Cet article, qui s’appuie sur les récits de vie de trois femmes arrivées à Berlin après avoir fui l’Afghanistan et la Syrie, conteste la validité des représentations des réfugiées comme des victimes de cultures patriarcales devant être sauvées et libérées. Il montre au contraire que ces femmes, luttaient déjà pour leur liberté dans leurs pays d’origine, et que l’expérience de l’exil a même été un moment d’empowerment pour certaines d’entre elles. À l’inverse, la situation de réfugiée en Allemagne peut présenter (...) des situations de disempowerment pour ces femmes. (shrink)

What has the past reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic taught us? We have seen that many low and middle-income countries (LMICs) still lack access to vaccines, and it seems little progress has been made in the last few months and year. This article discusses whether the current strategies, most notably, vaccine donations by the international community and the COVID-19 global access facility COVAX, offer meaningful solutions to tackle the problem. At the centre of our analysis, we compare the concepts of (...) “donations” and “charity” with “vaccine equity” and the “empowerment” of poorer countries. We suggest that the achievement of fair global vaccine production requires that our global approach is supportive of the idea of empowerment. We, therefore, need structural reforms, which would most importantly include capacity building, to positively impact this goal and to take the interests of the global poor seriously. (shrink)

What has the past reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic taught us? We have seen that many low and middle-income countries (LMICs) still lack access to vaccines, and it seems little progress has been made in the last few months and year. This article discusses whether the current strategies, most notably, vaccine donations by the international community and the COVID-19 global access facility COVAX, offer meaningful solutions to tackle the problem. At the centre of our analysis, we compare the concepts of (...) “donations” and “charity” with “vaccine equity” and the “empowerment” of poorer countries. We suggest that the achievement of fair global vaccine production requires that our global approach is supportive of the idea of empowerment. We, therefore, need structural reforms, which would most importantly include capacity building, to positively impact this goal and to take the interests of the global poor seriously. (shrink)

This study compares the balance of newspaper and television news coverage about migration in two countries that were differently affected by the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 in terms of the geopolitical involvement and numbers of migrants being admitted. Based on a broad consensus among political elites, Germany left its borders open and received about one million migrants mainly from Syria during 2015. In contrast, the conservative British government was heavily attacked by oppositional parties for closing Britain’s borders and, (...) thus, restricting immigration. These different initial situations led to remarkable differences between the news coverage in both countries. In line with news value theory, German media outlets reported much more on migration than did their British counterparts. In line with indexing theory, German news coverage consonantly reflected the consensual view of German political elites, while British news media reported along their general editorial lines. (shrink)

The most recent global refugee figures are staggering, with over 82.4 million people forcibly displaced and 26.4 million registered refugees. The ongoing conflict in Syria is a major contributor. After a decade of violence and destabilization, over 13.4million Syrians have been displaced, including 6.7 million internally displaced persons and 6.7 million refugees registered in other countries. Beyond the immediate political and economic challenges, an essential component of any response to this humanitarian crisis must be health-related, including policies and interventions (...) specific to mental health. This policy and practice review addresses refugee mental health in the context of the Syrian crisis, providing an update and overview of the current situation while exploring new initiatives in mental health research and global health policy that can help strengthen and expand services. Relevant global health policy frameworks are first briefly introduced, followed by a short summary of recent research on refugee mental health. We then provide an update on the current status of research, service provision, and health policy in the leading destinations for Syrians who have been forcibly displaced. This starts within Syria and then turns to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Germany. Finally, several general recommendations are discussed, including the pressing need for more data at each phase of migration, the expansion of integrated mental health services, and the explicit inclusion and prioritization of refugee mental health in national and global health policy. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter (...) of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The sample was selected from the refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan continuing their education in different departments of Karabük University and in different high schools of Karabük National Education Directorate in 2017-2018 academic year. “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales were applied to the sample with an average age of 18. According to the research findings, cultural adaptation and positive religious coping levels of the sample group are above the average, and negative religious coping levels are below the average. There was found a positive meaningful correlation between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping of which relation was determined through some independent and demographic variables (r =.269). Therefore, it is thought that providing spiritual care for refugee students might increase the level of cultural adaptation.Summary: The aim of this study is to determine what kind of religious coping activities the refugee students forced to emigrate to Turkey due to the devastating reasons such as war and violation of rights apply in order to overcome their traumatic lives and the relationship between the use of these religious coping activities and their adaptation to the culture they live in. The fact that religion has important functions in dealing with all difficulties, especially forced migration, makes it a matter of interest about what kind of religious coping process refugees have experienced for making their lives bearable. Therefore, this research is based on the assumption that the refugees mostly struggle with difficulties by using positive religious coping methods and try to achieve cultural adaptation through this struggle. The study that was conducted according to correlational survey model, used the questionnaire technique by implementing the “Cultural Adaptation” and “Religious Coping Styles” scales together with a personal information form. The sample of the study was chosen by random sampling, and consisted of 112 volunteer refugee students from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, studying at different departments of Karabük University and different public high schools in Karabük. While analyzing the data, firstly, averages were calculated by obtaining total scores of the scales. In order to reveal whether students’ cultural adaptation levels differ by various variables or not, t-test (Independent Samples t-test), one-way analysis of variance (Oneway ANOVA) and Scheffe Test were applied. While analyzing relations related to religious coping, non-parametric ‘Man Whitney U’ and ‘Kruskall Wallis H’ tests were applied in accordance with the result of the normality test. In the study in which correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between cultural adaptation and religious coping, the lowest p-value was predicated as.05 to determine the level of statistical significance. According to the findings, sample group’s levels of cultural adaptation (=3,27) and positive religious coping (=3,42) were above the average, and the level of negative religious coping (=1,77) was below the average. Cultural adaptation levels of the sample group has shown significant statistical differences in terms of the nationality variable. Accordingly, Syrian students had higher cultural adaptation scores (=3,48) than Iraqi (=3,19) and Afghani students (=3,06), and the difference among them was statistically meaningful (p<.01). There wasn’t detected any significant relationship between ‘negative religious coping’ levels of the sample and demographic and other independent variables; however, there were seen statistically significant differences just in terms of nationality, gender and age range among other demographic variables. Accordingly, female students scored higher (= 64,46) in positive coping than male students (= 47,32). The difference between them is statistically meaningful (p<.01). Students at the ages of 21-24 scored higher in positive religious coping (= 70,54) and the difference between them and the students at the ages of 14-16 (= 47,47) reached meaningful level, next to this Syrian students had higher levels of positive religious coping (= 62,91) and this reached a meaningful difference (p<.01) when compared with the averages of Afghani students (= 42,63). Moreover, there was a positive significant relationship between cultural adaptation and positive religious coping (r=.269, n=112, p=.004).Forced migration caused by wars is a traumatic experience including material and moral loss. The greatest contribution of spirituality in this kind of negative experiences causing severe stress is through positive religious coping. Hence, religious and spiritual beliefs not only enable cognitive satisfaction by offering the most satisfying answers to traumatic victims’ search for meaning, yet also help them to accept the situation. This is caused due to a sense of devotion, and contribute to both their struggle with the trauma and their post-traumatic development. According to the research findings, there is a significant relationship between students’ cultural adaptation and ‘positive religious coping’ tendency. Therefore, providing these students with spiritual care and counseling might contribute to their integration process. Moreover, it has been seen that it is important to conduct value-centered projects and activities which would prevent both refugee students and locals to marginalize each other, and would improve the culture of living-together. It is also important to provide governmental and non-governmental support for these projects and activities. On the other hand, launching free language courses to resolve communication problems, which are obstacles for integration, and establishing socio-cultural networks in and around the campus for constituting more compatible relationships among the students would improve the students’ integration capability. (shrink)

