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Refugee Policy (refugee + policy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Factors Affecting Australia's Refugee Policy: The Case of the Kosovars

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2001
Jackie King
This article seeks to explain Australia's refugee policy and to identify the various objectives and factors that influence the development of that policy. Australia's refugee programme seeks to: provide a humanitarian response and protection to individual refugees; participate responsibly in the international community; honour its Convention obligations; further the interests of the people of Australia; meet high standards of administration and; acknowledge as much as possible changes in refugee populations. In fulfilling these objectives, Australian governments must weigh and balance various competing factors. These include: humanitarian responsibility, international obligations, social, political, economic and foreign policy factors, as well as efficient administration. In balancing the relative importance of these factors, the Federal government hopes to fulfil all its refugee and humanitarian objectives. However, the pluralistic nature of Australian society and the often conflicting ideals associated with protection of Australia's interests and the preservation of the rights of refugees, means that fulfilment of these objectives is difficult. This article examines the Australian government's response to the Kosovar conflict, to assess the relative success Australia had in fulfilling its refugee policy objectives and identifying the various factors that produced the final result. [source]

Reterritorilizing the Relationship between People and Place in Refugee Studies

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2001
Cathrine Brun
The article discusses different conceptions of space and place in refugee studies, especially contributions from anthropology and geography. A main distinction is drawn between two understandings of space and place; an essentialist conception, stating a natural relationship between people and places and an alternative conception attempting to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places. The consequences of applying different conceptions of space and place for the development of refugee policies and representations of refugees and displaced persons are addressed. For many displaced persons, displacement is experienced as being physically present at one place, but at the same time having a feeling of belonging somewhere else. It is argued that though attempts to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places have been important for how the refugee experience is conceptualized, there has been too much focus on imagination accompanied by a neglect of the local perspective of migrants and displaced people. In the local perspective of forced migration, the present lives of displaced people are emphasized. Especially the attitudes from the host communities, the policy environment that displaced people are part of, and their livelihood opportunities are the focus of regard. ,Territoriality' and ,reterritorialization' of the relationship between people and places are discussed as tools to analyse the local perspective of forced migration in general and the strategies of internally displaced persons and their hosts in Sri Lanka in particular. [source]

Lives in limbo: Temporary Protected Status and immigrant identities

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2002
Alison Mountz
The United States formulates much of its immigration and refugee policy to match economic and political circumstances. We interpret these policy shifts as a set of graduated positions on immigration and refugee flows that attempts to discipline the lives of newcomers and, in so doing, shapes immigrant identities. In this article, we analyse the interplay between the US government and Salvadoran asylum applicants negotiating procedures that grant only temporary relief from deportation via the policy of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We find that each policy shift results in the strategic renegotiation of asylum applicants' identities so as to achieve the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Based on Foucault's ideas of governmentality and Ong's concept of flexible citizenship, we argue that what appears more superficially as a patchwork strategy of immigration laws and asylum practices may be theorized more deeply as a set of flexible responses by the state that turn on identity construction at different scales, and that aim to mediate transnational relations. [source]

Factors Affecting Australia's Refugee Policy: The Case of the Kosovars

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2001
Jackie King
This article seeks to explain Australia's refugee policy and to identify the various objectives and factors that influence the development of that policy. Australia's refugee programme seeks to: provide a humanitarian response and protection to individual refugees; participate responsibly in the international community; honour its Convention obligations; further the interests of the people of Australia; meet high standards of administration and; acknowledge as much as possible changes in refugee populations. In fulfilling these objectives, Australian governments must weigh and balance various competing factors. These include: humanitarian responsibility, international obligations, social, political, economic and foreign policy factors, as well as efficient administration. In balancing the relative importance of these factors, the Federal government hopes to fulfil all its refugee and humanitarian objectives. However, the pluralistic nature of Australian society and the often conflicting ideals associated with protection of Australia's interests and the preservation of the rights of refugees, means that fulfilment of these objectives is difficult. This article examines the Australian government's response to the Kosovar conflict, to assess the relative success Australia had in fulfilling its refugee policy objectives and identifying the various factors that produced the final result. [source]

Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Richard Black
This article reviews the growth of the field of refugee studies, focusing on its links with, and impact on, refugee policy. The last fifty years, and especially the last two decades, have witnessed both a dramatic increase in academic work on refugees and significant institutional development in the field. It is argued that these institutions have developed strong links with policymakers, although this has often failed to translate into significant policy impacts. Areas in which future policy-orientated work might be developed are considered. [source]

Transnational Migration, the Lost Girls of Sudan and Global "Care work": A Photo Essay

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Laura DeLuca
Abstract This essay explores the work lives of a group of Sudanese refugees known popularly as the Lost Girls of Sudan. Like other women from the Global South, the Lost Girls often work in the care work sector as maids, babysitters, nannies, preschool attendants, food service workers, nurses, personal care attendants for elderly and disabled people. The article also explores the U.S. refugee policy of self-sufficiency. [source]

What Does ,Efficiency' Mean in the Context of the Global Refugee Regime?

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2006
Alexander Betts
The language of ,efficiency' has increasingly been used as a rhetorical device to legitimate new approaches to refugee policy; in particular, extraterritorial processing and ,protection-in-regions-of-origin'. This article aims to explore what ,efficiency' might mean from the perspective of the global refugee regime in order to, firstly, expose the hidden assumptions implicit in the use of the ,efficiency' discourse in the current debate and, secondly, to explore what the concept might offer in defining the normative contours of a future regime structure. Although the concept is acknowledged to be inevitably political and to carry epistemological assumptions, reconstructing the concept by drawing on economic theory is argued to offer a means to improve the quality of debate on the allocation of resources within the refugee regime. Indeed, a critical application of the concepts of productive, allocative and dynamic efficiency is shown to offer far more nuanced insights for sustainable refugee protection than is implied by the contemporary debate's political manipulation of the term. The article assesses both the theoretical and policy implications that derive from a more rigorous conceptualisation of the meaning of efficiency. [source]