Books in the Forced Migration series

Palestinian children and young people living both within and outside of refugee camps in the Middle East are the focus of this book. For more than half a century these children and their caregivers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape that is the Middle East. These children have been captive to various sorts of stereotyping, both academic and popular. They have been objectified, much as their parents and grandparents, as passive victims without the benefit of international protection. And they have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development as well as the psycho-social approach to intervention. Giving voice to individual children, in the context of their households and their community, this book aims to move beyond the stereotypes and Western-based models to explore the impact that forced migration and prolonged conflict have had, and continue to have, on the lives of these refugee children.

In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Lozos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.

War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family's capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children's effective growth and well being. Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people's own accounts, this volume provides insights into children's experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young. Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of 'victim' and 'trauma.'

In this volume, eighteen scholars provide a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look beyond the statistics at the experiences of the women, men, girls, and boys who comprise the global migration flow, and at the highly gendered forces that frame and affect them.

The Myth of Self-Reliance provides valuable insights into refugees' experiences of repatriation to Liberia after protracted exile and their responses to the ending of refugee status for remaining refugees in Ghana.

For almost nine decades, since their mass-resettlement to the Levant in the wake of the Genocide and First World War, the Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria appear to have successfully maintained a distinct identity as an ethno-culturally diverse group, in spite of representing a small non-Arab and Christian minority within a very different, mostly Arab and Muslim environment. The author shows that, while in Lebanon the state has facilitated the development of an extensive and effective system of Armenian ethno-cultural preservation, in Syria the emergence of centralizing, authoritarian regimes in the 1950s and 1960s has severely damaged the autonomy and cultural diversity of the Armenian community. Since 1970, the coming to power of the Asad family has contributed to a partial recovery of Armenian ethno-cultural diversity, as the community seems to have developed some form of tacit arrangement with the regime. In Lebanon, on the other hand, the Armenian community suffered the consequences of the recurrent breakdown of the consociational arrangement that regulates public life. In both cases the survival of Armenian cultural distinctiveness seems to be connected, rather incidentally, with the continuing 'search for legitimacy' of the state.

A study focusing on Sri Lankan Tamils from the Jaffna Peninsula who, due to ethno-nationalist violence and repression, sought asylum in Switzerland. McDowell (research officer, refugee studies, U. of Oxford) bases his research on a combination of anthropological fieldwork and archival material...

The Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth in the Middle East have been stereotyped regionally and internationally: some have been objectified as passive victims; others have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development.

Recent years have witnessed a significant growth of interest in the consequences of political violence and displacement for the young. However, when speaking of childrenA" commentators have often taken the situation of those in early and middle childhood as representative of all young people under eighteen years of age.

The first of its kind, this volume explores refugee resettlement as a form of humanitarian governance; it offers a detailed understanding of resettlement practices, from the selection of refugees to their long-term integration in resettling states, and highlights the relevance of a lifespan approach to resettlement analysis.

Providing nuanced accounts of how the social identities of men and women, the context of displacement and the experience or manifestation of violence interact, this collection offers conceptual analyses and in-depth case studies to illustrate how gender relations are affected by displacement, encampment and return.

"This deeply disturbing but brilliant collection will be a challenge to a burgeoning literature on children in war situations ... [especially] to those who wish to make a black and white distinction between children and adults." -Children, Youth and EnvironmentsWar leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family''s capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children''s effective growth and well-being.Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people''s own accounts, this volume provides insights into children''s experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young.Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of ''victim'' and ''trauma.''Jo Boyden is a senior research officer at the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.Joanna de Berry trained in anthropology at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Many people worldwide are displaced every year, due to development projects, such as the construction of dams, conservation or mining projects. This volume argues that there is a complexity inherent in trying to reconcile enforced displacement of people with the subsequent creation of a socio-economically viable and sustainable environment.

Infrastructure development projects are set to continue into the next century as developing country governments seek to manage population growth, urbanization and industrialization. The contributions in this volume raise many questions about 'development' and 'progress' in the late twentieth century.

A contribution to the debate on the impact of international assistance on migrant communities, this text explores the ways in which Tibetan exiles in Nepal negotiate their norms and values as they interact with the many international organizations that assist them.

Refugee flight, settlement, and repatriation are not static, self-contained, or singular events. Instead, they are three stages of an ongoing process made and mirrored in the lives of real people. For that reason, there is an evident need for historical and longitudinal studies of refugee populations that rise above description...

This study examines refugee communities closely linked with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and a host of other UN agencies in the case of the Sahrawi and near total lack of humanitarian aid in the case of Afghan refugees in Iran.

Taking the context of forced migration, this book addresses the role that regional, in contrast to national or global, institutions and relationships play in shaping asylum policies and procedures. It also considers the role that regional responses are likely to play in determining the direction of asylum policy in receiving states.

Besides elaborating a new concept, this volume has three main purposes: the first is to focus empirical attention on previously understudied topics, such as internal trafficking, the second is to highlight new challenges, including the effects of climate change; and the third is to explore gaps in current policy responses and elaborate alternatives

Muslim Arab Sudanese in Cairo have played a fundamental role in Egyptian history and society during many centuries of close relations between Egypt and Sudan. Although the government and official press describes them as 'brothers' in a united Nile Valley, recent political developments in Egypt have underscored the precarious legal status of Sudanes

Based on the work of Ahmed Karadawi, Refugee Policy in Sudan discusses Sudanese government policy towards the refugee flows from Ethiopia into the Eastern Region of Sudan in theperiod 1967 to 1984, arguing that there were two underlying assumptions behind successive governments' policies: that refugees were considered a security threat...