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- Convenors:
-
Ziga Podgornik-Jakil
(European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder))
Fazila Bhimji (Independent Scholar (formerly at University Of Central Lancashire, U.k.))
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- Discussant:
-
Heath Cabot
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-B497
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 14 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
There has been much criticism of humanitarian work within refugee camps. Anthropologists have pointed out that aid workers assume refugees to be passive recipients of humanitarian aid and thus deny them their agency. This panel aims to examine these relations between refugees and their supporters.
Long Abstract:
Refugees and Migrants Network and Mobilise with Activists and NGO workers
There has been much criticism of humanitarian work within refugee camps (e.g. Fassin 2012; Agier 2011). Anthropologists have pointed out that aid workers assume refugee to be passive recipients of humanitarian aid and thus deny them their agency. This panel aims to further examine the relations between refugees and NGOs and independent volunteers in empirical ways. Papers are invited from researchers working in the global south as well as the north to interrogate the ways in which refugees and migrants network amongst aid workers, NGOs, volunteers and/or activists. In this regard, as a starting point panel participants are asked to consider refugees' and migrants' agential capabilities and to examine some of their initiatives in seeking support from varying activist groups and aid workers. We would like to invite paper to consider the following, "How do refugees and migrants characterise the aid workers and activists?", "How do refugees and migrants continue to maintain their sovereignty when moving with activists and NGO workers?", "How do they negotiate with them in order to attain their goals?", "What are some of the conflicts and contradictions that refugees, migrants and NGO workers and activists may experience and encounter as they strive to attain social justice?", "How do refugees and migrants and activists or aid workers mobilise together?", "What spaces and meanings do refugees and migrants create as they mobilise in conjunction with activists and NGO workers?"
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 14 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
Inclusion of refugees' agency can counter balance or add something to government programs that were designed at "the desk" mostly without talking to refugees. Though well-intended, many programs don't include refugee opinions and can make it difficult for them to get established in the host society.
Paper long abstract:
The mobility of people, as a result of armed conflicts, has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Germany alone has witnessed the arrival of some 1.2 million refugees since the summer of 2015, requiring quick intervention. The State has often designed programs without having time to interact with the refugees as individuals. The authors work in Berlin among NGOs, in startups, and in one-on-one interpreter or collaboration roles with refugees and with aid programs, filling the gaps left by those well intended programs. Today, as the immediate criticality of need in Germany has eased, several refugee-driven endeavors have taken root, and more are in the ideation stages.
In this paper we note the patterns and processes that characterize several successful refugee driven endeavors. Structural constraints of German bureaucracy are a daily feature of these emergent endeavors and this paper outlines the patterns of engagement and co-integration. Can these patterns direct government agencies to plan for merging populations in the numbers of the 2015 - 2018 period as we move into the next decade?
Paper short abstract:
Some migrants and refugees decide to act in their new local environments without seeking assistance of aid workers or NGOs. Through small or grand 'acts of citizenship' (Isin 2008) they constitute themselves as active(ist) citizens. This paper explores such endeavours.
Paper long abstract:
Migrant and refugee activism is typically assessed in the context of the engagement of migrants/refugees in their own-group advocacy and/or promotion of culture. This paper instead focuses on situations when migrants (including refugees) are involved in activism for non-migrant causes. In such initiatives/groups run by migrants, the origin of members is not necessarily hidden but neither is it highlighted or considered relevant. Thus, it is only through ethnography that one can realise that Polish is lingua franca at many Vegan Picnics in Manchester or understand who is quietly cleaning neighbourhoods in a Serbian city. Still, since these initiatives are not concerned with migrant issues but with those relevant to the entire local community, it is unlikely for them to be looked upon in studies and discussions concerned with 'migrant activism' or migrant-majority relations.
Using examples from ethnographic work in Novi Sad, Serbia and Manchester, UK, the proposed paper offers to explore how migrants perform their citizenship without engaging with/in NGOs, charities, movements and other organised (majority) activism. Why do they engage in, or even initiate, endeavours spreading beyond the interests of their own community? What is the role of such engagement for their status among the host society? How dramatically do opportunities to engage vary between different migrant groups? Finally, does studying this activism allow us a better understanding of refugees and migrants and of migrant-majority relations?
Paper short abstract:
Building on the idea that relational dynamics in migrant protest are structured not only by the inequality of resources but also by individual inventiveness, this paper offers a new perspective in moving beyond the notion of the "refugee" in explaining migrant agency through personal trajectories
Paper long abstract:
During the preparation meeting for a German federal migrant activist network event in March 2018, one person who had recently arrived to Germany reportedly stood up in midst of a discussion and asked: "When do we actually stop being refugees and start being considered humans?"
Within the past decade, studies of migrant activism point to the agency of people moving (illegally) across national borders. In doing so, they go beyond the dominant paradigm of the migrant as homo sacer. Seeking an approach that equally considers structure and agency, recent studies of relations between migrants and local activists indicate that rather than being fixed to a subordination-domination dyad, they are shaped both by the inequality of resources as well as by individual inventiveness and situationally changing configurations.
This paper aims to expand on these ideas and contribute a new perspective to the study of migrant protest in analyzing such relational dynamics through the prism of migrants personal trajectories. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork within two migrant activist groups in Germany, I show that the way migrants' engage with local activists is shaped by their personal trajectories and living conditions in the local context. Thus, I propose an empirical approach that aims at raising attention to the complexity of and historical reasons for individual agency beyond the collectivities created by notions such as "refugees".
