Although older refugees can be seen as particularly vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness, they are often overlooked by ageing and migration scholars. This article addresses this research gap by identifying and examining potential drivers of loneliness among older refugees. The study analysed data from the first two waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, focusing on 958 individuals aged 45 and older who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016. Nearly half of the participants reported symptoms of loneliness. The major contributing factors included poor health, financial strain, lack of family ties in Germany, limited contact with Germans, insecure residence status, and perceived hostility towards them. The study highlights the need for a range of interventions at multiple levels targeting not only the older refugees themselves but also institutional arrangements and the people of the host country.
{"title":"Drivers of Loneliness among Older Refugees","authors":"Vincent Horn, T. Fokkema","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although older refugees can be seen as particularly vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness, they are often overlooked by ageing and migration scholars. This article addresses this research gap by identifying and examining potential drivers of loneliness among older refugees. The study analysed data from the first two waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, focusing on 958 individuals aged 45 and older who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016. Nearly half of the participants reported symptoms of loneliness. The major contributing factors included poor health, financial strain, lack of family ties in Germany, limited contact with Germans, insecure residence status, and perceived hostility towards them. The study highlights the need for a range of interventions at multiple levels targeting not only the older refugees themselves but also institutional arrangements and the people of the host country.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49259362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many refugee teachers toil for years with little support, inadequate working conditions, and unliveable wages, all while facing ‘unknowable futures’ (Dryden-Peterson 2017) about their ability to continue working as teachers. The current push for inclusion of refugees into national education systems has created policy openings for the inclusion of refugee teachers. Drawing on interviews with refugee teachers in Kakuma refugee camp and critical policy analysis of refugee education policies across global, regional, and national levels, our study examines what refugee teachers identify as policy barriers influencing their work and how policies that purport to include refugees into national systems address the needs of refugee teachers. We argue that policies that recognize refugee teachers either fail to address their specific professional needs for recognized teaching certification, adequate teacher compensation, and future career pathways or are inadequately implemented, leaving teachers and the countries hosting them without adequate support to improve teacher management.
{"title":"National Inclusion Policy Openings/Barriers for Refugee Teachers: Critical Reflections from Kenya","authors":"Mary Mendenhall, Danielle Falk","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Many refugee teachers toil for years with little support, inadequate working conditions, and unliveable wages, all while facing ‘unknowable futures’ (Dryden-Peterson 2017) about their ability to continue working as teachers. The current push for inclusion of refugees into national education systems has created policy openings for the inclusion of refugee teachers. Drawing on interviews with refugee teachers in Kakuma refugee camp and critical policy analysis of refugee education policies across global, regional, and national levels, our study examines what refugee teachers identify as policy barriers influencing their work and how policies that purport to include refugees into national systems address the needs of refugee teachers. We argue that policies that recognize refugee teachers either fail to address their specific professional needs for recognized teaching certification, adequate teacher compensation, and future career pathways or are inadequately implemented, leaving teachers and the countries hosting them without adequate support to improve teacher management.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47810152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. J. Alpes, Kwamou Eva Feukeu, Marieke van Houte, Shahed Kseibi, Belal Shukair
For both political and ideological reasons, return is the most favoured future imagined for refugees by policy makers and protection actors. This article analyses how humanitarian migrants in a context of limited durable solutions can be supported to reclaim ownership of their futures, as well as how this can result in deeper insights for social scientists and policy makers. For the case of Syrians, this study deploys futures literacy labs as a participatory and capability-based research methodology that allows participants to become researchers of their own lives. Based on two futures literacy labs with two Syrian families in Lebanon in 2020 and 2021, the article demonstrates that a futures capability-based approach provides humanitarian migrants with the cognitive space and agency needed to go beyond foreclosed decision-making processes. The research methodology allows researchers to become witnesses to intimate reappropriation and learning processes by humanitarian migrants themselves. As a result, we are able to argue that ‘returns’ as a durable solution are essentially about a return to a state of well-being and possibilities, which may or not entail a spatial return.
