Refugee Research Online

"Preserving human capital in countries affected by forced migration therefore necessitates a two-pronged strategy. Firstly, displaced persons should have access to HE through national enrolment and complementary educational pathways in host and third countries, as well as connected higher education, regardless of their place of residence. This is in line with the 15by30 international humanitarian educational strategy. In addition to the mutual economic, social, and legal benefits for both host countries and displaced persons, HE would produce future leaders and peace-builders originally from conflict-torn or post-conflict countries. Secondly, HEi should provide their partnership, collaboration, knowledge, expertise, and financial and technical assistance to academic institutions in conflict zones and to those forcibly displaced, to help rebuild affected countries".

How can we preserve the human capital of countries affected by forced migration? - Refugee Research Online Universities and other higher education institutions (HEi) not only provide highly-skilled workforce, but they also produce human capital that is crucial for the political, economic, social, and cultural future of every country. Forced migration has had devastating effects on national higher educati...

"The Rwanda Plan and the Illegal Migration Act would add deportation as a major pillar of the UK asylum system, alongside dispersal and denial. Keir Starmer’s announcement has put this in check to some extent, but the antagonistic system is deep and embedded. The Rwanda Plan may be ‘dead and buried’ but the cruelty of the asylum system is very much alive."

New UK Government Rescinds ‘Rwanda Plan’ But Cruel System Remains - Refugee Research Online After their landslide victory in the 2024 UK General Election, one of the first policy announcements from the Labour government was to drop proposals to deport people seeking asylum who had entered the country without authorisation to Rwanda. In his first news conference as Prime Minister, Keir Star...

"Our research is showing that more attention is needed to children, to build child-centred responses so that they and their families can be supported to rebuild their lives in Australia and ensure that no child is left behind. This can only be achieved when we truly listen to children and hear directly about their unique experiences."

Listening to child refugees and asylum seekers in Australia-what matters most - Refugee Research Online Background In 1992, Australia adopted a policy of mandatory detention of people arriving in the country without a valid visa. This policy was targeted towards asylum seekers, and over time policies became increasingly punitive with the aim of deterring people from arriving through channels described...

"While the US Government does not allow the resettlement agencies to spend government dollars on religious activities – these Christian charities still find ways to get away with it by incorporating religion and their specific beliefs in their organisational activities – i.e praying before meetings and events or asking unaccompanied minors if they attend church. Instead, the government should focus more of its efforts on supporting Ethnic Community-Based Organisations (ECBO) which would eliminate the evangelisation that faith-based organisations commit. Ethnic Community-Based Organisations (ECBOs) are community-based organisations comprised primarily of refugees, for the specific purpose of assisting other refugees".

The Dominance of Christian Charities in US Refugee Resettlement - Refugee Research Online “Do you believe in a God?” This is one of the first questions that was asked of me in 2021 when I was offered a job at a Christian refugee resettlement agency. Once hired, I was required to sign a statement of faith, which is written as the Apostle’s Creed. If this is required for

"Myanmar will require the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms to enable the Rohingya to return and live in harmony with their brethren in Myanmar. A truth and reconciliation commission like the one in South Africa or the Rwandan post-conflict judicial system will be essential. In a nation where people cast doubt on the Rohingya’s very identities, truth is a necessary antidote to the poison of hatred that has consumed the country."

Post-Coup Human Rights for the Rohingya: Paving A Path Forward - Refugee Research Online In early 2021, the military in Myanmar – the Tatmadaw – seized power in a coup d'état. Its actions, on the one hand, mean ill for the Rohingya ethnic group, which has long faced persecution in the country. On the other hand, its power grab may have inadvertently united several ethnic groups aga...

The Greater Manchester Migrant Destitution Fund offers no-strings-attached cash support to people made destitute by the UK's immigration system and hostile policy environment towards asylum seekers and refugees.

"The fund’s cash grants provide a crucial lifeline – promoting wellbeing, reducing dependency on others, and offering a measure of hope, freedom and dignity. We do not stipulate what the grants are spent on, and do not require recipients to account for them, but feedback suggests that they go towards fresh, culturally appropriate food; phone credit for keeping in touch with loved ones in the UK and in country of origin; travel expenses to crucial medical or legal appointments; and contributions to hosts’ household expenses".

Read below for more details and how to support the Greater Manchester Migrant Destitution Fund.

