second part draws on field work and grey literature from refugees from Burma in Thailand and refugees from Bhutan in Nepal to test these propositions. The paper concludes with some observations about the assumptions underlying precarity and proximity for homeland activists without a home.

Louise Olliff, University of Melbourne / Refugee Council of Australia

From resettled refugees to humanitarian actors: Motivations, modalities and implications of diaspora humanitarianism

Refugees resettled to Australia often establish small voluntary-run organisations to mobilise resources and implement humanitarian projects targeting displaced populations in other parts of the world. These ‘everyday humanitarians’ raise money for schools and health centres, purchase wheelchairs and water pumps, send material aid, facilitate migration outcomes, and advocate at different levels to draw attention to the plight of ‘their people’. The capacity of resettled refugees to draw on transnational social networks, contextual knowledge of humanitarian situations and systems, mobility enabled through resettlement, and (in)visibility makes them distinct humanitarian actors. Although not ‘new’ in their actions, there is increasing interest in what role diaspora organisations could or do play in responses to forced displacement.

 

Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Geneva, and interviews with representatives of 26 refugee diaspora organisations formed in Australia, this presentation focuses on the motivations, modalities and implications of diaspora humanitarianism. It explores the complex moralities and motivations that underlie acts of helping, and of the social world of those who have  been mostly unseen by more powerful humanitarian actors. This research also muddies the lines between ‘those who suffer’ and ‘those who help’ and explores the implications of diaspora humanitarianism as a distinct form of transnational engagement—one that is shaped by the politics, histories and positionalities of people who have direct personal connection to, or experience of, ‘being a refugee’.

 

Panel: New Humanitarianism in Context: Protection and Refuge from the Past to the Present

Glen Peterson, University of British Columbia

Selective Sanctuary: Colonial Extradition Practice and the Concept of Political Refuge in Republican China

How did the notion of “political asylum” play out in a colonial context? The idea of the modern political refugee was first introduced to China more than a century ago as part of a growing international debate over the practice of extraditing fugitives. By the late 1800s extradition was increasingly regarded by states as a necessary response to growing transnational mobility and the need for effective international legal mechanisms for the repatriation of fugitive criminals. However, the extradition of persons for political offenses was controversial, especially among liberal states that championed the idea of political freedom. This paper explores the tensions and contradictions that emerged when European notions of political freedom and asylum for political offenders were transposed onto a colonial landscape. It does so by examining British and French extradition practices involving the sovereign Chinese state as well as colonized spaces within China. By considering the ways in which the emergent humanitarian principles associated with the concept of the modern political refugee collided with the realpolitik of imperial interest, we can better understand the nature of the enduring challenges faced by humanitarian activism in a world of nation-states.

 

Laura Madokoro, McGill University

Sanctuary in Context: Historical Contingencies and Contested Notions of Legitimacy and Authority

The concept of a “sanctuary city” has become an increasingly popular phenomenon in recent years. There are currently 19 sanctuary cities in the United States with hundreds of smaller jurisdictions embracing a similar status. Practices vary but the core element of contemporary sanctuary city practices is that individuals, including children, who do not have proper paperwork or official immigration status will not be denied services within that jurisdiction. From a historical perspective, one of the more striking aspects of the current moment is the opposition of one jurisdiction against another.

 

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, until the medieval period, sanctuary was undertaken by churches in order to protect fugitives and alleged criminals from prosecution and allow time for penance. In England, sanctuary was granted by the Crown to particular spaces, Westminster Abbey for instance with the idea that religious authorities would take the practice of sanctuary seriously and not allow it to be abused. Over the past five hundred years, the practice of sanctuary has continued with a noticeable shift in practice. Now, the persons offered protection are generally refugees or migrants, considered innocent of whatever allegations are laid against them, and worthy of protection from state.

 

To contextualize the present moment, this paper considers how refugees caught up in sanctuary practices involving individual churches and the state transformed notions of civil society and attendant responsibilities. The paper focuses in particular on the various contingencies that have shaped sanctuary practices from the late 19th century with a view to understanding the manner in which individual questions of protection have been bound up with larger questions of religious legitimacy and state authority and the impact this entangled history has on contemporary practices.

 

Megan Bradley, McGill University

Socializing UNHCR: Refugees’ roles in interpreting and promoting international norms

It is often assumed the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the guardian of the central norms in the international refugee regime, and the flagbearer for refugee protection. In this capacity, UNHCR educates refugees about their rights, and “socializes” states to respect the cardinal rules of the refugee regime. Examining the ways in which refugees mobilize to protect themselves, and actively debate and conceptualize their own rights, yields a more complex picture. In some cases, refugees themselves “socialize” UNHCR by pushing the agency to recognize and support their own interpretations of key norms. This paper explores this “turning of the tables,” and its implications for understanding the exercise of subaltern power in the refugee regime, through a historical case study. Drawing on UNHCR archives, the paper explores how refugees from El Salvador collectively interpreted an under-examined norm in the refugee regime, the right of return, and how they mobilized at different levels to advance their vision for return. This entailed engagement with UNHCR at different levels, from the local to the international. This engagement prompted a significant rethinking on the part of UNHCR of the meaning and implications of the right of return for refugees, and the agency’s own role in supporting refugees’ claims to exercise this right in the face of state opposition.

 

Geoffrey Cameron, University of Toronto

Religious groups and the institutional origins of private sponsorship in Canada

Why did private sponsorship develop in Canada, traditionally considered to be a statist country with an actively managed immigration policy? This paper answers this question by tracing the evolution of the private sponsorship program from early partnerships with religious groups in the post-war period to the legal establishment of private sponsorship in the 1976 Immigration Act. What this institutional history reveals is that private sponsorship developed through iterative negotiations between religious groups and government bureaucrats over the moral and practical dimensions of refugee resettlement. Ministers responsible for immigration were unwilling to exclude religious groups from the policy process, but bureaucrats sought to sideline their active involvement in selection and resettlement. The Goldilocks solution was private sponsorship, where these groups were granted an active role, outside of government-sponsored programs. This compromise was a logical, but counterintuitive, consequence of statism, and a particular expression of public religion animated by transnational solidarities. The institutional and religious contours of this history are relevant to consider at a time when Canada’s private sponsorship program is internationally celebrated with a view to promoting policy diffusion.

 

Shauna Labman, University of Manitoba, Faculty of Law

The Export Experiment: Globalizing Private Sponsorship

After over a decade of pilot programs, shifting numbers, narrowed criteria, submission caps and the introduction of a new blended sponsorship model, the change in federal Canadian government in 2015 came with a strong promise of resettlement, both governmental and private. Filipo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees declared that “Canada has taken the mantle of humanitarian leadership in the world” as talk grew of private sponsorship as a response to the asylum crisis in Europe. In September 2016, in partnership with the UNHCR, and the Open Society Foundations, Canada announced a joint initiative aimed at increasing the private sponsorship of refugees around the world. Whereas in the past the Canadian government turned to private sponsorship as evidence as its own humanitarianism at home, the new government embraced not just the numbers but the resettlement model itself on a global stage.  But private sponsorship sits it the particular context of Canadian history and geography nor has it been without challenges. This article anchors its concerns in these challenges and the relationship between resettlement and asylum. Canada embraced resettlement because geography meant it was not a country of first asylum. New state interest results conversely from the reality of an influx of asylum seekers.  Concerns with the privatization of state responsibility and the power of selection that resettlement offers over uncontrolled asylum raises questions over who will benefit from additional sponsorship places and who will face increased obstacles to access.

 

Roundtable: Taking stock of the 2015-2016 refugee migration towards Europe : what future for protection, belonging and citizenship?

Danièle Bélanger, Université Laval ; Celine Cantat, Central European University; Danica Santic, University of Belgrade; Katherine Pendakis, King’s College; Gunnar Stange, University of Vienna

The 2015-2016 migration from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other South Asian and African countries has drawn enormous media and political attention. Migrants seeking protection travelled through various routes, taking risks and facing tremendous precarity and uncertainty. Over two years after the closure of borders, participants of this roundtable will discuss issues of protection, belonging and citizenship.

 

Participants of this panel will go beyond 2015-16 binary vision of this migration that tends to predominate. Initial openings of borders coupled with citizen-led humanitarian and solidarity work led to hopes for new forms of political community based on new imaginings of borders.  But by early 2016 it became clear that the response of EU states was much more traditional.  Borders were closed, and the problem externalised, amidst culturalist and securitised discourses. One of the consequences of post 2015/16 refugee movements has been a general agreement, even amongst liberal parties, that refugee protection, when granted, should be limited.  ‘Refuge’ and ‘migration’ are seen as two different things and categories of ‘refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’ reinforced.  In Europe and many other countries of the world, people recognised as refugees are given short-term permits to stay, with the expectation of return.  The expectation that refugees can or should plan long term residency and citizenship in host countries has been watered down by the growth of subsidiary protection rather than full fledged refugee protection. There however continues to be attempts at crafting solidarity and images of new political communities by grassroots and other groups. In this context, how can we map or respond to the call for new forms of political community amidst a securitising and externalising discourse and politics in Europe? Speakers of this roundtable will provide questions and illustrations to spark discussion among the participants about this question. Examples from a few countries will brought forward.

 

The objective of this roundtable is to launch an open discussion with the conference participants about the 2015-2016 refugee movement, in the midst of the current devastating situation for refugees, many of whom, are stuck, waiting and silenced. It is an opportunity to discuss how to mobilize our research findings to further the debate and reinstate the legitimacy of the need for protection and long-term solutions.

 

Panel: Citizen Mobilization and New Solidarities Opposing European and US Restrictionism

This panel examines new forms of citizen political action through voluntarist and solidarity work with refugees that challenges increasingly restrictionist and nationalist policies in Europe and the United States. The papers are based on ethnographic and qualitative research examining how citizen activists and volunteers have become increasingly important actors in emerging forms of “new humanitarianism.” The presenters examine the prospects and limits of their involvement in the privatization of aid and protection in Greece, the Austrian/Italian border, and the United States. Papers address voluntarism and refugee resettlement in the United States as a mode of political resistance to racist and xenophobic policies; the role that grass-roots initiatives in Greece play in supporting refugees and asylum-seekers; and how volunteer groups and grassroots organizations participate in border monitoring in Italy and Austria as a form of “humanitarian citizenship.” The papers underscore that citizen mobilization has created new spaces for democratic deliberation on the rights of forced migrants, but in the absence of wider organizing such efforts are not likely to transform fragmented governmental and intergovernmental responses to large-scale migration.

 

Scott Harding, Grace Felten, and Kathryn Libal, University of Connecticut

 “Doing Something to Fight Injustice”: Voluntarism and Refugee Resettlement as a Mode of Political Engagement

While the protection of refugees is fundamental to international human rights law, rising xenophobia and nationalism in Europe and the United States have undermined historic commitments to refugees and immigrants.  The U.S. government has historically touted its generosity and support for refugees, claiming that the program reflects “the United States’ highest values and aspirations to compassion, generosity and leadership” (U.S. Department of State, Refugee Admissions, 2017).  This humanitarian framing is in sharp contrast to the restrictionist rhetoric from President Trump and recent policies seeking to radically curtail or end refugee admissions.  

