All in Then & Now

Trickster narratives in the memoirs of Germans displaced from Eastern Europe, 1944-48

Trickster narratives in the memoirs of Germans displaced from Eastern Europe, 1944-48

Arddun Arwyn
Then & Now

Trickster narratives are particularly useful in exploring the complexities of refugee histories. Refugees are often marginalised and portrayed as either one-dimensional ‘innocent’ victims or as a threatening ‘other’. Analysing such narratives allows for more nuanced understandings of how refugees negotiate power relations and enact agency. Refugee trickster narratives communicate difficult and exceptional experiences through stories that are commonly recognised, thus highlighting their shared humanity and helping to break down stereotypes. Most interesting is the prevalence of the trickster narrative through time and across cultures, as it reveals a deep human impulse to tell stories of triumph in the face of physical and social marginalisation.

Refugee-adjacency and the unrecognised grief of those left behind, part 2

Refugee-adjacency and the unrecognised grief of those left behind, part 2

Lauren Banko
Then & Now

What does it mean to be ‘refugee adjacent’? The first part of this post told the story of Doris, a young Jewish woman who came to Palestine from Romania in 1941. Her family and fiancé died before they could join her when the vessel they were travelling on, the MV Struma, was torpedoed off Istanbul in February 1942. Doris was left destitute. Unlike her family, Doris was never a refugee: a British subject by birth, she had come to Palestine on a tourist visa and was eventually repatriated to Britain. But her proximity to refugeedom is obvious, in the loss of her home in Romania and the possibility of a home in Palestine, in the loss of her material possessions, and in the loss of her family, all refugees when they died. This second post tell the story of Ahmad, another refugee-adjacent individual, who left Palestine a few years after Doris.

Refugee-adjacency and the unrecognised grief of those left behind, part 1

Refugee-adjacency and the unrecognised grief of those left behind, part 1

Lauren Banko
Then & Now

Historians have often explored what it means to be a refugee. But what happens to refugee history when we consider how and with what consequences people do not become labeled as refugees? This two-part blog post tells the story of two individuals who might have been refugees, but didn’t: a young Jewish woman who left Romania for Palestine in the early 1940s, and a young Muslim man who left Palestine a few years later. They are ‘refugee-adjacent’ individuals: people whose families became refugees or forcibly displaced persons, but who themselves did not. A refugee-adjacent individual has not been labelled as a refugee or displaced person. But they are deeply affected by what Peter Gatrell has termed refugeedom.

Humanitarianism in Newfoundland: the rescue of Tamil refugees in 1986

Humanitarianism in Newfoundland: the rescue of Tamil refugees in 1986

Rahul Balasundaram
Then & Now

On 11 August 1986, after five days adrift off the coast of Newfoundland, two lifeboats carrying 155 Tamil refugees fleeing the armed conflict in Sri Lanka were rescued by local fishermen. A fast-track refugee decision process that allowed them to be issued renewable one-year permits enabling them to live and work in Canada. The decision to grant Minister’s permits was controversial, especially when it emerged that the refugees had departed from West Germany, a ‘safe state’. But on the whole, media discourse was welcoming. This post revisits the incident in the light of present-day refugee policy in Canada and elsewhere.

From the 1951 Convention to the 1967 Protocol: how the refugee regime was globalized

From the 1951 Convention to the 1967 Protocol: how the refugee regime was globalized

Benjamin Thomas White
Then & Now

How should we understand the globalization of the international refugee regime? A conventional understanding is that the 1951 Refugee Convention, although it put in place a universal definition of ‘refugee’ for the first time, remained limited to European refugees. But the 1951 text was not as limited as people think. Most of the initial signatories intended the convention to be applied to people displaced from anywhere, not just from within Europe. And the decisive momentum for globalization was created by African states newly independent from France.