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I argue that German Government funding flowing into the migration organisations since the beginning of the refugee crisis has had certain implications for discourses promoted by the recipients of the funding. As a result refugees are treated as passive subjects who need to be helped.
Paper long abstract:
The refugee crisis in Europe and particularly Germany which recieved the most number of the refuguees created great challenges for the German government and the society in general. NGOs and intiatives multiplied and offer integration in Germany through various projects formulated on a ad hoc basis in order to get a piece of the cake. The projects at times are formulated without much reflection on the situation in general which also not yet systematically studied. The activities are mainly organised in from-above manner to act upon refugees on the bottom. General attitude of German officials to help the helpless refugees is reflected in the activities of NGOs in Germany which operate without basic inter-cultural communication skills. the argument of this paper is that Government funding which flew into the migration organisations has certain implication on the discourses promoted by the recipients of the funding. As a result refugees are treated as passive subjects who need to be helped.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to discuss the complexities of refugee relations with solidarity activists and volunteers in the context of homemaking in less welcoming times and ongoing gentrification of Berlin.
Paper long abstract:
Berlin has witnessed a significant inflow of refugees from Sub-Saharan African countries since 2013 and from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in 2015 during 'the long summer of migration.' Several solidarity and voluntary initiatives emerged in Berlin since 2014 in order to assist refugees find temporary housing, shared housing and flats. In 2015, several voluntary initiatives emerged amidst a 'Welcome Culture.' However, since 2015 the 'welcoming' mood has shifted, but many initiatives continue their work in Berlin. Finding accommodation in Berlin in the face of gentrification and racism is a massive challenge. The paper interrogates the relations between refugees and activists who support refugees in their search for temporary and permanent accommodation. Some refugees opt to network with activists and volunteers in the hope of finding accommodation, others develop tenuous relations, while still others actively participate in the solidarity work of homemaking for refugees -by refugees. Thus encounters between solidarity activists and refugees can be understood to be shifting, dynamic and contested. Scholarship on solidarity work with refugees has presented a critique on migrant solidarity activism (Atac, Rygiel and Siteri 2017; Cabot 2016) but there has been less discussion on actual relations between solidarity initiatives and volunteers and refugees during shifting moods and structural inequities. Thus, the paper aims to demonstrate how an unstable context can affect not only the solidarity efforts but also the relations between activists, volunteers and refugees. Data are drawn on interviews, participant observation and participation in three housing solidarity and volunteer groups in Berlin.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on refugee supporters in Slovakia. Applying an individual perspective, it maps out the contradicting impulses that guide their behavior in their encounter with refugees, ranging from paternalistic care to performance pressure.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines actors who engage for refugees in Slovakia and thereby stand up to the dominant discourse which prioritizes security and protectionism over solidarity. How is the controversy of the public debate reflected in interpersonal relationships, and how do refugees and supporters resolve the tension between opposing directives for integration?
Refugee care in Slovakia is a small-scale project, purposefully ignored and underfunded by state organs. The infrastructure for refugee integration is thus fragmentary and ever-improvised, necessitating individual agency and the use of informal networks of both supporters and refugees to "make do". To disentangle the commitments of refugee supporters, I carried out ethnographic fieldwork within church-affiliated and civic associations in three Slovak cities, consisting of interviews and participant observation. I take an individual approach to the emergence of engaged subjects, assuming that agency and personhood always include elements of bricolage and heteroglossia which allow people to hold contradictory views. Not only do various NGOs disagree on the guiding principle of their work; refugee supporters themselves follow diverging impulses in their daily encounters with refugees, prioritizing sometimes paternal care, sometimes individual self-realization, sometimes a meritocratic approach aimed at producing "productive" migrants. Refugees struggle with the lack of clarity on what is expected of them, but occasionally also succeed in managing the ambiguity to their advantage.
The paper offers a close-up case study of the interaction between refugees and their supporters in a hostile environment and weakly structured support system and highlights the ambiguous but decisive role of personal relationships.
Paper short abstract:
The Maltese state-sponsored "humanitarian/security" nexus offers restricted protection based upon acceptance of bureaucratic patronage: NGO activists discursively vernacularize international law and asylum seekers present their selves as deserving clients searching for a righteous intercessor.
Paper long abstract:
Between 2002 and 2012, hundreds of African asylum seekers reached Malta annually by boat. This coincided with the development, pre-EU entry, of a legal and institutional framework for managing asylum claimants. In the same period various NGOs emerged, deploying different forms of advocacy and support on behalf of asylum seekers.
This paper reports on interviews conducted with both NGO activists and asylum seekers over the last decade and on ethnographic fieldwork pursued by the first author since 2006. We show how the development of a state-sponsored humanitarian/security" discursive framework for managing these asylum seekers entailed their subjectification via a range of institutional statuses which construct them as "less than real refugees," while offering them protection premised upon acceptance of bureaucratic patronage.
Against the background of the constraints imposed by the humanitarian/security nexus, we explore: (1) the career trajectories and worldviews of refugee rights advocates, the way they position themselves in relation to dominant migration-related discourses and the forms of activism they promote; (2) the narratives through which asylum seekers seek to re-configure their experiences in Malta and to rightfully request protection. Since refugee rights advocates are expected to pay lip service to the humanitarian/security nexus as the price for the institutional cooperation they need to operate effectively, this limits the forms of advocacy they may adopt. Asylum seekers learn the limited effectiveness of protests based upon legal rights and try to selectively establish and manipulate patronage relationships with Maltese institutional actors (including particular activists).