Given the high numbers of refugees from Syria entering Germany in the recent years, the social integration of refugee youth has become an increasingly important issue in Germany. Thus, the current study examines adolescents’ decisions and reasoning around the inclusion of Syrian peers in Germany. Using a hypothetical scenario, we assessed adolescents’ peer inclusion decisions and reasoning with attention to comparing inclusion of a Syrian refugee peer and a German peer. Given the importance of group norms for adolescents, we (...) assessed not only adolescents’ own inclusion decisions, but also what they would expect their peer group to decide and what they think their peer group should do. Moreover, adolescents’ underlying reasoning was assessed. The analyses revealed that adolescents thought they would be more inclusive of a Syrian peer than a German peer and that their peer group should be more inclusive of a Syrian peer than a German peer. These tendencies toward including refugees were justified with references to morality as well as social-conventions. In contrast to their own decisions and to what they think their peer group should, participants expected their group would be more inclusive toward a German peer than a Syrian peer. This was mainly justified by referencing aspects of group functioning and psychological information about the peers, whereas moral and prosocial reasoning was very rarely used for the expected group decision. In sum, these findings document that adolescents in Germany wish to be inclusive regarding refugee peers and that they balance attention to morality and other domains of social reasoning when thinking about inclusion decisions while they expect that their peers will not consider morally relevant information when making these decisions. These findings have important practical implications as they indicate the importance of interventions that focus on promoting inclusive peer group norms. (shrink)

How has Germany performed with regard to accepting asylum applications and refugees? Luc Bovens and Jane von Rabenau assess recent data on acceptance rates and the size of the refugee population in Germany, finding that the country has one of the lowest acceptance rates in western/northern Europe. The size of the refugee population in Germany is more moderate by western/northern European standards, however recent developments suggest official data has likely overestimated the size of this population.

