Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the complex conceptions of time and space in the uncertain frame of transit, through the case study of young Afghani asylum seekers transiting Greece and attempting to reconstruct their identity between imagination and agency.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a case study of young Afghani asylum seekers temporarily residing in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece. It is an attempt to elucidate the process of reconstructing the Self after the traumatic experiences of exile while being bound in time and space.

On hold for indefinite periods of time while transiting inevitably Greece in their passage from Asia to Europe, young Afghani asylum seekers find a refuge in memory, even though their narratives consist mostly of tragic events. This is not so much an idealisation of the past, as a mental "way out" of a foreign and unknown place, where they find no points of reference and nothing familiar to hang on from.

Precariousness and other everyday challenges in this host country (such as social exclusion, discrimination and stigmatisation) add up to form strategies of self-affirmation and empowerment while wavering between invisibility and visibility in everyday life. Alongside with the negotiation of new identities, this social group struggles with real and imaginary boundaries that affect both their everyday practices and their social interactions, marking not only their trajectories in this particular city, but their everyday choices, their coalitions and their self-representation tactics as well.

Through ethnographic examples and analysis, we will try to discern the complex interactions between vulnerability, precariousness and determined struggle for identity beyond borders, in a harsh reality where time and space have to be re-evaluated.

Paper short abstract:

Iraqi refugees living in San Diego, California and seeking therapy face unexpected economic hardships. As a result they envision a future wrought with obstacles and possess an overly positive view of past host countries. Such engendered thoughts can limit the therapeutic process and resettlement.

Paper long abstract:

Recently resettled Iraqi refugees living in San Diego, California, and who are seeking therapy have often moved across several borders before permanent resettlement in the United States. Envisioning an easier life in the United States Iraqi refugees demonstrate surprise at a high cost of living, limited work opportunities and confusion about the American system of benefits. Consequently, this population has constructed decisively positive and possibly exaggerated memories of life in their former host countries. Such memories of the past create fear and obstacles for the future of this population in their new home country and city of resettlement. Iraqi refugees have expressed doubt at being able to succeed in a country that appears to offer fewer opportunities to them than they had hoped for and of which they once assumed possible. These engendered thoughts of the past and future present during therapy sessions and can limit and complicate the therapeutic healing process. Therapeutic healing is limited because Iraqi refugee clients present a heightened level of fear about not having their needs met and thus struggle to progress forward and establish new communities and traditions in the United States. Iraqi refugee clients appear to straddle two worlds, one they recall as filled with opportunity and the current one that they perceive as overly restricted thus creating a sense of being trapped by the memories of the past and exceedingly anxious about the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyze the ways Estonian refugees photographically represented themselves while migrating by boat to Canada in 1948. It will also examine the memories that were elicited 60 years later in conjunction with viewing these images, which transcend time and trauma.

Paper long abstract:

According to Liisa Malkki (1997), by the late 20th century, public visual representations of refugees developed into a "singular translatable and mobile mode of knowledge" that transcends national borders, providing an internationally understood, albeit discriminatory, visual sense of what a refugee looks like - a set of universalized visual metaphors. To date, there are few studies that specifically look at how refugees visually represent themselves while in transit. My paper analyses the various ways photographs, taken by refugees who were migrating by boat in 1948, not only give voice to their experience, but more importantly, allow contemporary viewers to see them as complex human beings, which in turn provides a powerful counterpoint to stereotypes. It will also analyze the memories that came forward while looking at these photographs 60 years later in personal interviews with over 30 of the SS Walnut's 347 passengers, including the photographers. Over 200 photographs were taken by four young, male, Estonian refugees while on route to Canada. All of them had escaped Soviet occupation near the end of World War II, and were again fleeing Stalin's wrath after living in Sweden for four years. These photographs transcend time to show how humanity and hope is imagined by refugees while they experience the trauma of forced migration by boat.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyse the interpretation of “time” by the community of congolese women refugees in Kampala (Uganda). It will invistigate the construction of a painful present, which shapes between the idea of “no-return” (in the past) and a difficult “elsewhere” (in the future).

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from an ethnographic research conducted in Kampala (Uganda), aimed to analyze the survival strategies of women refugees from the Kivu (DRC).

Here we share Laura Hammond's critical approach about what is defined "speech of repatriation", emphasizing the problematic and the lack of familiarity in the concept of return. For the women refugees from the Kivu the country of origin is an alien and alienating place: it is no longer the cradle birth, but now it is only the symbol of violence and painful memories of the past. In fact are the so-called bad memories to play a crucial role in their idea of "no-return", as well as in the construction of the urban present.

On the other hand for many women even Uganda is not a real "home", but an other insecure place to live. So here the possibility of resettlement grows, a myth that shapes into the minds of the women, but that will soon reveal its assumptions and its contradictory implications, remaining a "dream in midair".

It is therefore important to question our assumptions about the meanings we give to the concepts of "time", "return", "home" and "place". The construction of being a refugee and a woman, in this case, represents a transition that has no return, that seems also to have no "elsewhere" and that certainly changes places and the relationships within it. The challenge that exile poses to these women is that the present is the soil from which reborn and where to plant new roots, not the past neither the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to outline the ethnodemographic profile of Somali refugee in post-independent Eritrea, that is one of the largest per capita producers of refugees worldwide. Besides, it aims to underline the refugees’ perception and use of time in such a peculiar socio-political context.

