Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics

Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics

Author: Ato Kwamena Onoma

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-10-07

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1107276861

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Using comparative cases from Guinea, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, this study explains why some refugee-hosting communities launch large-scale attacks on civilian refugees whereas others refrain from such attacks even when encouraged to do so by state officials. Ato Kwamena Onoma argues that such outbreaks only happen when states instigate them because of links between a few refugees and opposition groups. Locals embrace these attacks when refugees are settled in areas that privilege residence over indigeneity in the distribution of rights, ensuring that they live autonomously of local elites. The resulting opacity of their lives leads locals to buy into their demonization by the state. Locals do not buy into state denunciation of refugees in areas that privilege indigeneity over residence in the distribution of rights because refugees in such areas are subjugated to locals who come to know them very well. Onoma reorients the study of refugees back to a focus on the disempowered civilian refugees that constitute the majority of refugees even in cases of severe refugee militarization.


Difficult Life in a Refugee Camp

Difficult Life in a Refugee Camp

Author: Ulrike Krause

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-07-22

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1108830080

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Offering nuanced insights into violence, humanitarian protection, gender relations, and coping of refugees in a Ugandan refugee camp, this book shows how risks prevail for refugees despite and partly due to their settlement in the camp and the system established to protect them, and hones in on the strategies used by people to protect themselves.


The Color of Asylum

The Color of Asylum

Author: Katherine Jensen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2023-09-05

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0226828441

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"In 2013, the world watched as Syrians desperate to escape a brutal war fled the country. Brazil took the remarkable step of instituting an open-door policy to all Syrian refugees. Why did Brazil-in contrast to much of the international community-offer asylum to any Syrian who would come? And how do Syrians differ from other refugee populations seeking status in Brazil, and why? In The Color of Asylum, Katherine Jensen provides an ethnographic look at the process of asylum seeking in Brazil, uncovering the different ways asylum seekers are treated and the racial logics behind their treatment. She focuses on two of the largest and most successful groups of asylum seekers: Syrian and Congolese refugees. While they obtain asylum status in Brazil at roughly equivalent rates, their journey to that status could not be more different. While Syrians travel to Brazil on visas and in airplanes, most Congolese refugees reach Brazil as stowaways on ships. Congolese migrants wait in long lines in unbearable heat to see immigration officials, while Syrians go through an expedited process. And while Syrian migrants reported a relaxed and comfortable environment while meeting with immigration officials, Congolese migrants were met with distrust and suspicion as they recounted the harrowing and traumatic stories of life in their home country. As Jensen shows, Syrians are treated so differently from other asylum seekers because the Brazilian state recognizes them as white. This dates back to Brazilian immigration policy that followed the abolition of slavery. Eager to "whiten" its population, Brazil welcomed a first wave of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants-a precedent that would affect the nation's policy toward Syrian refugees in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, anti-black racism shapes the experiences of Congolese and other African refugees and entrenches racial inequalities-even among those deemed worthy of safe haven. Jensen's comparative study arrives at an unexpected conclusion, however: even when migrants do obtain asylum status, Jensen finds that their lives remain largely unchanged, marked by struggle and discrimination"--


In This Land of Plenty

In This Land of Plenty

Author: Benjamin Talton

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0812251474

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On August 7, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland departed on a flight from Addis Ababa, with his thirteen-member delegation of Ethiopian and American relief workers and policy analysts, bound for Ethiopia's border with Sudan. This was Leland's seventh official humanitarian mission in his nearly decade-long drive to transform U.S. policies toward Africa to conform to his black internationalist vision of global cooperation, antiracism, and freedom from hunger. Leland's flight never arrived at its destination. The plane crashed, with no survivors. When Leland embarked on that delegation, he was a forty-four-year-old, deeply charismatic, fiercely compassionate, black, radical American. He was also an elected Democratic representative of Houston's largely African American and Latino Eighteenth Congressional District. Above all, he was a self-proclaimed "citizen of humanity." Throughout the 1980s, Leland and a small group of former radical-activist African American colleagues inside and outside Congress exerted outsized influence to elevate Africa's significance in American foreign affairs and to move the United States from its Cold War orientation toward a foreign policy devoted to humanitarianism, antiracism, and moral leadership. Their internationalism defined a new era of black political engagement with Africa. In This Land of Plenty presents Leland as the embodiment of larger currents in African American politics at the end of the twentieth century. But a sober look at his aspirations shows the successes and shortcomings of domestic radicalism and aspirations of politically neutral humanitarianism during the 1980s, and the extent to which the decade was a major turning point in U.S. relations with the African continent. Exploring the links between political activism, electoral politics, and international affairs, Benjamin Talton not only details Leland's political career but also examines African Americans' successes and failures in influencing U.S. foreign policy toward African and other Global South countries.