{"title":"Who Owns the Future of Syrians in Lebanon? Intimate Family Explorations of Refugees’ Own Search for Durable Solutions","authors":"M. J. Alpes, Kwamou Eva Feukeu, Marieke van Houte, Shahed Kseibi, Belal Shukair","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 For both political and ideological reasons, return is the most favoured future imagined for refugees by policy makers and protection actors. This article analyses how humanitarian migrants in a context of limited durable solutions can be supported to reclaim ownership of their futures, as well as how this can result in deeper insights for social scientists and policy makers. For the case of Syrians, this study deploys futures literacy labs as a participatory and capability-based research methodology that allows participants to become researchers of their own lives. Based on two futures literacy labs with two Syrian families in Lebanon in 2020 and 2021, the article demonstrates that a futures capability-based approach provides humanitarian migrants with the cognitive space and agency needed to go beyond foreclosed decision-making processes. The research methodology allows researchers to become witnesses to intimate reappropriation and learning processes by humanitarian migrants themselves. As a result, we are able to argue that ‘returns’ as a durable solution are essentially about a return to a state of well-being and possibilities, which may or not entail a spatial return.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45741818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Academics in Exile: Networks, Knowledge Exchange, and New Forms of Internationalization. By Vera Axyonova, Florian Kohstall, and Carola Richter","authors":"Ahmad Akkad","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42914573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the Thirty Years’ War was the greatest demographic crisis in Europe between the Black Death and the two World Wars, it is unsurprising that the conflict created the greatest number of refugees in the continent’s history prior to the twentieth century. However, the limited scholarship on displaced persons between 1618 and 1648 has been exclusively based on micro-level eyewitness accounts, diaries, and memoirs. This article broadens the scope of studies on refugees during the Thirty Years’ War beyond such individualistic sources through an examination of their treatment in newsprint, a source base which has hitherto been entirely overlooked. A case study based on over 200 newspaper reports allows this article to examine how the frequency of appearances of refugees in newsprint, as well as the language and vocabulary used to describe them, can provide a valuable insight into the experiences of displaced persons and the attitudes of contemporaries in mid-seventeenth century Europe.
{"title":"‘The Great and Miserable Flight’: The Experiences of Refugees in Newsprint during the Thirty Years’ War","authors":"T. Pert","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 As the Thirty Years’ War was the greatest demographic crisis in Europe between the Black Death and the two World Wars, it is unsurprising that the conflict created the greatest number of refugees in the continent’s history prior to the twentieth century. However, the limited scholarship on displaced persons between 1618 and 1648 has been exclusively based on micro-level eyewitness accounts, diaries, and memoirs. This article broadens the scope of studies on refugees during the Thirty Years’ War beyond such individualistic sources through an examination of their treatment in newsprint, a source base which has hitherto been entirely overlooked. A case study based on over 200 newspaper reports allows this article to examine how the frequency of appearances of refugees in newsprint, as well as the language and vocabulary used to describe them, can provide a valuable insight into the experiences of displaced persons and the attitudes of contemporaries in mid-seventeenth century Europe.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43757095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why does education damage refugees? To understand this, we need to ask how education frames refugees’ thinking about their future, specifically related to questions of waiting in the camp or migrating through dangerous, irregular channels. Between 2016 and 2019, Ethiopia was at the forefront of trends in migration policy that prioritized education as part of a global strategy to prevent irregular, northward migration. However, despite increased educational opportunities, refugees rejected schooling as they weighed the decision to migrate onwards, citing a sharp disconnect between aspirations connected to schooling and the constraints on professional and personal progress that they face in hosting states. Drawing on long-term, multi-sited, ethnographic research on temporal violence, and temporal agency among Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, we develop the concept of teleological violence to describe the harm generated by this disconnect, as risky secondary migration may come to seem like the only path toward a desired future.
{"title":"What Kind of Weapon Is Education? Teleological Violence, Local Integration, and Refugee Education in Northern Ethiopia","authors":"A. Poole, J. Riggan","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Why does education damage refugees? To understand this, we need to ask how education frames refugees’ thinking about their future, specifically related to questions of waiting in the camp or migrating through dangerous, irregular channels. Between 2016 and 2019, Ethiopia was at the forefront of trends in migration policy that prioritized education as part of a global strategy to prevent irregular, northward migration. However, despite increased educational opportunities, refugees rejected schooling as they weighed the decision to migrate onwards, citing a sharp disconnect between aspirations connected to schooling and the constraints on professional and personal progress that they face in hosting states. Drawing on long-term, multi-sited, ethnographic research on temporal violence, and temporal agency among Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, we develop the concept of teleological violence to describe the harm generated by this disconnect, as risky secondary migration may come to seem like the only path toward a desired future.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44259864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on displaced peoples’ migratory journeys to the borderlands of Lebanon and Turkey. Building on a selection of ethnographic, interview, policy, and programme materials, it advances the argument that Syrian encounters with these borderlands encompass multidirectional movements and context-specific and fluid processes imbricated in relations of power that often stimulate migrant politics, processes that involve, what we term, borderland porosities. Contributing to critical migration and border studies, the analysis emphasizes how displaced people negotiate the permeabilities of borderlands, engage intermediaries to assist in their perilous journeys, and employ their pre- and post-war transnational networks during their movements. This perspective places borderland porosities front and centre. It illuminates how these dynamic and penetrable spaces shape peoples’ movements, foster a diverse web of actors and encounters in migratory journey and resettlement processes, and cultivate a migrant politics of presence and invisibility.