This study examines the topical frames reflected in articles published about Syrian refugees by German, British and American news websites in 2016. We analyze these for terms associated with Syrian refugees and the themes they address then relate them to those we identified for 2015 and to those indicated by German students in expressing their attitudes towards them. The results show that, despite discrepancies in the occurrence of Syrian refugees’ collocates in our 2016 news corpora, they still reflect, at a (...) lower rate, the themes identified for 2015: humanitarianism, conflict, dehumanization, security, economic burden, political responsibility, and integration. The survey results confirm humanitarianism and integration as particularly prominent themes for our participants, too. While our findings provide further discursive evidence for the variation in refugees’ representations in news discourse and for the influence of media on public opinion, they suggest that this impact may be balanced out by other factors including an audience’s critical reading and thinking skills. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Gabiam’s timely and original book makes an excellent contribution to the limited literature on Palestinian refugees in Syria. The need to be seen to ‘suffer’ as her title suggests has long been a mantra of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. A visit to any Palestinian refugee living in a United Nations Relief and Works (...) Agency camp would be struck by the poverty and crowdedness of the camp as well as its bareness. But the situation for Palestinian refugees in Syria has always been somehow different. Of all the UNRWA countries, Palestinian refugees in Syria had more rights—guaranteed in legislation going back to the 1950s—amounting to a form... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe German state permitted about one million refugees to enter Germany in 2015–2016, although many were subsequently denied refugee status. Germany adopted an ‘integration’ and ‘welcome’ politics, an important, if imperfect, model for a European refugee policy. The integration of refugees required the joint activity of state, of civil society, of the public sphere and of refugees themselves. Civil society initiated a vast amount of essential care work and solidarity with refugees pursued especially, but not only, by women, yet civil (...) society and refugees had no say in refugee policies. German refugee policy and practice raised many normative issues, producing an intense and vigorous national debate about them, in which philosophers and theorists were active. Among the questions debated were whether Germany had accepted ‘too many’ refugees, the acceptability of the costs of the policy, the risks of harm to the least well off, the purported risks to safety, security and the social order and the purported threats to German culture. I first describe German state policies, practices and civil society efforts and then turn to normative debates. I discuss the limits of the German discourse and suggest how it needs to be expanded. (shrink)

Socio-psychological integration is a dimension of integration affecting refugees and receiving community members alike, and is related to those integration goals which promote positive intergroup attitudes, close social proximity, interrelation of social networks, low levels of perceived intergroup threat, positive intergroup contact, etc. The goal of this study was to explore the differences in the levels of indicators of socio-psychological integration in both groups. Six hundred receiving community members in Croatia, and 149 refugees from Syria in Croatia participated in (...) the field study. The results generally show that the refugees have more positive attitudes towards receiving community members, a closer social proximity and lower levels of perception of symbolic and realistic intergroup threat than vice-versa. Intergroup contact in Croatia is very rare, posing an interesting setting for the integration process. Potential implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The extent to which EU countries take on their ‘fair share’ of asylum seekers is a contentious issue. Luc Bovens and Jane von Rabenau write on concern within Germany that the country is taking on a higher burden than other EU states. They argue that when compared on a per capita basis with similar EU countries, Germany performs relatively poorly in terms of acceptances for new refugees. Where Germany performs better is with respect to the size of the existing refugee (...) population within the country, however this may be a reflection of the difficulty refugees experience in gaining German citizenship. (shrink)

ObjectiveViolent conflict forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes to host countries. This study examines Syrian refugee women’s experiences from the war’s outset through their journey to Jordan. It addresses the toll this journey had on their lives.MethodsTwenty-four in-depth interviews were completed with Syrian refugee women who currently reside in urban areas of Jordan. Researchers translated, transcribed, and analyzed the interviews using group narrative methodology.ResultsThe Syrian women had unique nostalgic memories of times before the war. They experienced atrocities during (...) the war that forced their decision to escape Syria. Their journey narratives testify of internal displacement, personal and collective traumatic journeys via legal and illegal routes. Almost all the women were placed in refugee camps during their transitions to host country residency. In Jordan, they faced diverse hurdles of displacement and extremely different realities compared to the ones they had in Syria. Despite how very different but difficult each of their journeys were, every single woman longed to return home to Syria.ConclusionsThis study presents a new understanding of the role and process of the journeys undertaken and highlights the concept of “return” as the defining element for Syrian refugee women. Regardless of the hardships women endured to escape their homeland to find safety, “return” marks an ending to their horror journey and the beginning of a new journey of hope for a better future. (shrink)

This study examines how institutional logics interplay in a cross-sector social partnership that manages refugee integration in a rural district in Germany. In an inductive 15-month case study that drew on interviews and observations, we observe the dynamic materialization of institutional logics in day-to-day practices and an increasing contradiction and even rivalry between community- and market-based institutional logics over time. As a result, we delineate a model explaining the interplay of institutional logics along two dimensions: the dominance of one salient (...) logic and whether conflicts arise among logics. Our analysis also addresses the unifying properties of community as an institutional logic, especially in the context of urgency conditions. In addition, we show the influence of exogenous events and their media coverage on the interplay and conflicts of institutional logics. By unfolding the complexity of refugee integration—one of the global grand challenges of the present—we deepen the current understanding of the specific challenges addressed by cross-sector social partnerships. (shrink)

Should Germany be prosecuting crimes committed in Syria pursuant to universal jurisdiction? This article revisits the normative questions raised by UJ—the principle that a state can prosecute serious international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by foreigners outside of its territories—against the backdrop of increasing European UJ proceedings regarding Syrian conflict–related crimes, focusing on Germany as an illustrative example. While existing literature justifies UJ on the basis of universal prohibition of certain atrocities, this creates (...) residual normative issues. Alternatively, this article applies the “two-tiered test” derived from the “dual foundation” thesis of the Eichmann judgment, in which the normative appropriateness of UJ is evaluated against both accounts of universal prohibition and the specific politics surrounding the prosecution. It contends that the large number of Syrian refugees in Germany means that Germany, in particular, should initiate Syrian conflict–related UJ proceedings to prevent continued harm and recognize the political agency of refugees. Ultimately, the article suggests UJ should normatively be thought of as a domestic, rather than international, political event. (shrink)