Paper long abstract:

Eritrea, because of its location in the Horn of Africa and due to the events that characterize its long liberation struggle, has always been a refugee-producing country. However, Eritrea, after obtaining the de facto independence in 1991, is hosting a few thousand refugees, mostly Somalis. My paper aims to describe in emic terms the peculiarity of the Somali community living in Eritrean refugee camps, waiting for their resettlement elsewhere according to international programs. In an attempt to outline the history and the ethnodemographic profile of Somali refugee population in Eritrea, I give special special attention to the migratory trajectories, to the actors involved in the process of admission and management, to the conditions and possibilities for personal growth and training opportunities available with a view to moving to other countries. More in detail, Somali refugees' experience in Eritrea is unique because of the context, as tens of thousands of Eritreans have fled a suffocating socio-political situation over the past decade, making the small northeast African nation one of the largest per capita producers of refugees in the world. Therefore, it is interesting to analyse how time is perceived and invested by the Somali refugees in a context that seems to act as a push factor for local population. Moreover, opportunities of training and self-fulfillment available in refugee camps can have consequences on the refugees' expectations, due to transit in a country that has not yet ratified the main treaties about the consolidation of the international refugee protection.

Paper short abstract:

Following a new law on repatriation, a small number of Muslim Meskhetians - a deported population - are resettling in their historical homeland in Georgia. This paper seeks to explore how imaginaries of a primordial duration collide/adjust with the more conventional time of policy-making planning.

Paper long abstract:

In 1944, the Muslims of Meskhetia were deported from the Georgian SSR, to be resettled in Central Asia. Today, the Meskhetian diaspora constitutes a transnational population. Their ethos is permeated by a sense of removal and dispersion, prompted by the narratives of that first forceful displacement, but also by successive mass scale, dramatic events, most notably the pogroms that, in 1989, targeted their communities in Uzbekistan.

Their historical homeland, Meschetia, is comprised within present-day Samskhe-Javakheti, a province of Georgia, thus any progress towards repatriation is subordinated to the legal framework adopted by the latter country.

My fieldwork within returnees' communities in Georgia has shown how deeply their aspirations are implicated with collective imaginaries of an uprooted, originary community and, ultimately, with a feeling of loss and oblivion.

Parallel to a mythico-historical chronology that revolves around the event of deportation, the passing of time is also perceived as playing into the hands of abstract, conspiring entities - supposedly hostile governments, ethnic groups, ecc. - engaged in loosening the fabric of the community and in preventing a collective return.

As the older generations die off and ideas of national belonging are reassessed, institutional frames fall short of confining imaginaries and aspirations towards the restoration of a historic justice.

This paper sets out to explore how notions of a primordial time collide with the more mundane, conventional ethos expressed by bureaucratic deadlines, forms and applications, in the wake of Georgia's new law on repatriation.

Paper short abstract:

After WWII Polish Displaced Persons found themselves in temporary and makeshift refugee camps, where they created visions of their future life and of an imagined exile community. This paper analyse the process of building camps communities in the shadow of debates on repatriation and resettlement.

Paper long abstract:

In the aftermath of WWII millions of former soldiers, slave labourers and other Poles in Germany, Austria and Italy were categorized as Displaced Persons and directed to "assembly centres" which were designed to facilitate their repatriation. These camps became the centres of national life and discussion of people's options.

Polish Displaced Persons in the refugee camps found themselves between communists and UNRRA who promoted their repatriation and, on the other hand, the Polish government-in-exile and General Anders' officers who issued warnings about the new regime. Those who waited for repatriation were mentally suspended between their future in Poland and their daily life in the camp. Those who refused to return home faced an uncertain future and felt the nostalgia towards the lost homeland. They started to build communities based on different visions of the good society and membership of the Polish exile community.

Displaced Persons renamed the camps to express an affiliation with Poland. Their mental map of Germany became dotted with Polish names from the national spiritual repository. The topographical reconfiguration of the space of some camps was completed by organizing and naming the streets after prewar Polish cities and by adding names in honour of military units and leaders.

This paper analyses the process of building Polish communities in the shadow of debates on repatriation and resettlement. Drawing on memoirs and other personal accounts I will explore Poles' personal expressions about repatriation and/or building an ersatz of Poland and a "normal" life outside their homeland.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how two 'Refugee Colonies' in post-Partition Kolkata have evolved from makeshift camps to residential neighborhoods. I will take changes in housing and land legislation as a point of departure for analysing how East-Bengali refugees have claimed a permanent presence in Kolkata.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the tension - inherent to the experience of migration - between temporary and permanent settlement by foregrounding the dwelling experiences of residents of two 'Refugee Colonies' in Kolkata. Following the 1947 Partition of the Indian sub-continent, Kolkata witnessed a massive influx of potentially permanent newcomers from what was previously known as East-Bengal (contemporary Bangladesh). Depending on their time of arrival these newcomers were administratively categorized as 'refugees', 'old migrants', 'new migrants' or 'displaced people'. The purpose of this ever-expanding and convoluted legislative taxonomy was to restrict the number of East-Bengalis who could be considered 'proper' Partition refugees and were therefore entitled to permanent rehabilitation. This narrow legal definition of refugeehood mirrored the institutional unwillingness to recognize the crowds of migrants as anything other than temporary guests. However, as I will demonstrate in this paper, the newcomers themselves continuously defied and undermined institutionally framed ideas about their future repatriation or resettlement. Instead, they strived to make their presence in Kolkata more permanent as they appropriated and developed low-lying swamplands, constructed their own houses out of bamboo, and launched a political campaign for land titles. Through these material and political practices East-Bengali newcomers gradually anchored themselves in the history and landscape of the city, thereby sending out the unequivocal message: 'we are here to stay'. By focusing on the ways in which Refugee Colonies developed from makeshift camps into permanent residential neighborhoods, I seek to make sense of the spatial-temporal dimension of the transition from newcomer to citizen.