{"title":"Borderland Porosities: Migratory Journeys and Migrant Politics in Lebanon and Turkey","authors":"Suzan Ilcan, Seçil Dağtaș, Lana Gonzalez Balyk","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on displaced peoples’ migratory journeys to the borderlands of Lebanon and Turkey. Building on a selection of ethnographic, interview, policy, and programme materials, it advances the argument that Syrian encounters with these borderlands encompass multidirectional movements and context-specific and fluid processes imbricated in relations of power that often stimulate migrant politics, processes that involve, what we term, borderland porosities. Contributing to critical migration and border studies, the analysis emphasizes how displaced people negotiate the permeabilities of borderlands, engage intermediaries to assist in their perilous journeys, and employ their pre- and post-war transnational networks during their movements. This perspective places borderland porosities front and centre. It illuminates how these dynamic and penetrable spaces shape peoples’ movements, foster a diverse web of actors and encounters in migratory journey and resettlement processes, and cultivate a migrant politics of presence and invisibility.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44587493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For over six decades the Tibetan diaspora in India has followed a strategy of ‘non-assimilation’ towards Indian society. A majority of Tibetans still reside in self-governed settlements and maintain their self-imposed statelessness. Tibetan refugees have constructed boundaries that—according to the diaspora leaders—enable them to continue their political struggle for a free Tibet while in a state of protracted exile and imposed waiting. In this article, based on long-term ethnographic research, I discuss the mechanisms and rationale of this boundary-making by exploring its spatial, educational, and political dimensions. I then analyse the political activism which takes place within those boundaries, with a special focus on second-generation Tibetan refugees. I scrutinize the internal divisions in the Tibetan freedom movement, the radicalization of struggle, and the everyday patriotism practiced by generations born in exile, demonstrating that waiting has the potential to produce resistance.
{"title":"Boundary-Making and Political Activism in Protracted Exile: Second-Generation Tibetan Refugees in India","authors":"Natalia Bloch","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 For over six decades the Tibetan diaspora in India has followed a strategy of ‘non-assimilation’ towards Indian society. A majority of Tibetans still reside in self-governed settlements and maintain their self-imposed statelessness. Tibetan refugees have constructed boundaries that—according to the diaspora leaders—enable them to continue their political struggle for a free Tibet while in a state of protracted exile and imposed waiting. In this article, based on long-term ethnographic research, I discuss the mechanisms and rationale of this boundary-making by exploring its spatial, educational, and political dimensions. I then analyse the political activism which takes place within those boundaries, with a special focus on second-generation Tibetan refugees. I scrutinize the internal divisions in the Tibetan freedom movement, the radicalization of struggle, and the everyday patriotism practiced by generations born in exile, demonstrating that waiting has the potential to produce resistance.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45675474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review—The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Researchers","authors":"J. Liew","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44880329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent scholarship has insightfully explored the colonial roots of the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. In this work I seek to extend this line of argument by situating the adoption of the Additional Protocol of the Refugee Convention (1967) in relation to the transformations of international order following the Second World War. Contra the conventional account, this article shows that the Additional Protocol was created in no small part due to fears that the UN Refugee Convention would be unable to claim universal status due to competing ‘regional’ refugee conventions. Breaking down four meanings of ‘universal’ and drawing on archival documents of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, I explore efforts by newly independent African and Asian countries to find voice in an exclusionary international order. Reading the Bangkok Principles and OAU Convention as collective subaltern resistance against efforts to discipline newly independent states offers new insights into contemporary international struggles and brings refugee studies into productive dialogue with critical international relations.
{"title":"Contesting the Universality of the Refugee Convention: Decolonization and the Additional Protocol","authors":"Itty Abraham","doi":"10.1093/jrs/fead008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fead008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recent scholarship has insightfully explored the colonial roots of the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. In this work I seek to extend this line of argument by situating the adoption of the Additional Protocol of the Refugee Convention (1967) in relation to the transformations of international order following the Second World War. Contra the conventional account, this article shows that the Additional Protocol was created in no small part due to fears that the UN Refugee Convention would be unable to claim universal status due to competing ‘regional’ refugee conventions. Breaking down four meanings of ‘universal’ and drawing on archival documents of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, I explore efforts by newly independent African and Asian countries to find voice in an exclusionary international order. Reading the Bangkok Principles and OAU Convention as collective subaltern resistance against efforts to discipline newly independent states offers new insights into contemporary international struggles and brings refugee studies into productive dialogue with critical international relations.","PeriodicalId":51464,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Refugee Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43774849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}