How do African states respond to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees? This book answers this question by drawing on recent case studies and examining the politics behind refugee policy in Africa. The implications of this approach are important not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of refugee protection.
How do African states respond to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees? This book answers this question by drawing on recent case studies and examining the politics behind refugee policy in Africa. The implications of this approach are important not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of refugee protection.
This book discusses African migration and the refugee crisis. Economic, political and social tension in the Middle East and in many parts of the Global South has induced historic mass migration across national and international borders. The situation is especially dire in Africa, where a sizable number of Africans have chosen or have been forced to leave their countries of origin for Europe and North America. Written by an international team of scholars, this edited book traces the refugee crisis around the world, telling the necessary story of forced migration, intentional exclusion, and human insecurity from an Afrocentric lens. The volume is divided into three sections. Section I places African migration within the broader contexts of international history, law, economics, and policy. Section II discusses cases of African migration to Europe, Latin America, and the Mediterranean. Section III considers negative consequences of mass African migration, including the restriction and criminalization of migration, post-traumatic stress disorder, and gender-based violence. A compelling account of risk, resilience, and global power dynamics, this volume will be useful to students and researchers interested in African studies, migration, peace and conflict studies, and policy as well as professionals, practitioners, NGOs, IGOs, governmental and humanitarian organizations.
The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ represents one of the biggest contemporary political and social challenges. Although many African countries have been dealing with forced migratory and refugee movements for decades, their experiences have so far largely been neglected in the predominantly Eurocentric public debate. The present volume aims to bridge this gap by providing comparative African and European perspectives from different disciplines, highlighting the challenges but also potential mutual benefits of social diversification, and offering an insight into possible solution strategies.
First published in 1999, this volume is an attempt to make the facts of the tremendous physical, social and psychological problems for the uprooted due to the numerous conflicts known to all and to stress the need for a concerted effort by all to achieve lasting peace on the continent. Ebenezer Q. Blavo had substantial opportunity to observe first hand and be in close contact with refugees of almost all African nationalities. He explores concepts and experiences of being refugees as well as current and potential refugee policies for African countries. This book forms part of a series on voices in development management, in which grass roots organisations and development practitioners can voice their views and present their perspectives along with the conventional development experts. Many of the volumes in the series will contain explicit debates between the various voices in development and permit the suite of neglected development issues such as gender and transport or the microcredit needs of low income communities to receive appropriate public and professional attention.
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.
This book discusses the phenomena of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) across several African countries. There are 40 million IDP worldwide; of these, an estimated 12.6 million are in 37 of Africa’s 55 countries. Written by a team of fifteen scholars across four continents, this book uses both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze the causes and consequences of this displacement, the role of the state in creating and mitigating these situations, and potential policy solutions. The volume is divided into three sections. Chapters in Section 1 discuss the causes of displacement. Chapters in Section 2 discuss refugees in their regional context. Chapters in Section 3 discuss IDP camps in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana. Bringing scholarly analysis to address two humanitarian crises, this book will be useful to students and researchers interested in African politics, forced migration, and policy as well as members of the diplomatic corps, governmental, and non-governmental organizations actively working towards solving these challenges.
This volume sheds new light on the refugees and forced migration at the Horn of Africa and East Africa. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, it traces historical, structural, and geopolitical factors to reveal the often brutal uprooting of people in a region that hosts more than three million refugees and almost six million internally displaced persons (IDPs). By doing so, it enriches our understanding of the socio-economic, geopolitical and humanitarian causes and implications of migration and population displacement. The book is divided into five parts, focusing on different drivers of involuntary displacement and people’s uprooting: The first part covers geopolitical conflicts rooted partly in the colonial and Cold War geographies. The second part then focuses on security aspects and conflicts, while the third looks at encampment and refugee policies as well as refugee agencies. Part four highlights issues of forced repatriation and human trafficking. Lastly, part five analyzes the dynamics of refugee camps.
Ludger Pries explores the important moral, social and political challenge facing Europe and the international community: the protection of refugees as one of the most vulnerable groups on the planet.