 

In this context, community mobilization in support of the U.S. refugee resettlement program has become more visible and vocal.  Based on qualitative interviews and field observation in Connecticut and other states, this paper underscores how citizen mobilization and engagement in communities hosting refugees has led to new forms of lateral organizing across geographic locales.  In the past community “co-sponsorship” or other voluntarist approaches to refugee resettlement have been critiqued for neoliberal underpinnings.  Yet in this political moment such efforts have become part of a broader movement to challenge policies that exclude those fleeing violence and persecution.  While citizen-refugee solidarity action in the United States often remains undeveloped, our research reveals how refugee resettlement is understood by community members as both “humanitarian” in nature and as a political act of resistance.

 

We discuss the efficacy of horizontal, municipal-level responses to support refugees and migrants as a strategy to combat fragmentary national approaches and exclusionary policies.

 

Elisabeth Kirtsoglou,  Durham University

Producing ‘the refugee’ in the land of hospitality: Experiences from 2015-2016 Greece

In 2015-2016, more than one million asylum-seekers crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece. The Greek state –in the midst of financial meltdown– was unprepared to deal with the number of arrivals. And international NGOs struggled to coordinate ‘humanitarian’ efforts. This paper focuses on the provision of housing, sustenance, healthcare and legal services to asylum-seekers in which relations between EU, state and non-state actors resulted in a markedly uneven and asymmetrical landscape and violations of asylum seekers’ human and legal rights. Based on ethnographic data collected as part of an ESRC/DFID-funded project, the paper discusses how the quality of asylum- seekers’ accommodation varied considerably and depended heavily on socio-historical, demographic and local-political aspects. The hierarchical and asymmetrical character of service provision will be analyzed against two major factors that played a crucial role in 2015-2016: First, the tendency of the state to ‘outsource’ most services to the third sector, volunteers and the local communities; second, the importance of a local ethos of solidarity underpinned by historical memories of being a refugee from Asia Minor (stemming from the 1919-22 Greco-Turkish war), and by culturally-specific cosmologies of what constitutes ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’. Ethnographic dialogues with refugees, state representatives, NGO actors, volunteers and members of Greek communities reveal the inefficiency of top-down ‘reception systems’ that disregarded the needs and aspirations of asylum-seekers. The paper provides examples of grass-roots initiatives that were more effective and symmetrical than larger-scale efforts, calling for radical changes in the current ‘humanitarian care’ paradigm of asylum-seekers in Europe.

 

Marciana Popescu & Katharina Ehikioya-Lang

From border control to border monitoring: Shifting responsibilities between state and civil actors, as a path to safe migration

The political discourse on migration increasingly shifted towards securitization, with border control becoming the most important regulatory mechanism attempting to “manage” and limit human mobility. During the most recent migration wave into the European space, and due to the inability of state actors to properly respond, border control expanded and maximized. Externalization of borders and the expansion of clearly set the tone for a more restrictive, more state-controlled migration policy throughout Europe.

 

FRONTEX reports claim great effectiveness, visible in the immediate drop in numbers of migrants accessing Europe by Sea, both through Greece (the Balkan route, heavily controlled and mostly closed in 2016), and Italy (the Italian route, controlled by the Dublin III Agreement and bilateral agreements between Italy and Libya, for example). Yet, the more the state agents pushed for restrictive migration policies, closing borders, the more the civil actors engaged in creating a countermovement. Possibly one of the best examples of such engagement is reflected by the border monitoring efforts first at the border between Italy and Austria, and soon expanded to in-country efforts in Italy (the Verona-Trento-Bolzano migration route). Using a qualitative methodology, this study will present findings from participatory observation of border monitoring as well as interviews with volunteer groups and grassroots organizations involved in the border monitoring project in Verona, Trento and Bolzano, particularly focusing on factors contributing to civic engagement, and the impact of civic engagement on existing migration policies, at core implementation points.

 

Panel: Syrian refugees and the labour market in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

With an influx of nearly five million Syrian refugees in just a few years, Turkey, Jordan and Lebannon shoulder the largest burden of the humanitarian crisis provoked by the conflict in Syria. Research to date has focused on refugees’ precarious living conditions, in part because of their ambiguous legal status and limited social rights. This panel shifts the gaze to labour markets.  Turkey, Jordan and Lebannon have put in place policies aimed at regulating and/or limiting labour rights and labour incorporation. Many other actors also intervene in labour market processes, including employers, international organisations, NGOs, municipal governments, civil society organisations and refugee solidarity networks. Presenters of this panel will unravel the dynamics at work in these three countries where refugees form a new contingent of cheap and vulnerable labour. The papers reveal how labour is a particularly illuminating vantage point to shed light on the management of refugee populations as well as the experiences of refugees in the region.

 

Katharina Lenner, University of Bath and Lewis Turner, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute

The politics of labor market integration for Syrian refugees in Jordan

Refugee response planners no longer frame Syrian refugees merely as objects of humanitarian care. They are increasingly portrayed as enterprising subjects, whose formal integration into labor markets can simultaneously create self-sufficient actors and cure the economic woes of host countries. But bringing together humanitarian and economic agendas is not an easy task. This article analyzes the contradictions and frictions that have emerged in the process of implementing the Jordan Compact – a political commitment to formally integrate Syrian refugees into the Jordanian labor market, which is supposed to showcase such win-win strategies. It argues that the Compact should be seen as a policy model, which has achieved enough consensus, and incorporated enough disparate objectives, to be labelled a ‘policy success.’ Yet central actors have neglected core features of Jordan’s political economy and labor market, and/or the lives and survival strategies of refugees, such that their radical blueprints of transformation have been disrupted. Despite the widespread commitment to the scheme, it is thus unlikely that the Jordan Compact will both reinvigorate the Jordanian economy and offer Syrians the prospect of a dignified, self-sufficient life – an important lesson for comparable schemes being rolled out across the globe.

 

Lama Kabbanji, IRD/CEPED

“Refugee” workers from Syria in Lebanon : Between agency and downward social mobility

This research investigates some aspects of the changing living and employment conditions of Syrians in Lebanon after 2011. To do so, I rely mainly on an ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted between May and November 2017 in the Lebanese coastal city of Tyr. The research focused on one of the restaurants along the sea where all the employees came from Syria after 2011. None of them had ever worked in Lebanon before. Participant observation, informal and formal interviews with the owner and the employees were conducted throughout the season. Audio-visual material has also been collected and allows to observe more subtly work interactions, power dynamics, and the lived experience of downward social mobility. Among the questions tackled: How did the changing Lebanese legal and political framework affect their living and working conditions? How did the war in Syria contribute to change the profile of “refugee” workers? How do these workers perceive themselves and their working/living conditions in Lebanon? The study of these “refugee” workers journeys, life stories and discourse will be mobilized to show how, despite a media, political and humanitarian discourse aiming at making Syrian refugees only poor “victims”, their agency remains complex: different considerations and desires are guiding their choices and destinations, despite the policies put in place to control them.

 

Danièle Bélanger, Université Laval and Cenk Saraçoğlu, Ankara University

Who regulates Syrian refugees’ incorporation to the Turkish labour market?  Insights from the city of Izmir, Turkey

The inflow of over three million Syrian refugees into Turkey in the last five years has meant that the Turkish labour market has benefited from a large influx of cheap and vulnerable labour. In the absence of a well-planned strategy, labour market incorporation of refugees have been largely shaped by conflicting practices and perspectives of various actors that implicitly or explicitly take part in the process of “governing” them. Among these actors are market forces (i.e companies, small capital owners and entrepreneurs), state institutions, municipalities, international and domestic non-governmental organizations and city-based citizens’ solidarity networks. This paper unpacks contentions among these actors and argues that discourses and policies of the Turkish state, the humanitarian “universalist” framework of international organizations and the altruistic agenda of city-based activists remain ineffective in moulding labour market dynamics and working conditions of Syrian refugees because market actors dominate other actors and their agendas. Because other actors have no significant effect on shaping labour processes, labour incorporation of refugees have been shaped to a certain extent by “unregulated” labour process on the one hand and the contending practices of various actors, which attempt to “regulate” the consequences of these work relations on the other.  The paper develop this analysis based on an ethnographic study carried out in İzmir, Turkey in 2016 and 2017.  Our argument emerges from our first-hand fieldwork with various actors on labour relations in the textile, shoe and agricultural industries.   

 

Ismail Doga Karatepe, Kasel University

Syrian Refugees and Turkey’s Labour Market: The State and Capital Perspective

The main argument of this paper highlights that the business communities’ strategies concerning Syrian refugees’ integration to the Turkey’s formal labour market are relatively insignificant in fashioning the policy field. It is quite unusual considering that the business community has been historically regarded as the most important domestic stakeholder in moulding labour market regulations. My aim here in this paper is bringing the critical political economy, more specifically cultural political economy into the very centre of the analysis of the integration of Syrian refugee to the labour market. The entrance of hundreds of thousands of Syrians into the Turkey’s labour market has drastic impacts, given the fact that half of the Syrian refugees in Turkey are of working age and their hope to return Syria has already withered away. The massive influx has flourished new visions-cum-concrete strategies concerning the integration of Syrian refugees to the formal labour market. Against this backdrop, this research raises the question of why the strategies offered by business community are de facto inapplicable. The strategies of business community in question will be analysed by revealing relevant agency (A), structure (S), institutions (I) and discourses (D) – or put in other words, ASID framework, which considers the developments of agency-, structure-, institution- and discourse-relevant factors in a specific spatio-temporal context. This study draws on the primary and secondary data sources, including expert interviews, official bulletins, official gazette, newspaper reports and statistics.

Refugees and Turkey

 

Dolunay Ugur, Yale University

Politics of Transnational Humanitarianism: Humanitarian Aid Organizations Assisting Syrian Refugees in Southeastern Turkey

Turkey, as the top host country for Syrian refugees, also hosts dozens of international and local (Turkish and Syrian) NGOs assisting them, mostly in southeastern Turkey. However, Syrian refugees are not the only population who have been suffering in the region. The region, where Kurdish people constitute the predominant ethnic group, has recently witnessed state violence, curfews, civilian deaths, human rights violations, and hundreds of thousands internally displaced persons (IDPs) since the June 2015 general election. The co-existence of historically ‘less-than-citizen’ Kurdish IDPs and relatively recently ‘less-than-human’ Syrian refugees in the same region constitutes the ideal setting to explore the complex dynamics of transnational humanitarianism with politics, law, and morality, more specifically with nation states, international law, and humanitarian ethics. In the presence of these complicated dynamics and two “possible” beneficiaries of the humanitarian aid in the region, namely Syrian refugees and Kurdish IDPs, this paper analyzes the humanitarian claim of impartiality in determining who can be the “subject” of its assistance. The in-depth semi-structured and open-ended interviews with 20 humanitarian workers from 15 different organizations reveal that this morally and legally driven international assistance intersects with national and international politics in various ways. The research shows that humanitarian assistance cannot be given to the conflict induced IDPs in an authoritarian nation-state, like Turkey, if there is a prevalent fear among NGOs about being dismissed from the country where they operate. The paper argues that the realization of the humanitarian principle of impartiality in such conditions is strictly restricted by the national politics.

