Gendered and Racialised Border Security: Displaced People and the Politics of Fear

This article examines the dynamics of constructing current migration from the so-called Global South in ‘risk’, ‘crisis’ and ‘fear’ terms that translate into xenophobic, racialised and gendered processes of ‘othering’ people who are displaced. This is done within the framework of a ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000b) perspective, understood as the ‘colonial power matrix’ (Grosfoguel 2011. This is how the location from which the current racialised and gendered politics of fear is being constructed. The notion of racialised security leads to racialised masculinity of the ‘Other’, while stigmatising migrant men. These colonial narratives that have created ‘knowledge’ about other masculinities have been invoked and re-articulated within the current racialised processes of securitisation of migration. They have supported construction of the sexual assault of ‘our’ women as the public security concern. Consequently, racially marked rape becomes an important part of State security, linked to national territory and border control

Gender, conflict, and social Capital: Bonding and bridging in war in the former Yugoslavia

The 1990s are marked by unprecedented mobilisation for armed conflict at the local or state level. With 44 countries, or 25 per cent of the world’s states at war during this period, the world experienced more violent conflict than ever before. Conflicts of the 1990s are often called new wars (Kaldor 1999; Duffield 2001) as they are importantly shaped by the processes of globalisation, structural changes in the world economy and politics. This chapter aims to contribute to gendered analyses of conflict and social capital by examining how the process of mobilisation of social capital for war or peace is gendered and context-specific. The author’s analysis also supports substantial empirical evidence that women-as-women organising in specific contexts promotes civic bridging links and supports a type of alternative politics that is embedded in cross-ethnic and cross-boundary trust and reciprocity. This type of links and communication are central to the reconciliation processes, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction. Further research and analysis is required to uncover other links and factors affecting these (gendered) processes in order to identify and support the ones which represent a resource for democracy and peace

The Lack of Integration Policy and Experiences of Settlement: A Case Study of Refugees in Rome

This article examines the question of an absence of an integration policy, and specifically how this lack of state intervention is perceived by refugees themselves, and how it shapes their attitudes towards and strategies for integration. The emphasis in examining integration of refugees in this paper is on the importance of human agency in the process of structuring and re-structuring social relations across space and time. The article is based upon research among a group of refugees from former Yugoslavia settled in Rome. Their experiences presented in this paper document a case of integration in which the refugees, for the most part, have not encountered any kind of assistance programme. This situation caused considerable difficulty in the process of their settlement, particularly during its early stages, yet it permitted spontaneous and personalized encounters between the refugees' native culture(s) and that of the receiving society. It is suggested that the nature of these encounters contributed to strengthening the adaptability of the refugees. It also affected their subjective wellbeing and tended to compensate for the numerous problems associated with other aspects of their integration

Policy, agency, and intercultural dialogue: Experiences of refugees from war-torn Yugoslavia in Italy

This article examines the process of policy and bureaucratic labelling of refugees and its intersection with race, ethnicity, class and/or gender, as well as with other exclusionary mechanisms operating in the places of their settlement. It critically examines the prospects and process of settlement of people who fled war-torn Yugoslavia and were granted the right to work and/or study in Italy based on a special Government decree, without any lengthy determination procedure. The analysis is based on the ethnographic research conducted in Rome, in 1999 and 2000. It explores mechanisms and processes that enabled them to benefit from the rights they were granted upon arrival. The discussion points to the connections between assistance strategies or policies, structural constraints they embody and the type of agency they encourage. It explores the role of co-ethnic, cross-ethnic, and minority-majority social networks in settlement. This article argues that if acquisition of formal legal and social rights to inclusion and equality are not accompanied by informal bridging, micro-level minority-majority contacts and ties the experience of minority groups will remain strongly shaped by their feelings of ‘otherness’, perceptions of inequality and exclusion. This is because the development of trust between minority (ethnic) and majority groups only partially depends on a set of rights that can be granted to the ‘ethnic’ or ‘minority’ groups

‘Is there a right time for gender just peace? Feminist anti-war organising revisited’

This paper addresses the question of totalising gender power relations that have led to and shaped the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and the emerging ethno-national states on the ‘periphery’ of Europe. I argue that the same type of gender power relations continue to dominate the region, notably Serbia, and to perpetuate gender inequalities and gender based violence in its many everyday and structural forms, causing profound levels of human insecurity. My analysis aims to set in motion a debate on how to tackle these continuing gender inequalities and GBV in post-war societies. In so doing, I propose a shift from focusing on the hierarchy of victimisation that has characterised much of the feminist analyses, activism and scholarly work in relation to these (and other) conflicts, to a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war and peace, that is - of both women and men. Such an approach holds a potential to undermine the power systems that engender these varied types of victimisation by ultimately reshaping the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are central to the gender power systems that generate gender unjust peace

The Role of Bridging Social Networks in Refugee Settlement: The Case of Exile Communities from the former Yugoslavia in Italy and the Netherlands

The chapter examines how different refugee settlement policies in Italy and the Netherlands affect the process of formation of social networks within and outside a group of compatriots. I explore the social condition of exile communities from the former Yugoslavia and examine how different policy interventions, intentionally and unintentionally, affect micro-level social interactions in these specific settlement contexts. Data for this study were collected during several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Rome (1999-2000) and Amsterdam (2000-2001). The discussion aims to emphasise the connection between specific policy contexts, structural constraints they embody, and the type of human agency they engender. Special emphasis is placed on the examination of the role of ‘bridging social networks’ established outside the refugee group, which seem to facilitate considerably the successful integration of refugees. I suggest that although governments cannot directly affect the formation of bridging social capital, it is possible to develop policies that facilitate it. Without such policies, integration remains plagued by relative social isolation, even when there are employment opportunities and relaxed naturalisation policies

Feminists against Sexual Violence in War: The Question of Perpetrators and Victims Revisited

This article reflects upon feminist activism and analyses of sexual victimisation of women in war during the 1990s. It critically examines the reasons for the continuation of this type of violence against women, despite its recognition as a war crime; the recognition that marked one of the significant achievements of feminist activism during the last decade of the 20th century. The discussion points to the centrality of sexual violence in war for the system of gender based violence (GBV) against both women and men in war. It argues that a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war is critical. This approach enables an acknowledgement that sexual violence in war and rape, as one of its expressions, is a violent political act that is highly gendered both in its causes and consequences, and, as such, it affects both women and men. This article provides an overall argument for the need of feminist scholarship and activism to engage with these differently situated experiences and practices of victimisation in war, to ‘unmake’ it

Cross-ethnic networks, self-reception system, and functional integration of refugees from former Yugoslavia in Rome, Italy

The character of the immigrant policy context in Italy has caused refugees from the former Yugoslavia in Rome to organize themselves spontaneously and to create a self-reception system that facilitates their functional integration. The Italian policy context allows refugees to approach their situation in exile in an active way because it does not offer them a dependent role. Emphasizing the importance of providing refugees with a framework for an active reconstruction of life, however, should not be understood as an apologia for the absence of strategy for integration as well as legal, financial, and institutional means to facilitate this process