Assessing the poverty impact of internal resettlement programs on the ethnic minorities in Lao PDR

<p>This research assesses how poverty-based resettlement programs make a contribution to poverty reduction and controlling migration of ethnic people in rural Laos. In 2009, the government of Laos launched new resettlement programs in six northern provinces. The programs aimed to improve the accessibility to land of people who were remaining poor in some rural areas. Primarily, poor people were required to resettle in a village where land could be available for them. I investigated two resettlement sites in Thathome district, Xiangkhoang province. I applied a qualitative approach to examine the poverty experiences of settlers. In particular, I focused on identifying the causes and impacts of poverty-based resettlement programs on ethnic migrants. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather responses from migrants, government officers and host villagers. Two focus group interviews were organized with migrant participants who came from different locations. The findings revealed that poverty-based resettlement programs did not directly address the core causes of poverty and migration of poor people in rural Laos. Conversely, the improper planning and implementation of programs were responsible for poverty that happened in the resettlement sites. The programs were carried out while the local government was hampered by insufficient funds. There was little support and assistance provided to settlers during the transitional periods. As a result, settlers faced worse hardship than they had in their original villages. Poverty-based resettlement programs instead of reducing poverty had created a situation whereby there was a greater potential for poor people to become trapped in continued poverty.</p>

Assessing the poverty impact of internal resettlement programs on the ethnic minorities in Lao PDR

<p>This research assesses how poverty-based resettlement programs make a contribution to poverty reduction and controlling migration of ethnic people in rural Laos. In 2009, the government of Laos launched new resettlement programs in six northern provinces. The programs aimed to improve the accessibility to land of people who were remaining poor in some rural areas. Primarily, poor people were required to resettle in a village where land could be available for them. I investigated two resettlement sites in Thathome district, Xiangkhoang province. I applied a qualitative approach to examine the poverty experiences of settlers. In particular, I focused on identifying the causes and impacts of poverty-based resettlement programs on ethnic migrants. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather responses from migrants, government officers and host villagers. Two focus group interviews were organized with migrant participants who came from different locations. The findings revealed that poverty-based resettlement programs did not directly address the core causes of poverty and migration of poor people in rural Laos. Conversely, the improper planning and implementation of programs were responsible for poverty that happened in the resettlement sites. The programs were carried out while the local government was hampered by insufficient funds. There was little support and assistance provided to settlers during the transitional periods. As a result, settlers faced worse hardship than they had in their original villages. Poverty-based resettlement programs instead of reducing poverty had created a situation whereby there was a greater potential for poor people to become trapped in continued poverty.</p>

Working towards Culturally Responsive Trauma-Informed Care in the Refugee Resettlement Process: Qualitative Inquiry with Refugee-Serving Professionals in the United States

Trauma-informed care (TIC) approaches have gained popularity in various contexts of human services over the past decades. However, relatively little has been explored about how it is applicable and built into services for refugee populations in resettlement programs. This study explores the current status of the application of TIC in refugee-serving agencies and identifies perceived and experienced challenges and opportunities for culturally responsive TIC in the United States. As designed as part of the evaluation of state-wide refugee health promotion programs, this study conducted individual interviews with 78 refugee service providers from five resettlement sites. Despite the burgeoning interest and attempt to embrace TIC, our findings show that there is clear inconsistency and inexperience in TIC adaptation in resettlement programs. This study highlights that TIC that is culturally responsive and relevant to refugee trauma and acculturation experiences is a vital way to address the chasms between refugee-specific programs and mainstream services including mental health care systems. This study also discusses community resources and opportunities to bridge the deep divide and substantial gaps between mental health services and refugee resettlement services and to address comprehensive needs around mental health and wellness in the refugee community.

Refugee Youth Resettlement

This article traces the evolution of the concepts of radicalization and deradicalization, specifically as they pertain to the social category of youth. It aims to locate and understand the concept of ‘resiliency’ as a deradicalization method and map out resiliency agendas in relation to the settlement of refugee youth. This article sets out to understand the relationship between deradicalization narratives and refugee youth resettlement programs within a broader historical and contemporary socio-political context.

Flood Disaster Risk Perception and Sense of Place Among Households Along the Ocoy River in Negros Oriental, Philippines

This quantitative study using a survey method aims to understand the relationship between flood disaster risk perception and the sense of place of people living in communities along a river. The survey covered a non-probability sample of 120 respondents from households located along with the downstream, midstream, and upstream sections of the Ocoy River in Negros Oriental. Generally, the respondents have very high flood disaster risk perception and sense of place scores which do not significantly differ across communities. But the significant positive relationship between these two major variables contradicts the common understanding that disaster makes people devalue particular places and relocate to safer areas. The majority who conditionally agreed to relocate may not proceed if they perceived a more difficult life in the resettlement site. Adaptive resettlement programs and policies are recommended where the desired characteristics of a place of flood survivors are reconstructed. At the same time, risk reduction and mitigation mechanisms are designed for those who decided to remain in riverside communities.