 

Rana B. Khoury, Northwestern University

Aiding Activism? Humanitarianism’s Impacts on Syrian Activists in Turkey

A common narrative of the Syrian conflict suggests that it began with a grassroots uprising and devolved into a violent war between armed actors, leaving civilians to become victims or warriors. A more careful consideration of developments in and around Syria uncovers evidence of continued unarmed mobilization among civilians. Indeed, refugees in neighboring countries like Turkey are deeply engaged in humanitarian, developmental, and political endeavors. This study seeks to demonstrate that Syrians in Turkey have engaged in abundant activism—non-routine or unconventional behavior on behalf of a cause. Still, the overwhelming militarism and humanitarianism that have characterized the Syrian crisis have had their impacts: activist organization is constricted and configured by security imperatives and, paradoxically, by the aid regime assisting civilians in the conflict. This paper contends that external assistance activates causal processes that transform the nature of activism. Among Syrians in Turkey, activism has evolved from contentious grassroots mobilization to an extensive but formal and uncontentious response to a humanitarian crisis. Fore-fronting the idea of war as a social condition, rather than merely a series of violent events, this study builds on scholarship on civilians, including refugees, and external actors in civil war, new humanitarianism, and contentious politics.

 

Panel: Cities for whom? Exploring urban issues and forced migration with innovative and participatory methods

Franziska Werner, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Urban Studies & Social Research, Co-Panel- Organizer: Anna Marie Steigemann

 

More than half of the global population lives in cities today. Therefore, the relevant questions are whom does the city belong to? How and to which extend can urban dweller be part of the city? The neoliberal structure of cities creates a competition for space and access to infrastructure depending on the inhabitants’ resources. It is even harder for forced migrants and asylum seekers to find their own ways as newcomers into these cites as their legal status is often uncertain and they therefore face constraints regarding access to proper accommodation, labor market or education. Since many governments continuously fail to address the so-called refugee crisis, civil society steps into the void on a local level and carries the burden to integrate and provide for the needs of forced migrants. They make use of public spaces as meeting points, which are less regulated locations that can be places for exchange, protest or other possibilities. However, in the neoliberal world nowadays even these locations are not free of control and privatization.

 

The links and relations between the city/ urban spaces and the daily life of forced migrants and refugees will be the first focus of this panel. This as well can include works about refugee camps becoming city-like infrastructures over time. Secondly we would like to discuss new, innovative and participatory methods to explore these urban issues regarding forced migration.

Relevant questions for us are:

 

What is the role of civil society in integrating forced migrants into the urban life? How can citizens use space within the city for civil engagement when it comes to supporting refugees? Which consequences does the neoliberal city have for the daily life of forced migrants and refugees and their use of space? To what extend are refugees able to constitute and participate in urban spaces? What methodology is adequate for researching spatial aspects of forced migration and how can research empower civil society and refugees by using participatory research methods?

 

Christian Sowa, SOAS, University of London

The Camp, Civil Society and the Right to the City

The paper explores the city by looking at refugee camps in Berlin. Framed around the Lefebvrian concept of the Right to the City, a main question is: who has the Right to the City? Related to this, two arguments can be made: first, camp-spaces exclude people from this right, from participating in urban life. But despite these exclusions, the paper also points to dynamics in which new (public) spaces are created and a Right to the City is reclaimed by focusing on the everyday life of refugees as well as on activism and protests. Hence, refugee-led processes are highlighted, rather than classical NGOs and volunteer-networks. This points to a discussion about the concept of civil society. It is argued that by reclaiming the Right to the City, by creating public spaces, a new vision of civil society is established.

In a second part, the paper will discuss ways to approach those questions methodologically. It is argued that a spatial view on the issue of camps, forced migration and the city is crucial. Based on spatial- qualitative research, issues of the city and society itself can be addressed. Furthermore, the question will be raised how research can solidarize with refugee struggles. Here, the paper critically engages with aspects of participatory research methods: How can research generate knowledge that at the same time support struggles? What power-dynamics are simultaneously reproduced in this research situation and how can they be faced?

 

Anna Marie Steigemann & Philipp Misselwitz, Chair of International Urbanism and Design/ Habitat Unit at TU Berlin

Spaces of belonging in architectures of asylum? Urban refugees’ agency in the production of space in Berlin, Germany and Zaatari, Jordan

Combining research methods from architectural and social sciences and combining the two into new hybrid methods that also include refugees stronger into the research and knowledge production process, the paper investigates physical, material, social, and symbolic appropriation processes by Syrian refugees currently housed in humanitarian settings in Jordan and Germany. We ask: What spatial knowledge is mobilized at the place of asylum? How does this knowledge hybrizide practices of the place of origin, experiences made during the escape, as well as during and after the arriving and uncertain period of stay at an unfamiliar place of asylum? How do spatial appropriation processes collide with humanitarian logics and technocratic emergency management approaches at the place of asylum?

 

We argue that arriving refugees mobilize “urban knowledge” at the place of asylum which can only be understood as a re-figuration process, which is equally at work in the case of other migrants, migration and translocal processes. The main focus is on the ways in which refugees perceive, adapt to, appropriate, and alter their new urban environments physically and socially and of how they thereby draw on existing and evolving stocks of urban and spatial knowledge, urban experiences, and relationships in so-called emergency accommodations in Berlin and the more urbanized refugee camp Zaatari in Jordan.

 

Through the direct inclusion of urban refugees in this study, we thus aim to explain how migration transforms urban space physically and socially and how planning and the social and technical infrastructures affect migrants’ mobility – socially and spatially.

 

Informal panel: The Politics and Practice of Forced Migration Research Methods, A Conversation

Anita Fábos, Clark University; Cathrine Brun, Oxford Brookes University; Charles Simpson, Tufts University; Nassim Majidi, Samuel Hall. Facilitators: Adam Saltsman, Worcester State University and Karen Jacobsen, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University

In this panel, we recognize the methodological tension facing researchers working with forced migrants: between a donor-driven desire for evidence-based research in humanitarian settings, on the one hand, and, on the other, an increasing awareness that the power imbalance of such methodological approaches between expert researchers and local collaborators and participants can have negative consequences for all involved. Responding to this, we explore the challenges faced by academic and practitioner researchers in working with displaced populations, and provide methodological insights for how researchers can address these difficulties. Our conversation interrogates our methodological standpoints asking how we have addressed dilemmas that arise in the field, and where we should go from here. We draw on our collective field experience as researchers from different social science disciplines working in different field and organizational contexts, often in close collaboration with forcibly displaced people themselves.

 

Rather than a formal panel, we aim to structure this as a conversation. Adam Saltsman and Karen Jacobsen will be facilitators, and participants will include:

• Anita Fábos
• Cathrine Brun
• Charles Simpson
• Nassim Majidi

 

 Specific themes that will be covered include:

• The challenge of collaboration: dealing with power and privilege
• The problem of timeliness: regarding the balance between conducting “good” research and the timeliness of the final report is often difficult to strike.
• Tensions regarding ideas of validity: exploring what makes research relevant and authentic to participants, versus that which counts as “evidence” for policy makers and donors.
• Over-researched environments: Navigating how to be an ethical researcher in humanitarian contexts that are “over-researched”

 

Panel: Feminist Researchers Against Borders: Reframing Debates on Mobility, “Refugees,” and “Crisis” – Part 1

Note: This session will include the launch of a special issue of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, “Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the ‘Refugee Crisis'”.

 

Anna Carastathis, Independent Researcher, Athens

Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the ‘Refugee Crisis

This panel features papers included in the special issue of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, to be launched at the IASFM conference. “Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the ‘Refugee Crisis’” was edited by Anna Carastathis, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley, co-founders of the network Feminist Researchers Against Borders. I will introduce our framing questions and motivations for assembling the special issue, which departs from the observation that, with a few notable exceptions, scholarly attention to the declared global “refugee crisis” has not taken into account how it is constituted by the intersecting dynamics of gendered, racialised, class-, age-, religion-, and sexuality-based forms of oppression, discrimination, violence, and subjugation. In this special issue, comprised of articles developed through the inaugural meetings of the Feminist Researchers Against Borders network (last summer), contributors work to bridge this gap, offering feminist, intersectionally-informed interventions in discourses of “crisis.” Our starting point is an intersectional framework and a no-borders feminist activist orientation for resisting capitalism, war, racism, and reproductive heteronormativity, and militarised nation-state borders.

 

Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen 2

On ‘The Refugee Crisis,’ Coloniality and Racism

As the political debate on “the refugee crisis” makes evident, the right to asylum is not always negotiated on the grounds of political persecution or other forms of persecution due to religion, gender or sexuality. Rather, as an object of governance “asylum” represents a field of heated and controversial negotiations, subject to political and economic conjunctures. Within this context “the refugee crisis” articulates the morphology of the current conjuncture of racism. Based on these observations this essay will discuss the asylum-migration nexus as an expression of the entanglement between capitalism and racism.

 

Seçil Dağtaş, University of Waterloo

Hospitality Across Religion and Gender: Displaced Women’s Experiences Along the Turkish-Syrian Border

Since 2011, over 3 million Syrians have sought protection in Turkey, making Turkey the country with the highest number of refugees in the world today. This paper draws on fieldwork in Turkey’s border province, Hatay, which currently hosts over 400,000 Syrians in its towns and villages and about 20,000 in five refugee camps. I examine the everyday forms of religious kinship and the gendered practices of hospitality paying a particular attention to the experiences and narratives of Syrian women. Building on but also transcending the ethnic, religious, and national identities, these hospitality practices call into question the authority of the nation-state and international regimes in defining the “refugee” as bounded in space by the inviolability of naturalized borders. They reveal that what it means to be a “refugee” in a given context is determined less by universally defined politico-legal frameworks than by historically produced and culturally informed understandings of gender and religious difference in that context. These understandings, furthermore, derive significant insight from women’s labour and everyday networks at the local level, which often go unnoticed or are dismissed as trivial in public debates. Rather than the graphic and victimizing stories of sexual and gender-based violence under Muslim rule as highlighted in popular discourses, cross-boundary relations across religion and gender in Hatay call for a political language that decenters both Western imaginations of the “refugee” and territorially bounded categories of citizenship.

