Suchergebnisse

Diaspora politics is often expressed as an emancipating experience and can therefore give agency to migrants. Yet, rather than interpreting transnational political practices as globally liberal or cosmopolitan, Meuller-Funk's findings underline that diaspora politics is a highly diverse political field which can reinforce political fragmentation among migrant collectivities. This volume explores the controversial topic of diaspora politics: the political activities of migrants who aim to influence the domestic or foreign policy of their country of origin. The revolutions in 2010/11 represented a major political upheaval in the Middle East, which politicised Arabs across borders on a grand scale. Meuller-Funk explores the links between recent political developments in Egypt between 2011 and 2013 and emigration. More specifically, she examines the question of how the revolution in and its aftermath influenced emigrants' political perceptions and actions regarding their homeland. The book takes an interdisciplinary macro and micro approach by investigating policies which influence migrants' political transnational behavior as well as by looking at individual activists' perspectives. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, security studies, political theory, politics and middle east studies.

Abstract
Research with refugees poses particular ethical challenges, especially if data is collected in places where most refugees today live: namely countries neighbouring conflict, ones that are sometimes at war with their country of origin and where refugees are exposed to different degrees of legal vulnerability, posing security risks to participants and researchers alike. These challenges are exacerbated when data is collected across countries and includes survey research. The article adds to the emergent literature on ethics in forced displacement by highlighting how security precautions and ethical considerations influence and shape methodological choices. Based on recent fieldwork with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey in 2018, the article discusses a mixed-methods approach combining in-depth interviews with an individual survey based on multistage cluster sampling, random walks and limited focused enumeration. Advocating for a refugee-centred approach, it elaborates on: (i) how to negotiate 'ethics in practice'; (ii) how risks and violence influence the choice of fieldwork sites; and (iii) how ethical considerations impact in particular quantitative or mixed-methods studies. It describes the advantages of including members of refugee populations in research teams, as well as open challenges with regard to risks, informed consent, confidentiality, sensitive issues, positionality, advocacy and collaborative writing efforts.

This paper addresses the question of how different actors attempt to control mobility during civil war, and how mobility control and processes of state-making interact in such settings. Mobility in civil wars is often considered a political act by the various actors involved: Leaving the country can be perceived as an act of opposition, as can moving between territories which are controlled by different, opposing factions. Drawing on literature on strategic displacement and migration politics and combining this with empirical insights from the ongoing wars in Libya and Syria, the paper identifies three mechanisms of mobility control in civil war settings: forcing exit, selective return as a form of expulsion, and strategic laissez-faire as the intentional absence of regulation regarding displacement and return. The analysis reveals that all three mechanisms are employed by state actor(s), rebels, and militias, and can be understood as elements of a new (post)war order that includes some citizens while excluding others depending on perceptions of political threats. We interpret the three mechanisms as ways in which actors in civil war settings attempt to manipulate a country's demography in their own favour in a process of state-making. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2021 in Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Tunisia.

This article studies how return migration aspirations are formed and realized in the context of protracted displacement. Drawing on a mixed-methods study that included survey research and in-depth interviews in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria conducted, we study whether respondents aspired to return (i) currently, with the conflict still ongoing; and (ii) in the future, if the war were to end. Our analyses reveal how broader life aspirations play a crucial role in shaping return aspirations, and how current and future return aspirations are separate concepts. Current return aspirations were strongly stratified. For economically vulnerable respondents, current return considerations were often related to survival, whereas for respondents from the educated middle class, current return aspirations were part of their broader life aspirations. Aspirations to return after the war's end were largely driven by a wish to realize broader life goals. Future return aspirations often functioned as a mental coping strategy to keep hope for change in the future — including political change — alive. Return abilities favored those with higher socioeconomic status, those who had remained neutral in the conflict and those willing to take high risks. Overall, our analyses illustrate the usefulness of the aspirations-abilities framework, and the important role of life aspirations, in understanding return-migration decisions in a context of protracted displacement.

