Suchergebnisse

AbstractHumanitarians have recently championed faith actors as valuable resources in delivering humanitarian aid. Partnerships are increasingly promoted through international declarations and bespoke toolkits. Such approaches are abstracted from the historical and contemporary contexts through which faith is negotiated, and through which faith actors have become legitimate. This paper explores how faith has been entangled within the dynamics of two spatially connected crises: Ugandans fleeing post‐Amin reprisals in the mid‐1980s, and South Sudanese fleeing civil war from 2013. Drawing attention to the local‐structural engagements which have shaped forms of protection and the legitimacy of faith actors, this paper urges for a consideration of complexity in humanitarians' localisation calculations.

AbstractPrior to COVID‐19, migrant journeys through the Mediterranean were often described with reference to the barriers posed within 'fortress Europe' or through registers which centre migrant's adeptness at navigating draconian immigration regimes. Between these two contexts, this paper explores how a public authority lens can assist in understanding the implications of COVID‐19 and associated vaccine bureaucracies. We draw on ethnographic research on the Italian‐French Alpine border and chart how 'vaccine populism'—perpetuated in nationalist political discourse as well as in the counter‐commentaries of resistance offered by solidarity networks—has specific implications for migrants' access to vaccines and health information. We argue that analyses attentive to the subtle nuances of state and local politics provide an important entry point to map multi‐scalar power dynamics which accompany universal health policies. Through considering the complex realities relating to Alpine crossings, we advocate from less categorising approaches to vaccinating migrants.

Faith actors have become increasingly significant in the field of global mental health, through their inclusion in the delivery of psychosocial support in humanitarian settings. This inclusion remains empirically underexplored. We explore historical and contemporary activities of local faith actors in responding to mental disquiet in northern Uganda. Given pre-existing roles, we question what it means when humanitarians draw on faith actors to deliver mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in conflict-affected settings. We argue for a recognition of faith actors as agents operating within a therapeutic marketplace, which on occasion links suffering to social inequality and exclusion. We show, moreover, that the formal inclusion of Christian actors within MHPSS may not equate to the enforcement of rights-based values at the core of international ideas of protection.

African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects for businesspeople, but it can also engender anxieties around the unchecked spread of insecurity, disease and economic exploitation. Understanding this ambiguous construction of borders in the minds of their inhabitants requires us, we argue, to look beyond statist or globalizing discourses and to appreciate the moral economies of borderlands, and how they have been discursively and epistemologically negotiated over time. Narratives around witchcraft and the occult represent, we argue, a novel and revealing lens through which to do so and our study draws on years of fieldwork and archival research to underline how cartographies of witchcraft in this region are, and have long been, entangled with the construction of state political geographies, internal as well as international.

African borderlands – such as those between South Sudan, Uganda and Congo – are often presented by analysts as places of agency and economic opportunity, in contrast to hardened, securitized borders elsewhere. We emphasize, however, that even such relatively porous international borders can nevertheless be the focus of significant unease for borderland communities. Crossing borders can enable safety for those fleeing conflict or trading prospects for businesspeople, but it can also engender anxieties around the unchecked spread of insecurity, disease and economic exploitation. Understanding this ambiguous construction of borders in the minds of their inhabitants requires us, we argue, to look beyond statist or globalizing discourses and to appreciate the moral economies of borderlands, and how they have been discursively and epistemologically negotiated over time. Narratives around witchcraft and the occult represent, we argue, a novel and revealing lens through which to do so and our study draws on years of fieldwork and archival research to underline how cartographies of witchcraft in this region are, and have long been, entangled with the construction of state political geographies, internal as well as international.