The space of camps (original) (raw)
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What Is a Refugee Camp? Explorations of the Limits and Effects of the Camp
On a global scale, millions of refugees are contained in camps of one sort or another. This special issue and this introductory article explore what characterizes a camp and how camps affect the lives of those who are placed in them. It argues that the camp is an exceptional space that is put in place to deal with populations that disturb the national order of things. While being exceptional, the camp does not, however, produce bare life in an Agambenian sense. Life goes on in camps— albeit a life that is affected by the camp. Camps are defined along two dimensions: spatially and temporally. Spatially, camps always have boundaries, while in practice refugees and locals cross these boundaries for trade, employment, etc. Temporally, refugee camps are meant to be temporary, while in practice this temporariness may become permanent. The article proposes that camps may be explored along three dimensions. First, analyses of refugee camps must be attentive to the fact that a camp is at once a place of social dissolution and a place of new beginnings where sociality is remoulded in new ways. Second, we must explore the precarity of life in the camp by exploring relations to the future in this temporary space. Finally, the depoliticization of life that takes place in refugee camps due to humanitarian government, paradoxically also produces a hyperpoliticized space where nothing is taken for granted and everything is contested.
Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2010
This article outlines the debate over extraterritorial processing in the European Union (EU) from the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) to the Treaty of Lisbon (2009). It will briefly outline the historical precedents, the evolution of policy within the EU, and the role of other models (Australian, American, etc.). This article emphasizes the contested understandings of how these zones might be manifested in practice. It uses evidence from the political history and policy-making of the EU to question Giorgio Agamben's concept of the state of exception. In fact, the promotion of extraterritorial zones was not merely sold as necessary, if unfortunate, choices. Likewise, the more sinister interpretation of these zones as a regression from the Liberal State to the universe of camps failed accurately to capture what was happening in reality. Firstly, supranational extraterritorial processing was beyond the constitutional or political capacity of the EU. Secondly, at times, the unintended consequences might have led to a liberalization of so-called " Fortress Europe" and caused certain politicians to become disenchanted precisely because the proposed form of extraterritorial processing threatened to institute a rigorous form of burden sharing.
This article presents the results of an empirical research carried out within Italian reception centres for asylum seekers. The article shows how reception centres can become a trap from which asylum seekers are no longer able to escape as they become victims of a process of social disempowerment making them dependent on the “humanitarian government.” This reproduction of dependence enables the reception system to carry out a subtle social control function, achieving the effect of confining asylum seekers within a concentrated place that can easily be controlled by the police. But this form of control is exercised even though the law does not provide any explicitly repressive means for keeping them under surveillance. So-called reception centres exert a centripetal force which is hard to resist, and which in a sense has an ability to trap asylum seekers more than any wall. The Italian reception system amounts to a form of “humanitarian confinement,” in that provides hospitality for asylum seekers, while subjecting them to a form of control enacted through humanitarian agents.
To Define a Refugee: Clarifications of the Term That Escapes Definition
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES, JOURNAL OF TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, 2010
The concept of refugee lacks a generally accepted definition both in international law and political science literature. Some authors view refugees as only a contemporary phenomenon, but the existence of norms regulating asylum in Ancient Greece or medieval Europe suggests otherwise. Even if the definition of ‘asylum’ is tied to that of ‘refugee’, they are different concepts. A refugee is a real person; to define a refugee is to establish a category that describes the common aspects of a certain way of movement; to define asylum is to establish the normative regulation regarding this movement.
The Realities of a New Asylum Paradigm
2005
In recent years, forced migration scholars have begun to ask whether we are seeing the emergence of a New Asylum Paradigm around the current (or resurgent) debate on 'in-region asylum processing', 'regional protection zones' and 'transit processing centres'. Although similar ideas have been around in various forms for some time, there appears currently to be a convergence of thinking, seen in debates within the EU, the UNHCR's Convention Plus, the British government's proposal on 'new' approaches to asylum seekers and related proposals from the German and Italian governments. This article looks briefly at the discussions around processing centres, which seem to have focussed attention on whether a New Asylum Paradigm is emerging, and to explore developments on the ground, asking to what extent alleged novelties constitute a new, or a single, paradigm. We suggest that although there are apparently competing, conflicting and contradictory propos...
The Notion of Refugee. Definition and Distinctions
Europe has been recently shaken by the great number of persons coming from Syria and neighbouring countries which were calling themselves "refugees". According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, since 2015 more than 1 million refugees travelled to Greece. This paper aims to analyze the notion of "refugees" in light of international legal instruments applicable and to draw up distinctions between different categories of migrant persons and those who are really refugees and may apply for international protection under the 1951 UN Convention on refugees. The distinction regarding the use of terms is relevant for shaping the legal status of different persons who leave their country of origin.
