Social Media and Forced Migration: The Subversion and Subjugation of Political Life

As social media platforms and the associated communication technologies become increasingly available, affordable and usable, these tools effectively enable forced migrants to negotiate political life across borders. This connection provides a basis for resettled refugees to interact with their transnational networks and engage in political activities in novel ways. This article presents a digital ethnography with 15 resettled refugees living in New Zealand and the role of social media and transnational networks for the maintenance and creation of political lives. Taking a broad interpretation of how political and political life are understood, this article focuses on how power is achieved and leveraged to provide legitimacy and control. In particular, it examines how refugees practise transnational politics through social media as they navigate both the subjugation and subversion of power. These digital interactions have the potential to reconfigure and, at times collapse, the distance between the resettled "here" and the transnational "there". This article highlights how social media facilitates political lives as an ongoing transnational phenomenon and its implications for the country of resettlement and the wider diaspora

Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement

The image we have of refugees is one of displacement – from their homes, families and countries – and yet, refugee settlement is increasingly becoming an experience of living simultaneously in places both proximate and distant, as people navigate and transcend international borders in numerous and novel ways. At the same time, border regimes remain central in defining the possibilities and constraints of meaningful settlement. This book examines the implications of ‘belonging’ in numerous places as increased mobilities and digital access create new global connectedness in uneven and unexpected ways. Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement positions refugee settlement as an ongoing transnational experience and identifies the importance of multiple belongings through several case studies based on original research in Australia and New Zealand, as well as at sites in the US, Canada and the UK. Demonstrating the interplay between everyday and extraordinary experiences and broadening the dominant refugee discourses, this book critiques the notion that meaningful settlement necessarily occurs in ‘local’ places. The author focuses on the extraordinary events of trauma and disasters alongside the everyday lives of refugees undertaking settlement, to provide a conceptual framework that embraces and honours the complexities of working with the ‘trauma story’ and identifies approaches to see beyond it. This book will appeal to those with an interest in migration and diaspora studies, human geography and sociology

Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement

The image we have of refugees is one of displacement – from their homes, families and countries – and yet, refugee settlement is increasingly becoming an experience of living simultaneously in places both proximate and distant, as people navigate and transcend international borders in numerous and novel ways. At the same time, border regimes remain central in defining the possibilities and constraints of meaningful settlement. This book examines the implications of ‘belonging’ in numerous places as increased mobilities and digital access create new global connectedness in uneven and unexpected ways. Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement positions refugee settlement as an ongoing transnational experience and identifies the importance of multiple belongings through several case studies based on original research in Australia and New Zealand, as well as at sites in the US, Canada and the UK. Demonstrating the interplay between everyday and extraordinary experiences and broadening the dominant refugee discourses, this book critiques the notion that meaningful settlement necessarily occurs in ‘local’ places. The author focuses on the extraordinary events of trauma and disasters alongside the everyday lives of refugees undertaking settlement, to provide a conceptual framework that embraces and honours the complexities of working with the ‘trauma story’ and identifies approaches to see beyond it. This book will appeal to those with an interest in migration and diaspora studies, human geography and sociology

Aspirational yet precarious: compliance of New Zealand refugee settlement policy with international human rights obligations

New Zealand has ratified many of the same international instruments instructing resettled refugees\u27 rights as other resettlement countries. However, New Zealand has adopted broad strategies with little policy specificity or funding to ensure settling refugees\u27 rights are upheld. In examining selected rights, this article demonstrates that New Zealand refugee policy remains aspirational yet precarious in two main ways. First, refugee pathways to protection, via the UN quota system or as Convention refugees, significantly affect both settlement support and family reunification. Second, policy implementation is often inconsistent and, at times, discriminatory, because economic, social and cultural rights are inadequately embedded into New Zealand\u27s human rights framework. It is thus difficult to claim that New Zealand consistently and sufficiently meets its international obligations, despite the aspirations articulated within New Zealand\u27s recently developed Refugee Resettlement Strategy

Ethics Recommendations for Crisis Translation Settings

This document is a summary public version of the Ethics Recommendations for Crisis Translation Settings produced by some of the INTERACT project team. INTERACT is the International Network in Crisis Translation, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 734211. Further information about the project as a whole is available at: https://sites.google.com/view/crisistranslation/hom

Regulating immigrant identities: The role of government and institutions in the identity construction of refugees and other migrants

This interdisciplinary paper explores the role of governments in the identity formation of people of resettled refugees. Using ethnographic data collected from 32 South Sudanese Australians and 9 professionals who work with this community, the paper outlines how participants face a range of systemic barriers and threats from government institutions relating to the cultivation of self-identity. We demonstrate how institutions poorly respond to the three typologies of self: moral, democratic, and status-seeking, and forward alternative institutional responses and possibilities. We conclude by arguing that rather than delivering a cohesive society, the regulation of cultural values and moral identities threatens the development of positive self-identities among resettled refugees and their children