Imagining Refugia: thinking beyond the current migration impasse - work in progress seminar

Nicholas Van Hear writes:

The UN is currently steering the international community towards global ‘compacts’ on migration and refugees, due to be agreed by the end of 2018.  While the aims of the compacts are worthy, many lack confidence that they hold promise of real progress, nor that the three traditional ‘durable solutions’ (local integration, resettlement and return) can address the challenge on the scale needed – addressing the often ‘protracted displacement’ of some 65 million people worldwide.  

This contribution takes as a starting point recent proposals that depart from the usual three ‘durable solutions’ and the current international migration architecture, and that think about alternatives.  One set of proposals explores the idea of new nations or polities for refugees and migrants – suggestions that have been dismissed as fantasies by many commentators.  But perhaps such seemingly outlandish proposals should not be rejected out of hand.  The presentation will explore the possibility not of a new ‘refugee nation’ on an island or other bounded territory, but rather a new kind of transnational polity – Refugia.  We envisage this as a linked set of territories and spaces connecting refugee and other migrant communities that would be governed by refugees and migrants themselves.  The key feature of Refugia is that its different parts are connected, with mobility between them, and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

It will be suggested that such a transnational polity is already imperfectly prefigured in many of the transnational practices that refugees and migrants deploy and the environments in which they find themselves today -- in both the ‘global south’ and the ‘global north’.  Camps and communities in countries neighbouring conflicts, neighbourhoods in global cities, transnational political practices and money transfers, emergent communities in disparate locations en route: all are fragments that taken separately do not seem to promise much. But cumulatively they could add up to Refugia, imperfectly prefigured. Consolidating them into a common polity might prove to be a way out of the current impasse.

The seminar is on Thursday 1 March, 16.30-18.00, in the Student Hub, White Space, on the 3rd floor of the Abercrombie building. All welcome. For the whole seminar series programme, check: http://cendep.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/work-in-progress-seminars-all-welcome.html.

The presentation will develop ideas set out in Cohen and Van Hear 2017 ‘Visions of Refugia: territorial and transnational solutions to mass displacement‘, in Planning Theory & Practice. 

See also Imagining Refugia: Could a New Transnational Polity Help Solve the Refugee Crisis? | Foreign Affairs online | Nicholas Van Hear | 17/10/2017

Sudanese hosting practices in urban Jordan

Zoe Jordan writes from Amman, updating us on her PhD fieldwork:

After a long break over Christmas, I'm now back in Amman. I’ve got two months left in Jordan, and feel like my time here is rapidly running out!

As a first step in my fieldwork, I have been trying to identify the different forms of hosting – arrangements in which one or more different families live in the same space – that exist among refugee populations in urban Amman. As I’m seeking to identify the broad range of different arrangements that exist, I’ve focused on speaking to refugee households with different characteristics –  including nationality, age, gender, marital status, length of time in Jordan, living with a physical disability, and the number and age of children in the household – rather than seeking a representative sample.

With Dina - a Jordanian researcher - I spoke to 13 Sudanese and nine Somali refugee households in late October and early November 2017. So far, this has shown that within these two national groups hosting practices are extremely diverse. They are also a primary coping strategy, given limited humanitarian assistance and low awareness in the host community. The interviews also suggest that among the Sudanese refugee population, this form of refugee-refugee support has undergone substantial changes, and is increasingly difficult to maintain.

Sudanese and Somali refugees in Jordan are a small minority. Compared to 657,628 registered Syrian refugees, 79% of whom are living outside of camps, the 66,262 Iraqis, 4058 Sudanese refugees and 810 Somali refugees have been overshadowed. In December 2015, approximately 800 Sudanese people were deported, following a demonstration outside UNHCR. In the three years since, there has been an increased awareness of the presence of Sudanese and Somali refugees among humanitarian actors, and a number of reports published detailing their particular concerns and needs. Despite this, many NGO programs serve primarily Syrian and Jordanian populations. The wider Jordanian population has little awareness of the presence of these minority refugee groups in Amman, or understanding of their needs.

The frequency of racially-motivated verbal and physical harassment of Sudanese and Somali refugees is particularly concerning. Many refugees experience social isolation due to their status. For Sudanese and Somali refugees in Amman, this is further reinforced by their fear of harassment and, for some Somalis, limited Arabic language skills. Combined with the low awareness of the presence of Sudanese and Somali refugees, this fear has resulted in limited contact with the host community, and low levels of host community support. Some Sudanese - and fewer Somalis - spoke about the kindness they had been shown by Jordanians - being given household items, or a landlord reducing rent costs. This was outnumbered by the number of households who said they have few or no interactions with Jordanians, that they are charged an inflated rent despite poor living conditions, that they have been forced to leave their accommodation due to complaints from neighbours, or that they had been underpaid and exploited by employers, as they cannot legally work. Given the limited assistance available from both humanitarian agencies, and the isolation from other community members, Sudanese and Somali refugees in Amman rely heavily on the limited support available from other households of the same nationality.  

