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Refugee Status (refugee + status)
Selected AbstractsAverting Forced Migration in Countries in TransitionINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2002Susan Martin Many countries of emigration are in transition from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governments. Addressing population movements from these countries requires more than economic opportunities; equally important is the establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights, and, in countries recovering from conflict, reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and housing. Otherwise, fragile peace and democratization processes can easily break down, creating new waves of forced migrants and hampering efforts towards repatriation and reintegration of already displaced populations. This background paper discusses the nature of forced migration, pointing out that the end of the Cold War has produced new pressures and new opportunities to address these flows. While extremism, particularly rampant nationalism, has provoked massive forced migration in many parts of the world, the changing geopolitical relations has also led to peace settlements in some countries and humanitarian intervention to reduce suffering in others. Addressing forced migration pressures in countries in transition requires comprehensive policy approaches. Four types of best practices are considered in this paper. First, mechanisms to ameliorate the causes of forced movements, including the role that expatriate communities can play in strengthening the rule of law and respect for human rights, particularly minority rights. Second, mechanisms that enhance refugee protection while minimizing abuses of asylum systems, including enhanced respect for the refugee convention, adoption of complementary forms of protection when the refugee convention does not apply, strengthened regional protection, and the establishment of in,country processing of refugee claims. Third, mechanisms to resolve the longer,term status of forced migrants, including decisions on when to cease refugee status and temporary protection and encourage/permit return or integration. Fourth, mechanisms for more effective repatriation when return is possible, particularly programs to help returnees reintegrate and communities reconstruct themselves. [source] Female Asylum-Seekers in the Netherlands: An Empirical StudyINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2001Jos W. Van Wetten This article presents the findings from a study into the chances for refugee status, or a temporary residence permit, for three cohorts of male and female asylum-seekers to the Netherlands. The study investigated whether men and women with similar backgrounds in terms of country of origin, social and demographic characteristics have a similar likelihood of obtaining permission to stay in the Netherlands. The quantitative findings are corroborated with an in-depth qualitative study of refugees' files from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), as well as with an experiment in which decision-making personnel were asked to judge hypothetical case studies of refugees in which gender as well as other gender-specific properties were systematically varied. We recommend that further in-depth studies be conducted to capture elements in the decision-making process that could not be investigated in our kind of large-scale study. [source] To belong or not to belong: the Roma, state violence and the new Europe in the House of LordsLEGAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2001David Fraser Issues of national sovereignty and membership in the body politic are central to many current political and legal debates surrounding ,New Britain' and Europe. Traditional understandings of citizenship and belonging are grounded in the ideal of a territorially limited and defined nation state. In this article, I explore a series of judicial and political decisions surrounding the fate of Roma or Gypsies, both as claimants to refugee status in Britain, or as subjects of domestic legal controls. I argue that these decisions construct this nomadic Other as a fundamental danger and challenge to the coherence of the legally protected body politic of the nation state ,Britain' . I argue that the deconstructive excess found in the construction of the Roma as dangerous nomads, without allegiance to a fixed and geographically delimited nation state, might contain the kernel for a possible re-imagining of the basis of our understandings of citizenship and belonging. [source] ,No one gives you a chance to say what you are thinking': finding space for children's agency in the UK asylum systemAREA, Issue 2 2010Heaven Crawley Drawing on research undertaken with separated children seeking asylum in the UK, this paper explores the ways in which children's political identities and experiences have been conceptualised in procedures for determining who is , and is not , in need of protection under international refugee law. The paper focuses in particular on the experiences of separated children during the asylum interview. It is suggested that the conduct of the interview not only indicates a basic lack of humanity and care in engaging with the experiences of separated asylum-seeking children, but also a particular conceptualisation of ,childhood' that undermines the ability of children to fully articulate their experiences and to secure access to the protection to which they are entitled. The consequence of this approach is not only that separated asylum-seeking children are significantly less likely than adults to be granted refugee status, but that children who express political views and agency may not be considered to be children at all. [source] | ||||||||||