Getting the first job: Size and quality of ethnic enclaves and refugee labor market entry

We analyze the relationship between residence in an ethnic enclave and immigrants' labor market integration with respect to finding a first job in the receiving country. The analysis distinguishes between the size and the quality of the ethnic enclaves, where quality is measured in terms of employment rate among ethnic peers in the same neighborhood. We use longitudinal geo‐coded registry data for two distinct groups of immigrants arriving in the Stockholm metropolitan area to investigate their initial labor market contact. The first group of immigrants moved from the Balkans in the early 1990s following the Yugoslavian war, and the second group arrived from the Middle East following the second Iraq War in 2006. We estimate the probability of finding a first job using probit regressions and complement the analysis with additional duration models. To draw causal inference, we use instrumentation that combines initial neighborhood variables with citywide variation over time. We provide empirical evidence that the employment rate of the respective immigrant group in the vicinity facilitates labor market integration of new immigrants. The influences of the overall employment rate and the share of conationals in the neighborhood tend to be positive, but less robustly so. Our results are consistent with the notion that the qualitative nature of an enclave is at least as important as the sheer number of ethnic peers in helping new immigrants find jobs.     

The world-wide web of humanitarianism: NGOs and population displacement in the third quarter of the twentieth century

Abstract

Non-state organisations were important actors in the international refugee regime after the Second World War. This article traces connections between refugee crises and geo-politics by focusing on the interaction of three NGOs with the new Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the 1950s. One non-state actor, the World Council of Churches (WCC), highlighted the suffering of German expellees as illustrating the limitations of the refugee regime. The second non-state organisation, Jami’at al’ Islam (JAI), asserted its right to represent all Muslim refugees in Europe. Along with its anti-Communist stance it adopted an anti-colonial rhetoric and denounced the limitations of UNHCR’s mandate, but it was later exposed as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The third organisation, Comité Inter-Mouvements Auprès des Evacués (CIMADE), formed in 1939 to help French Jews escape deportation during the Vichy era, subsequently aided Algerians who suffered persecution by the French authorities. Like WCC, this began a long ‘career’ in humanitarianism. In its dealings with these NGOs, UNHCR trod cautiously, because it was constrained by its mandate and the governments that contributed to its budget. Each example demonstrates the challenges of ‘non-political’ efforts to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees and the limits to the autonomy of non-state organisations.     

Building intersectoral partnerships as place‐based strategy for immigrant and refugee (re)settlement: The Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership

This paper examines the role of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership in the Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada's national capital following the federal government's 2015–2016 resettlement plan. Based on the findings of qualitative data collection—including semi‐structured interviews with representatives from community organizations, settlement agencies, and the City of Ottawa—two main arguments are advanced. First, while the current literature tends to portray the Canadian settlement sector as a passive victim in the face of neoliberal restructuring and austerity measures, this paper offers a more nuanced perspective by reflecting on the sector's ability to exert agency by developing initiatives and devising strategies that are rooted in the local context. Second, the case of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership sheds light on the significance of intersectoral networks and partnerships that extend beyond the settlement sector to build a sound approach for welcoming refugees and newcomers more generally. These findings serve to demonstrate the potential of partnerships as a place‐based settlement model that is responsive to context‐specific needs and enhances local community strengths, thus providing important lessons that can inform future immigrant and refugee (re)settlement and integration in other Canadian cities and regions.     

Perilous Journeys: Visualising the Racialised “Refugee Crisis”

This article explores the benign and malignant power of the visual in the racialised framing of the ongoing “European refugee crisis”. Bringing together literatures on racial discourses, visuality, storytelling and decoloniality for the first time, this paper breaks new ground in our understandings of the political possibilities that visual storytelling offers in shifting “lines of sight” in an increasingly vitriolic anti‐refugee climate. It does this by analysing prominent graphic narratives created by the non‐profit organisation PositiveNegatives, animating the refugee experiences of Syrian men in Scandinavia. We consider the affective engagements that such progressive storytelling promotes and the decolonial potential invested in it, arguing that the modality and content of narratives of this genre offer important scope to provoke encounter and empathy. Contributing to geographies of race, migration, visuality and decoloniality, we suggest that these narratives allow new and gently radical ways of resisting the dehumanising impetus of mainstream media discourses.     

国际难民机制与战后初期全球难民治理——以“国际难民组织”为中心的考察

二战的爆发造成全球产生了大量的难民和流离失所者,国际社会围绕这一问题的解决进行了积极探索。国际难民组织作为联合国处理难民问题的专门机构应运而生,通过与各国政府、社团组织开展合作与互动,共同致力于战后国际难民问题的解决。该组织重点从难民的照护、失踪人员追踪、法律和政治保护等领域出发,参与到国际难民保护实践当中。同时,该组织通过遣返、重新安置以及本地安置等方式积极推动难民安置目标的达成。作为联合国对于战后难民问题的制度化回应,国际难民组织的实践本身体现了持不同立场的国家之间的合作,也逐渐显现出各国的合作意愿与冷战现实之间的矛盾。随着冷战在欧洲及其他地区的开启,国际难民问题日趋复杂且出现新变化,联合国难民署的成立标志着全球难民治理进入新的阶段。     

