Zones of Exclusion: Offshore Extraction, the Contestation of Space and Physical Displacement in the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf

Abstract:  This article examines two aid interventions that manifest the merging of community development/relief and industrial security policy in the petroleum offshore of the Nigerian Niger Delta and the Mexican Gulf. In the Nigerian case, the article considers the crisis in the Warri region of Delta State in 2003, the subsequent evacuation of local residents, and the surrounding context of oil-related violence. Simmering since the 1990s, the 2003 Warri conflict displaced thousands due to competing community claims to territory that "hosts" oil installations, Shell and Chevron primarily. In Mexico, the analysis centers on the implementation of 2003 Mexican security legislation, prompted by International Maritime Organization post 9/11 security policy, that amplifies the "Zone of Exclusion" around offshore installations. To offset the loss of livelihoods resulting from the "exclusion zone", Mexican state agencies offered financing to support the conversion of the displaced small-scale fishers to fish farming. The varying forms of displacement prompted by these two "liberating" interventions reflect the socio-historical specificity of territorial relations in the Nigerian and Mexican extractive regimes. These relations constitute divergent extractive settings which have come to play contrasting roles in the global political economy of oil, one highly volatile, the other relatively stable.     

The mobilities of forced displacement: commemorating Karelian evacuation in Finland

In this article I discuss the mobilities of forced displacement. I analyse the politics of mobility by connecting the multiple scales of experienced mobility with the representational and non-representational strategies of sense of place. The aim of this article is twofold: to illustrate the different collective cultural narratives of displacement, and the ontological bodily memories. Three narratives of Karelian displacement are discussed. To capture the bodily memories, I also apply the philosopher Jacques Derrida's (1995) ideas on khora. Khora originates in Plato's Timaeus. Derrida's one interpretation of khora is a half-way-place, which is midway between space and time. I argue that khora as a non-topological concept deepens the understanding of existential place relations and also provides a fresh conceptual basis for the analysis of non-representational aspects of experiential place. Empirically, I focus on the commemoration of Karelian evacuation in Finland. I argue that the festivity called the Trail of the Displaced consists of several culturally representational and embodied non-representational mobilities which explain the complexities of spatial belonging among displaced communities.     

Feminizing risk at a distance: critical observations on the constitution of a preventive technology for HIV/AIDS

Distance is a key idea in contemporary literatures on geography and the government of risk, and it is central to the work presented in this paper, which focuses on Western media representations of an innovative ‘first-generation’ non-contraceptive microbicide, Carraguard. A preventive technology that has been developed under the auspices of the US Population Council and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carraguard is represented in the media in ways that produce certain noteworthy cultural geographies of HIV/AIDS. Via an analysis of a selection of such media representations of Carraguard, and focusing on sexual citizenship, political subjectivity and three socio-spatial orderings of risk (displacement, replacement and reorientation), we posit that Carraguard has effected a feminization of the government of risk at a distance. Specifically, we contend that HIV/AIDS has been displaced from the marginalized spaces of metropolitan centres of the West and replaced at the world's under-developed margins, being reoriented from dangerousness/deviance and the masculine to risk and the feminine in that process. In this work, we have taken up Dean's (1999) call to use an analytics of government to highlight the effects of certain ways of thinking and acting, and have also sought to respond to observations by Craddock (2000) that the silences in geography about HIV/AIDS and the regional coordinates of risk and vulnerability need to be addressed. In the final analysis, it appears that media representations of Carraguard reproduce and intensify much older geopolitical and socio-spatial orderings and relations of power that give effect to conceptions and practices of political obligation and sexual citizenship.     

A Roma Nation? Constructing Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement

The process of displacement has affected the articulation of collective identity among the Romani diaspora. The nation state persists as the main vehicle through which diasporic identities are formulated. A challenge to this is when a diaspora has lost its homeland as its territorial reference point. This article reflects on the way in which the Romanies – a 1,000‐year‐old diaspora – confront traditional understandings of diasporic identity as combining the ideas of a loss and longing for a homeland. It explores the limits and possibilities of building a collective Romani identity in the context of extreme displacement, with reference to narratives of identity and belonging articulated by the Romani diaspora in Britain.     

