The Imperial End: How Empire Overtakes Refugees in Jeremiah

ABSTRACT

Refugee studies, postcolonial studies, as well as political theory is used to argue that the portrayal of the Judeans who flee to Egypt, rather than those deported to Babylon, occupy the social space of the everyday conception of refugees in Jeremiah. By examining the narratives of chapters 42–44 in relation to the oracles against the nations (chs. 46–51), I show how the exclusion of the Egyptian group shores up the imperial turn represented in the OANs. After explaining the oracles' imperial character, a discussion follows of how reading them as imperial produces the Egyptian group as refugees in chs. 42–44. An exploration of contemporary discussions regarding refugees follows, enabling the claim that refugees are produced by the state. Finally comes, a broader discussion on how various discursive strategies excludes the Egyptian group of refugees in favor of the Babylonian deportees, supportive of an imperialized agenda.     

The Art of Wounded Hope: Forced Migration,Prophecy and Aesth/Ethics

ABSTRACT

This paper constructs an analogy between art and prophecy, exploring and comparing their relationship to political change. It does so through considering arts-based responses to the contemporary forced migration context in conversation with the book of Jeremiah. Recognizing that the artistic – in the case of Jeremiah, the poetic – can be an important means of resistance for those experiencing exile and injustice, this paper delineates two key ways in which visual arts, poetry, music and theater are playing a prophetic role in relation to migration today. First, the arts can generate prophetic revelation, helping people to see more clearly and truthfully the pain and suffering experienced by forced migrants. Second, the arts can enliven prophetic imagination, helping people to visualize creatively how a world-in-migration could be at its best by offering glimpses of oneness and hope. The paper concludes by pointing out some ambiguities involved in engaging with the arts as a means of prophecy.     

Chinese Refugee Children and Empires: The Politics of International Adoptions in Cold War Hong Kong

With the support of new sources from British and Hong Kong archives, this study casts new light on the post-war international adoptions of Chinese refugee children in the British colony of Hong Kong. It argues that while children were ‘saved’ and found families overseas, they were also used as pawns in a bigger political game. A way to delegate welfare for the Hong Kong government, a symbolic humanitarian concession vis-à-vis a strict anti-immigration policy for Britain, and an anti-communist propaganda tool for the United States, these adoptions also convey the competing power and population politics played over subject children by two multiracial empires: one in decline (the rapidly decolonising Britain), the other on the rise (the new cold war superpower).     

The securitisation of migrant smuggling in Australia and its consequences for the Bali Process

This article analyses the Bali Process in the context of Australia’s securitised approach to migrant smuggling, and the consequences this has for both the Australia–Indonesia diplomatic relationship and the Bali Process overall. The Bali Process is the premier regional forum for combating migrant smuggling and is well placed to discuss and develop regional cooperation policies on irregular migration within the region. In particular, the Bali Process remains a key domain where Australia and Indonesia can contest and amend the norms and practices around the human rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. This article traces and analyses the emergence of Australia’s bilateral agreements for offshore processing and resettlement between 2011 and 2014, which Australian political elites aligned rhetorically to the Bali Process, but which the authors argue remain in tension with stated Bali Process objectives in terms of rights and protections for asylum-seekers and refugees. This article identifies that Australia’s security-driven policies and regional disagreements over humanitarian responsibility remain an ongoing tension within Bali Process states, and provides commentary on the implications of this for future Australian policy relating to regional cooperation on irregular migration.     

From spaces of exception to ‘campscapes’: Palestinian refugee camps and informal settlements in Beirut

The recent literature on the refugee condition and spaces has heavily drawn on Agamben's reflection on ‘bare life’ and the ‘camp’. As refugees are cast out the normal juridical order, their lives are confined to refugee camps, biopolitical spaces that allow for the separation of the alien from the nation. But is the camp the only spatial device that separates qualified and expendable lives? What happens when the space of the camp overlaps with the space of the city? Taking the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut as a case, this study problematises the utilisation of legal prisms and clear-cut distinctions for the understanding of the production of bare life and spaces of exception. Isolated at the time of its establishment, Shatila is today part of the so-called ‘misery belt’. Physical continuities are also reflected by the distribution of the population as both Palestinians and non-Palestinians, including Lebanese, live in Shatila and the surrounding informal settlements. As physical and symbolic boundaries separating the refugee and the citizen blur, I argue that the exception is not only produced through law and its suspension. While legal exceptions place the Palestinians outside the juridical order, other exclusions run along sectarian and socio-economic lines cutting through the Lebanese body. As Shatila and the informal settlements are entangled, a new spatial model of analysis defined as the ‘campscape’ is proposed. Once the exception leaks out of the space of the camp, the campscape becomes the threshold where the refugee, the citizen and other outcasts meet.     