 

Aila Spathopoulou, King’s College University

Crisis, what crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles

Co-authored by Anna Carastathis, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, and Aila Spathopoulou. Different evocations of “crisis” create distinct categories that in turn evoke certain social reactions. Post- 2008, Greece became the epicentre of the “financial crisis”; simultaneously, since 2015 with the advent of the “refugee crisis,” it became the “hotspot of Europe.” What are the different vocabularies of crisis? Moreover, how have both representations of crisis facilitated humanitarian crises to become phenomena for European and transnational institutional management? What are the hegemonically constructed subjects of the different crises? The everyday reality in the crisis-ridden hotspot of Europe is invisible in these representations. It is precisely the daily, soft, lived, and unspoken realities of intersecting crises that hegemonic discourses of successive, overlapping, or “nesting crises” render invisible. By shifting the focus from who belongs to which state-devised category to an open-ended, polyvocal account of capitalist oppressions, we aim to question the state’s and supranational efforts to divide the “migrant mob” into discrete juridical categories of citizens (emigrants), refugees, and illegal immigrants, thereby undermining coalitional struggles between precaritised groups.

 

Panel: Feminist Researchers Against Borders: Reframing Debates on Mobility, “Refugees,” and “Crisis” – Part 2 

This panel offers a politically and theoretically engaged reconsideration of some of the central terms organizing contemporary framings of relationships within and across borders: “migration,” “refugees,” and “crisis”. Contributors to the emerging network, Feminist Researchers Against Borders, panelists offer new conceptual and strategic modes adequate to responding to the ongoing “refugee crisis” in historical and geographical context. Papers engage the framing of refugees as vermin – waste, numbers, and threats to the home – to examine the normalization of ‘domopolitics;’ the discursive practices of “anti-trafficking” as relying on nation- state logics of restrictions on mobility in the name of protectionism; the development of research methodologies that lead to queer coalitions between LGBTQI+ refugees, migrants and activists; and how the private sponsorship of LGBTQ “refugees” might strategically produce spaces beyond humanitarian and nation-state logics. All of our papers are critical of the territorializing logics of the nation-state and the controls over mobility that serve as alibis for global capitalism.

 

Bridget Anderson, University of Bristol;

In 2015 more than one million people entered the European Union, many fleeing wars in the Middle East. In the UK there was a strand of hostile media coverage that represented migrants as vermin or insects. This paper will examine this representation and its context, and argue that associations related to vermin – waste, numbers and threats to the home – provide useful insights into the anxieties underpinning negative responses to asylum seekers and to the prevalence of‘domopolitics.’  Analysing these representations offers insights into the kinds of political questions that must be tackled in struggling for new ways to respond to and think about refugees attempting to enter Europe.

 

Nandita Sharma, University of Hawaii at Manoa

From Forced Migration to Forced Immobility: The Ideology of Immigration Controls as Protection

I discuss two 1835 Mauritius Ordinances which were the first British imperial regulations restricting the movement of co-British subjects into the shared space of the Empire. These ordinances marked the beginning of the end of the regime of unrestricted migration within the British Empire and presaged today’s world of immigration controls. Passed shortly after Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, these restrictions were enacted over anxieties about freedom and slavery – and over challenges to their legitimacy. London was worried that the newly organized “coolie” labour system would be perceived as slavery, as it was by the slavery abolition movement. Both the labour contract of indenture as well as migration controls resolved these seemingly opposing sets of concerns. Unfree, indentured workers would have their mobility further restricted by both contracts and by the mobility controls of colonial administrators. Today’s largely uncontested nation- state logic of ever-more restrictive constraints on human mobility is central to the discursive practices of “human trafficking” aimed at ending so-called modern-day slavery. I argue that the contemporary discourse of “anti-trafficking” relies on many of the same tropes – and concerns – that viewed “coolie” labour as free and viewed state restrictions on human mobility and labour contracts as a form of “protection” for workers on the move.

 

Myrto Tsilimpounidi, Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Facing Crisis: Queer Representations Against the Backdrop of Athens

Co-authored by Myrto Tsilimpounidi and Anna Carastathis. In this presentation, we will reflect on our ‘Facing Crisis’ photography workshop, held in Athens (Greece) in July 2017 in collaboration with LGBTQI+ refugees, migrants, and local activists. The aim of the workshops was to engage people in collective acts of self-representation through portraiture—people who have been rendered entirely invisible in hegemonic, heteronormative discourses of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece, Europe, and globally, because their lives, desires, and embodiments do not fit the narrative of the ‘deserving refugee,’ understood in terms of what Gayatri Spivak has called “reproductive heteronormativity: “the para- reasonable assumption that producing children by male-female coupling gives meaning to any life,” “the oldest, biggest sustaining institution in the world, a tacit globaliser” that reproduces itself through “war and rape.” Our participants are survivors of war and gendered violence, in their intersecting manifestations, understood not as ‘exceptional’ crises, but as the systemic underpinnings of global capitalism. Rather than simply offering a counter-narrative of ‘inclusion’ to hegemonic and activist responses to the multiple, overlapping, declared and undeclared crises that converge in the urban space of Athens, the workshops intervene in embodied ways in the ways that such responses reproduce representational violence in rendering certain subject positions unthinkable, untranslatable, and, ultimately, unlivable. They are motivated by a desire for what Cathy Cohen has termed ‘queer coalitions’; for living and working together across and against axes of power and lines of belonging constituting a bordered reality, which criminalises movements across space that contest the nation-state system.

 

Melissa Autumn White, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Stranger Intimacies: Private LGBTQ+ Refugee Sponsorship Beyond Humanitarianism and State Logics?

Although private refugee sponsorship has been possible since the late 1970s in Canada, it has recently become a key resettlement technology in the context of the Syrian “refugee crisis,” and, on a much smaller scale, for those seeking asylum on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression.  The growing reliance on private sponsors to provide the “gift of mobility” calls for rethinking of the relationships between state and non-state actors, identity and geopolitics, emotion and bureaucracy, as these intersect to reproduce and subvert the territorialized/territorializing logics of global capitalism.  With a focus on the Rainbow Refugee Assistance Program, this paper offers some speculations on how private sponsorships may facilitate the emergence of “stranger intimacies” that could be strategically positioned to undermine the state’s primacy in the governance of mobility.

 

Panel: Exploring possibilities of solidarity and challenges to humanitarianism – In response to the Mediterranean refugee and migration crisis – Part 1

Discussant: Jennifer Hyndman, York University

 

Since the beginning of Europe’s so-called refugee crisis, two discourses have shaped public responses to the arrival of people to Europe from conflict-ridden countries. The securitisation discourse appeals to the need to ‘defend’ the economic and cultural security of the community, whereas the humanitarian discourse tends to stress the suffering of refugees and emphasises the cultural and economic benefits the newly-arrived would bring to the community.

 

The aim of this panel is to explore the possibilities and limitations of the humanitarian discourse. We do this by discussing the practical forms of solidarity and resilience that have emerged since the ‘refugee crisis’. We ask: what forms of solidarity and activism have emerged during the Mediterranean refugee crisis? What kinds of challenges solidarity movements have faced? In what way have they countered, if at all, the securitisation of migration? The panel examines these questions from the perspectives of community, political agency, and citizenship.

 

The panel includes activists, activist scholars, and refugee activists and draws on examples of solidarity from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East and different parts of Europe. Among the country cases addressed are Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary, France, UK, and Finland. The panel is divided into two parts. The first part of the panel focuses on different examples of solidarity activism. Drawing on these examples, the second part of the panel explores how they address changing concepts of community, political agency, and citizenship.

 

Anitta Kynsilehto, University of Tampere / EMHRM

In defence of resilience: On the ways to support solidarity actors in mobile contexts

Undocumented mobilities are perceived as a problem by established society yet many struggle to get any access to a regularized status. Many individuals, neighbourhood groups, networks and associations engage with these mobile people in order to provide everyday assistance, information, and human contacts, meanwhile seeking to keep the relation as egalitarian as possible. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research in several European countries and around the Mediterranean Sea, and the author’s involvement in various networks, I call these people ‘solidarity actors.’ Often the commitment transcends the boundaries of organizational limits, and many work in a voluntary, sometimes ad hoc manner, as has been manifested across Europe in 2015 and onwards, even if this type of engagement is nothing new.

 

Solidarity action is indispensable and personally rewarding, but simultaneously very tiresome and emotionally consuming due to the global political context that does not promise for an end to an increasing need for engagement. Some organisations have begun to pay attention to the well-being of their employees and voluntary workers in order to avoid burn-out and drop-out. However, this is not the case for all organisations, and for more informal groups and engaged individuals this type of support depends on resources one may have via other relational networks, and on the ways in which such issues are recognized as pertinent. At the same time, critiques assess the very idea of resilience as an integral part of the neoliberal order. How to recapture this notion, informed by the critiques but not remaining bound by them?

 

Céline Cantat, Central European University

Migration Solidarity and Acts of Citizenship Along the Balkan Route

The so-called Balkan route recently emerged as a crucial passageway towards western and northern Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees and as an imagined geography highlighting the boundaries of “Europe”. Along the route, refugees move in and out of the European Union (EU), entering “Europe” through Greece then leaving via Macedonia and Serbia, before re-entering in Hungary or Croatia. Refugee movements provide a powerful standpoint from which to observe the territorial and symbolic geography of the EU and to question the separation that has been produced between Europe’s imagined “inside” and “outside”, and between European citizens and non-citizens.

Refugee mobilities have been met by calls to reinforce and secure Europe’s borders but also by countless instances of solidarity by groups of citizens, activists and refugees themselves. What implications do these solidarities have for our understanding of political communities and political participation, and how do they challenge ideas of Europe and European citizenship?

 

In this paper, based on ethnographic research conducted in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I explore these urgent questions by examining refugee movements and solidarity initiatives with refugees, and assessing their implication for formal understandings of rights, belonging and citizenship. By mobilising ethnographic methods that pay careful attention to the nuances of solidarity practices and discourses in both EU and non-EU sites, this paper aims to contribute to rethinking citizenship in contemporary Europe through a crosslocal exploration of issues of mobility, mobilisation, identity and belonging.

 

Marianna Karakoulaki, E-International Relations

No Borders against Border Violence

Summer 2015: The refugee crisis reaches its peak. Thousands of people are reaching Greece’s shores while moving towards the country’s northern borders. A humanitarian crisis is looming. An open-door policy, initially followed by Germany, is met by barbed-wire fences around Europe. As European states raise visible and invisible walls, people fleeing their homelands are met with violent responses and brutal security measures by state actors. As a response to the securitisation of the refugee crisis social movements around Europe and Greece step up to replace the violence created by structured borders with solidarity.

 

Drawing from interviews with social movements and members of the No Borders network in Greece as well as social media analysis this presentation looks at the role of social movements during the refugee crisis. How have self-organised groups managed to take a leading role in the refugee crisis? How did they fight the violence of the borders and the state? What does it mean to stand in solidarity with refugees?

 

This presentation suggests that self-organised networks of solidarity played, and continue to play, a crucial role from the early days of the refugee crisis by replacing the absent state, while combatting the violence created by borders with solidarity.

