Politicians are clearly misreading EU provisions regarding freedom of movement

UKIP’s success in the Clacton by-election has prompted further unease in Conservative and Labour ranks, with free movement of people in the EU, a cornerstone of the Union, now suddenly under fire from the political elite. Brad Blitz writes that the shift in tone is not only at odds with previous policies, it reflects a clear misreading of EU provisions regarding the free movement of people. The free movement of people is not an absolute right and does not guarantee automatic access to the UK; states are still permitted to treat nationals and EU citizens differently and prevent benefit fraud and welfare tourism

Chapter 1: Migration and freedom

Migration and Freedom is a thorough and revealing exploration of the complex relationship between mobility and citizenship in the European area

Citizenship and statelessness

The concept of citizenship has deep roots in legal, political and social thought. By contrast, the notion of statelessness has only recently received wider attention. Statelessness is often described in opposition to citizenship. However, this pairing is not always helpful since these terms developed separately, and their association cannot be understood without reference to the related concepts of the state, and nationality. Citizenship features in both formal and substantive discussions on the meaning and exercise of political and economic rights. The term is frequently used to denote membership of a political community, which grants status and in turn also provides a source of identity. The term ‘statelessness’ was popularised on the back of the post-war refugee regime, though the problem of managing large numbers of stateless people featured in international treaties in the nineteenth century. This chapter examines the role citizenship and statelessness play in society, the history or statelessness, the root causes of people becoming stateless and how this differs from state to state

Bosnia revisited: a retrospective on the legacy of the conflict

It is instructive to review the legacy of both the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the post-war settlement and experience in order to appreciate how this European conflict set the stage for major institutional developments in the field of humanitarian protection, and how, after 20 years, the lessons which emerged from this experience are being ignored

Tracing Jewish family history in a post-Holocaust world

The growth in online platforms and documentary aggregator sites has revolutionised the process of Jewish family history research. This article records how the loss of EU citizenship rights following Britain’s departure from the European Union encouraged the author to investigate their own family history. Drawing upon the author’s findings, it describes how communal record books left on the shelves of town halls across Romania for over a century have been given new life thanks to the efforts of community archivists. This article chronicles their efforts to identify, preserve and digitise these documents which help to shed light on the history of the Jewish community of Dorna Watra, now Vatra Dornei, a small town in the former Austrian crownland of Bukovina. This article provides a detailed evaluation of the opportunities facing Jewish family researchers and the strengths and weaknesses of online aggregator sites such as Ancestry.Com and JewishGen

Location Security and Environmental-Induced Displacement: a Case Study of the Riverine Islands in Bangladesh

This article introduces the concept of ‘location security’ to describe the specific relationship between place, environmental and human security. It argues that ‘location security’ is determined by a location’s resilience to risk, understood in terms of the degree to which a specific region is protected by virtue of geographical endowments and has sufficient infrastructure to withstand and recover from the effects of environmental hazards and ensure that rights are protected. To illustrate the concept of location security, this article uses the sustainable livelihoods framework to explore actual and anticipated environmental pressures that affect the river deltas of Bangladesh, and examines the adaptation responses developed by the inhabitants of the riverine islands. A central finding of this article is that flexible migration and localised coping strategies based on acute knowledge of their local ecological and geological systems, enables the char dwellers to reduce their vulnerability. In this setting, human and environmental factors when harnessed may enhance agency to mitigate hazards.    Cet article propose le concept de «sécurité du lieu» pour décrire les incertitudes auxquelles sont confrontés les populations de zones menaces par les chocs environnementaux et les effets complexes de leur éventuelle adaptation. On y avance que la sécurité du lieu se mesure en fonction de la résilience de la zone considérée, determine par l’importance de sa protection par des subventions territoriales, par la présence d’infrastructure permettant de soutenir les risques environnementaux et de s’en remettre, et par la mesure dans laquelle les droits sont protégés. Cet article explore les pressions environnementales actuelles et à venir au Bangladesh. On en conclut que la sécurité du lieu est déterminée par les interactions entre les considérations environnementales et humaines, au premier chef l’impact sur les moyens de subsistance, et que des migrations de formes et de durées diverses peuvent resulted de pressions environnementales, comme des pressions sociales, économiques et politiques

The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), Alexander Betts, 448 pp., cloth 25.95,eBook25.95, eBook 17.99.

It is hard to believe that it has been six years since Alexander Betts burst onto the world stage by publishing, with economist Paul Collier, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. In that book, Betts and Collier set out to address push factors encouraging out-migration, including a lack of jobs in refugees’ countries of origin. In an effort to address this particular push factor, they emphasized the utility of special economic zones. Refuge—and Betts himself—was criticized by some in the scholarly community for misrepresenting the history of the refugee system. Yet, I would argue, Betts's instincts were not wrong. His concern to find practical ways in which to create progressive refugee policies while recognizing the considerable political constraints should not have been derided and I note that since then international organizations, including the UNHCR, have spent much time exploring how to link humanitarian protection to broader development goals more effectively. In The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies, we find in Betts a more authoritative scholar who is prepared once again to grapple with the evil of dependency, where refugees are made into victims, and through empirical investigation he showcases how it can be mitigated to create sustainable solutions

Contestation and reconstruction: natural capital and post-conflict development in borderland regions

Though often remote and underdeveloped, borderlands are contested territories. The incorporation of borderlands into the post-conflict state highlights many important land-related paradigms, including the conversion of natural resources for economic, political, and civic purposes. This article explores the relationship between the natural resources of borderlands and their post-conflict development, management, and sustainability. Based on case study data and secondary material drawn from Croatia and Cyprus, the paper seeks to establish how the interplay of cross-border, national, and sub-national interests in post-conflict settings may contribute to the creation of new opportunities for economic development and the reconstruction of borderlands. It considers how the exploitation of natural resources may advance the agendas for the political development and incorporation of previous sites of contestation; and equally how their incorporation may constrain policies of sustainability, potentially giving rise to new conflicts. The paper sheds light on issues such as: the conversion of borderland natural capital to political capital as post-conflict states assert sovereignty claims and consolidate territorial identity; the ways in which the non-monetary value of natural capital is reconceived as commercial use value in post-conflict reconstruction; and the involvement of non-state actors and civil society in promoting environmental agendas, often as a counterbalance to state power