Two decades of Bosnian place-making in St. Louis,Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri received approximately 11,000 refugees from the Bosnian War (1992–1995) between 1993 and 2001. These newcomers were resettled in a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood on the city's south side known a century earlier for its German population. They were joined by family reunification immigrants, secondary migrants from other US cities, and a newborn generation of Bosnian Americans. With a current population of about 70,000, they constitute the largest population of Bosnians in the USA. They are credited with revitalizing the St. Louis neighborhood of Bevo Mill and stabilizing the city's declining population. Bosnians have created a distinctive ethnic enclave that is visible on the commercial, religious, and residential landscapes, and they have found a place in the wider receiving community. Drawing upon field observations, the local media, and the work of fellow scholars, this article investigates two decades of Bosnian place-making in south St. Louis. Through this case study, the author also seeks to fill a gap in the scholarly literature of this relatively recent diaspora by documenting the Bosnian imprint on the cultural landscape.     

Performing refugeeness in the Czech Republic: gendered depoliticisation through NGO assistance

The article examines the gender micropolitics of non-governmental assistance to refugees in the Czech Republic – a post-socialist society which is becoming a country of immigration. It critically examines relations of power between refugees and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs act as mediators between refugees and the state, media, wider public and academic production of knowledge. It is argued that despite the important roles they play in securing refugees' access to rights, their assistance is often perceived as problematic by refugees. The article analyses these relations in a wider context of the institutions of the refugee system where the state has increasing power in defining the conditions under which NGO assistance to refugees is provided. The study is based on qualitative research among recognised refugees from the former Soviet Union living in the Czech Republic and local NGOs assisting them with integration into society. I demonstrate how particular forms of assistance and public representation depoliticise refugees in a sense of fostering rather than challenging unequal power relations that lock refugees in a position of clients lacking political means of influencing their place in a receiving society. This is done by conceptualising ‘a refugee’ as a performative identity that is being produced and enacted in feminised NGO spaces. The analysis highlights refugees' critical reflections on their position in the relations of assistance.     

French-Caribbean Refugees and Slavery in German Protestant Maryland

The late eighteenth century saw the immigration of thousands of French refugees from France and its Caribbean colonies to the United States. An examination of one family of these refugees, Jean Payen de Boisneuf and his relatives the Vincendières, reveals that the values that the refugees imported, such as plantation slavery and Catholicism, could be antagonistic to social norms in the regions they chose to settle.     

Tracing Imaginations of the State: The Spatial Consequences of Different State Concepts among Asylum Activist Organisations

Abstract: This paper examines the spatial consequences for activism of viewing the state through either a statist or post‐structural lens. It is argued that understanding the state in different ways produces very different spatial strategies among activists. Drawing upon detailed case studies of two asylum‐seeking activist organisations in the UK, the connections between imaginations of the state, spatial strategies towards institutionalised authority, and the pros and cons of these strategies for activism itself are examined. Through these cases, the paper emphasises the importance of everyday theories about the state not only for understanding what the state is, but also for understanding how relationships with the state are formed and points towards the constructive power of imaginations of the state in their own right.     

Australia’s Detention Centres on Manus Island and Nauru: An End of Constructive Pacific Engagement?

The ‘Pacific Solution’ of transporting asylum seekers who arrive by boat in Australian waters to detention centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has attracted considerable international attention. Most of this has focused on the treatment of those detained and the morality, practicality and sustainability of Australian refugee policy. In this issue of ‘Pacific Currents’, we focus on the consequences for the Island nations. This article sets the scene for articles on Nauru and Manus Island by: 1. outlining the policy debates that led to the two phases of the ‘Pacific Solution’; 2. assembling data covering the numbers and costs involved; and 3. exploring the policy options in the wake of the PNG Supreme Court’s April 2016 ruling that the Manus Island centre was in violation of the constitution. All three papers are particularly concerned to explore the domestic political and legal ramifications of the centres for Nauru and PNG, and to examine the impact on Australia’s reputation in the Pacific region.