The Greater Manchester Migrant Destitution Fund: Promoting Dignity amidst the Hostile Environment - Refugee Research Online The Greater Manchester Migrant Destitution Fund supports people who are forced into destitution by their immigration status with cash grants of £80 per month. The largest group of people applying to the fund are people who have been refused asylum. For such people, who may have been wrongly refused...

"The book’s first person whole-of-life accounts go beyond the refugee experience, and include much about family and upbringing, religion and politics. A purging of emotions by the voiceless and suffering is to be expected, which makes for uncomfortable reading — of deaths, interpersonal conflicts and intense suffering, the buildup to the wars and oppression they fled from, the dangerous and unknown routes of escape, the casual violence and abuse of power by people smugglers and authorities — and much of this occurs after they arrive in Samos."

Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, Helen Benedict & Eyad Awwadawnan - Refugee Research Online Footnote Press, 2022, 328 pages Helen Benedict is a well-known journalist, academic, novelist and non-fiction writer, often writing on themes of war and violence against women. She and her Syrian co-author and translator Eyad Awwadawnan focus here on the stories of five refugees — painfully traver...

"This is a book which starts with a tragic personal story but provides much “warts and all” reportage from many participants in the refugee “capture and storage” system, and how the criminal justice system, in one case, deals with these personal specifics in its conclusions and reasoning. To her credit, the author does not suggest a neat answer to how much of Osman’s motive was due to mental illness, personal traits, his resentment, and feelings of inferiority towards his friend Ahmed, or a consequence of the wider difficulties he had in Afghanistan or in Australian detention".

Book Review: The World is not Big Enough - Refugee Research Online Vanessa Russell, Hardie Grant Books, 2021 With some nervousness, this refugee supporter took the plunge in 2001 and did what many others have boldly attempted: to contact a refugee stuck inside the Australian detention system and try to improve their life. The suggestion from the Melbourne-based Ref...

"In the affirmative asylum interview context, the freedom to impart information is particularly salient because asylum seekers are required by law to credibly corroborate past or future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Without the assistance of a competent interpreter, an applicant’s ability to accurately convey their experiences greatly diminishes. Moreover, mistranslations and miscommunications could invite an Asylum Officer to make a negative credibility finding, which could prolong the affirmative process and/or launch the applicant into high-stakes removal proceedings."

Freedom of expression at risk as US agency ends COVID-era interpretation services - Refugee Research Online Introduction In a move that has caused much anger and confusion, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is no longer providing free interpretation services for asylum seekers. Since September 2020, USCIS provided applicants with its own telephonic interpretation services in 4...

"It’s an attractive book due to its extensive illustrative content of maps, photos, sculpture, art and epigrams, and may be derided as a coffee table book. Yet its importance is as an authoritative and accessible introduction for most lay audiences, both young and adult, who seek an alternative to the long and detailed texts aimed at academic and specialist readers – surely a major contribution in this period of much toxic nativism and racism".

Book Review: Migrations – a history of where we all come from - Refugee Research Online Dorling Kindersley, a Penguin Random House Company, London, 2022, 287 pages Dorling Kindersley, the education and lifestyle publisher, has assembled a dozen contributors with relevant backgrounds to compile this attractive and comprehensive, albeit concise, survey of world migration history. It incl...

"My main learning from these interactions was that the Tibetan youth had faced very hard circumstances as most had crossed borders in very precarious conditions accompanied by agents and often without their parents. Their first stop was mostly Nepal where they spent a few weeks to a few months before finally embarking to India where they first arrived in Dharamshala. In Dharamshala, they were admitted to residential schools where they were taken care of by adult care-takers and grew up along with other young Tibetan children who had been separated from their parents at a young age of below 10 years. The striking thing I found among the youth I interviewed was that they were strongly embedded in their religious and cultural identity which provided them an emotional anchoring".

Researching Tibetan youth in Delhi - Refugee Research Online By Kanchan Gandhi, Jessica James, Kanchandeep, Katyayni Mishra, Rohit Raj This blog post is collaboratively written by Dr Kanchan Gandhi and her students from the urban studies program at Dr B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. The voice of each author is identified by their names preceding their writin...

"Hayden doesn’t shirk in her reports on a number of Libyan centres, and the situations in Sierra Leone and West Africa, where returnees originally from those countries were sent back. Much of her commentary is critical of the UN agencies and international NGOs for their sanitised reports and low expectations of the EU’s use of funds to prevent departures; MSF (Medecin Sans Frontiere".

