Refugees in the Arab Middle East: Academic and Policy Perspectives

The field of Refugee Studies is relatively unfamiliar to Middle East area specialists despite the significance of refugees in the region. The strong policy orientation of much of the work in the field has often shaped the way refugee issues are framed by scholars as well as practitioners. Concerns and discourses about refugee‐producing regions in general, and the Arab Middle East in particular, have tended to reflect Western notions of belonging, citizenship, and the state; and in recent years, have been seen through a lens of securitization in the region. This article addresses the development of the field, the subject of displacement and dispossession in the Arab Middle East from a Western perspective, the significant role that Arab cities play as sites for hosting refugees, and the challenges presented by the continued existence of Palestinian refugees.     

Stigma and the doomed-to-fail school careers of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods

ABSTRACT

The paper contributes to ‘geographies of education’ (Holloway, S., and H. Jöns. 2012. “Geographies of Education and Learning.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 (4): 482–488), as it presents the typical school careers of students stigmatized in educational institutions because of their disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Drawing on qualitative research with male residents of one disadvantaged neighbourhood in ?ód? (Poland), I identify their typical careers as ‘doomed-to-fail school careers’. The paper has three aims. First, it highlights the significance of stigma-based spatially embedded school practices on the educational failure and low-paid employment of students from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Second, it uncovers forms of school control over stigmatized students and the students’ resistance to these. Finally, I argue that Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma in human geography (Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma. Notes on Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall) offers a unique language to describe and explain the spatially embedded educational experiences of marginalized students.     

PATH DEPENDENCE AND LANDSCAPE: INITIAL CONDITIONS,CONTINGENCY AND SEQUENCES OF EVENTS IN LATGALE,LATVIA

The notion of path dependence has not yet been well explored as a tool for analysing landscape change. Within geography it is primarily economic geographers who have, up until now, shown a keen interest in this concept which stresses the role of social agency and institutions in understanding the development trajectories of regions. Further, the notion of path dependence usefully captures the idea of contingency in historical sequences. This article presents such a perspective on landscape change analysis, discussing two dominant types of sequences in path‐dependent systems. Self‐reinforcing sequences characterize the formation and long‐term reproduction of a given institutional pattern, while reactive sequences describe chains of temporally ordered and causally connected events. From a landscape point of view, by the former we can describe the fixity of practices, by the latter the particular development of (or changes in) landscapes. Within such a framework of path dependence analysis, examples from south‐eastern Latvia, the historical region of Latgale, are used to account for the institution of partible inheritance and to explain its impact on landscapes. The landscape biographies of two villages are studied in order to understand the particular key breaking points and the (series of) reactions that follow from these events. The challenge of using the tool of path dependence analysis lies in its openness for various interpretations, suggesting the need for supplementary theory.