Stimulation and connection: science and theatrical experience in Complicite’s Mnemonic

First produced in 1999, Complicite’s Mnemonic is one of the best examples of plays to use the potential of the stage to convey complex scientific ideas. Complicite’s creative utilization of dramaturgical strategies and theatrical techniques enables the company to artistically enact the complex mechanism of simulation and connection on which the act of remembrance is based. However, performativity is not the only means by which Complicite transfers science from the laboratory to stage. The complex science behind the act of remembrance is also enacted on the stage via the play’s narrative structure and the internationalism that it advocates. The present study provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which science is presented in the play, by detecting and discussing the mnemonic devices that not only hold the play's narrative elements together but also expand the proscenium arch to involve the audience, via shared images of exile, immigration, and displacement.     

Child migrants and deportees from Poland and Ukraine after the Second World War: experience and memory

This article aims to compare the biographical experiences and individual memories of child deportees and migrants from Eastern Europe. The analysis is based on a field study of over 100 biographical interviews in two local communities situated in the borderland regions which were particularly exposed to post-war displacement, resettlement and population exchange: Ukrainian Galicia and Western Poland. The author claims that although the history of these two distant communities was totally different, contemporary memory of being a refugee/deportee/forced migrant, losing one's home/homeland and watching the deportation of the previous inhabitants of one's new place of residence bear many similarities. While analysing autobiographical narratives, I attempt to find common threads and topics generated by their experiences as children, as well as explain the differences by exploring the social context of individual memory, with a special accent on post-war socialisation and the Polish and Ukrainian memory culture. The author also strives to show how and why the children's memories differ from those of their parents.     

(Dis)(em)placing gender at Ukwimi: refugee resettlement and repatriation in eastern Zambia

There is growing recognition within feminist scholarship that managing displacement is a highly contested, politicized, and gendered process. This article seeks to contribute by demonstrating that the processes of resettlement and repatriation (both thought of as ‘solutions’ to displacement) are also contested, politicized, and gendered. My analysis is situated within feminist geopolitics and includes empirical data collected from interviews with and observations of Mozambican/Angolan refugees, their hosts, and institutional actors at Ukwimi Refugee Settlement (URS), Zambia. Specifically, the discussion focuses on two realities. First, that resettlement to formal, organized settlements (like URS) actively displaces gender dynamics, as illustrated by the case of Mozambican refugees resettled to URS. Second, that large-scale, organized repatriation also displaces gender relationships in profound ways, as demonstrated by the large-scale repatriation of Angolan refugees from URS. In the midst of multiple displacements, the daily (and highly gendered) struggles of people at URS reflect the concrete ways in which refugees and their hosts actively seek to emplace themselves at URS.     

Hygienisation,Gentrification, and Urban Displacement in Brazil

This article engages recent debates over gentrification and urban displacement in the global South. While researchers increasingly suggest that gentrification is becoming widespread in “Southern” cities, others argue that such analyses overlook important differences in empirical context and privilege EuroAmerican theoretical frameworks. To respond to this debate, in this article, we outline the concept of higienização (hygienisation), arguing that it captures important contextual factors missed by gentrification. Hygienisation is a Brazilian term that describes a particular form of urban displacement, and is directly informed by legacies of colonialism, racial and class stigma, informality, and state violence. Our objective is to show how “Southern” concepts like hygienisation help urban researchers gain better insight into processes of urban displacement, while also responding to recent calls to decentre and provincialise urban theory.     

Spaces of safety and more-than-safety in women’s refuges in England

Many women escaping domestic violence spend time in women’s refuges (shelters) whilst they deal with practical and emotional issues in a safe space. Such spaces are therefore an important place for women’s recovery and empowerment after abuse, but are also complex spaces of displacement. In the UK, there is a wide range of refuge providers, and different models of accommodation and support provision in refuges. Differences, such as those between refuges providing self-contained flats and those with communal facilities and communal activities, can provide very different experiences for the women and their children who live there. In addition, there have been shifts in the policy context of refuges, and increasingly individualistic models of service provision. This article explores women’s refuges as spaces of safety, and of more-than-safety, drawing on interviews with women in the Midlands, South Coast and London, and on participatory creative groupwork with women in the Midlands and South Coast. Refuge spaces require, but also enable, contact and encounter between women; and communal living and group processes can enable interaction and collaboration between women. The article draws on women’s words and images to exemplify these experiences, concluding that the safe spaces of women’s refuges can enable processes of more-than-safety. These collective processes begin to counteract the isolation of abuse and to help prepare women for their lives after the refuge.