This ground-breaking book focuses on the ‘forgotten refugees’, detailing people with disabilities who have crossed borders in search of protection from disaster or human conflict. The authors explore the intersection between one of the oldest international human rights treaties, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, with one of the newest: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Drawing on fieldwork in six countries hosting refugees in a variety of contexts – Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Uganda, Jordan and Turkey – the book examines how the CRPD is (or should) be changing the way that governments and aid agencies engage with and accommodate persons with disabilities in situations of displacement. The timeliness of the book is underscored by the adoption in mid-2016 of the UN Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action adopted at the World Humanitarian Summit.
Displaced. Forgotten. Having nowhere to go. A heart-breaking tales of persecution, forced migration, separation and exploitation. Anecdotes of courage, resilience, faith and hope. Behind all the complex academic discussions and sensational news in the media about wars and displacement, refugees are after all humans. Displaced and Forgotten: Memoirs of Refugees is hoped to bridge the gap between the majority population and this vulnerable group which is often misunderstood and misrepresented. Because the world needs to know about the refugees’ stories, their experiences and their struggles in search of a place called home.
This book examines the social and political mobilisation of religious communities towards forced displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. It analyses religious strategies in relation to tolerance and transitory environments as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the post-2011 Syrian crisis and the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea. How do religious actors and state bodies engage with refugees and migrants? What are the mechanisms of religious support towards forcibly displaced communities? The book argues that when states do not act as providers of human security, religious communities, as representatives of civil society and often closer to the grass roots level, can be well placed to serve populations in need. The book brings together scholars from across the region and provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which religious communities tackle humanitarian crises in contemporary Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
This engaging analysis of the refugee crisis explores how borders are formed, policed—and used to inflict violence on the poor. “In an era of terrorism, global inequality, and rising political tension over migration, Jones argues that tight border controls make the world worse, not better.” —Boston Globe Forty thousand people have died trying to cross between countries in the past decade, and yet international borders only continue to harden. The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union; the United States elected a president who campaigned on building a wall; while elsewhere, the popularity of right-wing antimigrant nationalist political parties is surging. Reece Jones argues that the West has helped bring about the deaths of countless migrants, as states attempt to contain populations and limit access to resources and opportunities. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.” In Violent Borders, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and the dire consequences for countless millions. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the ailing decolonized world, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality.
“Powerful and deeply moving personal stories about the physical and emotional toll one endures when forced out of one’s homeland.” —PBS Online In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. Though the refugee caps have been raised under President Biden, admissions so far have fallen short. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience. Featuring original essays by a collection of writers from around the world, The Displaced is an indictment of closing our doors, and a powerful look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of refuge. “One of the Ten Best Books of the Year.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Together, the stories share similar threads of loss and adjustment, of the confusion of identity, of wounds that heal and those that don’t, of the scars that remain.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Poignant and timely, these essays ask us to live with our eyes wide open during a time of geo-political crisis. Also, 10% of the cover price of the book will be donated annually to the International Rescue Committee, so I hope readers will help support this book and the vast range of voices that fill its pages.” —Electric Literature
Winner of the CILIP Amnesty Honour 2017. Shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017. Perfect for fans of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS. This is a beautiful, vivid and deeply moving story about a refugee boy who has spent his entire life living in a detention centre. This novel reminds us all of the importance of freedom, hope, and the power of a story to speak for anyone who's ever struggled to find a safe home. '...a special book' - Morris Gleitzman, author of the acclaimed ONCE series Born in a refugee camp, all Subhi knows of the world is that he's at least 19 fence diamonds high, the nice Jackets never stay long, and at night he dreams that the sea finds its way to his tent, bringing with it unusual treasures. And one day it brings him Jimmie. Carrying a notebook that she's unable to read and wearing a sparrow made out of bone around her neck - both talismans of her family's past and the mother she's lost - Jimmie strikes up an unlikely friendship with Subhi beyond the fence. As he reads aloud the tale of how Jimmie's family came to be, both children discover the importance of their own stories in writing their futures.
Armed conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, and the pandemic have forced over 117 million people to abandon their homes and heritage. Surging pushbacks, protection gaps, and deportations precipitate refugees' exclusion from equitable economic, social, cultural, political, and reproductive rights, amplifying suffering. As such, displaced communities will shoulder a silent epidemic of posttraumatic stress as well as other debilitating ailments, which are often passed down to future generations. Host nations to which refugees flee do not always associate their psychological well-being with future self-sufficiency and potential for contributions to society, and humanitarian organizations seldom prioritize improved mental health outcomes for refugees. The toll of failing to elevate the importance of refugee mental health is immense, at both individual and societal scales. Drawing on firsthand accounts and empirical research, as well as interviews with government officials, agency directors, and refugee camp managers, Displaced explores the psychological trauma of refugees, the complex interplay between trauma and integration into host nations, and the consequences of failing to attend to refugee mental health as part of comprehensive resettlement initiatives worldwide. Displaced utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate various aspects of refugee trauma, including gender-specific experiences of war; trauma transmission within conflict-affected families; the mental health ramifications of human cruelty such as political torture; local expressions of refugee resilience and illness in their countries of origin; and the role of stereotypes, social categories, and transatlantic networks in shaping refugee identity and resilience. Identifying key themes and resettlement processes of asylum frameworks in Germany, the US, the UK, and elsewhere, the book demonstrates how national policies can affect refugees' self-sufficiency and well-being in host societies, and the essential role of receiving nations in designing better opportunities for their access across vocational, educational, and social domains. Utilizing a systems-informed, evidence-based, and human-rights-oriented approach, Displaced also discusses trauma-informed treatments that may help improve refugee mental health outcomes and enhance inclusivity, along with prosperity for refugees and host nations alike.
Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the World War I. After Stalin's post-World War II redrawing of Poland's borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc's uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to the town being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated. Today, it exists only in ruins, with barely a hundred people living on the unstable ground above its collapsing mines. Springer catalogs the lost human elements: the long-departed tailor and deceased shopkeeper; the parties, now silenced, that used to fill the streets with shouts and laughter, and the once-beautiful cemetery, with gravestones upended by tractors and human bones scattered by dogs. In Miedzianka, Springer sees a microcosm of European history, and a powerful narrative of how the ghosts of the past continue to haunt us in the present--Provided by the publisher.
This book aims to develop global conversations around refuge. Through an interdisciplinary, transnational and historical set of chapters, the authors develop new theoretical frameworks for scholars working on the forced displacement of people around the world, including refugees, stateless persons, internally displaced persons and others.
&‘You approach family stories with caution and care, especially when a thing long forgotten is uncovered in the telling.'In this deft memoir, Richard Shaw unpacks a generations-old family story he was never told: that his ancestors once farmed land in Taranaki which had been confiscated from its owners and sold to his great-grandfather, who had been with the Armed Constabulary when it invaded Parihaka on 5 November 1881.Honest, and intertwined with an examination of Shaw's relationship with his father and of his family's Catholicism, this book's key focus is urgent: how, in a decolonizing world, Pakeha New Zealanders wrestle with, and own, the privilege of their colonial pasts.