Oral healthcare is attracting much attention after decades of neglect from policymakers. Recent studies have shown a strong association between oral and overall health, which can lead to serious health problems. Availability of oral healthcare services is an essential part of ensuring universal healthcare coverage. More importantly, current gaps in its accessibility by minority or marginalized population groups are crucial public health as well as ethical concerns. One notable effort to address this issue comes from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which offer (...) oral healthcare services for non-insured refugees. However, the challenge remains that these care services are not comprehensive, which has implications for the refugees’ oral and general health. In this article, we discuss this complex issue in the German healthcare context by including ethical reflections. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss the ethical challenges related to oral healthcare services provided by NGOs for refugees in Germany. First, we will introduce the general oral healthcare context worldwide and in Germany. Second, we will provide a general description of the oral healthcare services provided by NGOs for refugees in Germany, as well as an overview of existing gaps. This will provide us with the context for our third and most important task—discussing the ethical implications of the gaps. In doing so, and since the ethical implications can be several, we demarcate the scope of our analysis by focusing on the specific ethical issues of justice, harm, and autonomy. Finally, we offer some recommendations for how to move forward. (shrink)

This article comprises a short case exemplifying ethical challenges arising for a participatory researcher working with Afghan women refugees during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany. The researcher is an Iranian-German woman, qualified as a midwife, undertaking doctoral research on refugees’ access to reproductive health care. Disclosures about some women’s experience of domestic violence are made, which raise ethical issues for the researcher relating to personal-professional boundaries, roles and responsibilities. Two commentaries are given on this case from participatory researchers based in (...) Germany, UK and Austria. Both commentaries highlight the relevance of the ethics of care for participatory research and for this research in particular, which entails very close relationships between the doctoral researcher and the refugee women with whom she is researching. The first commentary analyses the research process in terms of Tronto’s five phases of care, while the second illustrates the importance of caring institutions in supporting researchers working on sensitive topics. (shrink)

In 2011 there are 76 countries of the world still criminalising same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults. In seven of those countries homosexual acts are punishable with death penalty (i.e., Mauritania, Sudan, the northern states of Nigeria, the southern parts of Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen). Homophobic (transphobic) attitudes are also frequent in many societies. However, the LGBT asylum seekers are frequently left outside the refugee definition due to many refugee qualification problems in LGBT cases. Therefore, in this article the (...) author aims to describe the main refugee qualification problems in LGBT asylum cases (i.e., criminalisation; state protection against non-state persecution; concealment of sexual or gender identity; internal protection) and propose their solutions. Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 has several important provisions including LGBT asylum seekers into otherwise gender-neutral refugee definition. Today these provisions need to be correctly interpreted and transposed into practice of the Member States. (shrink)

Refugee migration leads to increased diversity in host societies and refugees have to face many stereotyped attitudes in the host society. However, there has been little research on minority group stereotypes toward host society members and how these stereotypes relate to the acculturation-relevant attitudes of refugees in their first phase of acculturation. This study surveyed 783 refugees in Germany who had migrated mostly in the so-called “refugee crisis” between 2015 and 2016. At the time of the survey in 2018, they (...) had been in Germany for an average of 27 months. These refugees reported their positive and negative sociability stereotypes toward German host society members, acculturation-related orientations, shared reality values, and perceived discrimination. Results showed that positive sociability stereotypes toward host society members were associated with increased cultural adoption and shared reality. In contrast, negative sociability stereotypes negatively affected cultural adoption and shared reality. However, stereotypes showed no association at all with cultural maintenance. Interactions between sociability stereotypes and discrimination experiences highlighted a disillusion effect, in the sense that discrimination reduced the motivation to adopt the host culture more strongly among refugees who held strongly positive sociability stereotypes. The study extends knowledge on the significance of minority group stereotypes in the context of refugee migration and reveals the maladaptive consequences of discriminatory behavior against refugees by host society members. (shrink)

As the war in Syria and the destruction of the Calais camp in France in 2016 bitterly demonstrate, declarations of human rights and asylum devolve into empty promises without a common sense of solidarity and an implicit understanding that we share responsibility for the world and one another. Today’s refugee crisis demonstrates that many of the problems that Hannah Arendt identified during the first half of the twentieth century are still with us. National security and the state of exception (...) increasingly place refugees and migrants at the borders of international law. This article argues that Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace and Arendt’s postwar reflections on the stateless as modern pariahs continue to frame current debates on hospitality, human rights, and responsibility. Without a recognition of our common humanity and shared world, sovereign states will continue to find exceptions to the legal status of refugees and migrants, thus enabling their exclusion from political life and the very laws that should protect them. Falling outside human rights law and the rights of refugees leads to the uncertainty of the pariah. (shrink)

