Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among the migrants from Venezuela and those providing different kinds of aid in Colombia, this paper explores how pre-existing histories and practices of helping those in need inform the emerging forms of humanitarian assistance in the Venezuelan 'migratory crisis'.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the encounters between migrants from Venezuela and those providing different kinds of aid in the city of Cali (Colombia), this paper explores how pre-existing histories and vernacular ideas and practices of helping those in need inform the newly emerging forms of humanitarian assistance in the context of Venezuelan 'migratory crisis'. Both for migrants and those who are helping them (mostly religious, NGO or voluntary-based groupings, which were more recently joined by international organisations), the city of Cali has come to be relationally understood as a 'more welcoming' place. This particular conception of self as 'caring' for others derives not only from the regional histories of past migrations and relations with Venezuela, but it is also co-constituted by experiences of co-living and dealing with a high amount diverse bodies of internal migrants (internally displaced persons arriving due to the violent conflict in Colombia) and past humanitarian projects and interventions. This paper examines emerging practices of helping and modes of understanding the migrants alongside shifting scales and entanglements of the past and present temporalities of humanitarian interventions. It explores how the previous international, national and local organisations working with the 'internal displaced' of armed conflict in Colombia attempt to re-translate and move their previous experiences and knowledge of interacting and working with internally displaced persons to the different kinds of new (Venezuelan) migrants and perceptions of 'suffering subjects'.

Paper short abstract:

Initiatives that merge development with humanitarianism, emphasize local integration as a means to stem migration. However, these approaches are flawed because the temporality of developmental approaches to refugee management are disjunctive with refugees conceptualizations of time and progress.

Paper long abstract:

As walls are thrown up to keep migrants from the Global South out of wealthy countries a corollary migration management paradigm has emerged in large refugee hosting states, which merges development with humanitarianism. Efforts to simultaneously promote "local integration" as the most promising durable solution for refugees and prevent secondary migration were introduced through initiatives such as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), which emerged out of the 2016 Global Refugee Summit and the subsequent Global Compact on Refugees. In Ethiopia, these initiatives seek to curtail secondary migration by opening opportunities for refugees to locally integrate through development initiatives. Through ethnographic research in refugee camps in Northern Ethiopia, we explore the early role out of these new policy paradigms. Our findings show that the temporality of developmental approaches to refugee management which supplement, and at times supplant, humanitarian projects are disjunctive with refugees conceptualizations of time and progress in several ways. First this policy orientation is fundamentally spatial in its orientation while refugees are fundamentally temporal in theirs; these policy goals are to encourage refugees to stay in Ethiopia while refugees seek a safe and stable life where they can work to improve their circumstances. Second, these policies ostensibly encourage refugees to stay, but are framed by the concept of hospitality toward refugees which is inherently a temporary condition. Third, temporalities of development are teleological in their orientation towards progress, but structural barriers prevent refugees from achieving progress, leading to stasis, frustration, despair and a desire to get unstuck.

Paper short abstract:

The ICRC's SAF intiative in Rio converges with public service providers' perception that there is no endpoint in view for the outbursts of armed violence that affects the city and its services. SAF is imbued with a temporality that stretches into an unknown future.

Paper long abstract:

Under its Safer Access Framework (SAF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) trains public service providers - school and clinic staff - on how to manage risks associated with armed violence in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The initiative does not contemplate an endpoint for the violence that affects public services, which in fact converges with its beneficiaries' expectations. Both the ICRC and its beneficiaries hold the view that armed violence in Rio is cyclical and ever-shifting. Espousing the humanitarian drive to treat consequences rather than causes, SAF's projected temporal horizon fades into an unknown distant future as public institutions are expected to maintain the initiative on their own once the ICRC leaves. Even those staff working in seemingly safe locations are told to attend trainings and prepare in case the dynamics of urban violence shifts and their neighbourhood starts to see shootings. This represents a shift from the usual humanitarian imaginary of a "short" temporality for immediate action during armed conflict. Similarly, it represents a shift in how the Brazilian state has framed its interventions in the favela under a short temporality of the war on drugs and long temporality of pacification (Machado da Silva, 2010). In this paper, I will present findings and preliminary thoughts from ongoing fieldwork in Duque de Caxias (Rio de Janeiro state) and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the unintended consequences of a development project by focusing on (a) the process of accumulation by different actors in local communities, and (b) the process of dispossession of the major means of social reproduction, with socio-economic consequences.

Paper long abstract:

Worth US$4.2 billion, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline—a 1,100 km pipeline for crude oil running from southern Chad, through tropical forest, to Cameroon's Atlantic coast—was the biggest development project in Africa when it was completed in 2003. It was funded on condition that 72% of oil royalties, as per an agreement with the World Bank, be spent, with international supervision, on roads, schools, and hospitals. Over ten years since the completion of the project, what has been its impact on targeted communities? In Cameroon, the project has led to social conflicts and deprived local indigenous communities of territorial resources and traditional livelihood. In Chad, local residents have not benefited from the project, as revenues have been diverted to the ruling elite and the purchase of weapons to ensure the regime's survival. This paper examines the unintended consequences of the project by focusing on (a) the process of accumulation by different actors in local communities, and (b) the process of dispossession of the major means of social reproduction, with socio-economic consequences in terms of livelihood transformation and inequalities. In sum, this paper brings to the fore new patterns of accumulation, social reproduction, and differentiation.

Paper short abstract:

The paper departs from literature examining the NGO-isation of civil society in development countries. Its main contribution regards the expressions of NGO-isation at local level, focusing on long-term effects on the associative movement and norms and practices of reciprocity in rural Mozambique.

