The Floating Pumpkin Syndrome: Forced Migration, Humanitarian Aid, and the Culture of Learned Helplessness

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.

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Cultural artefacts and the ‘migration crisis’: Disruptive materialities in works by Navid Kermani and Maxi Obexer

Crossings Journal of Migration and Culture ◽

10.1386/cjmc_00029_1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 267-281

Author(s):

Sabine Zimmermann

Keyword(s):

Political Discourse ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Humanitarian Aid ◽

Border Security ◽

Literary Texts ◽

German Constitution ◽

Migration Crisis ◽

Present Focus

Amplified worldwide fragility and growing mobility have contributed to increased forced migration towards Europe. However, Europe’s present focus on border protection has furthered the ‘migrant crisis’ which is very much a crisis of response. News about the ‘migrant crisis’ continues to dominate political discourse in Europe and elsewhere. The discussions typically focus on Europe’s supposed solutions in the form of increased border security, new political agreements, and various forms of humanitarian aid. This article reviews four literary texts about Europe’s responses to forced migration and proposes that the literary treatment of various cultural artefacts employed in these texts critiques Europe’s current restrictionism. Two speeches by Navid Kermani, ‘Towards Europe’ and ‘On the sixty-fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the German Constitution’ and two novels by Maxi Obexer, Wenn gefährliche Hunde lachen (‘When dangerous dogs laugh’) and Europas längster Sommer (‘Europe’s longest summer’) make reference to several phenomenal objects and also to gestures. In and of themselves, these cultural artefacts such as beds, blankets, buses, lipsticks, T-shirts, shoes, and even the gestures of kneeling and bowing, may not possess anything disruptive. However, there is an unruly quality about them that puts a spotlight on the precarity of survival migrants who cannot access the European asylum process.

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International Aid, Relief, and Humanitarian Assistance

Encyclopedia of Social Work ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.957 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Carmen Monico ◽

Karen Smith Rotabi ◽

Taghreed Abu Sarhan

Keyword(s):

Social Work ◽

Capacity Building ◽

International Development ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Humanitarian Aid ◽

Social Work Practice ◽

Humanitarian Assistance ◽

International Social Work ◽

Post Conflict ◽

International Social

International development, humanitarian aid, and relief are at the heart of international social work practice. They have evolved historically and globally; shaped by world markets, social and environmental forces, including natural disasters. Considering this context, the authors cluster relevant social-work theories and practices as (a) human rights perspectives, and (b) ecological, feminist, and cultural theories. They discuss both micro and macro practice, with an emphasis on the latter. Case studies are presented with the overlay of relevant international conventions, guidance, and international private law. A continuum of humanitarian assistance is presented considering different countries. Guatemala is a prominent example in addition to Haiti’s massive earthquake of 2010 with recent revelations of sexual abuse and exploitation by humanitarian aid workers, post-conflict community-based practices in Afghanistan, and the largest cross-border forced migration in modern history of Iraqi, and Syrian refugees with this second group being of particular concern given their mass displacement. Capacity building as related to social work training is emphasized. This entry concludes that much remains to be accomplished with regard to capacity building among humanitarian assistance organizations so that the principles and practice strategies of international social work are institutionalized.

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MOVING ONWARD: TRANSNATIONALISM AND FACTORS INFLUENCING ROHINGYAS’ MIGRATION FROM BANGLADESH TO MALAYSIA

Journal of Nusantara Studies (JONUS) ◽

10.24200/jonus.vol4iss1pp49-68 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 49 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andika Ab.Wahab ◽

Aizat Khairi

Keyword(s):

Data Collection ◽

Group Discussion ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Humanitarian Aid ◽

Refugee Camps ◽

Refugee Protection ◽

Factors Influencing ◽

Job Opportunities ◽

Depth Interview ◽

Klang Valley

Continuous human rights persecutions have forced nearly one million Rohingyas to flee from Myanmar and seek refuge in Bangladesh. While their forced migration to the first asylum country of Bangladesh is inevitable, some have been compelled to move onward to other transit countries. Existing studies indicate various factors influencing cross-border activities among different segments of immigrants. They also suggest that the degree of transnationalism affects different kind of people on the move, subsequently brings about unique consequences to receiving community. In this study, we aim to determine factors contributing to the onward movement of Rohingyas from their refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh to Malaysia. We utilize the broader concept of transnationalism in order to gauge the Rohingyas’ perception and the realities they face in relation to their onward movement from Bangladesh to Malaysia. This study employed three methods of data collection namely a survey, an in-depth interview and a focus group discussion in engaging the Rohingyas in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Resulting from a two-part of data collection conducted in 2013 and 2016, we found that the onward movement of Rohingyas was mostly driven by poverty, unconducive livelihood experiences, limited access to humanitarian aid, and inadequate refugee protection in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, positive Rohingyas’ perception toward Malaysia, coupled with the availability of job opportunities have attracted them to choose Malaysia as the next asylum country. While this study enriches the existing literatures on transnationalism and onward movement of refugees, it also provides empirical evidences for humanitarian assistances in Bangladesh and Malaysia. Keywords: Forced migration, onward movement, refugees, Rohingya, transnationalism. Cite as: Ab. Wahab, A. & Khairi, A. (2019). Moving onward: Transnationalism and factors influencing Rohingyas’ migration from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 4(1), 49-68. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol4iss1pp49-68

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Demarcating Boundaries: Against the “Humanitarian Embrace”

Refuge ◽

10.25071/1920-7336.40791 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 46-55

Author(s):

Hanno Brankamp

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Common Sense ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Humanitarian Aid ◽

Migration Studies ◽

International Organisations ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Critical Scholarship ◽

Market Economic ◽

Economic Thinking

Recent years have seen recurrent calls for bridging the “gap” between the worlds of policy-makers, practitioners, and academic scholars concerned with forced migration and humanitarian aid. This has resulted in growing partnerships between international organisations, governments, businesses, foundations, and universities with the aim of harnessing market economic thinking to create new practice-oriented knowledge rather than out-of-touch theories. This intervention responds critically to these developments and questions the seemingly common-sense logic behind attempts to forge ever closer collaborations across institutional lines. Rather than benefitting displaced communities, bridging divides has often served as a way of consolidating the hegemony of humanitarian actors and inadvertently delegitimized more critical scholarship. Scholars in refugee and forced migration studies have hereby been engulfed in a tightening “humanitarian embrace”. This paper argues that in order to fulfil a scholarly commitment to social justice, anti-violence and pro-asylum politics, it is time to again demarcate the boundaries between the practices and institutions that reproduce humanitarian power and their critics.

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