Struggles for gender justice by women's movements have sought to give legal recognition to gender equality at both national and international levels. However, such society-wide goals may have little resonance in the lives of individual men and women in contexts where a culture of individual rights is weak or missing and the stress is on the moral economy of kinship and community. While empowerment captures the myriad ways in which intended and unintended changes can enhance the ability of individual women (...) to exercise greater control over their own lives, it does not necessarily lead to their engagement in collective struggles for gender justice. This paper argues that ideas about citizenship, as both legal status and potential for action, can help bridge this gulf between institutional and individual change. It draws on empirical research from Afghanistan and Bangladesh to explore the extent to which efforts to empower women by development organisations have also encompassed discourses of citizenship which allow them to articulate, and act on, their vision for a just society. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a great deal of activity and discussion on the appropriate treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers. The increasing number of asylum-seekers in Western Europe, which peaked in Germany with more than 438,000 requests in 1992 alone, has been at the root of the political debate. The administrations involved seem to be unable to cope adequately with such increases, a fact which in its turn has given rise to a variety of humanitarian and juridical problems .It (...) is not my intention here to discuss the many technical facets of this social issue . I prefer, rather, to offer a socio-ethical reflection on one particular and fundamental aspect of our attitude toward refugees, namely, the apparently unavoidable fact that they are set against the background issues of migration and social integration. In their host countries refugees have in fact been perceived primarily as immigrants and foreigners, not as refugees.It is also not my intention to make an a priori judgment on the question. Instead, I would like to begin by inquiring into the historical and structural factors which have defined our perception of the issue. It will become clear that we can only achieve an ethically adequate treatment of refugees if we are prepared to rectify the much broader problem of our attitude to foreigners as such. (shrink)

Asylum has become a highly charged political issue across developed countries, raising a host of difficult ethical and political questions. What responsibilities do the world's richest countries have to refugees arriving at their borders? Are states justified in implementing measures to prevent the arrival of economic migrants if they also block entry for refugees? Is it legitimate to curtail the rights of asylum seekers to maximize the number of refugees receiving protection overall? This book draws upon political and ethical theory (...) and an examination of the experiences of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia to consider how to respond to the challenges of asylum. In addition to explaining why asylum has emerged as such a key political issue in recent years, it provides a compelling account of how states could move towards implementing morally defensible responses to refugees. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the concept of policy malaise, which refers to citizens’ dissatisfaction with the way political institutions and processes handle specific problems such as the refugee issue in Germany. Based on a representative online panel survey with two waves conducted in 2016 and 2017 (N = 836), we explore the occurrence of policy malaise among the German population and its relation to issue-specific media use, trust in news media, and issue fatigue. First, the results indicate that policy (...) malaise toward the refugee issue is widespread in Germany. Second, we found that media use relates differentially to policy malaise: While high exposure to public broadcasting was negatively associated with policy malaise, we found the opposite for private broadcasting. Third, policy malaise is higher for people who experience issue fatigue and lower for people who trust the news media. Finally, trust in media reinforces the negative and positive relations between media use and policy malaise. Implications concerning the associations between policy malaise and political alienation in its broader sense are discussed. (shrink)

The paper reviews the military policy of a new independent Republic of Tajikistan over 1991-2011. The smallest by territory Central Asian republic lived through a five-year civil war on its way to an independent sovereign democratic state which seven million people were wise enough to reach national reconciliation in 1997. The majority of Tajikistan population is on the verge of poverty, which is indicative of the inadequate social policy. The country is rich in Pamir water which is drawn from eleven (...) glaciers as well as cotton, electric energy and aluminum. Tajikistan secures its military power owing to cooperation with the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Republic develops all-embracing cooperation with such Asian countries as India, Pakistan, Turkey, China and Iran. Among European countries it is Germany that allocated funds for strengthening the border with Afghanistan, which notably stands out. Cooperation with the NATO within the Partnership for Peace Program helps the military of the Republic to dispose of outdated ammunition as well as take part in NATO peacekeeping operations in accordance with resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. The Russian Federation having the largest foreign military alignment in the territory of the Republic remains the main strategic partner and guarantor of the national sovereignty of Tajikistan. The Republic still faces the problems of energy resources, terrorism and international drug trafficking. The internal political situation requires continuous international monitoring. UN observers left the country in 2000. The authoritarian government does not contribute to development of the democratic foundation of civil society. Today's Armed Forces of Tajikistan are of insignificant numerical strength and poorly-armed. The Army needs modernization and adaptation to a present-day environment. (shrink)

Women-led political organizations that employ feminist and nationalist ideologies and operate as separate from, rather than associated with, male-dominated or patriarchal nationalist groups are both significant and under-explored areas of gender, feminist, and nationalism studies. This article investigates the feminist and nationalist vision of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA exemplifies an effective political movement that intersects feminist and nationalist politics, where women are active, rather than symbolic, participants within the organization, and help to shape an (...) ideological construction of the Afghan nation. RAWA subsequently links its struggle for women's rights (through feminism) with its nationalist goals for democracy and secularism. This article also analyses RAWA's use of conservative nationalist methods to reproduce the future of the organization and to develop ‘citizens’ for its idealized nation, while countering existing patriarchal social and familial structures through a re-configuration of women's roles in the family, community, and nation. This inquiry is based on geographic and feminist examinations of RAWA's organizational structure, literature, and political goals obtained through content analyses of RAWA's political literature and through interviews with RAWA members and supporters living as refugees in Pakistan in the summer of 2003 and winter of 2004/05. RAWA is an instructive example of counter-patriarchal and nationalist feminist politics that questions patriarchal definitions of the nation and its citizenry by reconfiguring gender norms and redefining gender relations in the family as a mirror of the nation. (shrink)