 

Reiko Shindo, Coventry University

Exploring the link between violence and foreignness: Toward the gothic approach to community

Since the refugee ‘crisis’ began in Europe, there have been a number of violent incidents perpetrated by immigrant refugees. While the securitisation discourse translates immigrant-refugee-involved violence into the language of fear, the humanitarian discourse struggles to speak about such violence. Because foreignness is framed as a welcoming change to the ‘host’ community in the humanitarian discourse, it tends to detach the image of violence from immigrant refugees. This paper asks: why, to begin with, is it difficult to ‘talk more frankly, yet not less responsibly’ (Bitter 2016) about violence in relation to foreignness within the humanitarian discourse? How can we talk about violent incidents involving immigrant refugees without using the language of fear? These questions will be explored with a focus on the idea of community. Drawing on the literature on home, the paper examines two leading humanitarian campaigns developed in the UK during the Mediterranean migration and refugee crisis: the refugees welcome campaign, and the ‘I Am A Refugee’ campaign.

 

Panel: Exploring possibilities of solidarity and challenges to humanitarianism – In response to the Mediterranean refugee and migration crisis – Part 2

Discussant: Eeva Puumala, University of Tampere

 

Imran Adan, Free Movement Finland; Eeva Puumala, University of Tampere

Enacted community: Solidarity and participation seen through activist work

How do people in their everyday lives and actions envision and enact ways of living together and reconciling differences? The question has become ever more pertinent since the so called refugee crisis in 2015. This presentation framed in the form of a dialogue will explore ways and possibilities of overcoming prejudices and suspicion that exist both among migrants and local populations. Questions of solidarity and participation are approached empirically through Imran Adan’s short film on overcoming barriers to communication and peaceful community relations as well as his activist work in Finland.

 

In their dialogue, Adan and Puumala explore the ways in which a sense of participation develops and how communities are enacted in people’s lives. The discussion sheds light on the multiplicity of social bonds, networks and various institutions that shape people’s perceptions of their possibilities and positionality within the society. It challenges static ways of envisioning communities and belongings and calls for more nuanced and grounded ways of promoting the integration of newly arrived migrants in Finland.

 

Jonathan Darling, University of Manchester

Solidarity, vulnerability, and the labour of refugee activism

Considering responses to refugee mobility in the UK, a focus on the practice of care for refugees, has centred on the effects of displacement and the vulnerabilities this exposes, both for citizens and non-citizens. A wide range of organisations at both national and local levels, have sought to welcome and support refugees in various ways, with an ethic of care at the heart of many of these responses. Critically, however, care itself often falls short of an articulation of solidarity, read as a political interruption into (shared) vulnerability. In this sense, solidarity asks not simply how suffering may be alleviated but under what conditions suffering flourishes. With this tension in mind, this paper focuses on the work of the Northern Ireland Community of Refugees and Asylum Seekers (NICRAS), a refugee-led organisation that supports refugees across Northern Ireland. In examining the recent work of NICRAS to investigate the housing conditions of asylum seekers and refugees across Belfast and to hold accommodation providers to account, the paper illustrates the forms of labour, learning, and collaboration that produce acts of solidarity. By exploring the shared labour of NICRAS in producing collaborative reports, challenging local authorities, and articulating claims to political visibility to the devolved Northern Irish Assembly, the paper discusses how acts of solidarity are both produced by, and productive of, relationships of learning and vulnerability.

 

Elisa Pascucci, University of Tampere

Performing refugee-ness: Syrian NGOs in Jordan and the sharing economy

The paper draws on fieldwork with two refugee women-led NGOs that fund themselves by selling workshops in traditional Syrian handicraft to tourists, expatriates and locals in Jordan, through the Airbnb Experiences platform. Engaging with theories of precarity and affective and non-material labour, the paper explores how, by participating in the emerging Jordanian urban ‘sharing economy’, Syrian NGOs attempt to counter the socio-economic precarization produced by restrictive immigration, labour and funding laws. While the actual material and financial impact of participating in such platforms remains limited, the sharing economy recasts individual and collective experiences of ‘refugee-ness’ through a performative act that makes them visible, intelligible and profitable in transactional relations. Reading the findings in a dialogue with recent research on hospitality, solidarity and refugee-to-refugee humanitarianism, I argue that critical research on the politics of asylum should pay more attention to the economies that sustain the inclusion of migrant and refugee-led groups in the NGO and humanitarian world.

 

Roundtable: ‘Informality’ as mode of political response in North America: Examining potentials and limits

This panel considers ‘informality’ as mode of political response to restrictionist state policies on resettlement and immigration in North America. In reaction to heightened attacks against refugees and migrants in some contexts, activism is visible and loud. But we also ask how political action might take a diffused and quiet form. Even in supposedly more accepting political environments, there is a manifested need for informal responses to government action and restrictions, however muted. We interrogate both potentials and limits of informal practice by individualized actors in three domains of civil society: state-funded resettlement agencies, refugee-run organizations, and migrants’ social networks. With scholars of social work and practitioner-scholars comprising this panel, we seek to connect research to practical application.

 

The first paper considers how actions of resettlement practitioners comply with but also subvert policy restrictions specified in funding contracts between Canadian governments and local agencies based in Calgary.

 

The second paper reframes informal refugee-run organizations as institutional actors that offset the limits of resettlement policy in the United States, while also pointing to the pitfalls of civil society as substitute for the state.

 

The third paper deliberates upon the contradiction that informal networks are sources of both respite and stigma for precarious migrants, as they contend with newly enacted visa regulations in Canada that aggravate vulnerability for labor migrants.

 

These three papers and the moderated discussion will open dialogue to consider ‘informal’ acts (in social networks, organizations and agencies) as part of the range of strategies of political action by and on behalf of refugees and migrants. How do such acts — subtle, indirect and quiet — constitute resistance?  How do they empower the individual, remedy the hardships inflicted by policy and what are their limits? 

 

Cesar Suva, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society

Subverting limits to public policy: Refugee resettlement and the intricacies of the public-private relationship in Calgary, Canada

While the articulated government response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Canada has been relatively accommodating, the state has addressed the practicalities of resettlement primarily through its partnerships with non-governmental community organizations (NGCOs). Such partnerships carry with it the benefits of a more grassroots-based understanding of the immediate requirements of refugees newly arrived in particular communities, but they have also been constrained by a funding process that compels NGCOs to restrict their programming to fit the terms defined in policy.

 

Taking these funding agreements as manifestations of public policy, this study examines the ways in which NGCOs respond to and operate under and around their restrictions. Through interviews with staff from three Calgary-based NGCOs as well as through the examination of funding applications in response to calls for proposals issued by various levels of the Canadian government, this paper will discuss how NGCOs have endeavoured to balance state requirements with newcomer needs. Various practices, such as the reframing of existing services deemed essential to fit the eligibility requirements of current calls for proposals, the opening of programming to wider audiences than those specified under funding agreements, and the deployment of volunteers to extend the reach of services provide a detailed picture of how government policies relating to refugee resettlement are implemented at the community level. Program staff employ various strategies in order to ensure their organizations are both responsive to actual migrant needs, whilst at the same time adhering to their contractual obligations to the state under these funding agreements. 

 

Odessa Gonzalez Benson, University of Michigan School of Social Work

Institutional actor or substitute for the state?: Examining informal refugee-run organizations vis-a-vis state-funded counterparts in the United States

Amidst strong restrictionism and nationalism in the US, scholars and practitioners alike are pointing not only to the state and their partners, but also to actors at the ‘lowest’ levels for renewed visions of participatory governance. Emerging from local communities and run by and for resettled refugees, Refugee Community Organizations (RCOs) are informal grassroots organizational entities that provide a range of services and means for solidarity amongst newcomers. Such groups are indispensable on the ground but there is much to be understood about how they fit alongside their institutionalized actors and within policy frameworks.

 

This study examines the range and scope of activities of informal refugee-run organizations vis-a-vis their federally-funded counterparts. I draw on interviews with RCO leaders from 35 cities across the US, using the Bhutanese refugee community as case study and directed content analysis as methods. Findings illustrate in particular ways how RCOs have a dual component: RCOs fill in service gaps left agape by resettlement policies that stipulate employment-focused and resource-limited services, while also aiming to transcend policy limitations by pursuing long-term goals of meaningful membership. RCOs are evidenced as providers of material, practical assistance in direct response to specific policy gaps, but also as simultaneously transformative and contesting. In closing, I discuss social justice implications and the contradictions that emerge when informal organizations, lacking resources and without legitimacy, assume functions of the state in the resettlement domain.

 

Rupaleem Bhuyan, University of Toronto School of Social Work and Migrant Mothers Project; Marie Esel Laxa Panlaqui, Thorncliffe Neighborhood Office and Migrant Mothers Project; Lorraine Valmadrid, Migrant Mothers Project; Novabella L. Lopez, Migrant Mothers Project; Pearlita Juan, Migrant Mothers Project

Participatory research on migrants’ informal social networks and the conditions of exploitation for migrant workers in Canada

In this paper, we explore the role of informal social networks among people working in Canada’s Caregiver program. While the Canadian government removed a “live-in” requirement for international Caregivers in 2014, changes to regulations for work permit renewal and applications for permanent residence have produced longer periods of uncertainty where Caregivers are legally dependent on their employer; conditions that increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse. Considering the marginalization of Caregivers in Canada, the majority of whom are Filipina women, this research employed a participatory research design with oversight from a community advisory committee. Caregivers who participated in this study experienced different forms of labor exploitation and in some cases psychological or sexual abuse from their employers. Caregivers reported experiencing hardship during periods of unemployment and from the strain of family separation. While the removal of the live-in-requirement improved the quality of life for some Caregivers to have “a life of their own”, some remain with abusive employers due to challenges of renewing their work permit.

 

Informal networks through migrants’ church or via social media offer mutual aid and provide respite from their jobs. These tight-knight communities, however, can increase stigma for people during periods of unemployment, loss of immigration status, and the financial hardship associated with renewing their work permit. This research illustrates the social and psychological consequences of international domestic labor. We consider how stigma and vulnerability associated with precarious immigration status can shape the research process and thus our study findings.

 

Panel: Civic engagement to improve children and youth refugees’ social integration

Moderator: Michael Ungar, Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience, Dalhousie University

 

Michael Ungar, Dalhousie University

Engagement as a Strategy for Long-term Individual and Community Resilience

In his introductory remarks, Dr. Ungar will discuss the broader implications of civic engagement as a factor in the resilience of refugee and immigrant populations. He will briefly set the context for the panel and, based on his own research with Indigenous and immigrant youth, show that engagement in community mitigates risk exposure in different ways for young men and women from different populations.

