Refugees and history: why we must address the past

This article examines a pressing problem for those concerned with research on forced migration – the absence of refugees from most historical work, and the low profi le of history in Refugee Studies. Using examples from Europe and South Asia, it considers why refugees have been “silenced” by history and how we can develop positive, inclusive approaches to the past

Troubling the exclusive privileges of citizenship: mobile solidarities, asylum seekers, and the right to work

This article discusses asylum seekers and the right to work in the UK. Differential access to the labour market is one of the ways in which the state maintains a distinction between British citizens, who ‘belong’, and non-citizens who do not. While such a policy approach garners widespread support amongst the general public of citizens, it does not go uncontested. This article discusses a UK-based campaign, ‘Let Them Work’, which has sought to influence the government in extending the right to work to asylum seekers. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways in which the stratified regime of citizenship rights is contested politically, and explores how such contestation troubles the exclusive privileges of citizenship by enacting mobile solidarities from marginalised spaces

Hyper-precarious lives : Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North

This paper unpacks the contested inter-connections between neoliberal work and welfare regimes, asylum and immigration controls, and the exploitation of migrant workers. The concept of precarity is explored as a way of understanding intensifying and insecure post-Fordist work in late capitalism. Migrants are centrally implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets in Global North countries, including becoming trapped in forced labour. Building on existing research on the working experiences of migrants in the Global North, the main part of the article considers three questions. First, what is precarity and how does the concept relate to working lives? Second, how might we understand the causes of extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious lifeworlds? Third, how can we adequately theorize these particular experiences using the conceptual tools of forced labour, slavery, unfreedom and precarity? We use the concept of ‘hyper-precarity’ alongside notions of a ‘continuum of unfreedom’ as a way of furthering human geographical inquiry into the intersections between various terrains of social action and conceptual debate concerning migrants’ precarious working experiences

Conceptual problems in forced migration

Scholars have made rapid progress in establishing the field of Refugee Studies/Forced Migration Studies over the past 30 years. It has emerged from both the moral imperative of ameliorating the suffering of the displaced and from academic interests of scholars considering involuntary migration from the perspectives of sociology, geography, political science and international relations, anthropology, and international law. In spite of this broad interest, or perhaps because of it, key conceptual issues have seldom been addressed, with the result that there is a lack of clarity on matters of fundamental importance. Greater awareness of general theory and greater analytical rigour is required urgently on issues that bear upon forced migration. This special issue is the outcome of a cooperative effort to initiate discussion on some of these problems. In 2011 a special seminar series was organized by the University of Oxford and the University of East London to consider a series of inter-related issues: problems of choice and constraint, forced migrants and the nation-state, and refugees and history. © Author(s) [2013]. All rights reserved

Schooling and Refugees: engaging with the complex trajectories of globalisation

This paper examines the complexities associated with educating a mobile and politically marginalised population, refugee students, in the state of Queensland, Australia. Historically, schools have been national institutions concerned with social reproduction and citizenship formation with a focus on spatially fixed populations. While education authorities in much of the developed world now acknowledge the need to prepare students for a more interconnected world of work and opportunity, they have largely failed to provide systemic support for one category of children on the move - refugees. We begin this paper with a discussion of forced migration and its links with ‘globalisation’. We then present our research findings about the educational challenges confronting individual refugee youth and schools in Queensland. This is followed with a summary of good practice in refugee education. The paper concludes with a discussion of how nation-states might play a more active role in facilitating transitions to citizenship for refugee youth