Paper long abstract:

Critical scholars are increasingly questioning the roles of NGOs in developing countries. The equation of civil society with NGOs is sometimes labelled NGO-isation of civil society. Several scholars point out the need for a deepened understanding of the effects of the NGO-isation at local level and in people's everyday life. Hence, the main contribution of this paper regards the expressions of NGO-isation at local level in rural Mozambique, focusing on its long-term effects on the associative movement and norms and practices of reciprocity. The effects of NGO interventions aiming at strengthening civil society is of special interest.

The paper suggests that NGOs have profited from the existing collective organisations, without respecting it or building upon it. Collective organisation has been undermined and weakened by interventions with the supposed intention to strengthen it. Existing forms of collaboration have been instrumentalized and used vehicles to carry out activities and deliver services in areas such as education, health and agriculture within the programmes of NGOs as well as government entities. The NGO-isation has contributed to undermining and weakening of the social fabric and norms of reciprocity and mutual support in society.

The paper's empirical material consists of ethnographically inspired fieldworks in rural areas in two provinces in northern Mozambique. It includes life history interviews with peasants, traditional and religious leaders as well as with representatives from local and national government institutions, as well as observations and go-alongs.

Paper short abstract:

This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable long-term solution to displacement in the context of Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso. It eventually shows that such tendency can end up reinforcing inequalities among refugees.

Paper long abstract:

This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable long-term solution to displacement in the context of Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso. After briefly explaining how these recent trends (ideologically) differ from self-sufficiency programmes that were implemented by humanitarian agencies on the African continent in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper focuses on these projects' outcomes as observed through ethnographic research in Burkina Faso. These programmes supposedly aim for long-term impact on the lives of refugees, and not just short-term relief. However, by discussing the projects implemented - and not implemented - in the country, analysing who can access them and what they stand for conceptually, this paper highlights the consequence of this new "economic ethos" (or developmental goals?) of UNHCR. These consequences are quite straightforward: inequalities among forced migrants can increase, in this case particularly those linked with accessing opportunities and assistance. The aim of this paper is obviously not to criticise actual desires and aspirations of refugees to be economically self-sufficient, rather, I analyse and question the broader macro-economically fashioned humanitarianism, making explicit why it is problematic at the conceptual level, and anchoring that critique in the local context, practices, and discourses that I studied. In sum, this paper explores the (unintended) consequences of long-term planning getting into humanitarianism, and asks whether the increase of inequalities and hierarchies among Malian refugees in Burkina Faso can be analysed as traces left by recent - developmental-like - programmes implemented by aid agencies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the evolution of humanitarian interventions in Greece, investigating the linkages between their current articulations and aims, and problematizing their temporalities in relation to changes in contextual and institutional priorities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss the ongoing legacies of humanitarian intervention in Greece, across the spectrum of micro-horizons defined by contextual and institutional funding shifts, starting with the decision of DG ECHO to exceptionally deploy within the EU and transitioning to the eventual submersion of all official humanitarian funding under DG HOME in 2019. Applied to the context of the EU 'South', and drawing on the lessons relating to legacies of humanitarian interventions in the global South, the paper will emphasize the contiguous and conflicting resonance of national and EU policy in shaping the lives of migrants and refugees in Greece. Specifically, it will examine how the 'temporal disjunctures' between volunteerism, humanitarian agency, policy-making and institutional funding have conditioned the humanitarian approaches to, and realities of, the refugee crisis in Greece. Likewise, it will examine the disjunctures inherent in the current state-of-affairs, elucidating contrast between the ongoing change in legal regimes for reception and asylum claim, the degrading state of reception conditions in the 'hot spots', the perpetuation of state of exception in the mainland long-term accommodation centers, and the piloting of a rapid integration scheme in urban centers across Greece. The approach taken will draw on the experience of both authors as academic practitioners between 2016 - 2020 working in various roles in local and international NGOs, allowing for the juxtapositions of experience and perspective in space and time, against an informed reflection on the complexities involved in defining and interpreting the appropriateness of humanitarian interventions in Greece.

Paper short abstract:

The paper reflects upon two historically different implementations of development through humanitarism in a Guatemalan indigenous town. The two experiences are appropriated to shape a temporal narrative of the community that re-signify ethnic identity and the relation with modernity and the State.

Paper long abstract:

In the Guatemalan indigenous municipality of Todos Santos, development and humanitarian interventions have a long historical trajectory. At the half of the XX century foreign Maryknoll fathers installed with a double goal: convert the syncretic Maya religion into a conventional form of Catholicism and promote development oriented form of social organization and political leaderships. The accomplishments of the padres' projects left such a significant legacy that their era is generally perceived as a temporal landmark in local history: the missionaries brought modernity to the community, with all the contradictory sentiments attached to it.

Another turning point in Todos Santos history is the end of the Civil War (1996) and the beginning of a governmental model marked by the State's multicultural neoliberalism and internationally funded development projects. These resources were distributed with a humanitarian logic benefitting those communities that were able to adhere to the victim profile shaped during the peace process. The dependency from NGOs and projects resources impacted deeply the way local power is established and performed.

The aim of this presentation is to reflect upon how these two experiences are appropriated by todosanteros to shape a temporal and moral narrative of the community that re-signifies ethnic identity and the relation with modernity and the State. This shows how the impact of development and humanitarism, through their entanglements with religion, sport, prestige and imaginaries of modernity and tradition, suffering and aiding, goes beyond the immediate effects of the projects, usually not fulfilling their original purposes.