Explores such issues as inhumane responses of governments to refugees, the current system of determining refugee status, and the right of refugees to asylum; 10 articles. Topics include international refugee law, repatriation, Vietnamese refugees and the UN's Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Hungary as host country for refugees fleeing Eastern Europe.
The state of economic emergency under which Greece has been put for the past eight years throws into relief the basic antinomy inherent in democracy. This pertains to the exercise of national sovereignty on the basis of borders whose safeguarding, however, implements a network of state practices of control and selection of populations both 'within' and 'outside'. In Greece, under the memoranda imposed by the Tetroika (involving four institutions: IMF, ECB, ESM and EC, not three as in Troika), extreme austerity has created 'superfluous' populations within their own country. The internal shifting of the borders that produces exclusion, sustained by parliamentary dictates and intense supervision because of the Tetroika's policies at the national level, goes along with the stiffening of external border control by the state in a strategy of deterrence against the entry of war refugees into the country. At the same time, the regulation of 'superfluous' refugee populations replicates the biopolitical model of EU governance introduced to the national 'body'. Therefore, the Greek radical Left has to demonstrate that both dispossessed Greek subjects and refugees are victims of globalized capitalism, distance itself from humanitarianism and politicize solidarity by creating the terms for a common struggle.
It is generally accepted by the community that nations have obligations to protect refugees. This tradition has long roots in Western thought spanning across centuries of political and religious oppression despite its various shortcomings. The origins of the legal and moral obligations towards refugees is beyond the scope of this paper. It suffices to point out that helping refugees is a valance issue. Like promoting peace and cleaning up the environment, helping refugees has primarily advocates. However, there is frequent and at times bitter disagreement as to how one should approach this issue in practice. Among the most disputed issues are (1) hammering out a definition of a 'refugee', (2) determining who defines and implements this definition, (3) halting the flow of refugees, and (4) creating an international regime to effectively deal with refugees. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss various definitions of what is a refugee as a precondition of both, political analysis and political action. The controversy of defining a refugee is deeply entangled with the sovereignty of individual nations. The paper concludes by offering an alternative perspective for analyzing the current international refugee crisis.
This article challenges the assumption that until relatively recently refugees or persons with lived refugee experience have not been involved in the development of international refugee law and policy. By drawing on primary source material – including the preparatory work for international legal instruments such as the 1933 Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, along with the operational work of the League of Nations, the International Refugee Organization and the early years of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – this article argues that refugees and persons with lived refugee experience exercised significant influence and thought-leadership in the development of international refugee law and policymaking during the foundational years between 1921 and 1955. These contributions to the development of international refugee law and policy are significant because they not only reorient our understanding of the ways in which international law and policy pertaining to refugees has been developed and negotiated to date, but also because they provide a practical example of how refugees can more meaningfully be included in the creation of laws and policies that affect them going forward.
THIS IS A REPORT OF A PANEL DISCUSSION ON INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE PROBLEMS HELD AT THE 37TH COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE IN SEPTEMBER 1991. THE PARTICIPANTS DISCUSSED THE GLOBAL REFUGEE SITUATION, THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS, AND HOW COMMONWEALTH MEMBERS SHOULD BE INVOLVED IN SOLVING HUMAN RIGHTS PROBLEMS.
In this article the authors present an auto-ethnographical analysis, describing their personal experiences with forced migration. Using narrative passages, the authors problematize the way in which refugee identities are entwined with socially constructed labels. The authors explore the points at which self-identification negotiates with labelling in order to create new spaces wherein individual and collective refugee experiences mutually shape and transform each other. These new spaces emerge from an inclusive participatory socio-cultural and political process where the idea of "us" and "them" merges into a "we." This article represents the culmination of the authors' sustained interactions (in conversation, in storytelling, in shared analyses, in writing) and serves as an example of putting a new space into action. ; Les auteurs présentent dans cet article une analyse auto-ethnographique fondée sur la description de leurs vécus respectifs de la migration forcée. Par des extraits narratifs, ilsproblématisent la manière dont les identités de réfugiés sontliées à des catégories socialement construites. Ils explorentles points de négociation entre l'auto-identifcation et lacatégorisation pour créer de nouveaux espaces dans lesquels les expériences individuelles et collectives de réfugiésse façonnent mutuellement et se transforment les unes lesautres. Ces nouveaux espaces se dégagent à partir d'unprocessus participatif et inclusif qui relève à la fois du politique et du socioculturel, dans lequel les concepts de « nous-mêmes » et « eux » se fondent en une seule entité, « nous ».Cet article, qui est l'aboutissement d'interactions approfondies entre les auteurs (sous la forme de conversations,d'histoires racontées, d'analyses partagées, de textes rédigés),constitue un exemple de mise en action d'un nouvel espace.