 

Nicole Ives, McGill School of Social Work

Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program

This paper will focus on Canada’s private sponsorship program, which requires the direct and active engagement of community members in resettling refugees. Other countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have been investigating this program with a goal of possibly adapting it to their own resettlement systems. An introduction will provide the main points of this system, including strengths and potential drawbacks, to stimulate discussion of the implications of this strategy for broader use by countries of resettlement and ultimately for the well-being and long-term integration of refugees. How social workers can engage community-based resources and implications for working with diverse community-based entities will be discussed. Attention will be drawn to specific challenges within resettlement and how, drawing on social capital theory, social workers can partner with communities for social change for refugees.

 

Rev. Paula Kline, Montreal City Mission

Community connections that link newcomer families and youth with an engaged broader community

Montreal City Mission (MCM), founded in 1910, is social justice-based ministry of the United Church of Canada. One of the organization’s programs focused on refugee and immigrant children and youth is Camp Cosmos. For over 40 years, Camp Cosmos has provided a 6-week summer camp to children from diverse cultural backgrounds focused on music, athletics, ecology, yoga, and science. Families typically have low, fixed incomes and are newly arrived refugees or single parents. In response to the Syrian refugee crises, Camp Cosmos expanded in 2016 to create a second camp on Montreal’s West Island. That year, 23 Syrian children were welcomed at both the West Island and Downtown locations. This past summer, numbers rose, with 28 Syrian children and 12 children whose families had recently crossed the Canadian/USA border for a total of 40 (camp fees waived). The total number of campers in 2017 was 121 (up from 50 in 2014). In addition to welcoming Syrian campers, there were also 3 young Syrian counselors-in-training who had their first Canadian job experience. This paper will discuss community engagement using Camp Cosmos as an illustration of a community organization that gathers volunteers from the larger community to offer initial settlement support and to bring refugee and local youth together in civic engagement activities.

 

Adan and Moad Alhjooj

Youth leadership in settlement

Youth provide leadership through the arts, social media, public speaking, and other strategies to engage and educate their peers and the larger community. More organizations in resettlement countries are sponsoring initiatives led by youth to provide them with a voice and platform for working together to build strengths, identify and address challenges, and advocate for solutions. The final presentation will be by two Muslim youth from Montreal, aged 15. Both youth volunteer with the Montreal City Mission Kid Zone project that reaches out to refugee children and youth and are also active in their neighbourhood community Teen Zone centre. Adan and Moad have worked together with other youth in Montreal City Mission’s Camp Cosmos, in their schools, and in both Israel and in Montreal, to identify challenges that youth with refugee and similar backgrounds experience in their host countries. They will describe civic engagement projects they initiated that build on their and their community strengths to address these challenges. Through their presentation, they will share their own perspective on civic engagement, what these experiences have meant to them personally, their challenges and successes in carrying these out, and how such experiences with civic engagement can help support refugee youth resilience while resulting in contributions to their families, communities, and countries.

 

Policy and Practice (1)

Lamis Abdelaaty, Syracuse University, Co-author: Liza G. Steele, State University of New York – Purchase College

Explaining Attitudes towards Refugees in Europe

While there is a large literature on attitudes towards immigrants, scholars have not systematically examined the determinants of attitudes towards refugees. Often, refugees are simply treated as a subset of immigrants, under the assumption that attitudes towards both sets of foreigners are similar.  In contrast, we argue that immigrants are viewed primarily as economic competitors while refugees are seen as political actors.  Attitudes towards refugees are shaped by political concerns related to ethnic identity and national security.  Meanwhile, as other studies have shown, attitudes towards immigrants are driven by economic concerns related to income and occupation.  We test these hypotheses using individual-level data from 16 countries in the 2002 and 2014 waves of the European Social Survey.  By distinguishing between refugees and immigrants, this paper addresses an important gap in the academic literature on attitudes towards foreigners in Europe.

 

Grant Mitchell, Swinburne University

Civil Society Engagement of Government on Alternatives to Immigration Detention

 

David FitzGerald, University of California, San Diego

Institutional Constraints on Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

What are the institutional constraints on remote control policies of asylum seekers that attempt to prevent them from reaching the territories of states in the Global North to ask for asylum? I argue that only judicial systems with a judicial tradition of drawing directly on international law and strong rights of territorial personhood that can be applied in liminal spaces strongly constrain executive and parliamentary action. Civil society has a constraining effect through heuristically distinct legal and political mechanisms. Human rights organizations and investigative journalists increasingly range beyond state borders to highlight the secret practices and effects of remote control policies. Court cases draw from civil society’s knowledge to establish the risks of refoulement when deciding landmark cases. There are feedback loops between the legal and political mechanisms. A realist account of foreign relations is also necessary to understand the remote control options of destination country governments. The willingness of transit and origin states to cooperate with the Global North on mobility controls, such as restricting exit and allowing readmission, is contingent on the broader state of their relations. Remote control is linked to other interests in ways that can inhibit even powerful destination states from simply imposing their will on weaker states. Transit states share a similar dilemma as states in the Global North that seek on the one hand to control who enters, while on the other, to enjoy the rewards of cross-border trade and migration, including flows with other countries in the Global South.

 

Melissa Anderson, York University

When sanctuary cities aren’t enough: A Canada-Germany Comparison on the Aplication of Human Rights to Non-Status Migrants

My research explores the ways in which contradictions in legal jurisdiction threaten the application of human rights to non-status migrants, which in Canada, has enabled such practices as immigration enforcement personnel to raid social service agencies, elementary schools, and women’s shelters. While local actors such as migrant justice activists, doctors, social workers, and migrants, have been immensely successful in developing sanctuary zones and municipal sanctuary city motions across Canada, issues of legal jurisdiction continues to vex civil authorities, leaving many public services (namely healthcare) often inaccessible without the threat of deportation. At the same time, responding to the inaccessibility of health services in Germany, the State Government of Lower Saxony initiated a three-year pilot project in January 2016 to administer “anonymous healthcare vouchers” to ensure medical service funding to migrants without threat of deportation. Germany has amended federal laws to provide refugee claimants with medical care; however, welfare workers are still required to report non-status migrants, leaving these services inaccessible due to the risk of deportation they pose (German National Contract, 2016). My work develops a socio-legal framework for considering the spread and adaption of sanctuary policies, in which the insights of critical policy studies (Clarke et al., 2015) are tempered with those of comparative law. By comparatively analyzing sanctuary movements and practices in Canada and Germany, my research explores how countries with federal structures and divided jurisdictions make the provision of public services to non-status migrants necessary and simultaneously puts migrants in constant peril.

 

Policy and Practice (2)

Irina Sille, Swiss Forum for Migration and Citizenship Studies, University of Neuchâtel

Swiss NGO refugee advocacy discourse: Humanitarianism and solidarity with the “weak”

Asylum policies in most European countries have become increasingly restrictive over the past thirty years. A large body of sociological and political science research focuses on the arguments of control and abuse that States advance to justify this tendency. At the same time Fassin (2010) observes a humanitarianisation of refugee protection, as European States put increasingly forward humanitarian reasons when granting a less certain form of protection while refusing asylum. However, less attention has been given to non-state actors, such as advocacy NGOs, that also use a rhetoric of humanity, solidarity and vulnerability but try to reverse the State’s tendency of increasingly restrictive asylum policy.

 

This paper aims to look deeper into such ways of “vulnerabilisation” of refugees and the humanitarianisation of asylum by Swiss advocacy organizations. I ask what characteristics are emphasized in the organizations’ discourse when speaking about “vulnerable refugees” and their need of protection. Who is included in the category of the “refugee” and who is not? Moreover, what responsibilities should the State take when confronted with these categories of persons and on which arguments are those claims based?

 

The analysis of press releases of the two most important Swiss NGOs over the last five years shows that discourse is dominated by moral rather than rights based argumentations. From a solidarity movement perspective, one could argue that the image of the “refugee” as “the weak” creates a moral obligation based on the principle of help and charity.

 

Laura Schack, Royal Holloway, University of London

The relationship between civil society and the state in the integration of refugees in Berlin

The 2015 refugee crisis in Germany led to the proliferation of civil society engagement in the integration of refugees, and to the implementation of increasingly restrictive asylum policies by the state. Yet despite evidence of subversive and radical movements within civil society responding to these restrictions, civil society engagement has largely remained consistent with state requests for humanitarian aid, without crossing the line into political activism. This paper addresses the lack of critical analysis in the literature of the role played by civil society in facilitating integration, and contributes to debates surrounding the role of civil society in refugee integration and the independence of civil society from the state generally. By answering the research question, ‘what is the relationship between civil society and the state in the integration of refugees in Berlin?’, this paper seeks to uncover the underlying power dynamics which influence the extent of civil society’s engagement. Interviews were conducted with relevant civil society actors in Berlin in July 2017. The analysis of the results led to the development of an initial framework outlining the forms of civil society organisations which facilitate the integration of refugees and interact with the state in different ways. Furthermore, the application of Lukes’ Power framework revealed that the state exerts power over civil society across the three dimensions of power, thereby ensuring that civil society does not cross the line from providing humanitarian aid to engaging in political activism.

 

Caterina Giacometti, Nasp (Network for the Advncement of Social and Political studies) Milan and Turin

Inclusive rhetoric and exclusive practices? Power asymmetries between asylum seekers and urban social movements

Despite more and more rigid internal and external borders, numerous subjects of the civic society mobilize acting in support with asylum seekers and refugees. These subjects are different both in character and in performed actions. The motivations that drive their actions also differ. Among them, urban social movements seem to function as collectors of the claiming energy of these migrants and to offer a sort of counter-space of relation and reciprocal knowledge that helps the identification of common needs and aims. Through the organization of welfare activities and a constant and shared political reflection, social movements aim at providing the conditions for the capacity of action and of self-determination of asylum seekers to be progressively restored. Nevertheless, their privileged status of nationals causes strong power asymmetries in their relationship with asylum seekers. In fact, urban social movements are usually characterized by a specific radical anti-institutional approach that shapes their political agenda, giving priority to elements of revindication and conflict. This approach may differ from some more concrete objectives aimed by asylum seekers that could be side-lined if activists are not willing to challenge their own political views giving more importance to inclusion activities rather than political conflict. If so, some mechanisms of paternalism and “subaltern integration” could emerge concretizing a “discrepancy between inclusive rhetoric and exclusive practices”. This paper aims at discussing the latter mechanisms trying to understand if and how urban social movements are actually capable of supporting asylum seekers inclusion into host societies.

 

Megumi Nishimura, Ritsumeikan University

Forced Displacements and Transitional Justice: Neoliberal Discourse and Post-War Realities

This paper analyzes how the discourses and instruments of transitional justice justify the post-war ethnic divisions. 

 

Recent literature in this field recognizes that displacements after armed conflicts and large-scale human rights violation, including refugees and IDPs, are conceived as transitional justice issues.  These analyses perceive the displaced persons as the unit of analysis whose interests are promoted by the current transitional justice instruments, such as the International Criminal Court and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 

 

This paper in contrast argues that the current hegemonic discourse and associated instruments of transitional justice based upon neoliberal narratives justify the post-war ethnic compositions, or even ethnic cleansing during the armed conflicts.  The ICC as well as ad hoc international courts has created and led the discourses of collective guilt of one side in the armed conflicts.  One-sided justice scared and divide the refugees communities.  The UN instruments and the governments of the neighboring countries enforce either repatriation or forced naturalization as a durable solution for refugees.  Animosity created by those mechanisms had destabilized the already fragile regions, which cause the future conflicts. 