Book Review: “My Fourth Time, We Drowned: seeking refuge on the world’s deadliest migration route” by Sally Hayden - Refugee Research Online Hayden, S "My Fourth Time, We Drowned: seeking refuge on the world’s deadliest migration route” 4th Estate, an imprint of Harper Collins, 2022, 480 pages Sally Hayden is a young and energetic freelance journalist, who travelled frequently all over Europe and North Africa in the three years from ...

'In the face of the increasingly inhospitable climate in Central and Southern America, Humanitarian Parole also has the potential to play a key role in the future of American (and international) immigration policy'.

Expanding Humanitarian Parole - Refugee Research Online In January of 2023, the Biden Administration formally announced its new approach to border enforcement and immigration policy. Facing the inevitable end of Title 42, the White House issued both a carrot and a stick: the expansion of legal pathways to enter the United States at its southern border, a...

Call for Papers.

Submissions are now open for the ASB-UNHCR Research Workshop on Refugee Studies and Forced Migration.

The ASB-UNHCR Research Workshop on Refugee Studies and Forced Displacement 2023 - Refugee Research Online The ASB-UNHCR Research Workshop on Refugee Studies and Forced Displacement 2023 will be held at the Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur on the 19th and 20th of June 2023. This third workshop, hosted in conjunction with World Refugee Day 2023, marks the return of the workshop after a three-year hia...

"Understanding the various mechanisms refugees undertake to ease the mourning process can have significant implications for refugees going through psychotherapy. As contemporary theories have demonstrated, the role of the environment and objects play an important role in their mourning process. This coupled with the fact that upon moving to a new country their lives are often riddled with instability and uncertainty, makes the psychotherapeutic setting even more important."

The Role of the Environment and Objects for Refugees and its Implications for Therapy: A Psychoanalytic Approach - Refugee Research Online “And as the sun sets in the West, You will shed a tear, Longing to be back in the East. Immigrant.” Nishant Akhtar (Akhtar, 1999, pp.20) This poignant quote delicately articulates the losses that migrants experience when leaving their home country. Being forced to leave one’s homeland entails ...

"The alternative perspective from the authors is that a deficit in context has occurred because the sovereign nation-state is accepted by the mainstream as the natural unit of analysis, with remedies centred on putting displaced people inside a state’s border and have them remain there. The movement of people across a border is seen as the trigger for concern, and elevates control as the objective (reflecting the priorities of authorities), with lesser attention to the immobilized others and IDPs (Internally Displaced People) who haven’t (yet) crossed. Displaced people will respond strategically to the various types of military/government/official power they face, both immediate and contingent, sometimes with decisions outside the expectations or advice of observers or official supporters. The lack of nuance inherent in UN reports of a “population of concern” does not explain why some people move in response to a threat, and some stay."

Book review: The Refugee System: a Sociological Approach – Rawan Arar and David Scott Fitzgerald - Refugee Research Online The Refugee System: a Sociological Approach, Rawan Arar and David Scott Fitzgerald, Polity Press, 2023, 316 pages US researchers Arar and Fitzgerald are promoting a sociological “systems approach” to refugee research as an alternative to what they call the prevailing “siloed” approach by law...

"The research results found that while most Rohingya girls have not completed school past grades 1-3 in formal education, they are eager for alternative avenues for learning (at home, with friends, or in community centres). Many girls have materials at home and study collectively, revealing their capacity and potential for education despite delivery disruptions or familial barriers".

Why Cultural Contextualization Matters: Books Unbound’s program with Rohingya girls in the world’s largest refugee camp - Refugee Research Online The Rohingya Crisis The Rohingya are an ethnic minority from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Like many other ethnic groups in Myanmar, they have been victims of religious persecution and genocide by the Burmese military. For years, the diaspora has grown as Rohingya flee to neighboring countries for safety....

"After taking shelter in no man’s land the Rohingya people were continuously threatened by the Myanmar authorities. Authorities claimed that the no man’s land area was within their territory and tried to push Rohingyas from the area. Various land mines were also planted by the Myanmar authorities along the border and also near the no man’s land area that created a dangerous situation. The Myanmar security forces even used loudspeakers to order the stranded Rohingyas to leave the area immediately and cross into Bangladesh."

https://refugeeresearchonline.org/the-rohingyas-in-no-mans-land-have-fled-to-bangladesh/

"In the absence of an Afghan Adjustment Act, Afghans living in America wake up every day uncertain of what their future holds, yet still go to work and school in hopes of building a successful new life. It is impossible for Afghan refugees to have their fundamental human rights fulfilled: the right to life, the right to work, and the right to an education, if there is no permanent structure in place that protects these rights."