For many of the Sudanese refugee households I spoke to, the 2015 deportation marks a significant turning point in their circumstances. In addition to the devastating separation of family and friends, many Sudanese refugees report experiencing a general climate of fear in the weeks and months following the deportation, limiting their movement and ability to find (informal) work. An additional effect of the deportation seems to have been a weakening of the ability of Sudanese refugee community in Amman to offer support to other refugee households. Though many people I interviewed still spoke with pride of their desire and intention to help others, many described their primary form of support – both given and received – as moral, advice, and sharing any assistance opportunities they found, rather than material or financial support. Previously, there were ‘association’ houses, where single men collectively covered the rent and basic expenses. New arrivals would often be taken to such a house on arrival, and be able to join this community support mechanism while they established themselves. Now, these houses are much smaller - there is less demand as the number of new Sudanese arrivals has slowed, but previous residents also reported rent increases and eviction requests from neighbours after the deportation. Smaller groups of single men continue to live together, but the groups are often less stable, and are unable to

support members who cannot pay their way for longer than a couple of weeks. In general households have fewer resources available to lend or share with other households, and the human connections that brokered these supportive relationships have disappeared. The situation of Sudanese refugees may slowly be recovering - though this is debatable - as an increasing number of NGOs show greater engagement with the non-Syrian population in Jordan. Yet refugee households – particularly those led by single women – told me they avoid going to others for help. As one Sudanese woman told me: “I could have gone to another family - people would have helped me - but I have four children. It’s not easy to support us.”

In the coming month, I will be conducting similar interviews with Syrian refugees living in Amman. Syrian refugees differ from Sudanese and Somalis in several key ways, including greater awareness of their presence and needs, more opportunities for further study, and legal avenues to work. I am looking forward to seeing if and how Syrian hosting practices differ, and what they can add to my emerging understanding of this important community self-support mechanism.

Work in progress seminar: Agamben and architecture

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This event is cancelled because University College London is taking part in the University and College Union strike action on 22 February. Apologies for the late notice.

In this Work in Progress seminar, Camillo Boano, Professor at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, will present his recent book in conversation with CENDEP’s Cathrine Brun. The book titled The Ethics of Potential Urbanism. Critical encounters between Giorgio Agamben and Architecture is a unique engagement with the philosopher Giorgio Agamben from a position of architecture and urban planning. Professor Boano will present an outline and the main argument of the book. This is followed by a conversation between Boano and Brun about how, by engaging with Agamben, we can promote a radically new architecture. Within Agamben’s philosophy lies a social critique and analysis that enables a potentiality – the ability to act – or not to act, the possibility to resist and a hopeful architecture. Agamben’s exceptionalism is perhaps most known in our field for the contribution to the ways in which we can approach humanitarian action and human rights. While the camp is the most prominent and most discussed spatiality of Agamben’s work, we aim to discuss how that spatiality can be applied in shelter, housing and home. The conversation will consider the meaning of the material and the social in understanding how practice inform theory but also how Agamben’s philosophy can inform practice.

For the whole seminar series programme, check this blog post.

Haiti, Oxfam and Amnesty: time for a rethink

Richard Carver writes:

One of the reasons we teach about human rights at CENDEP is that we think it is important to assert the rights and the agency of those affected by conflict and disasters. The behaviour of some Oxfam personnel in Haiti and Chad underlines, in a particularly distressing manner, why this matters.

Three years ago, Amnesty International, an organization I was honoured to work for in the past, voted to adopt a policy advocating the decriminalization of prostitution. This is an issue about which I know next to nothing but my immediate feeling was that such a policy was unwise, primarily because it seemed to be a question on which reasonable people might disagree, rather than a human rights principle. Some argue for the rights of sex workers; others for the “Nordic solution” of criminalizing use of prostitutes. Empirical studies seemed inconclusive, at least to the casual reader like me.

Now we have the Haiti scandal, in which it has emerged that humanitarian personnel paid women for sex in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. This seems to me to pose a very big problem for the decriminalization camp. Amnesty International is on record as condemning the behaviour of these Oxfam personnel, but why? Surely, Roland van Hauwermeiren and his friends were just injecting hard currency into the local economy. Shouldn't Amnesty’s ire rather be addressed to the Haitian authorities who have criminalized these activities and thereby reduced the livelihood opportunities of the affected population? 

