Forced Migration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Snezana Stankovic ◽  
Jonas Ecke ◽  
Elizabeth Wirtz
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Societal Dynamics

Forced migration refers to the forcibly induced movement of people, for example, when migrants are forced to flee to escape conflict or persecution or become trafficked. The definition also encompasses situations of enforced immobility, for example, when displaced people are confined to refugee camps and detention centers. Forced displacement may occur within or across the borders of the nation-state. According to this definition, the effect of the force causing the migratory movement is crucial, and distinguishes forced migrants—who may be termed “refugee,” “trafficked person,” “stateless person,” “asylum seeker,” or “internally displaced persons” (IDPs)—from other migrants such as economic migrants. However, as anthropologists of forced migration illustrate, such distinctions by legal, state, or international organizations are not always relevant outside of institutional logics; when backed up by the force of the state, they can undermine the livelihoods and safety of migrants. The anthropology of forced migration is undertaken by researchers who aim to depict and capture the realities of forced migrants, and to understand the world from the perspective of the forced migrants themselves. The anthropology of forced migration also addresses the historical context that drives the displacement as well as how forced migrants interact with their cultural, social, religious, and economic environments, and how doing so compels cultural change. By virtue of their influence in the lives of forced migrants, anthropologists of forced migration must incorporate the terminologies and classifications of international organizations and states into their analyses, since these terminologies and classifications have tangible effects on the lives of migrants. At the same time, anthropologists of forced migration interrogate these terminologies and classifications. In so doing, they prioritize the perspectives and realities of the forced migrants over external classifications and definitions. Consequently, the anthropology of forced migration is distinguished from other disciplines that also explore forced migration such as international law and some studies in the field of refugee studies and (forced) migration studies. On a theoretical level, an analysis that centers on the experiences, perspectives, and realities of forced migrants enables novel insights into societal processes such as austerity policies, the role of borders in society and the global system, and the work of humanitarian organizations. These policies, societal dynamics, and institutions have tangible and deep effects on the lives of forced migrants. How forced migrants interact with external systems and institutions has raised vital questions on dependency and agency, which anthropologists of forced migration have discussed in their works. Many anthropologists of forced migration also aim to be helpful in improving programs for forced migrants by conveying the perspectives and experiences of forced migrants to policymakers so that such programs are more relevant to the realities of forced migrants. Anthropologists of forced migration have also used art installations and films to convey the experience of forced migration.

A Spatial Model of Internal Displacement and Forced Migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272095847
Author(s):  
Jon Echevarria-Coco ◽  
Javier Gardeazabal
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Country Size ◽  
The World ◽  
Displaced People

This article develops a spatial model of internal and external forced migration. We propose a model reminiscent of Hotelling’s spatial model in economics and Schelling’s model of segregation. Conflict is modeled as a shock that hits a country at certain location and generates displacement of people located near the shock’s location. Some displaced people cross a border, thus becoming refugees, while others remain as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The model delivers predictions about how the fractions of a country’s population that become refugees and IDPs ought to be related with the intensity of the shock, country size, terrain ruggedness and the degree of geographical proximity of the country with respect to the rest of the world. The predictions of the model are then tested against real data using a panel of 161 countries covering the period 1995-2016. The empirical evidence is mostly in line with the predictions of the model.

Introduction: Dawn Chatty and Bill Finlayson

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Chatty
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
World War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Afghan Refugee ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Displaced People

Dispossession and displacement have always afflicted life in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Waves of people have been displaced from their homeland as a result of conflicts and social illnesses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Circassian Muslims and Jewish groups were dispossessed of their homes and lands in Eurasia. This was followed by the displacement of the Armenians and Christian groups in the aftermath of the First World War. They were followed by Palestinians who fled from their homes in the struggle for control over Palestine after the Second World War. In recent times, almost 4 million Iraqis have left their country or have been internally displaced. And in the summer of 2006, Lebanese, Sudanese and Somali refugees fled to neighbouring countries in the hope of finding peace, security and sustainable livelihoods. With the increasing number of refugees, this book presents a discourse on displacement and dispossession. It examines the extent to which forced migration has come to define the feature of life in the Middle East and North Africa. It presents researches on the refugees, particularly on the internally displaced people of Iran and Afghanistan. The eleven chapters in this book deal with the themes of displacement, repatriation, identity in exile and refugee policy. They cover themes such as the future of the Turkish settlers in northern Cyprus; the Hazara migratory networks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Western countries; the internal displacement among Kurds in Iraq and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Afghan refugee youth as a ‘burnt generation’ on their post-conflict return; Sahrawi identity in refugee camps; and the expression of the ‘self’ in poetry for Iran refugees and oral history for women Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

Humanitarianism, Displacement, and the Politics of Nothing in Postwar Georgia

Slavic Review ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Black Holes ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Republic Of Georgia ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Internally Displaced People ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
International Donors ◽  
The Republic

After the 2008 war with Russia, many internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Republic of Georgia complained that they had nothing, despite the fact that international donors gave more than $450 million in humanitarian aid. What was nothing? How was it related to forced migration? Why did humanitarianism continually focus the IDPs' attention on what they had lost rather than the help they had been given? In this article, I use the work of existentialist philosopher Alain Badiou to argue that humanitarianism creates four forms of absence: anti-artifacts, black holes, imaginary numbers, and absolute zero. These forms of nothingness force displaced people into having nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing, which in turn prevents them from reassembling the fragments of their previous lives into meaningful forms of existence in the present.