Late antique Alexandria is much better known than the early Islamic city. To be fully appreciated, the transition must be contextualized against the full range of Afro-Eurasiatic commercial and intellectual life. The Alexandrian schools ‘harmonized’ Hippocrates and Galen, Plato and Aristotle. They also catalyzed Christian theology especially during the controversies before and after the Council of Chalcedon (451) that tore the Church apart and set the stage for the emergence of Islam. Alexandrian cultural dissemination down to the seventh century is (...) here studied especially through evidence for the city’s libraries and book trade, together with the impact of its educational curriculum from Iran to Canterbury. After the Arab conquest, Alexandria turned into a frontier city and lost its economic and political role. But it became a city of the mind whose conceptual legacy fertilized not only Greek scholarship at Constantinople, but also Arabic science and philosophy thanks to the eighth- to ninth-century Baghdadi translation movement. Alexandria emanated occult energies too, thanks to the Pharos as variously misunderstood by Arabic writers, or the relics of its Christian saints, not least the Evangelist Mark, surreptitiously translated to Venice in 828-29. Study of the astral sciences too - astronomy but also astrology - was fertilized from Alexandria, as far afield as India and perhaps China as well as Syria, Baghdad and Constantinople. Egypt’s revival by the Fatimids, who founded Cairo in 961, had little impact on Alexandria until about the end of the eleventh century when, for a time, the city attracted Sunni scholars from as far away as Spain or Iran, while commerce benefited from the rise of the Italian merchant republics and the beginning of the Crusades. While the early caliphate had united a vast zone from Afghanistan to the Atlantic, the eleventh century saw a reemergence of late antique distinctions between the Iranian plateau, Syro-Mesopotamia, and the two Mediterranean basins. Alexandria was one of the points where these worlds intersected, though sub-Saharan Africa, to which it formally belonged, remained largely beyond its horizon until the twentieth century. (shrink)

What are the health impacts of President Trump's January 27, 2017, executive order suspending the resettlement of refugees and temporarily banning entry of nationals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen? Even if the President's constitutional arguments are credible, the order is deeply troubling under international law and humanitarian values. Under the 1967 Refugee Protocol, the United States has assumed a legal obligation to examine the claims of asylum seekers who reach U.S. territory without discrimination based on (...) race, nationality, or religion. Congress has delegated the decision as to how many refugees to accept to the president. Still, the executive order runs contrary to the principle of solidarity—which includes the fair sharing of responsibilities and burdens in accepting endangered individuals. Migrating doctors and nurses fill much of America's health care resources shortfall. The executive order also undermines science and academia, which depend on the free flow of knowledge and the spread of ideas. (shrink)

Modern, Stevie In the movie Exodus set in 1947, Paul Newman plays a Jewish 'people smuggler' Ari Ben Canaan in an amusing early scene where he disguises himself as a British soldier. Ben Canaan fools a commanding officer into signing off on the transport of recent holocaust survivors out of detention in Cyprus, making the officer believe the survivors would be shipped back to Germany.

Employment is critical for refugees’ positive integration into a receiving country. Enabling employment requires cross-sector collaborations, that is, employers collaborating with different stakeholders such as refugees, local employees, other employers, unofficial/official supporters, and authorities. A vital element of cross-sector collaborations is trust, yet the complexity of cross-sector collaborations may challenge the formation and maintenance of trust. Following a theory elaboration approach, this qualitative study with 37 employers and 27 support workers in Germany explores how employers’ experiences in cross-sector collaborations on (...) refugees’ labor market integration affect their trust in other stakeholders in this cross-sector space. Specifically, we explored employers’ perceptions of trust breaches, and how these perceptions affect their further engagement in cross-sector collaborations on refugee integration. Based on our findings, we propose a process model that describes how unmet collaboration expectations and negative assessments of collaborators’ attitudes and behaviors lead to perceived trust breaches which, in turn, lead to employers’ hesitancy to hire refugees and/or to engage in cross-sector collaborations. In doing so, we extend existing theory on trust within organizations to the cross-sector context of refugee integration, uncovering context-specific meanings to trustworthiness dimensions and illustrating how breaches of different trustworthiness dimensions can interact. Moreover, we show how social policies, resources, and trustors’ perceived vulnerability in collaborations shape their risk perceptions. This study highlights the central role of trust for refugee integration and illustrates how missing goals and process clarity endanger sustainable collaborations. (shrink)

The recent and ongoing refugee crisis in Europe highlights conflicting attitudes about the rights of migrants and refugees to health care in transition and destination countries. Some European and Scandinavian states, such as Germany and Sweden, have welcomed large numbers of migrants, while others, such as the U.K., have been significantly less open. In part, this is because of reluctance by certain national governments to incur what are seen as the high costs of delivering aid and care to migrants. In (...) response to these assumptions, some theorists have argued that the appropriate way to view the health needs of migrants is not in terms of rights, but in terms of the interests of destination and transition countries—and have argued that providing care to migrants and refugees will generate benefits for their host countries. However, self‐interest alone is less effective at motivating the provision of care for health deprivations that do not pose a threat to third parties, or to migrants and refugees in poor or distant countries. In this paper, I argue that while self‐interest is unlikely in itself to motivate the provision of all necessary health care to all migrants and refugees, and may risk stigmatizing already vulnerable persons, it can provide the foundation upon which such motivations can be built. My goal is therefore to show how and why a more just approach to the provision of health care to migrants can and should be derived from narrower, self‐interested commitments to preserving citizen health. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOn 4 September 2015 asylum seekers who got stranded in Budapest’s Keleti train station began a march to cross the Austrian border. Their aim was to reach Germany and Sweden where they believed their asylum claims would be better received. In this article, I argue that the march should be characterized as an act of civil disobedience. This claim may seem to contradict common convictions regarding acts of civil disobedience as well as asylum seekers. The most common justifications are given (...) with reference to moral rights of citizens and concerns for enhancing justice or democracy within states. Asylum seekers are not members of the European public. How can they be entitled to break the law? I first show that the march displays features of a paradigm case of civil disobedience. Then, I identify moral reasons for asylum seekers to carry out the march acceptable from both strong and weak cosmopolitan perspectives. After that, I point out its corrective, stabilizing and democracy-enhancing roles in the European political landscape. I conclude by emphasizing that conceptualizing the march as an act of civil disobedience is significant in recognizing asylum seekers as political agents making claims within an evolving framework of refugee protection. (shrink)

