This book argues that the international refugee regime and its ‘temporary’ humanitarian interventions have failed. Most refugees across the global live in ‘protracted’ conditions that extend from years to decades, without legal status that allows them to work and establish a home. It is contended that they become largely invisible to people based in the global North, and cease to remain fully human subjects with access to their political lives. Shifting the conversation away from the salient discourse of ‘solutions’ and technical fixes within state-centric international relations, the authors recover the subjectivity lost for those stuck in extended exile.
The book first argues that humanitarian assistance to refugees remains vital to people’s survival, even after the emergency phase is over. It then connects asylum politics in the global North with the intransigence of extended exile in the global South. By placing the urgent crises of protracted exile within a broader constellation of power relations, both historical and geographical, the authors present research and empirical findings gleaned from refugees in Iran, Kenya and Canada and from humanitarian and government workers. Each chapter reveals patterns of power circulating through the ‘colonial present’, Cold War legacies, and the global ‘war on terror".
Seeking to render legible the more quotidian struggles and livelihoods of people who find themselves defined as refugees, this book will be of great interest to international humanitarian agencies, as well as migration and refugee researchers, including scholars in refugee studies and human displacement, human security, globalization, immigration, and human rights.
Author(s): Jennifer Hyndman, Wenona Giles
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 182
City: New York
Tags: Refugees;Civil rights;Exile
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: invisible lives and silent disasters
Contemporary categories and impasses
Ethical encounters and legibility
Whose lives count? Protracted displacement and ontological security
Overview of the book
Notes
2. Securitization versus protection in a refugee camp
What is securitization?
Contextualizing securitization
Living on the edge in Dadaab
Ontological in/security
Grounding ontological in/security: humanitarianism meets the “war on terror”
The securitization of humanitarianism: how the incongruous becomes coherent
Protracted refugee crises: the bigger picture
Notes
3. Contextualizing indefinite exile
Living on the edge: camps as ad hoc cities?
Urban living: Afghans in Iran
Conclusion
Notes
4. States of emergency?: managing refugees in theory and practice
In theory: sites of exception, exclusion and violence
From structural violence to the failure of durable solutions
Containment in Kenya: refugee wars
The refugee cohort of 1992: encampment begins in Dadaab
Juxtapositions: containment versus development in Kenya and Uganda
From exile to settlement in Tanzania
Managing precarity and making home in the city
Conclusion
Notes
5. “It’s so cold here; we feel this coldness”: refugee resettlement after long-term exile
Troubling the resettlement rescue narrative
Spaces of resettlement
Whose bodies count? The feminization of refugees who stay put
Becoming Canadian
Escape and exile: “So this is how we came to Canada …”
Ambivalent acceptance: “It was Canada that chose us and selected us …”
“Refugees could bring so much to this country …”
Conclusion
Notes
6. Conclusion
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Scenes of exchange: seeing others
Essential if imperfect: UNHCR
Moving forward: a new “scene”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
