Nick Van Hear writes:
This blog is based on a contribution to the webinar hosted by CENDEP on ‘Rethinking solutions in never ending displacement: what are the alternatives?’ held on 1 December 2020.
I want to approach the question through an experiment in social science fiction that I have been engaged in with my colleague Robin Cohen over the past few years. We have tried to imagine a new kind of transnational entity, called Refugia, that has tentatively established itself by the year 2030, against the background of continuing global turmoil and mass displacement. Refugia is essentially the outcome of a socio-political movement of refugees and supporters which takes off in the early 2020s in the face of the failure of the durable solutions and the wider refugee regime to provide solutions to mass displacement on the scale needed. The transnational entity has been built up incrementally from the transnational practices of refugees and other people on the move.
To elaborate a little for those who not familiar with the idea, Refugia is a transnational polity governed by and for refugees that is neither a nation state nor an international organisation -- though it has some features of both. We see it as a kind of networked transnational archipelago existing alongside the nation state system and to some degree posing an alternative to that system. Refugia comprises a number of linked territories and spaces that we call refugiums; we envisage several hundred of these have been established by 2030, and in aggregate they make up the umbrella polity Refugia. Though we have drawn on utopian thinking to imagine this transnational polity, we do not suggest that it is itself a utopia, not least as it has to co-exist with nation states, some of which are hostile to it. Hence Refugia has necessarily to make compromises in its uneasy co-existence with the nation state system – a point missed by many of our critics.
How would Refugia sit in relation to the durable solutions? I take the essential objective of the durable solutions (and of the refugee regime more widely) to be for refugees to re-gain effective citizenship: that is, not just titular citizenship, but a citizenship that one can exercise.[1] In the durable solutions set-up, refugees achieve such effective citizenship by local reintegration in the country of first asylum, voluntary return to the home country, or resettlement in a third country. So, in the durable solutions framework, refugees are supposed either to recover the effective citizenship of their origin country by returning once conflict abates, or to acquire a new citizenship in the country of first asylum or the country of resettlement.
If we think of Refugia in terms of the durable solutions, the imagined transnational polity suggests a number of perspectives on them. I consider three of these here.
First, since in our vision Refugia sits outside the nation state system, it could arguably be seen as an alternative to the durable solutions, allowing a form of membership and belonging different from the conventional citizenship that the durable solutions would provide. In this strand of thinking, refugees come to re-gain effective citizenship, or rather membership, by becoming Refugian, by virtue of which they ‘belong’ to the whole dispersed, transnational polity of Refugia.
Another perspective casts Refugia within the durable solutions framework, but in a semi-detached way, or on the edges of it. In this perspective, becoming a Refugian could be seen as a fourth durable solution in its own right, since Refugia offers membership of a new polity that is a kind of alter-nation state. This is perhaps similar to the argument some [link to NVH and Katy Long] have made that transnational mobility and transnational living are or could in themselves be a fourth durable solution.[2]
A third perspective might place becoming a Refugian more squarely and conventionally within the durable solutions framework. Refugiums (the component parts of Refugia) are necessarily located in nation states (we call them Somewherelands in our book) – that is, either in areas neighbouring conflicts (first asylum countries in the durable solutions framework) or in countries removed from conflict areas (third countries of resettlement). Therefore an argument could be made that accommodating refugees in such refugiums is de facto local integration or resettlement in the Somewhereland host states within which refugiums are located. However this local integration or resettlement would likely be short of full citizenship in the Somewhereland host state, depending on the disposition of that state.
I’m not sure which position I would take. As I see Refugia as a kind of alter-transnationalism existing alongside the nation state system, and as I’m generally not a great fan of the nation-state system, I am inclined to the first position: Refugia as an alternative to the durable solutions – which as we know currently only cover a small proportion of the world’s displaced people.
But that’s just me. Refugians perhaps would not be too bothered as to what form of durable solution they achieve – it is perhaps a somewhat theological debate. What really matters is that Refugia should offer Refugians guaranteed security, a decent dignified life, a life worth living: in short an assured life for themselves and those who are close to them.
[1] The notion of effective citizenship or effective nationality is derived from the discourse on statelessness, including that of Hannah Arendt. Owen, D. On the Right to Have Nationality Rights: Statelessness, Citizenship and Human Rights. Neth Int Law Rev 65, 299–317 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40802-018-0116-7
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40802-018-0116-7#citeas
https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/21338
Long, K., “Extending Protection? Labour Migration and Durable Solutions for Refugees”, UNHCR New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 176, 2009, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/4ad334a46.html
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