Of course, the reason the Haiti scandal appals us is that it lays bare the power relations that underlie prostitution in all instances. Decriminalization promotes the idea that sex is just an exchangeable commodity like any other. The Oxfam affair tells is that this is false. What Amnesty calls “sex work” is always about gender power and oppression. In Haiti we see an additional layer of racism and neo-colonialism. Our gut response of condemnation is the right one – and Amnesty needs to take a long, hard look at its policy.

Catherine Bennett in the Observer puts it much more eloquently.

Work in progress seminar - measuring the impact of human rights work

Twenty or 30 years ago, the human rights world paid no attention to measuring the impact of its work - indeed, it was almost a point of honour not to do so, and instead to bear witness to violations and to "name and shame" perpetrators. Partly under the influence of financial donors, this has changed. Human rights organizations have fallen under the influence of evaluation culture. However, dominated by a normative and legal agenda, they are still not very good at it. Meanwhile, the few scholars to focus on this issue have mostly suffered from the opposite defect. They have the sophisticated analytic skills that human rights activists lack, but usually have a weak understanding of the normative framework. Is there a way of bridging this gap?

Richard Carver's presentation will be based on his own experience, grappling with how to measure the impact of human rights work, usually without much success. He will try to persuade participants that Does Torture Prevention Work?, his 2016 work with Lisa Handley, has bridged the gap, applying sophisticated research methods to real world human rights issues. But can it be replicated? And how can we know what is the impact of the book itself?

The seminar is on Thursday 15 February, 16.30-18.00, in the Student Hub, White Space, on the 3rd floor of the Abercrombie building. All welcome. For the whole seminar series, check the full programme.

Identity - Oxford Human Rights Festival 2018

The 16th Oxford Human Rights Festival begins on 12 March, with the theme of Identity. We talked to one of the organizing committee, DEP student Miriam Slaymaker, to find out more about this year's theme and what it is like to be involved with the festival.

Why are you interested in the festival?

I am interested in the festival since it allows me, as part of the committee, to emphasize the relationship between the citizens and the power a government has over them.  Overuse and misuse of well-meant powers granted or given to a government by itself can result in the reduction or inhibition of the rights of all humans affected by it.

What do human rights and identity mean to you?

Human rights and personal identity is incredibly important. One's right to a personal identity begins with the right to life. We know that it is only through existing that one can cultivate their personal identity. Identity is a part of your right to how you differentiate and are differentiated from other individuals with their own identities among the masses of humanity.  

What does it have to do with DEP?

This festival is intertwined with my master's course 'Development and Emergency Practice', in particular this year's theme because it is about identity - what we have learnt is that forced migrants, internally displaced people, environmental migrants and trafficked people can be left in a liminal phase. A liminal phase can not only affect an individual's attitude and perception of their own identity but also the host nation's perception of them.

Your favourite bits?

I have enjoyed being behind the scenes, seeing how committee members communicate and work together to produce such a powerful week full of information, performances and speakers.

What it is like behind the scenes?

Behind the scenes, preparing for this event, was a lot of work of various kinds - not physically stressing, but mentally.  For me, it was continual phone calls and a lot of leg work; many, many, rejections, or just being ignored and not responded to while trying to contact someone.  While supporting, promoting, and trying to source funding for this festival, in the midst of pursuing my degree, it was difficult to find time for a semblance of a personal life. But I know that it is for a worthy cause and that I would regret not being a part of it more so than anything else.

Understanding humanitarian financing - work in progress seminar

Sophia Swithern, Head of Research and Analysis at Development Initiatives, will be giving the CENDEP Work in Progress Seminar this week.

Saving lives costs money. Humanitarian action needs the right funding so that it can be prepared to act quickly and meet needs. So as crises persist and donors are squeezed, what do we really know about the financing? Where does it come from, where does it go, and how is it adapting in an increasingly complex humanitarian landscape? This talk will look at the work of the Global Humanitarian Assistance project which examines the data to answer these critical questions – to highlight what we know, what we don’t know and how the system needs to improve.

The seminar is on Thursday 8 February, 16.30-18.00, in the Student Hub, White Space, on the 3rd floor of the Abercrombie building. All welcome.

Peter Tatchell on Syria and the failure of the international community

Angela Hatherell writes:

In December we welcomed human rights campaigner and activist Peter Tatchell to the university to give the second Nabeel Hamdi lecture: The international community has failed Syria. In it he discussed the flaws and limits of international human rights law in relation to the conflict in Syria and looked at some of the options that could have been used to defuse the war and save lives, but were not actioned by the UN or any countries.

The Nabeel Hamdi Lecture series is presented jointly by the Oxford Human Rights Festival and CENDEP, the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice. Emeritus Professor Nabeel Hamdi was the founder of the MA in Development and Emergency Practice and long term director of CENDEP and one of the most distinguished academics in our field. On his retirement from Oxford Brookes, this lecture series was initiated in his honour.