Student refugees in wartime China: Macau, 1937–45

Student refugees in wartime China: Macau, 1937–45

Helena F.S. Lopes
Then & Now

China’s War with Japan (1937-45, with origins in 1931), a crucial theatre of the Second World War, generated millions of refugees, with some estimates reaching 100 million internally displaced persons. Among them were many students. Over a hundred primary, middle and secondary schools were transferred to Macau during the war, with a combined student population of more than 30,000.

Environmental refugees and the 1951 Convention

Environmental refugees and the 1951 Convention

Laura Madokoro
Then & Now

Over the past thirteen years, an estimated 24 million environmental refugees have been displaced annually as a result of climate change and extreme weather disasters. The magnitude of the climate change crisis and the sheer number of people moving as result has led to considerable debate about how to best address the crisis itself, as well as the plight of those currently being displaced. Should the 1951 Refugee Convention be expanded to cover environmental refugees? The way in which environmental displacement has been understood historically is critical to any contemporary discussions about how to address the plight of environmental refugees today, as it helps us understand the possibilities and limitations of revisiting the 1951 Convention’s definition of a refugee to incorporate those fleeing environmental crises. It will take more than a definitional change for the 1951 Convention to be effective and relevant in addressing the plight of climate change refugees: notions of responsibility must also evolve.

State succession to the 1951 Refugee Convention: the curious case of Mauritius

State succession to the 1951 Refugee Convention: the curious case of Mauritius

Nora Milch Johnsen & Maja Janmyr
Then & Now

In 2003 the Supreme Court of Mauritius concluded that, upon its independence from Great Britain in 1968, Mauritius had succeeded to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Yet Mauritius is not among the formal list of States Parties to the Convention and UNHCR regularly encourages it to accede to the Convention. Why then does the Supreme Court consider Mauritius a State Party while the International Community continues to see it as a non-signatory State?

Passion, bureaucratic violence, and the language of asylum

Passion, bureaucratic violence, and the language of asylum

Amy Grant
Then & Now

The illumination of sanctuary campaigns highlights the practices of subjectivity and unaccountability which work against those under threat of deportation, serving as a reminder of the ongoing importance of seeing through veils of democratic humanitarianism and facades of justice which so easily disguise the mistreatment of society’s most vulnerable. Sanctuary campaigns teach us the power of public pressure when it achieves the moral high ground – the barometer for which we all play a role in setting. Yet simultaneously they highlight how exceptionally sustained and supported campaigns must be from those in all levels of society – vicars, students, politicians and elderly parishioners alike – in order to prevail.

Mayday: histories of maritime rescue and repulsion

Mayday: histories of maritime rescue and repulsion

Juliette Frontier
Refugees Today, Then & Now

The internationally recognised radio distress signal, ‘Mayday’, came into the English language in 1923 in response to increased air and naval traffic over the Channel. Replacing the S.O.S call, Mayday, the phonetic pronunciation of M’aidez, French for ‘Help me’, is recognised by seafarers today. ‘Mayday’ captures the moral and legal duty of ships to rescue a person or persons in danger at sea. Such obligations are enshrined in the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Yet despite this duty and language of rescue, the response to the RNLI rescue operations in the Channel last week, namely the accusation that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was in some way assisting people trafficking, reveals how this international obligation has been vilified by politicians and tabloids, as well as defended and upheld. The RNLI has entered the spotlight because of a change in the legal language of the UK government's new Nationality and Borders Bill: a minor change which is set to have major consequences for search and rescue operations in the Channel. In short, the phrase 'for gain' has been removed from the stipulation that a criminal offence occurs when a person 'knowingly (and for gain) facilitates the arrival or attempted arrival in, or the entry or attempted entry into, the United Kingdom' of a potential asylum seeker. This leaves organisations such as the RNLI, who save the lives of people in the Channel 'knowingly' but not 'for gain', vulnerable to charges of facilitating 'illegal' entry into the UK—a crime which is set to carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In this post, I highlight four past blogposts which engage with the politics of maritime rescue and repulsion.

Load More