Crises of forced migration are, unfortunately, nothing new. At the time of the writing of this paper, at least two such crises were in full swing – mass movements from the Middle East and parts of Africa to the E.U., and major movements from Central America to the Southern U.S. border, including movements by large numbers of families and unaccompanied minors. These movements are complex, with multiple causes, and it is always risky to attempt to craft either general policy or (...) philosophical positions in response to salient crises. However, both of these instances do bring to the foreground important questions about the proper purpose and extent of refugee protection as a means of dealing with crises of forced migration. In particular, both of these instances force us to consider what role persecution on the basis of a protected ground – race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion – ought to play in granting refugee protection, and whether our response to those in danger should change if the agents of persecution are non-state actors. This paper is not primarily about the problems arising from Syria or Central America. In a way similar to how hard cases make bad law, I contend that a too central focus on salient crises tends to lead to bad theory and often to bad general policy. However, if I am successful in my goal of clarifying the place of persecution and non-state action in refugee protection, then we may in turn be better able to think clearly about our current crisis situations. -/- In this paper I will first draw on my previous work on the normative logic of the refugee convention to argue that, while persecution should play an important, and even central, role in our thinking about refugees, this importance is shallow and pragmatic rather than deep and fundamental. Next, I will show how this conclusion supports the claim that harms amounting to persecution by non-state actors may ground an asylum claim, at least in some cases, both when the state is unwilling and when it is unable to protect its members. I consider two cases: first, instances where the authority and power of the state has been usurped by another power, and second, when the state has (implicitly or explicitly) delegated its power or authority to non-state actors. I will show how this leads to extending asylum to a broader range of people than traditional accounts would. -/- (To download this paper, please use the link from SSRN below.). (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn light of the large recent inflow of refugees to the EU and the Commission’s efforts to relocate them, I raise the question of what a fair distribution of refugees between EU countries would look like. More specifically, I consider what concerns such a distributive scheme should be sensitive to. First, I put forward some arguments for why states are obligated to admit refugees and outline how I believe the EU should respond to the refugee crisis. This involves, among other (...) things, resettling a proportion of refugees from countries neighbouring Syria in the EU. Second, I consider how the intake into the EU should be distributed between member states, that is, the shares different countries can be expected to admit. I discuss the relevance of a number of different factors that may be claimed to affect such shares, including population size, GDP, number of refugees admitted so far, unemployment rate, country-specific costs and cultural ‘closeness’. Third, I consider whether the distributive scheme should be restricted to reflect specific states’ responsibility for creating refugees in the first place, levels of racism and xenophobia, and whether other states are required to pick up the slack if some refuse to admit their fair share. (shrink)

We can currently see the formation of new nationalist and racist parties or tendencies within established parties to lean towards right-wing politics within many European countries; from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) in the Netherlands, Lega Nord or Lega in Italia, Vox in Spain, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Front National in France, the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, Fidesz in Hungary, and Golden Dawn in Greece, to name only a few. At the same time, there (...) has been a surge in racist, fascist, and antisemitic attacks within Europe. Since 1991, Neo-Nazi gangs have attacked migrants and members of antifascist groups, burned down housing facilities for asylum seekers (including facilities for Ukrainian refugees in 2022), disrupted social initiatives, and spread fear (BfV, 2022; cf. Speit, 2021). However, most of these activities were described as the criminal action of socially marginalized individuals, downplaying the organized structure behind these far-right activities and, thus, paving the way for more attacks. Part of this paper is to show how the epistemic tools developed by the epistemology of ignorance literature can help to understand (a) why the organized structures of far-right movements are unintelligible within the dominant frame of intelligibility in Europe and (b) how the silence about far-right movements shifts the boundaries for what can be said or done, thus, having deeply problematic repercussions for who can feel safe in Europe. This paper has a modest aim: By bringing into focus contexts of social injustice that have not received much attention in the current literature and by understanding them with the help of existing research from the debate on problematic epistemic practices and philosophy of language, the paper aims to highlight some problematic practices. (shrink)

Between States is the first book that assesses systematically the broad implications of interim governments in the establishment of democratic regimes and on the existence of states. Based on historical and contemporary democratisation experiences, the book presents four ideal types of interim government: opposition-led provisional governments, power-sharing interim governments, incumbent-led caretaker governments, and international interim government by the United Nations. The first part explores the theoretical problems of each of these models from a broad comparative perspective. It uses as illustrations (...) historical and contemporary cases that present a wide spectrum of contexts for comparison. The second part provides extensive case studies that are intended to illustrate, appraise, amplify and criticise the analysis in volume one. These include Iran, East Germany, Portugal, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. (shrink)

