Full Description
This book examines how scholars and policy makers primarily characterize refugee resettlement as a humanitarian solution or a migration pathway. While these descriptions may be accurate, they are not comprehensive. It examines how such framing influences understandings of resettlement's scope and impact, generating conceptual blind spots that limit critical inquiry.
By reframing resettlement as an institution embedded in a complex network of actors, relations, and practices, the chapters in this book reveal how resettlement is not a passive process. They explore historical and contemporary questions about how resettlement influences refugee hosting countries in the Global South and its political dimensions as a "humanitarian" program offered by countries in the Global North. By including the experiences of refugees at various points along the resettlement trajectory, such as those who may never be resettled, the book's chapters demonstrate how refugees actively strategize to become resettle-able, advocate for others within their networks, or even reject resettlement altogether. Contributions centering perspectives from the Global South expand the discourse around resettlement by examining how it operates from Southern host countries. These dynamics underscore how the specter of resettlement shapes refugee experiences in enduring ways, even when the prospect of being resettled is unattainable.
This book is invaluable for students, scholars, researchers and practitioners in refugee studies, migration studies, human rights, development studies, international relations, humanitarian affairs, political science, and sociology.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic & Racial Studies.
Contents
Preface Introduction: Refugee resettlement as an institution 1. "We don't have to resettle those refugees. Some other countries do": how race affects the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and refugee admissions 2. Waithood and creativity in the absence of resettlement: evidence from "residual" Liberian refugees in Nigeria 3. Waiting for resettlement: experiences of Iranian refugee women in Turkey 4. The "not yet" and "never" resettled: individual and communal waiting strategies among refugees in Kenyan camps 5. Between hope and harm: the fragmentary effects of resettlement for Congolese refugees in Uganda 6. Anchors, archipelagos, and ports of departure: how resettlement shapes im/mobilities in Nyarugusu refugee camp, Tanzania 7. Being "resettlement-minded": intersectional dimensions of refugee resettlement strategies and refusals in Jordan 8. Unpacking "expectation management": the International Organization for Migration's pre-departure orientation for resettling refugees 9. Working on resettlement: refugees in Kenya and everyday practices in pursuit of migration futures 10. "Heaven without people is not worth going to": refugee resettlement, time, and the institutionalization of family separation 11. Brokering refugee integration: promises and pitfalls of refugee co-sponsorship in the United States 12. The power of sponsorship: power and moral action in private refugee resettlement