 

The paper discusses the cases of Armenia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, and the Great Lake region in Africa as the case studies.

 

Bridges to Integration

Maria Eleni Anastasopoulou, University of Oxford

Tracing the influence of historical memory on people’s attitudes, views, and behaviours towards contemporary migration and refugee flows

Do migratory experiences leave a lasting historical memory that is transmitted from one generation to the next and that influences perceptions towards contemporary ethnic out- groups? This research proposal seeks to discover the potential effects of historical memory through the historical parallelism between the compulsory population exchange between Turkey and Greece (1923) and the current migration and refugee flows. More specifically, while focusing on the case of Greece, the research question that I aim to address is: Do people’s historical memories of forced relocation affect their attitudes, views, and behaviours towards contemporary migration flows? If so, in what way, and does the extent of the effect of historical memory depend on the generation? My hypothesis is that historical memory influences people’s attitudes, views and behaviours to different degrees, depending on the generation, by increasing tolerance and empathy. To test my hypothesis, and to overcome the numerous methodological challenges, I will use a methodology of collecting primary data using multigenerational surveys and in-depth interviews in addition to secondary data.

Christopher Records, Books Not Bombs- Karam Foundation

Student Organizing and Supporting Syrian Students in Higher Education: Examples from the United States

Books Not Bombs is a student-led campaign for scholarships for displaced students that is active on more than 180 campuses in the United States. Started in 2016, BNB has won scholarships at universities including Barnard College, Columbia University, Michigan State University, and the University of Southern California, while raising public awareness of the education crisis for refugees throughout the world. Books Not Bombs student organizers work to organize educational events, demonstrations, resolutions, petition drives, media events, meetings, and fundraisers in order to build support for providing refuge for the students who have the greatest need of it.

 

This presentation will provide an overview of the relevant issues for refugee students, some stories of students in the United States, background on the Books Not Bombs campaign, and key findings on student, faculty, and community engagement. It will also provide case studies of how students at universities as varied as the University of Southern California, the University of Evansville, Oxford University, and Salve Regina University have all successfully organized for scholarships, ensuring that dozens of students can continue their education in safety.

 

Wendy Pettifer, Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU) London UK; Yasmine Bouagga, Centre national de la recherche scientifique

 Home for Refugees

This is a French/English presentation about life in the Calais Jungle for unaccompanied minors.  We both volunteered with the French Legal Shelter who had a daily presence on camp until its destruction in October 2016.

 

Wendy is a lawyer and talks about how her concept of home was challenged when working on take charge requests for unaccompanied minors in 2016.  This changed her idea of home for those children who carried their home in their hears remembering their close family.  After months of perilous travel they arrived in the Jungle bright eyed and full of hope expecting to swiftly join a family member in the UK.

 

Their idea of home as a place of permanence changed as they bonded with their peer group in that dangerous place.  Peers became their protection, their security, their hope.

 

Wendy considers the ability of the children to adapt to different forms of home on arrival in the UK: relatives, foster parents, Social Services provision.

 

Yasmine is an academic who considers the principal features in the camp which affected children.  Camps are different: self-settled campsites made of ticky-tacky shelters: government-controlled areas supposed to identify and contain refugees: hybrid places with various humanitarian interventions.  In these temporary spaces the notion of home is rarely considered: emergency issues of survival or security dominate.  For unaccompanied minors suffering from a rupture from family, what kinds of homes are these?

 

Yasmine looks at  different types of safe spaces created for children: schools, kids cafes, youth club created by volunteers, and la vie active a safe space created and controlled by Government contractors

 

Roundtable: Engagement for Innovation: How Grassroots Actors are Reinventing Humanitarian Aid in Greece

Joel Hernàndez, Campfire Innovation

TBD (subject to which actors/individual responders remain present in Greece next summer, and which new actors have arrived and made a mark)

 

Over the last two years, as Europe’s migration crisis has stretched thin the capacity of the Greek state, the European Union, and humanitarian NGOs, a broad range of grassroots NGOs has emerged to fill gaps and provide relief services in Greece and in the Balkans. Staffed largely by volunteers, these grassroots actors stepped up to provide crucial services, preparing hot food, distributing essential hygiene products, and giving clean changes of clothes to refugees otherwise scantly prepared to continue their journey. Ahead of the Whither Refugees? Conference, Campfire Innovation proposes to host “Engagement for Innovation: How Grassroots Actors are Reinventing Humanitarian Aid in Greece,” a roundtable discussion featuring a range of grassroots actors operating innovative projects in Greece. The roundtable will highlight their accomplishments, reflect on the challenges they face as they take on crucial roles in an aid environment that is historically not built for them, and propose bridges between INGO and state actors, and grassroots organizations, that may reduce friction and provide for closer collaboration in future interventions.

 

Although volunteer actors have come in every stripe—and although some, due to inexperience or lack of professionalism, have put refugees at risk—the grassroots NGO community has proved resilient, denouncing its offending peers and outliving their errors, and pushing onward to continue providing relief. Grassroots NGOs thus saved lives, supported livelihoods, built infrastructure, and provided medical, educational, and psychosocial support to thousands of refugees in Greece.

 

Through its network of partner organizations, Campfire Innovation tracks, facilitates, and when invited to, supports the development of innovative approaches to aid. We provide direct assistance to organizations engaging in smart aid, while also showcasing their accomplishments in order to promote they work they conduct and disseminate best practices and innovative ideas. For example, Campfire Innovation helped responders in Elpída Home, a now-closed refugee reception center in the outskirts of Thessaloniki, develop a remarkably innovative distribution system, effectively creating a database-driven credit system allowing residents to access a free shop featuring clothes, household goods, toys, and hygiene products. Supported by Elpída Home and operated by ERCI, the shop allowed the site’s residents to supply themselves with maximum choice and in a highly dignified environment, allowed for rich data collection to help administrators manage stock as a function of the community’s consumption patterns, and was designed to be replicable and scalable—it was indeed replicated, partly or fully, in several further sites. This distribution system is just one of dozens of examples of intelligent, innovative aid deployed in Greece over the last year.

 

Drawing from Campfire Innovation’s network of similarly engaged and innovative actors, we propose to bring them together at the Whither Refugees? Conference, around the “Engagement for Innovation: How Grassroots Actors are Reinventing Humanitarian Aid in Greece” roundtable. The discussion would be moderated by Campfire Innovation’s founder and director, Ioanna Theodorou, and feature representatives from a range of organizations providing a wide variety of services, and staffed by professional and volunteer humanitarians of equally varied origins and skillsets. As of this proposal, the exact participants remain to be determined, because the grassroots community is fluid and constantly evolving, and we fear that organizations and especially individual coordinators who are present in Greece now may no longer be present come next summer. Rather than propose specific actors, we propose inviting actors providing a range of services to the roundtable.

 

“Engagement for Innovation” would feature five types of actors:

 

• a tech-oriented organization, such as Habibi.Works or AstroLab, which have built and operate tech labs for refugees to learn programming and design, and pursue projects using the technology and equipment therein;
• a refugee-based organization, such as Jafra or KOOSH Radio, which are staffed exclusively by refugees and provide advocacy services, information dissemination, and opportunities for participation and leadership from within the refugee community;
• a logistics-oriented organization, such as HelpRefugees or A Drop in the Ocean, to highlight the challenges and gains of proper supply chain management;
• a medical actor, such as Team Kitrinos or DocMobile, to highlight the dynamics of providing medical care in precarious conditions, as well as the challenges of operating around Greece’s strained public health system and opportunities for mutual gain;
• a Greek organization, such as ERCI or Intervolve, in order to hear from local actors that will remain in Greece long after international actors have left.

 

We will firm up the specific participants as the conference date approaches, and look forward to leading a thorough and animated discussion.

 

Panel: Regimes of care, spaces of resistance: Contesting the humanitarian anti-politics ‘from below’

 

Since the first pioneering studies of migration and asylum seeking in Greece, the field has developed considerably and continues to evolve, especially as a result of the refugee arrivals since 2015. The dramatic crossings of over a million people, mainly from the Middle East and Asia, effected considerable visibility on the migration/refugee studies field. In a region dominated by narratives of “crisis,” the recent arrivals were readily confronted as another type of “crisis” in need of rapid interventions and strategic management. This political and policy approach predictably produced new layers of hierarchy between individuals, groups, and whole nations. New states of exception and exemption emerged, taking us further away from the vision of safe and legal passage supported by academics and activists on the ground.

 

We have collected five papers. Our proposal is an opportunity for dialogue on themes such as the material dimension of governmentality, biopolitics and bordering practices, and the manner in which the current humanitarian care paradigm produces ‘refugees’ as a separate, undifferentiated, invisible category of citizens. In stark contrast with structures that create and proliferate states of exception and spheres of political invisibility, we discuss new visions of citizenship as these are articulated either through every-day micro-politics of resistance, or through more organised grassroots initiatives. As it can be showcased in the example of City Plaza in Athens, grassroots initiatives can provide emancipatory spaces of potentiality through their emphasis on participation, self-organisation and inclusion. 

[Chair/Organiser: Dr. Elisabeth Kirtsoglou]

 

Giorgos Tsimouris, Panteion University Athens

 The Life of the Paper: The Material Dimensions of Governmentality, Biopolitics, and Bordering Practices in Greece

The paper establishes the interconnections between governmentality, biopolitics, and bordering practices as these have been witnessed in the makeshift camp of Piraeus in 2015 and 2016. It examines the life of the “registration paper” issued to refugees upon arrival at the Greek islands. The registration paper performed specific yet interrelated functions. It categorized persons either as potentially worthy of asylum or as “illegal” entities to be deported back to Turkey. Much like Cabot’s “pink card” (2014), the white registration paper literally “governed” as a material site for the enforcement of supra-national policies, bordering practices, and often arbitrary, ad hoc decisions on people’s legal status. Within the camps, one’s paper became a dispositif of biopolitical processes of humanitarian management (Rozakou 2012). Different humanitarian actors asked to “examine” these papers which were used as “proofs” of eligibility for humanitarian assistance. Chartia (as the refugees learnt to call their paper) enforced decisions taken at EU level, and facilitated the proliferation of borders and their extension into refugees’ daily lives.  Like past forms of identification, the registration paper is a polytropic object and a complex material nexus of governmentality, the biopolitical production and management of reduced forms of citizenship, and the enactment of borders and new forms of nationalism. Ultimately, chartia is the material locus of partial democracies

 

George Tyrikos-Ergas Durham University, NGO Agalia.

The Ethnography of Ghosts : Forced Migration as a Liminal Experience.