The Economic Impact of Conflicts and the Refugee Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa

The Economic Impact of Conflicts and the Refugee Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Mr.Bjoern Rother

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 1475535783

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In recent decades, the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has experienced more frequent and severe conflicts than in any other region of the world, exacting a devastating human toll. The region now faces unprecedented challenges, including the emergence of violent non-state actors, significant destruction, and a refugee crisis bigger than any since World War II. This paper raises awareness of the economic costs of conflicts on the countries directly involved and on their neighbors. It argues that appropriate macroeconomic policies can help mitigate the impact of conflicts in the short term, and that fostering higher and more inclusive growth can help address some of the root causes of conflicts over the long term. The paper also highlights the crucial role of external partners, including the IMF, in helping MENA countries tackle these challenges.


Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1890 to 1979

Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1890 to 1979

Author: Ogenga Otunnu

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-26

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 3319331566

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This book demonstrates that societies experiencing prolonged and severe crises of legitimacy are prone to intense and persistent political violence. The most significant factor accounting for the persistence of intense political violence in Uganda is the severe crisis of legitimacy of the state, its institutions, political incumbents and their challengers. This crisis of legitimacy, which is shaped by both internal and external forces, past and present, accounts for the remarkable continuity in the history of political violence since the construction of the state.


Africans in Exile

Africans in Exile

Author: Benjamin N. Lawrance

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2018-09-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780253038074

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The enforced removal of individuals has long been a political tool used by African states to create generations of asylum seekers, refugees, and fugitives. Historians often present such political exile as a potentially transformative experience for resilient individuals, but this reading singles the exile out as having an exceptional experience. This collection seeks to broaden that understanding within the global political landscape by considering the complexity of the experience of exile and the lasting effects it has had on African peoples. The works collected in this volume seek to recover the diversity of exile experiences across the continent. This corpus of testimonials and documents is presented as an "archive" that provides evidence of a larger, shared experience of persecution and violence. This consideration reads exiles from African colonies and nations as active participants within, rather than simply as victims of, the larger global diaspora. In this way, exile is understood as a way of asserting political dissidence and anti-imperial strategies. Broken into three distinct parts, the volume considers legal issues, geography as a strategy of anticolonial resistance, and memory and performative understandings of exile. The experiences of political exile are presented as fundamental to an understanding of colonial and postcolonial oppression and the history of state power in Africa.


Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis

Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis

Author: Gil Loescher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1996-08-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0195356071

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With more than 18 million refugees worldwide, the refugee problem has fostered an intense debate regarding what political changes are necessary in the international system to provide effective solutions in the 1990s and beyond. In the past, refugees have been perceived largely as a problem of international charity, but as the end of the Cold War triggers new refugee movements across the globe, governments are being forced to develop a more systematic approach to the refugee problem. Beyond Charity provides the first extensive overview of the world refugee crisis today, asserting that refugees raise not only humanitarian concerns but also issues of international peace and security. Gil Loescher argues persuasively that a central challenge in the post Cold-War era is to develop a comprehensive refugee policy that preserves the right of asylum while promoting greater political and diplomatic efforts to address the causes of flight. He presents the contemporary crisis in a historical framework and explores the changing role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Loescher suggests short-term and long-term reforms that address both the current refugee crisis and its underlying causes. The book also details the ways governmental structures and international organizations could be strengthened to assume more effective assistance, protection, and political mediation functions. Beyond Charity helps frame the debate on the global refugee crisis and offers directions for more effective approaches to refugee problems at present and in the future.


The Black Mediterranean

The Black Mediterranean

Author: Gabriele Proglio

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-04-28

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3030513912

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This edited volume aims to problematise and rethink the contemporary European migrant crisis in the Central Mediterranean through the lens of the Black Mediterranean. Bringing together scholars working in geography, political theory, sociology, and cultural studies, this volume takes the Black Mediterranean as a starting point for asking and answering a set of crucial questions about the racialized production of borders, bodies, and citizenship in contemporary Europe: what is the role of borders in controlling migrant flows from North Africa and the Middle East?; what is the place for black bodies in the Central Mediterranean context?; what is the relevance of the citizenship in reconsidering black subjectivities in Europe? The volume will be divided into three parts. After the introduction, which will provide an overview of the theoretical framework and the individual contributions, Part I focuses on the problem of borders, Part II features essays focused on the body, and Part III is dedicated to citizenship.


Casualties of Care

Casualties of Care

Author: Miriam I. Ticktin

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-07-30

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0520269047

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"Casualties of Care is a well crafted, intelligent and carefully argued study of the social and policy effects of a seemingly benevolent set of 'humanitarian practices' used in the French immigration and asylum processes. One of the leading anthropologists of humanitarianism, Miriam Ticktin is well placed to write this definitive study, having undertaken nearly ten years of thorough ethnographic research in France. Her research findings draw from ethnographic interviews and participant observation as well as broader, more structural data on the movement of foreign labor within the French economy." --Richard Ashby Wilson, Gladstein Chair of Human Rights, University of Connecticut "Ticktin cuts to the heart of contemporary concerns, speaking provocatively and incisively about humanitarianism and security through the topic of immigration." --Peter Redfield, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill