The final part of the Handbook places the preceding debates and challenges in regional context, exploring the nature and implications of different geopolitical areas’ specific social, political, and legal dynamics.
Introduction
The first three chapters respectively explore displacement and forced migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Marion Fresia contextualizes contemporary and ongoing processes of forced migration in West Africa, examining, inter alia, the role of the Economic Community of West African States and the European Union alike on the development of immigration discourses and policies in West Africa. In turn, Jonathan Crush and Abel (p. 12) Chikanda outline five phases of displacement in the ‘fifty years war’ of Southern Africa, highlighting the advantages and limitations of national refugee legislation, and regional initiatives such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Refugee Convention and the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. Gaim Kibreab then traces the interconnected causes and experiences of forced migration within the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa, critiquing mainstream encampment and self-settlement policies alike as means of preventing the local integration of displaced populations.
Sari Hanafi’s chapter on the Middle East and North Africa also highlights the challenges of protracted encampment through case-studies of Palestinians in Lebanon and Sahrawis in South-West Algeria, and of local integration in urban contexts in the case of Iraqis in Jordan. Alessandro Monsutti and Bayram Balci subsequently explore one of the most emblematic recent cases of forced migration—protracted displacement in and from Afghanistan—alongside complex cases of forced migration and statelessness prompted by conflict and environmental stress in the Central Asian republics.
Paula Banerjee’s chapter on South Asia addresses a wide range of mass displacement scenarios, including the impact of the Partition of India/Pakistan, the constitution of and discrimination against stateless populations, and the impacts of development projects across the region. Kirsten McConnachie subsequently discusses the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other regional initiatives in responding to conflict induced and disaster induced displacement and trafficking, before exploring responses to Indochinese refugees and refugees from Myanmar in detail.
The connections between political shifts and migratory movements between South-East Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific Islands are explored through McNevin’s chapter, with specific reference to Australia and New Zealand as destinations for asylum seekers and refugees, and Pacific Island states as source countries for climate induced and other forms of forced migration.
Three chapters then address displacement dynamics across the Americas, starting with José Fischel de Andrade’s analysis of the history, evolution, and impacts of Latin America’s unique protection regime, including a particular focus on the distinction between refuge on the one hand and territorial and diplomatic asylum on the other. Against the backdrop of the regional protection framework underpinned by the Organization of American States and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, Megan Bradley’s chapter on Central America and the Caribbean explores civil society, national, and regional responses to diverse displacement scenarios, critically evaluating the impacts of the International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA). Susan Martin’s chapter then explores North American states’
roles as resettlement and donor states, in addition to critiquing the increasing restrictionism of the United States of America’s and Canada’s asylum systems. Finally, Bank’s chapter on Europe draws this part of the Handbook to a close by examining the asylum and immigration policies and legislative frameworks created by the Council of Europe and the European Union. As such, Bank considers the extent to which developments in Europe have the potential to influence the interpretation of international refugee law across other regions of the world.
(p. 13) The Future of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
The contributors to this Handbook—leading scholars, practitioners and policymakers in this field—provide insights to the likely directions which research in refugee and forced migration studies will take in the future, and the challenges the field will need to address as it evolves over the next 30 years.
One thing is clear: the places where research with and about refugees and forced migration takes place are changing.
These changes are taking place in at least two regards.
First, an exponential growth in research tracing urban displacement has taken place since 2007, reflecting the fact that the majority of refugees and IDPs choose to live in cities, and correcting an earlier tendency to concentrate on the experiences of those in refugee camps. Furthermore, such a focus on urban displacement involves both international and internal displacement contexts. Indeed, the number of IDPs far outnumbers refugees in most displacement crises, and yet refugee and forced migration scholars have often been slow to focus on these groups, despite the important legal, political, and sociological questions that internal displacement raises. This is beginning to change, and the pace of such change is only likely to accelerate. Refugee and forced migration studies will increasingly concern itself with urban
hosting settings and IDPs rather than refugee camps.
Second, a major shift is taking place in terms of the (geographical and intellectual) location and origins of scholars conducting research into refugee and forced migration studies. While many academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in this field to date have been situated in institutions in the global North, significant contributions to the field have long been made by researchers from across all regions of the world, even if ‘southern’ academics’ voices and
publications (in different languages, institutions, and journals) have often had less reach due to structural conditions (Landau 2012; cf. Chimni 1998). With bodies such as the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and leading journals such as the Journal of Refugee Studies increasingly showcasing the contributions of scholars and universities, practitioners, and organizations from across the global South, the future of refugee and forced migration studies will be closely tied to ongoing debates regarding the visibility, audibility, authenticity, and acceptability of different perspectives from diverse locations around the world. With reference to the acceptability of such research, Banerjee argues that ‘the northern gaze is often turned away from the research done in the south, especially when it is considered too political. Our research cannot but be political because we have to live with the reality of forced migration every day and so our research, if not emancipatory, can become meaningless’ (2012: 572).
The diversification of regional perspectives in academic research will also be paralleled by the increasing number of regional initiatives designed to respond to, and attempt (p. 14) to prevent, displacement. Regional policies, institutions, and conventions are, of course, far from new innovations, as demonstrated throughout the twelve contributions in the Regional Studies section of the Handbook, and critical evaluations of so-called regional success stories such as the International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA) or the Comprehensive Plan of Action for
Indochinese Refugees (CPA), and the OAU Refugee Convention and Cartagena Declaration. Nonetheless, a multiplicity of regional mechanisms and frameworks have been developed (including the Bali process and the 2011 Regional Cooperation Framework in the Asia and Pacific region) and, in the case of Conventions, presented for ratification over the past decade, requiring detailed analysis of their implications over the coming years. In particular, such research will explore the potential impacts of the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (known as the Kampala Convention), which entered into force on 6 December 2012, and whether different regions around the world will mirror or reject the Kampala Convention and the European Union’s evolving asylum policy framework.
Other trends are less absolute, but many of the most exciting developments in refugee and forced migration studies are likely to take place at the edges of traditional areas of study. In particular, the overlap between migration studies and forced migration research studies will in all likelihood continue to increase. This reflects the growing body of existing work that shows that, on the ground and in lived experience, such distinctions are often arbitrary when trying to map movements from conflict and crisis situations, as well as increasing hostility towards immigration and scepticism about the possibility of integration in the West. A question that refugee and forced migration scholars have long wrestled with—how to frame the movement of those who migrate not because they are persecuted, but because they are poor—is likely to become increasingly salient. Human rights-based research—another field that has seen rapid growth—may provide one means of reconciling the study of forced migration with the politics of migration, through the language of rights.
There are also important gaps in our understanding of forced migration that closer collaboration with researchers working to document other forms of migration could help to fill. In particular, research in forced migration has tended to be overwhelmingly qualitative. This in part reflects the roots of the field in the gathering of both ethnographic and legal testimony that can document and challenge human suffering at the micro-level, but it has left notable gaps. One area requiring further engagement is that of the economics of forced migration. Perhaps the most referenced study to date in this regard is Kuhlman’s work on the economic integration of refugees in Eastern Sudan, and refugees’ impact on the economic behaviour and outcomes of the host population (Kuhlman 1991). While quantitative econometric studies have been conducted and circulated by and among economists (for instance: Ibáñez and Moya 2009; Alix-García and Saah 2010) there has nonetheless been little engagement with the economics of forced migration as part of the
multidisciplinary field of refugee and forced migration studies. A major exception is the valuable work which has been undertaken to successfully incorporate a livelihoods perspective into forced migration research and programming, as discussed by Jacobsen in this volume. There is therefore a real need both for (p. 15) more quantitative researchers to engage with the economics of forced migration, and for qualitative researchers to engage with this existing and emerging literature in order to maximize the benefits of mixed-methods approaches to research, despite the methodological challenges that the complexities and uncertainties of forced migration flows inevitably entail.
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Introduction
The increasing recognition that future research agendas in refugee and forced migration studies must incorporate an economic perspective also underlines the (recurrent) trend to connect refugee and forced migration studies with not only humanitarian but also development work. The question of how displacement interacts with development processes has long occupied both policymakers and researchers (see Betts 2004), but answers remain uncertain.
With protracted displacements of five years or more now being the norm rather than the exception, researchers are also increasingly documenting the experiences of those who have never personally moved anywhere, but who have inherited their status as displaced people, and who live alongside equally deprived local citizens. Further exploration of the multifaceted legacies of exile and displacement across generations both in the intimate space of the household and at societal level will continue to enrich debates on durable solutions. It will also facilitate the establishment of a rich terrain for cross-fertilization with diaspora studies and historical analysis more broadly, the latter a contact zone currently not fully appreciated partly as a result of a research agenda in refugee and forced migration studies which is more oriented towards the immediacy of the here and the now.