Why are human rights abuses of refugees at the EU’s geographical periphery tolerated by other EU states? This chapter uses the case of Hungary and Germany to explore how the former abolished the institution of asylum, shedding light on the human rights abuses of refugees, and why states such as the latter seem to condone such actions. It argues that core EU member states condone human rights abuses at the geographical periphery of the EU as long as they contribute to (...) keeping refugees from accessing their territory. If the ‘dirty work’ is being done by others, the moral self-portrait of a generous refugee-receiving state remains, on the surface, untarnished. The chapter aims at disenchanting this image. (shrink)

This research focuses on the Turkish government’s communications with the international community with regard to Syrian refugees. I use the Discourse Historical Approach to reveal and compare the discursive strategies that the official Turkish news agency has used as part of its public diplomacy efforts in their mass communication efforts regarding Syrian refugees during the last 8 years. The results reveal how a humanitarian issue such as the plight of refugees might be employed to establish a government’s political position, affirm (...) its involvement and influence public opinion about a conflict that exceeds national boundaries and has turned into a challenge for international dominance involving world superpowers. The topics highlighted in the Turkish news reports and the argumentations that these reports put forward reveal that the Turkish government is highly critical of the international community, especially Western powers, for not fulfilling their humanitarian responsibilities. This specific criticism from Turkey regarding its outsized role in hosting refugees has become a leverage point to claim a place in the decision table about the future of Syria. (shrink)

This article shows how activists in the open data movement re-articulate notions of democracy, participation, and journalism by applying practices and values from open source culture to the creation and use of data. Focusing on the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and drawing from a combination of interviews and content analysis, it argues that this process leads activists to develop new rationalities around datafication that can support the agency of datafied publics. Three modulations of open source are identified: First, by regarding (...) data as a prerequisite for generating knowledge, activists transform the sharing of source code to include the sharing of raw data. Sharing raw data should break the interpretative monopoly of governments and would allow people to make their own interpretation of data about public issues. Second, activists connect this idea to an open and flexible form of representative democracy by applying the open source model of participation to political participation. Third, activists acknowledge that intermediaries are necessary to make raw data accessible to the public. This leads them to an interest in transforming journalism to become an intermediary in this sense. At the same time, they try to act as intermediaries themselves and develop civic technologies to put their ideas into practice. The article concludes with suggesting that the practices and ideas of open data activists are relevant because they illustrate the connection between datafication and open source culture and help to understand how datafication might support the agency of publics and actors outside big government and big business. (shrink)

In the realm of pixels and virtual spaces, the art of placemaking transcends physical confines, weaving a digital mosaic of voices and visions. Feminist digital placemaking emerges as a vibrant brushstroke on this canvas, painting online environments with the hues of inclusion, safety, and empowerment. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement in Iran, mirrored in the "Year of Hope" digital exhibition, showcases the transformative power of feminist digital placemaking in amplifying voices, knitting solidarity, and challenging oppressive narratives. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" (...) movement, sparked by the tragic demise of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, unfolds like a poignant narrative, with women scripting the chapters of resistance. This movement, a collage of courage and defiance, has found a digital stage in the "Year of Hope" exhibition, where each artwork tells a story, each pixel a testament to the unyielding spirit of Iranian women. (shrink)

This article brings an anthropology of ethics to bear on a case of forced migration and displacement among Syrian refugee women in Jordan. The case reveals how projects of Islamic self‐making in displacement become “emplacement” processes within the new state‐mediated context. Syrian women in Jordan engage in Islamic self‐making as part of their wider emplacement practices in two primary ways: first, operating more publicly in the material world through Islamically‐inspired actions and rituals than in Syria. Second, utilizing narratives of (...) Islamic histories to establish dignity in conditions of precarity in exile. Using two focus groups in urban Jordan and participant observation in two religion classes in a Syrian refugee camp, this article focuses on these practices of Islamic self‐making that serve an important role in the projects of moral emplacement for Syrian women in the Jordanian context. (shrink)

The ongoing refugee crisis is described as the most important concern since the Second World War, which has caused a great displacement of people. Many of these immigrants have been departing towards Mediterranean countries, as first-line states, seeking for a chance to enter Europe. This situation has created a challenging condition for many refugee accepting cities as well as for the migrants to get integrated within the new society. This fact has had a great influence on the sustainability condition while (...) the rapid and uncontrolled inflows can overwhelm the host countries' capacities to integrate new arrivals. In this regard, some European countries including Germany and Italy are coming about with strategies for accommodation and integration of these refugees in their countries. This paper aims to study and analyze two of the current case studies reflecting adaptive reuse strategies in European context for providing refugees' temporary housing facilities. In the context of this research, using the existing building stock introduced as the dominant strategy which can provide refugees with a proper shelter and also while providing the chance for their urban integration can contribute to revitalization of urban areas with the newcomers' participation. By analyzing the Berlin's largest refugee shelter inside Tempelhof Airport as the first case study, the major policies in Germany for providing refugee housing in national and local levels have been investigated. However, the second case study -Ex-Moi in Turin, is characteristically different from the case of Tempelhof airport of Berlin; since the refugees occupied the abandoned facility of the Olympic Village and settled down there. Regarding the fact that there is an urgent need for long-term policies and sustainable approaches to cope with the current refugee crisis, this research tries to shed a light on the path towards providing temporary housings by analyzing the challenges and opportunities of two different current case studies in Germany and Italy. (shrink)