Syrian refugee resettlement and the role of local immigration partnerships in Ontario,Canada

We examine Canada's recent Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative (SRRI) paying close attention to the resettlement role played by mid‐sized urban communities. We elaborate on a key policy dimension at work at this scale of action: local immigration partnerships (LIPs). We start with a very brief review of Canada's history of mass refugee resettlement. Second, we assess the policy of LIPs, particularly how they have been presented as a form of “place‐based policy,” and third, we offer an overview of the role the LIPs played in three case study communities (Hamilton, Ottawa, and Waterloo) during the SRRI. Finally, we present three overarching themes that emerged from our research in each of these communities: the importance of each community's history of immigration and refugee resettlement; the embeddedness of the LIP and its leadership in the local community; and how the positioning of each LIP relative to the three levels of government and its official Resettlement Assistance Program agreement holders impacted its ability to act. The history, location, and place characteristics of each community influenced the nature of intersectoral and intergovernmental relations in distinctive ways, and differentially shaped the effectiveness of each LIP's ability to contribute to the SRRI.     

The role of local immigration partnerships in Syrian refugee resettlement in Waterloo Region,Ontario

As of January 29, 2017 Canada had received 40,081 Syrian refugees. The scale and scope of this resettlement is historic, with the only comparable event being the arrival of 60,000 Indo‐Chinese refugees in the late 1970s. Since that time, much has changed in local resettlement policy. This research focuses on one component of these changes—the role of Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) in Syrian refugee resettlement—through a case study of an official refugee reception centre in the Waterloo Region of Ontario and a series of interviews with key informants from multiple sectors involved in resettlement. Results indicate Waterloo's LIP playing a sizable role, but not acting as the sole response body to refugee resettlement. Nevertheless, participants saw the LIP as a crucial part of Waterloo's resettlement efforts. Despite being a product of a tri‐level intergovernmental agreement, the LIP played a central role in shaping a local strategy by using local solutions. LIPs represent an example of place‐based policy that worked well during the Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative, but LIPs’ success may set a challenging precedent for future mass refugee resettlement events.     

Transnational abductions and transnational responsibilities? The politics of ‘protecting’ female Muslim refugees abducted from Spain

This article examines evolving gendered protection narratives surrounding four ‘abduction’ cases in which Sahrawi refugee girls and young women living in Spain were ‘abducted’ by their birth-families and forcibly returned to the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps between 2002 and 2009. By exploring Spanish state and civil society responses to these girls' ‘abductions’, I argue that there has been a major shift in the ways in which legitimate responsibility and authority over Sahrawi refugee women as Muslim female forced migrants have been conceptualised and invoked by Spanish actors. I therefore assess the gendered nature of competing claims of responsibility to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women both within and outside of the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps, exploring the motivations and implications of different actors' in/actions towards these girls and women. With Polisario claiming to represent and act as a liberal ‘state’ committed to protecting the rights of its ‘refugee-citizens’ in some instances, while denying politico-legal responsibility in others, the question of ‘who’ or ‘what’ claims the legitimate authority to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women and girls is thus accentuated by such cases. By exploring shifts in Spanish public and political discourses of responsibility over the past decade on the one hand, and the accentuation of competing discourses as presented by Spanish, Polisario and Algerian actors on the other, this article highlights the complex nature and implications of the ‘intimate’ Spanish civil society networks that ensure the physical and political survival of the Sahrawi refugee camps. Ultimately, I argue that Sahrawi girls and women have become hypervisible in Spain, being conceptualised as women who ‘belong’ to the Spanish nation that in turn has a responsibility to ‘protect’ ‘our’ Sahrawi women from ‘their’ culture.     

Enclosures from Below: The Mushaa’ in Contemporary Palestine

This article traces the declining fortunes of the mushaa’, a once‐prominent Levantine culture of common land. Palestinians managed to resist attempts by the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate to break up the mushaa’. Under Israeli colonization, the remaining commons are now subject to another type of appropriation: individual Palestinian contractors seize hold of mushaa’ land and build on it. This article introduces the concept of “enclosures from below”, whilst looking at the dynamics of seizure of the commons by Palestinian refugees, who once were peasants practising mushaa’ on their lands and are now landless, some having become expert contractors. I show that the contractors consider their actions to be a form of resistance against the settler colonial project, manifested in the advancing of the Wall and settlement expansion. This is described through a case study of the Shu'faat area in Jerusalem. Changing uses of mushaa’ land reflect wider tendencies in the Palestinian national project that has become increasingly individualized.     

Children's agency in resettlement: a study of Swedish cultural orientation programs in Kenya and Sudan

The focus of this study is cultural orientation programs (COPs) for refugees being resettled from Kenya and Sudan in Sweden in 2011. This study aims to highlight how, if at all, children's agency was facilitated during the COPs. The programs were video recorded in order to look at the continuous negotiations during the meetings between the Swedish delegation and the children and youth. The concept of thick and thin agency is used in order to understand how sometimes the overall context of the program as a part of the resettlement process thins the agency of the children.