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- Convenors:
-
Tania Kaiser
(SOAS)
Cathrine Brun (Oxford Brookes University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Advocacy and Activism
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 15 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
To what extent are 'humanitarian interventions' in support of the economic security of displaced people, co-opted by dominant and ideologically driven visions of aspiration and achievement? How free are displaced people to identify and pursue their own livelihood and wider goals in such contexts?
Long Abstract:
In the 1990s, Harrell-Bond & Voutira highlighted the contribution of anthropology to understandings of forced migration, emphasising both its value in elucidating subjectivities and the lived experience, and connecting these critically to the kinds of political, policy and humanitarian responses made to refugees. Subsequently, scholars including George Marcus argued that geography had developed more socially and politically relevant lines of enquiry. Today, the 'thick' description offered by rich ethnographic accounts in combination with geographic insights into the intersection and interaction of social action in diverse spatial and temporal landscapes offers the prospect of analyses which integrate the lived experiences of the displaced, the socio-economic contexts in which they live, and the legal and political regimes to which they are subject.
To what extent are 'humanitarian interventions' in support of the economic security of the displaced in situations of conflict and displacement, co-opted by dominant and perhaps ideologically driven visions of aspiration and achievement?
To explore these points of departure in this panel, we welcome contributions that explore dimensions of livelihoods, employment and the discourse of self-reliance through trajectories of individual and collective experiences, and in the practices and policies of long term displacement. What kinds of economic opportunities are available to the displaced, via their own efforts or the efforts of institutional and other actors, and how do these interact with their familial, educational, political and other objectives? And what can taking a long view can tell us about the way that ideas are recycled in humanitarian and political circles?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 15 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Exploring WFP food aid resale networks and the brokers or malali involved, this paper demystifies the 'black market' to enter the 'humanitarian-development nexus' and 'refugee self-reliance' debate. I argue there is no nexus, humanitarianism is development.
Paper long abstract:
The 'humanitarian-development nexus' and 'refugee self-reliance' are two buzzwords that have recently been eagerly adopted by policymakers and warily critiqued by academics (Omata 2016; Easton-Calabria and Omata 2018; Carpi 2019; Ilcan 2018). Despite the new phraseology, this is in many ways an old and recurring debate (Chambers 1986; Black 1994; Kaiser 2006). This paper follows a new tack to entering this debate by tracking the relationship of the temporal shifts in Tanzania of negatively labelling food traders as walunguzi or 'black marketeers' or 'saboteurs' to the more benign label of madalali or 'brokers' as the macroeconomics of the country changed.
It has long been common knowledge that humanitarian food aid in refugee and humanitarian settings gets sold by its recipients (Pottier 1996). Oka (2014) calls this 'agentive consumption', which refugees enact for a sense of normalcy and dignity. The scholarship, however, stops at consumption and ignores the massive post-consumption distribution system and networks that stretch across East Africa. I track these networks of food aid resellers in and around the camp who are simultaneously labelled madalali and walanguzi to demystify the camp's black market. I situate these entrepreneurs—the heroes of the present neoliberal self-reliance strategies—within the large literature in anthropology and African studies on political brokerage in colonial and post-colonial contexts. While madalali individually are ambivalent businesspeople, they serve as crucial humanitarian links to de facto local integration and development. There is no nexus, humanitarianism is development.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on "voluntary" repatriation programs for asylum seekers.The paper reflects on the entanglement between neoliberal agenda, border enforcement and developmental project, taking Gambia as a case study to interrogate categories as forced migration and voluntary repatriation.
Paper long abstract:
Based on the ethnographic data gathered during a preliminary fieldwork in the Gambia, this paper focused on the structure, objectives and impact of "voluntary" repatriation programs promoted by international and national organizations for Gambian asylum seekers. While borders are increasingly externalized in Libya and Niger to stop the Mediterranean migratory route, the borders between securitization and humanitarianism become more and more flimsy. For European countries the promotion of voluntary repatriation is a fundamental tool in pursuing border enforcement through agreements with countries of origin, negotiating economic aid in return of repatriation deals, meanwhile responding to the humanitarian crisis of the Mediterranean route. For Gambian asylum seekers caught in bureaucratic mazes with no chance of regularization in Europe and for the ones who are stuck in detention centers in Niger and Libya, voluntary repatriation seems more as a forced choice. But how the sponsored re-insertion of returnees unfolds in the local context? In the words of the people I interviewed the self-empowerment rhetoric, strongly promoted by training institutes and various repatriation "coaches", was alternatively embraced as an existential project, or rejected as unrealistic and incapable of lifting the social stigma and economic hardships returnees have to face. The paper reflects therefore on the entanglement between neoliberal agenda, border enforcement and development project, taking Gambia as a case study to interrogate categories as forced migration and voluntary repatriation, looking at the effects of securitization-turned-cooperation on the other side of the Mediterranean and at the post-asylum phase of European migration policies.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the role of aspirations in shaping the trajectories of young people from education into employment in protracted displacement settings in Lebanon and Jordan in the context of poor access to quality education and a highly restricted labour market.