scholarly journals Asylum Migration, Borders, and Terrorism in a Structural Gravity Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Carril-Caccia ◽  
Jordi Paniagua ◽  
Francisco Requena
Keyword(s):  
Forced Migration ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Regional Heterogeneity ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Country Specific

In this article, we examine the impact of terrorist attacks on asylum-related migration flows. So far, the literature that examines the “push factors” such as terrorism that explain forced migration has omitted the fact that the vast majority of people forced to flee typically do so toward other locations within the country. The novel feature of our research is the estimation of a structural gravity equation that includes both international migration and internally displaced persons (IDP), a theoretically consistent framework that allows us to identify country-specific variables such as terror attacks. For that purpose, we use information on the number of asylum applications, the number of IDP, and the number of terrorist attacks in each country for a sample of 119 origin developing countries and 141 destination countries over 2009–2018. The empirical results reveal several interesting and policy-relevant traits. Firstly, forced migration abroad is still minimal compared to IDP, but globalization forces are pushing up the ratio. Secondly, terror violence has a positive and significant effect on asylum migration flows relative to the number of IDP. Thirdly, omitting internally displaced people biases downward the impact of terrorism on asylum applications. Fourthly, we observe regional heterogeneity in the effect of terrorism on asylum migration flows; in Latin America, terrorist attacks have a much larger impact on the number of asylum applications relative to IDP than in Asia or Africa.

Life after violence in North India: Islamic relief orgaizations and transactional relationships in a plural humanitarian space

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Larouche
Keyword(s):  
Positive Influence ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
North India ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Space ◽  
Displaced People

Abstract Religious humanitarianism is often closely scrutinized, as it is either viewed as exerting a positive influence in post-conflict contexts—through peace-building and sense-making—or a negative one—through proselytism and division. This article contends that both these (negative and positive) perspectives on the role played by religious organizations overemphasize, to a certain extent, their transformative power in post-conflict contexts, at least in the short term. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with both Islamic and non-confessional humanitarian organizations supporting internally displaced people—victims of anti-Muslim violence in Muzaffarnagar, India—I suggest that the inherent plurality and competitive dimension of the humanitarian field leads to a form of transactional relationship between displaced people and organizations and tends to reduce the importance of ideological differences between organizations. Paying attention to this particularity of the humanitarian field and how displaced people deal with it can provide us with a better understanding of the actual influence of religious humanitarianism in post-conflict contexts.

A Belated Awakening: National and International Responses to the Internal Displacement of Kurds in Turkey

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 5-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilgin Ayata ◽  
Deniz Yükseker
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
The Past ◽  
Donor States

Internal displacement has replaced the flows of border-crossing refugees as the major form of forced migration across the world in the past two decades. International organizations seek to have a central role in providing assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) although this phenomenon comes under the traditional realm of state sovereignty, in contrast to the refugee regime, which is part of international law. The evolving international IDP regime has triggered policy and scholarly debates about various aspects of state responsibility and international assistance. On one hand, when states fail to provide protection to the displaced, the decision to take international action is often selective and depends to a large extent on the balance of geopolitical interests of powerful donor states. On the other hand, extant international humanitarian assistance practices also face criticism for having created new modes of power over displaced groups.

More Heat than Light: The Challenges of Measuring Forced Migration

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-64
Author(s):  
Vickie Frater ◽  
Phil Orchard
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Displacement Monitoring ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Monitoring Centre ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Institutional Challenges

Counting forced migrants runs into a number of hurdles related to their classification, to their experience of flight, and to the need to use myriad sources of data from governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. To complicate matters, three organisations have mandates to count different groups – the un Relief Works Agency (unrwa) for Palestine refugees, the un High Commission for Refugees (unhcr) for refugees more generally, and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (idmc) for internally displaced persons (idps). All three face a range of common challenges in carrying out this vital aspect of their respective mandates. These include conceptual challenges, political concerns, competing interests and access. They also face their own political and institutional challenges, leading to individualised approaches and variance across and even within the organisations. In spite of these complexities, there have been significant improvements in the reliability of data and new technologies and registration methods are providing a way forward to a better understanding of forced migrant movements.

Civil Wars and Displacement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayşe Betül Çelik
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Return Dynamics ◽  
Shed Light

The growing number of civil wars in the post-Cold War era has been accompanied by a rising number of forcibly displaced people, who either stay within the borders of their own countries, becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs), or cross borders to become refugees. Although many studies have been conducted on the reasons of conflict-induced displacement, various questions remain of interest for the scholars of international relations, especially questions pertaining but not limited to the (a) gendered aspects of conflict, displacement, and peace processes, (b) predicting possible future displacement zones, and (c) best political and social designs for returnee communities in post-civil war contexts. Most studies still focus on the negative consequences of forced migration, undermining how refugees and IDPs can also contribute to the cultural and political environment of the receiving societies. Considering that there is a huge variation in types of conflict, motivations for violence, and the resulting patterns of displacement within the category of civil war, more research on the actors forcing displacement, their intentions, and subsequent effects on return dynamics can benefit research in this field. Similarly, research on return and reconciliation needs to treat displacement and return as a continuum. Paying attention to conflict parties in civil war bears the potential for new areas of exploration whose outcomes can also shed light on policies for post-civil war construction and intergroup reconciliation.

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