This paper intends to explore the applicability of the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ to the ethnographic analysis of the experience of forced migration. On the basis of extensive fieldwork that took place between 2015 and 2017 on the island of Lesvos –a major gateway of refugee passage from Turkey to Europe– I attempt to redress the lack of refugee narratives about their own experiences. Various critical aspects of forced migration, the perils of the journey, the poor humanitarian standards, the life in camps, the legislative complexities, are largely –and perhaps deliberately– discussed in ways that omit the perspectives of the main actors, the refugees themselves.  My approach challenges this status-quo by giving priority to the very words, symbols and ultimately to the representations refugees employ to narrate their own fates, and their own struggles for recognition. The paper starts by examining the meaning of the recurring claim of refugees that during their journeys, they “feel like ghosts”. I explore the implications of this claim in the production of the category of the ‘refugee’, claiming that persons are turned into refugees primarily by becoming invisible to others. My proposed paper is an ‘ethnography of ghosts’ that wishes to tell the stories of those who are rarely given the chance (and the right) to speak about themselves.

 

Maria Kenti-Kranidioti, Durham University

Making politics, Making Home: Refugee Politicisation in Piraeus, Greece

The present paper examines the different forms of refugee politicisation in Piraeus in 2016. As a result of the closure of European borders, nearly seven thousand refugees were transported from the Aegean islands to Piraeus where they remained for approximately two months before they were eventually transferred in the organised camp of Scaramangas. On the basis of original ethnographic evidence I wish to argue that refugees consciously resisted the positionality of the passive recipient of humanitarian care and sought to exercise some agency and control over their life situations. The paper documents prominent and notable political instances of politicisation such as the organisation of a united front of refugees from different nationalities, demonstrations, the attempt to “occupy” Syntagma square and forceful confrontations with international humanitarian care representatives. Alongside those notable expressions of campzenship (Sigona 2015) however, one could observe what Auyero (2000) called a “micro-politic of resistance” that took the form of daily, conscious attempts to “reverse hospitality” (Rozakou 2010). The refugees were engaged constantly in “home-making” through inviting and feeding volunteers (and the anthropologist) in their tents, through cooking simple meals, and through exchanging courteous visits and small “gifts” presented by the visitor to the host. By examining the array and interplay of different practices, this paper attempts to provide a nuanced and complex picture of refugee efforts to “preserve their dignity” and to resist fixing themselves in passive positionalities and hierarchies of dependence. 

 

Olga Lafzani, Harokopio University, Member of City Plaza.

City Plaza:  A project on the antipodes of bordering and control policies

City Plaza was an abandoned hotel in the center of Athens squatted by activists and refugees on the 22nd of April 2016 -one month after the closure of European borders as a result of the EU Turkey agreement. Since then, 120 rooms provide shelter to approximately 400 people from about 10 different nationalities. City Plaza, however, is not just a housing project. It is a radical answer to the dominant policies of control and repression, to the militarization and privatization of the management of migration movements. It is also a counter example, providing on the one hand dignified housing conditions in the center of the city -in contrast to the social and spatial exclusion of the camps- while at the same time promoting self-organization and participation.

 

Against the illegalization of migration, refugee victimization, or relations of dependency produced within the humanitarian care paradigm. Inhabitants share the everyday tasks while they participate in the decision making through house assemblies and working groups. Still, certain initiatives and projects take place in conditions marked by harsh inequality, asymmetrical rights and antagonism between members. These contradictions are not easy to overcome as there are no “islands of freedom” within wider structures of relations of exploitation and domination. However between the cracks effected by social struggles, emancipatory moments emerge as strong collective social and political experiences become articulated -for little, or longer.

 

Vassiliki Bathrelou, Durham University

Fantasies of equilibrium, performances of transformation: Chronically resilient subjects and the dynamics of affective ecologies.

My presentation investigates the resilience as a theoretical concept in the ethnographic analysis of LGBTQ refugee experiences. Examining the challenges faced by LGBTQ asylum seekers in Greece I will demonstrate the role that fantasies of equilibrium play in engendering seemingly resilient hetero-patriarchal systems. The manner in which refugees are produced within the humanitarian care paradigm as a single, homogenous category of persons obscures the superdiversive character of asylum seekers (cf. Vetovec 2007). The regime of invisibility imposed by humanitarian ‘crisis’ and refugee management approaches demonstrates the connections between neoliberal visions of partial citizenship and heteropatriarchy. At the same time, LGBTQ persons can be seen as subjects who face consistently different challenges in an intersectional fashion and prove to be ‘chronically resilient’. Interrogating the relational aspects of resilience, I will call for the need to further study the intricate assemblages that form between affective and political ecologies.  Resilience, I argue, can be seen as a technology of transformation and a potential site of resistance to singular conceptualisations of the subject and reduced forms of citizenship.

 

Panel: Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity

Chair: Hanne  Haaland, University of Agder, Norway

Organizers: Hanne Haaland and Hege Wallevik, University of Agder, Norway and Lau Schulpen and Sara Kingsbergen, Radboud University, Netherlands

 

With reference to the call for panels at IASFM we hereby propose a panel referring to thematic three of the call:  Civil society, new humanitarianism and citizens’ mobilization. This proposed panel on Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity meets the call’s emphasis on the new forms of citizen mobilization and engagement which we see emerging in development aid and in humanitarian crisis alike, where roles are being reversed and where privatization of aid is evident. It also meets the call for a focus on refugee and migrants’ led activism and citizens’ solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees. For many years researchers have paid attention to the emerging phenomena of private development initiatives – or Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity (here CI) – in development aid (Schulpen and Huyse, 2017) However small these initiatives are, the increase in numbers illustrate that citizens who are establishing and running their own development organization is far more than an anecdotal affair within the field of development (Pollet et al. 2014). During later years such initiatives have also emerged in numbers responding to humanitarian crisis across the world, as was the case in Lesvos in 2015. Modern technology has also facilitated for a new type of communication and engagement, opening for the participation of everyone in the production and mediation of humanitarian crisis through their own cultural imagination, rather than only observing them through the media (Pantti 2015.) Chouliaraki (2012) adds to this, pointing to how technology has provided an infrastructure where users are converted into producers rather than consumers in public communication. She refers to what she calls “light touch activism” as part of this, since part of our daily multitasking is to provide a daily donation or sign a petition (Choularaki 2012).

 

These new forms of engagement have contributed to the growth of CIs and clearly also contributed to the steady stream of volunteers and voluntourists going to the Greek islands, for example, either to initiate their own CI or work with others which they had discovered online through their profile and activity in the social media. Furthermore, CI’s are also increasingly visible in work on integration of refugees across the world. Modern technology is also evident in this work, however as more and more refugees and migrants are engaging, we also see that much CI work takes place within networks, where both the size and the informality of the work carried out remains more invisible.

 

This panel will open for a discussion linking research on Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity as seen in a development context with research on citizen initiatives emerging in a refugee crisis, emphasising the distinct roles that CI’s take on when responding to a crisis be it abroad or at home. 

 

Sara Kingsbergen and Lau Schulpen, Radboud University, Netherlands

Ordinary citizens or civil society? Questioning the nature of small-scale, voluntary development organizations

Worldwide, the field of international development cooperation is facing an increasing number and diversity of actors taking up an active role in this field. There is a trend of companies, philanthropists, famous stars and ordinary individuals feeling urged to actively contribute to the global fights against poverty. In the Netherlands, we bring these actors together under the heading of the philanteral aid channel. The voluntary character is the most important trademark that binds the different actors in this channel and distinguishes them from other, more traditional development actors. The philanteral channel already consists of a wide and diverse group of actors. The Dutch debate of diversification focuses especially on one vast group of alternative development actors: Private Development Initiatives (PDIs).  These organizations are characterized by their small size (i.e. small budget and limited number of staff) and voluntary character (i.e. low percentage of paid staff members). In this contribution, we will analyse the identity and origins of PDIs and question their rootedness in the Dutch civil society. We do so based on a unique dataset collected in 2017 among nearly 800 Dutch PDIs.

 

Trond S. Mydland and Eugene Guribye, Agder Research, Norway

Escape to the island: International voluntary engagement on Lesvos during the refugee crisis

The traditional pillars of North-South development aid have consisted of specialized development NGOs, governmental donors and multilateral institutions such as the UN. However, during the last decade we have seen the emergence of a “fourth pillar” of development cooperation, including private development aid initiatives and so called “voluntourism” involving small groups of people who bypass traditional development NGOs and provide support in a direct way. Previous research has indicated a need for a better understanding of the interplay between these pillars. This chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Greek island of Lesvos which has become an international focal point for the current refugee crisis. As hundreds of thousands of Middle-Eastern refugees haphazardly came to cross the strait between Turkey and Lesvos on their way to safety in Europe, thousands of citizens from all over Europe temporarily abandoned their day jobs to be of some sort of assistance for the refugees as they arrive on the beaches of Lesvos. We investigate the developing relationships between these voluntourists, development NGOs, local authorities, local population and the refugees themselves as the crisis unfolded.

 

Hanne Haaland and Hege Wallevik, University of Agder, Norway

Citizen initiatives for global solidarity: The role of local and international activists in Lesvos

In this paper we explore citizen initiatives (CIs) as they have evolved as a response to the refugee crisis in Europe. The ethnographic context for this study is the island of Lesvos, Greece. The island was radically transformed in 2015 with the arrival of thousands of refugees every day, passing through on their way to Europe. The situation rapidly became a challenge for the local population, and continue to be, even today. As a backdrop to the discussion on CI’s role in the crisis, we discuss how an attempt at a coordinated effort from the local government and established NGO was challenging – both within the CIs themselves coordinating thousands of volunteers and voluntourists, as well as between the different actors. Many of the new crisis actors were not easily “civilized” into a predefined thinking or discourse on crisis management. In this paper we will present and discuss different CIs, emphasizing the activist role they play and how they responded and still respond to the crisis in Lesvos.

 

Dorian Brown Crosby, Spelman College, USA

Hidden Figures of US Resettlement: A Gendered Analysis of Assistance

This paper focuses on an under researched sector within the grassroots efforts to resettle refugees in the U.S.: refugee and immigrant women. Resettlement is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) choice of last resort when integrating refugees into their first host country or repatriating them home does not occur. Although resettling refugees is a State facilitated process, in the United Sates (US), community involvement is a salient component to successful integration. Given the anti-refugee political climate in the US and the world, directing more resources and attention to refugees already resettled in the US will remain significant in the next three years of President Trump’s administration. That means grassroots entities such as non-profit, civic, and religious organizations will encounter more pressure to address those needs as US and state resources diminish alongside a possible reduction in the number of refugees allowed to enter the US. Refugee and immigrant women working in their own non-profits or for resettlement agencies are resources utilized by refugees based on their ethnic affiliations, or community trust as leaders. Yet, resettlement in the U.S. has not been fully explored from their perspective. This paper fills that gap by elucidating the resettlement breaks refugee and immigrant women seal by serving as resources themselves based on their political, economic, social and psychological networks.