A Call to Action: Pass the Afghan Adjustment Act - Refugee Research Online When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, a humanitarian crisis ensued that was 20 years in the making. We saw the shocking images that came out of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan citizens scrambled to flee the country, gripping onto American Boeing C-17s as they began their withdr...

"The author investigates the tricky context of volunteer support, discussing its personal and political dynamics. Is it best seen as emotionally gratifying charity by saviours to pitiful victims, a comfortable substitute for political action for change, and merely taking the rough extremities off an oppressive and violent system, all adding up to cooperation with an unjust system? For many, the original motivation for their goodness was simple and visceral: to just be there and offer to help. In practice, being directly and immediately exposed to suffering was transformative for many visitors, giving greater moral certainty about their cause, and an altered insight into how the world really works."

Book Review: Visiting Immigration Detention: care and cruelty in Australia’s asylum seeker prisons – Michelle Peterie - Refugee Research Online Refugee Research Online Editor Michelle Peterie, Bristol University Press, 2022, 176 pagesWith the UK and others competing to become the least attractive destination for refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by sea, the Australian approach of indefinite mandatory detention, offshore processing, and...

"No stone is left unturned by Aileen Crowe: her research extends from the ‘micro’ to the ’macro’ situation, examining the UN’s role, Australia’s racist White Australia and Indigenous past, and more broadly to integrate feminist, professional, academic and community activist perspectives. Crowe is inspired by feminist R K Bergen’s advocacy of “passionate scholarship” where “researchers are allied with those being studied, and work with great devotion to eliminate oppressive social structures”, listing many well-known Australian women who have been with her on the journey."

Book Review: Acts of Cruelty – Aileen Crowe - Refugee Research Online “Acts of Cruelty: Australia’s Immigration Laws and experiences of people seeking protection after arriving by plane”, Aileen Crowe, Palaver, an imprint of Ethica Projects Pty Ltd, 2022, 228 pages Franciscan nun Aileen Crowe PhD is one of Michelle Peterie’s visitors to Australian onshore dete...

A warm welcome to Phillipa Bellemore who has joined the Refugee Research Online editorial team!

https://refugeeresearchonline.org/hello-from-new-editor-phillipa-bellemore%ef%bf%bc/

Hello from new editor – Phillipa Bellemore - Refugee Research Online Hello, my name is Phillipa Bellemore, and I am excited to join the RRO team as an editor. I am a sociologist and my special area of interest is refugee and asylum seeker issues, particularly mentoring and volunteer welcome programs. Refugee mentoring In 2019 I completed my PhD thesis called ‘Refug...

"Refugees and things come together in all kinds of ways—sometimes out of necessity, other times out of convenience, and often, out of chance. Some of the items in the IOM bag, such as the Arizona Guide to Community Resources for Refugees, are purposefully given to refugees, like Zeljka’s family, as a source of information. They are intended to be shared and are often circulated across refugee networks. Others transform and alter the meaning and identity of both the documents and the family in possession of them. Neither the documents nor those holding them are exactly the same as they were before they were joined."

https://refugeeresearchonline.org/its-all-in-the-bag-refugees-and-materiality/

It’s All in the Bag: Refugees and Materiality - Refugee Research Online My grandmother made us chicken and made us sandwiches to take […] My mom was telling me that her, my aunt, was trying, you know, to make sure we had everything when we came there so she like bought a package of, of course, silverware and making sure we had it, and then she, Europeans

"Now the question is who is the main actor in the repatriation process of Rohingyas from Bangladesh: the Tatmadaw (the current Junta government) or the Arakan Army (the current Rakhine government)?"

https://refugeeresearchonline.org/rohingya-repatriation-various-actors-need-to-be-considered/

Rohingya repatriation: various actors need to be considered - Refugee Research Online Bangladesh is trying to resolve the burden of the Rohingya crisis by repatriating the Rohingyas to Myanmar who have been staying in Bangladesh for decades. Bangladesh has also agreed to the voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas without refoulement. After the crisis of...