Paper long abstract:
There has been increased emphasis on the possibility to work and be independent of aid in protracted displacement. However, hosts states continue to be restrictive with access to work for refugees. This paper reflects on insights from a research project on what shapes the trajectories of young people from education into employment in protracted displacement settings in Lebanon and Jordan. The paper seeks to understand the role of aspirations of young people in the context of poor access to quality education and a highly restricted labour market.
The paper first discusses the meaning of youth and the multidimensional and multidirectional trajectories of young people. Second, the paper develops a critical understanding of aspiration in the context of the particular legal constraints to employment that young refugees in Lebanon and Jordan experience. Based on a rich set of data from a survey, qualitative interviews, a collaborative analysis with young people and artistic performances, the role of aspirations in understanding young people's trajectories is analysed. The data are presented through typical trajectories to show how, in interaction between agentic capacities and constraints, young people continuously navigate the restricting, shifting and uncertain field of employment possibilities. Young people imagine, articulate and seek towards particular futures. In conclusion, we indicate the temporal injustices protracted displacement produce by restricting the potential for pursuing and reaching these desired futures.
Paper short abstract:
Aimed at moral insights into the Rohingya crisis, this paper sheds light on aid, actions and accomplishment of the global community and humanitarian aid organizations in managing the protracted refugee situation in Bangladesh.
Paper long abstract:
Since August 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh, joining another half million that made similar journeys in the past, in order to escape persecution in Myanmar. As a result of decade-long persecutions in Myanmar's Rakhine state, currently, over one million Rohingya live in the squalid camps in Cox's Bazar of Bangladesh. Despite their sufferings and restricted lives in the confined camps, the forced-migrant Rohingya prefer to stay in Bangladesh, and survive mainly on humanitarian aids. In response to the recent influx of the Rohingya, NGO influx has also ensued in Cox's Bazar. Thanks to the aid organizations, they have been providing the Rohingya refugees with life-saving supports (e.g. foods, clothes, medicine and the like). As a by-product, the crisis and the humanitarian aid have brought a host of events and activities in and around the campsites in Cox's Bazar. Based on primary fieldwork, this paper intends to sheds light on the multifaceted dimensions engendered from the Rohingya crisis. It also explores the potential role of anthropologists toward the humanitarian crisis. The study findings argue that the needs and social dynamics of the distressed Rohingya (endogenous) were not assessed emically, while assisted from the 'essential' point of views (exogenous). Eventually, in spite of enormous supports, the Rohingya continue to live in the deplorable conditions in the camps. Therefore, the paper urges the concerned bodies and organizations for culturally appropriate assistance to make a real contribution to the Rohingya crisis in line with their traditional lifeways.
Paper short abstract:
This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable solution to displacement in the context of Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso.
Paper long abstract:
This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable 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. Focusing on the programmes implemented - and not implemented - in the country and discussing who can access them, this paper shows how there is the construction of a decontextualized and depoliticized "neoliberal refugee" as the ideal one. Whoever does not fit this - and most of my interlocutors did not fit it - is perceived as a non-deserving refugee. The consequence of this new "economic ethos" of UNHCR, reflected in the projects implemented and conceptualisations of responses to displacement is quite straightforward: inequalities, in this case particularly linked with accessing opportunities and assistance, can increase among forced migrants. Additionally, programmes implemented to "promote" Malian refugees' self-sufficiency also reinforced simplistic and stereotypical (spatial) differentiations between self-settled urban refugees and camp refugees. 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.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is an ethnographic study of mental health interventions in a refugee settlement in Uganda,and of their relationship to the country's self-reliance policy.It shows that in this context mental health interventions are used to psychiatrize and disengage with issues of poverty and inequality.
Paper long abstract:
This paper offers an ethnographic study of mental health interventions in a refugee settlement in Uganda, and of their relationship to the country's much praised refugee policy. Uganda currently hosts more than a million South Sudanese refugees fleeing a brutal and ongoing conflict. Under Uganda's self-reliance policy, often enthusiastically depicted as an internationally relevant "humanitarian success story", refugees are encouraged to become economically independent actors. The reality of life in displacement in Uganda is, however, much bleaker, and people often struggle to overcome structural and socio-economic obstacles that make effective self-reliance at best hard to achieve. Given both the brutality of the conflict in South Sudan and the deep insecurity of the current displacement in Uganda, the mental health and psychosocial needs of the refugee population have several times been described as dire and largely unmet. Drawing on 12 months of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in the refugee settlement of Palabek, northern Uganda, this paper argues that mental health interventions are anything but neutral actors in the Ugandan refugee response, directly supporting the "self-reliance agenda" by establishing an explicit connection between mental health and economic self-sufficiency. Consequently, people who struggle to navigate an uncertain economic landscape and to rebuild their lives in a displacement setting where assistance is constantly reduced are often diagnosed with Major Depression and prescribed psychotropic medication.In the context of Palabek refugee settlement, mental health interventions become therefore a powerful tool for the humanitarian apparatus to psychiatrize, and ultimately effectively disengage with, issues of poverty and inequality.