The Political Implications of Urban Displacement: Notes from Two Fieldwork Research Projects in Casablanca

Resettlement programs have always been in the political agenda of public institutions and administrators of Casablanca since its growth during the French Protectorate. Today real estate and private multinational capital sneak into local and national powers, pushing public authorities to clear land for new urban development through demolition and resettlement of local residents. The dwellers of areas such as the old town centre (medina) and the slums (karyan) increasingly react to displacement by challenging this urban agenda frontally with their bodies and words, but often also deploying what James Scott calls “weapons of the weak”, i.e. implicit acts of resistance and symbolic dissent. Reversing Asef Bayat’s statement, we consider residents of these stigmatized neighbourhoods “revolutionaries without a revolution”, partisans of an intimate cause of their own, that aims at having a home and surviving in a hostile city. Our reflections are the product of two separate fieldwork researches: one with the inhabitants of informal neighbourhoods, another with residents and former residents of the old medina. The two cases show how resettlement affects the sense of belonging and of cohesion of low-income classes by uprooting the founding element of the everyday life: the house. The uncertainty about the possibility to keep their own home deeply conditions the implicit social pact with the monarchy apparatus, and may represent one of the conditions that are undermining the allegiance to the monarchy itself.

Implementing the Refugee Resettlement Process: Diverging Objectives, Interdependencies and Power Relations

Refugee resettlement is implemented by many different national and international stakeholders who operate in different locations and on the basis of sometimes diverging objectives. The implementation of the resettlement process has thus been characterized as multi-level governance, with resettlement stakeholders coordinating and negotiating the selection of refugees for resettlement. Still, literature on the implementation of refugee resettlement has remained very limited and has mainly focused on one specific stakeholder or stage of the process. In addition, a common conceptualization of the different stages is currently missing in academic literature. To address this research gap, the article proposes a common terminology of all stages of the resettlement process. Highlighting the diversity of resettlement programs, the article relies on a comparative case study of the German resettlement and humanitarian admission programs from Jordan and Turkey. By drawing on the concept of multi-level governance, the article examines diverging objectives and interdependencies between resettlement stakeholders, such as UNHCR and resettlement countries. As a result, the article argues that the increasing emphasis on national selection criteria by resettlement countries, including Germany, puts resettlement countries even more in the center of decision-making authority–in contrast to a diffusion of power that characterizes multi-level governance.

SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF PEOPLE FROM THE IMMIGRANT RUSSIAN ENVIRONMENT IN GERMANY: THE EXAMPLE OF BERLIN

Researchers are increasingly interested in how migrants perceive themselves in a new environment for them, but issues of identity and belonging are becoming more complex in a modern pluralistic society. Germany is a special case as the government has implemented several resettlement programs, thus singling out certain groups on its own. The article examines how Russian-speaking immigrants in Berlin identify themselves and whether their self-identification is influenced by the presence of programs that provide various conditions for inclusion in German society.The main results showed a variety of types of self-identification. However, there was no strong impact of the programs. A sufficiently high importance of the social circle, citizenship, and, most importantly, the urban environment for building a model of self-identification was revealed.

Selective Protection in Turkey

By analyzing the case of Turkey as a refugee-receiving country, chapter 5 allows a comparison with the more typical Egyptian case laid out in chapter 4. One of only a handful of countries that retains a geographical limitation to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Turkey has experienced several mass refugee influxes and boasts one of the largest refugee resettlement programs. The conventional wisdom in this “extreme” case emphasizes a dichotomy between European and non-European refugees. This chapter establishes that Turkish policies are more nuanced than this conventional wisdom expects. Once again, it draws on a range of sources to examine how Turkey responded to Bulgarians, Iraqis, Iranians, refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and refugees from Soviet and post-Soviet states. This analysis reveals that even seemingly general policies that exist on the books were applied selectively, a pattern that betrays the influence of foreign policy and ethnic politics on Turkey’s asylum policies.

Federal program of resettlement from the Far North regions

This article examines the main aspects of social partnership between government and business in order to support the social stability of the northern regions of Russia. The main provisions of federal resettlement programs from the Far North regions are considered.