Displace the Definition of Refugee: Reforming Refugee Regime
We must redefine the norms and understandings of all refugees in the 21st century. The definition a refugee needs to be broadened and non-refoulment needs to be strengthened. Under the current refugee regime definitions, there are numerous groups that can be excluded from asylum. Regarding non-refoulment, nations have turned to containment, often external to national borders, to confine refugees versus resettlement to new homes. Refugees who are denied refugee status under the current criteria, and therefore are barred from help, will still seek refuge away from their home. Containment facilities act as a gravity pit of exclusion that possibly strips refugees of many basic human rights. These problems are manifested in refugee containment, illegal smuggling, and a rise in fear-based border control rhetoric. Increased refugee numbers can come about progressively and humanely, or it can come about with increased divisiveness. Either way, displaced migration will continue to be pervasive with events both natural and man-made.
Alternatives to detention of asylum seekers and refugees
2006
The research was primarily conducted between September-November 2003, with further work undertaken to update its contents as of 31 March 2004. Additionally, Alice Edwards contributed to the research and writing of Part II on applicable legal standards and provided editorial guidance on the study as a whole. The study could not have been produced without the extensive and generous assistance of numerous nongovernmental organisations and of staff in UNHCR Offices responsible for the thirty-four States surveyed. The author wishes to express her gratitude to all these contributors, and in particular to Brenda Goddard at UNHCR for her assistance in facilitating the research. Nonetheless, the opinions, conclusions and any errors contained in the study belong to the author alone. Except where a source is specifically cited, the views expressed in this paper are not necessarily shared by UNHCR. Ophelia Field April 2006 2 UNHCR Revised Guidelines on Applicable Criteria and Standards Relating to the Detention of Asylum Seekers, February 1999 (henceforth, 'UNHCR Guidelines on Detention'). Based on UNHCR Executive Committee (ExCom) Conclusion No. 44 (XXXVII)-1986 on the detention of refugees and asylum seekers (henceforth "ExCom Conclusion No. 44 (1986)). 3 'Asylum seeker' here refers to any person whose claim to asylum is being considered either individually or on a group basis under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, regional instrument, or other national law. The term should in theory include all persons who are awaiting final adjudication of their appeals. This being said, national laws, statistics or practices will sometimes categorise such persons prematurely as 'rejected' or 'failed' cases. Asylum seekers whose claims to international protection have been rejected ('failed asylum seekers') are included within the parameters of this study in part due to this 'grey area', and in part because the issue of ensuring availability for removal impacts upon the treatment of asylum seekers who are still awaiting decisions. Where asylum seekers have been found neither to qualify for refugee status on the basis of criteria laid down in the 1951 Convention, nor to be in need of international protection in accordance with other international obligations or national law, following due consideration of their claims in a fair procedure, or wherever such persons are mentioned in a normative context, they are referred to as 'persons found not to be in need of international protection' (in the terminology of UNHCR ExCom Conclusion No. 96 (LIV)-2003 on the Return of Persons Found not to be in Need of International Protection (henceforth "ExCom Conclusion No. 96 (2003)). This study also looks at the treatment of refugees recognised on either an individual or prima facie basis where they may experience unnecessary or arbitrary detention or alternative restrictions upon their freedom of movement, alongside asylum seekers 4 See, for example, Resolution of the UN Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights regarding detention of asylum seekers, 2000/21; The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recommendation that 'alternative and non-custodial measures, such as reporting requirements, should always be considered before resorting to detention.' E/CN.4/1999/63/Add.3. See also Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
2020
Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for Exile Research (öge) in cooperation with the Department for Contemporary History (University of Vienna) and the research network “Migration, Citizenship and Belonging” (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna) 2-4 December 2020, Vienna online The conference aims to facilitate an extensive engagement with the organized, state-led, and forced placement of refugees in both the past and present. The emphasis will be on a comparative perspective – synchronic as well as diachronic. One of the key aims of the conference is to make visible the parallels and differences between the practices and types of internment in different countries – while considering the specific historical contexts. Another important focus will be the nexus of relationships and agencies which constitute the camps in question as transitory spaces. The contributions consist of analyses of local phenomena or case studies as well as comparative engagements from an international or historical perspective. Committee: Gabriele Anderl (öge), Linda Erker (Department of Contemporary History/University of Vienna), Kerstin von Lingen (Department of Contemporary History/University of Vienna), Christoph Reinprecht (öge & Department of Sociology/University of Vienna), Nora Walch (öge)
Detention of asylum seekers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy
Criminal Justice, 2005
Although criminologists in the US and Europe continue to explore issues of immigration, race, and ethnicity in the context of crime, they have yet to examine the detention of asylum seekers. Still, this is a social phenomenon that requires serious consideration since in many instances such policies and practices violate international standards for the protection of refugees. This work takes a critical look at the detention of persons fleeing persecution by situating it an expanding culture of control stoked by the criminology of the other. The article offers evidence of a steady increase in the reliance on detention of asylum seekers in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy. Indications of a conservative shift in criminological thought affecting crime—and asylum—policy are addressed alongside concerns for human rights in a post-September 11 world.