In this paper, we study the question of who and what drives forced migration governance in origin, host, and transit states, drawing on empirical material from the contemporary Syrian and Libyan, and the historical Algerian displacement situations. These three cases are examples for different forced migration governance approaches, ranging from open-supportive (Algeria), to restrictive-selective (Syria) and laissez-faire (Libya). We identify three key drivers of forced migration governance to explain variation in governance outcome: domestic, geopolitical, and international-normative drivers. We understand forced migration governance as a state-making strategy for different state and non-state actors in origin, transit, and host countries. We argue that while forced migration governance is negotiated around humanitarian principles in which international organizations and civil society play a crucial role, the international-normative driver remains strongly bound to domestic and geopolitical logics. Political and economic interests are key factors of forced migration governance in host countries, especially if they align with political interests and state-making strategies of state and non-state actors in origin countries.

For a long time now, "crisis" has been the dominant trope in European discourses on migration. This perception is extremely Eurocentric, as migration to the European Union is minimal compared to other world regions. How do non-EU states such as Tunisia and Turkey, which are bound to the EU through neighbourhood policies and agreements, view not only migration movements perceived as "critical" within the EU but also the ensuing migration agreements? Tunisian media discourses on the EU migration deal of June 2018 show that Tunisian political analysts are aware that the "migration crisis" is actively constructed by political actors in the EU for the latter's own political gain. In Tunisia itself, no such "crisis" was diagnosed - at least in media discourse -despite the high and rising number of forced migrants entering the country. Instead, political reporting focused on local domestic crises and on Tunisia's mediating role within the neighbouring conflict in Libya. Similarly, the reporting in Turkey on the negotiations leading up to the joint EU-Turkey statement of March 2016 shows an acute awareness of European constructions of a "migration crisis." Despite Turkey's rapid development from a migrant-sending state to one of the most important host states for forced migrants in the world, Turkish media reporting focused on local issues and conflicts and on Turkey's strategic interests in the Syrian conflict. EU perceptions of migration as a crisis and discrepancies between a rhetorical commitment to humanitarian values and real-life actions are carefully received and critically evaluated in neigbouring states, highlighting the need to better understand perceptions of the EU, as this can be expected to impact future cooperation. The EU should build knowledge on local and national discourses on migration in (potential) partner states; reflect upon who gains from the narrative of forced migration as a "crisis" both within and outside of the EU; and address severe protection gaps for refugees and migrants in partner states when negotiating cooperative migration governance.

On 26 May 2015, under pressure from its European partners, the Nigerien government issued Law 36-2015, which forbids Nigeriens from transporting international migrants north from Agadez towards Libya or Algeria. While this law supposedly targets only international migrants, a closer look reveals its extended impact on circular migration and the local population.
The implementation of Law 36-2015 has negatively affected the local economy in the Agadez region, as people who had once made a living from migration in the wider sense have faced sudden unemployment.
In reaction to the law's implementation, drivers and migrants have developed a diverse range of strategies to circumvent new restrictions. As a result, migration to Libya and Algeria has become more expensive and more dangerous, since drivers are forced to use unofficial routes that include higher bribe payments to local security officials.
Because routes have become more clandestine, dangerous, and expensive, the official number of Nigeriens migrating to Libya or Algeria has declined, leading to unintended consequences for their local communities for whom income from different forms of migration is part of an important resilience strategy to counter unemployment, poverty, and droughts.
Given the law's sole and explicit focus on international migrants, international NGOs working in the region of Agadez have started to concentrate mostly on non-Nigerien migrants. This has fuelled dissatisfaction among the local population, with the potential for future violence.
The European Union should stop using humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip to implement European externalisation policies. Rather than pursuing migration policies in sub-Saharan Africa that have evinced negative consequences for traditional and local forms of migration, policymakers should design policies that incorporate the knowledge, perspectives, and needs of both local actors and the affected local population - migrants and non-migrants alike.