The search for not just durable but transformative solutions for those trapped in protracted displacement is also likely to lead to continued efforts to incorporate forced migrants into existing ‘migration and development’ discourses. Equally, given the close connection between protracted displacement and prolonged conflict, links between peace and conflict studies and forced migration studies also need to be strengthened. This may further encourage refugee and forced migration scholars to focus not only on the displaced, but also to examine the needs and rights of those who are left behind and who are often rendered ‘involuntarily immobile’ (Carling 2002)—both in countries of origin and, after return, in countries of asylum.
Refugee and forced migration studies will also shift to incorporate new understandings not only of the consequences but also of the causes of forced migration. In particular, much work remains to be done in evaluating how climate change and accelerated environmental degradation are affecting patterns of migration, especially in weak and conflict-prone states. Furthermore, as the processes of urbanization, development, and post-conflict state-building described here accelerate, there is also likely to be a need for renewed attention to be paid to development induced displacement processes that pit individual rights against collective gain and pose new questions about power and ethics.
As exciting as these and other innovations may be, it is important that these new research fields are not developed at the cost of abandoning more traditional concerns. It is very clear that there is still a need for perceptive, thoughtful research that speaks directly to the original core concerns that underpin refugee and forced migration (p. 16) studies: who deserves international protection, and what should that protection look like? These concerns are closely linked to a much broader challenge that refugee and forced migration studies continues to face as it matures: how to manage the field’s close connections with policy and advocacy communities, while simultaneously continuing to build upon Harrell-Bond’s legacy of critiquing the nature and implications, both intended and unintended, of humanitarianism and the humanitarian regime (1987; also Fassin 2011; Weiss 2013).
As this Handbook documents, the field has its roots in advocacy and policy-relevant research. For many of us who have chosen to work in this field, our motivation is not just intellectual curiosity, but a sense of moral responsibility to try and account for some of the injustices experienced by refugees and other forced migrants, and to record testimonies that would otherwise be largely confined to the margins of history. Yet after 30 years, it is obvious that in many areas, the causes of continuing suffering stem not from research gaps, but a lack of political will to recognize the implications of very clear research findings. Similarly, as Bakewell (2008) has argued, research that blindly follows policy agendas rather than critically assessing such policy frameworks and breaking new ground is likely to offer few innovative conclusions.
Recent decades have seen the development of a more rigorous approach to methodology, and refugee and forced migration scholars need to be equally determined to set their own research agendas. Of course, the value of refugee and forced migration studies lies in its determination to confront very real world problems, and yet this must involve
challenging policymakers’ conventional approaches by providing new accounts, new insights, and new frameworks. In a world where academic funding and research work will be increasingly measured by ‘impact’, refugee and forced migration scholars are undoubtedly well placed to contribute to public debates. Nonetheless, the field needs to
remember that when it comes to the question of how to best ameliorate conditions, the right conclusions are often those that the powerful least want to hear. This is why it is important that refugee and forced migration studies retains a critical, independent edge.
Growing academic interest in refugee and forced migration issues is to be welcomed. However it also brings with it at
least two significant challenges that may not be easy to reconcile. On the one hand, some research into refugee and forced migration issues is conducted by scholars in the social sciences who analyse refugee crises primarily in order to contribute to theoretical debates within existing academic canons. This is important, as it increasingly places refugee issues in the context of broader debates and avoids forced migration being viewed as a marginal, peripheral subject rather than a complex topic that should interest the brightest and best minds. Yet on the other hand, there is a real risk that refugee and forced migration studies may lose its distinct identity and the strengths that come from its rich cross- disciplinary tradition and humanitarian roots.
We argue that engaging with refugee and forced migration studies should not be based on a purely intellectual pursuit, divorced from the human realities of displacement and dispossession. However, if refugee and forced migration scholars can grow in complex intellectual and theoretical directions while ensuring that the fundamental concerns with the ‘right to have rights’ (Arendt 1951) that saw the field emerge three decades ago (p. 17) remain at the centre of the field, the future for refugee and forced migration studies remains bright. Given how bleak a future so many refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants continue to face in cities and camps across the globe, a vibrant and engaged community of refugee and forced migration scholars is particularly crucial now and in the decades to come. It is for this reason that we hope that the Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies will both help to inspire new researchers to join our field, and help to build a sense of common purpose linking, but not limiting, the diverse interests of existing researchers working in this complex, fascinating, and important field.