The Global Refugee Crisis |
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Wars, conflict,persecution, state failure, and even climate change have forced more people than at any other time since records began to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere. Most of the world’s 60 million refugees in 2015 were fleeing ethnic and religious conflicts. We will explore the central issues at stake for both refugees and host countries, including protracted refugee states, why refugees must take life-threatening journys once they have been forced from their homes, issues of resettlement, and the impact of the crisis in Europe. We will then focus on some of the root causes of the crisis in global ethnic and sectarian conflict, and the Syrian conflict as a case study, Finally, we will look to the future and the search for workable and robust solutions.
Seminar Program Friday, May 12, 2017
Read: "Conceptual Problems in Forced Migration" Refugee Survey Quarterly, Volume 32, Issue 2, June 2013 https://academic.oup.com/rsq/issue/32/2 Goran Rystad, "Immigration History and the Future of International Migration" Jeremy Hein, "Refugees, Immigrants, and the State," Annual review of Sociology, 1993 19:43-59 Watch: "Going Home" 11:00-12:00 Guest Speaker: Refugees in Israel 12:00-14:00 Lunch in Haifa Downtown (Falafel Hanasi)
We address the question: “Why don’t refugees fly” when we examine the life-threatening journey to asylum-granting countries in Europe and North America. We will illustrate the crisis from the asylum seekers’ perspective by directly addressing the refugee crises in Israel and the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court which twice struck down legislation regarding the treatment of African refugees in Israel. Read: Saskia Sassen, "Regulating Immigration in a Global Age: A New Policy Landscape," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 570 (2000) Watch: "In this World" (2002) docudrama following a refugee/migrant (which one?) from Pakistan to London Jenna M. Loyd. et al., “Introduction: Borders, Prisons, and Abolitionist Visions,” Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, (Athens: University of Geogia Press, 2012) Giacomo Orsini, “Securitization as a Source of Insecurity: A Ground-Level Look at the Functioning of Europe’s External Border in Lampedusa,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 16, no. 1 (2016) Recommended: Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel's New Others, Pluto Press, April 2017 https://www.amazon.com/Unchosen-Non-Jews-Jewish-State/dp/0745336442 Maurizio Albahari, Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 18:30-19:00 Movie Screening: “4.2 Miles” (20 min) Tuesday, May 16th, 2017 Wednesday, May 17, 2017 Education Building, Room 570 16:00–20:00 Session 3: Session 3: How has the influx of refugees become a “crisis” for asylum-granting countries? This session will focus on Israel and Europe, and primarily on Germany. We begin by looking at the situation in Israel: the influx of asylum seekers brings to light Israel’s struggle to consolidate its values as a Jewish and democratic state and square those values with security concerns. The government has erected a surveillance fence along the border with Egypt, Israel has refused to absorb Syrian refugees, and asylum seekers are treated as infiltrators under Israeli law. In Europe, refugees are arriving in a period of economic decline which migrants have the potential to mitigate. But they are also arriving in a time in which the the anti-immigrant right wing has gained ground and a growing segment of the European population has turned inward and become increasingly nationalistic. We will examine the current crisis in historical perspective, i.e. the 12 million ethnic Germans who fled or were deported from Eastern Europe after WW II, Turkish “guest workers,” and refugees from the Balkan wars. We will look at IMF data on refugees and the European labor market and policies that might facilitate integration. We can then turn to the experience of 2015 which exposed the weaknesses of EU institutions (Schengen, Dublin) and the contradictions of the EU’s asylum policy. Finally we turn to politics, the rise of xenophobic nationalism and the radical right, looking in particular at Germany and the division of the population between the two cultures, the one that welcoms refugees and the one that rejects them. We will look at Angela Merkel’s changing policies and the current agreement with Turkey, as well as the current state of refugee integration in Germany. Read: Beverly Crawford “Moral Leader or Moral Hazard: Germany’s Response to the Refugee crisis and its Impact on European Solidarity” Moral Leader or Moral Hazard forthcoming in Unable to Cope? The Resilience of the European Union in Times of Crisis, Marianne Rittervold, Jarle Trondal, Akasemi Newsome, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 16:00-17:00 Guest Lecture Adi Hercowitz-Amir, ""Israel's policy towards asylum seekers: overview and issues of contested legality" 17:00-19:00 Session 3: The Refugee Crisis from the Perspective of Asylum-Granting Countries 19:00-20:00 Guest Lecture: Nurit McBride, PhD Candidate Minerva Center, "The Legal and Administrative Challenges in Refuge e Crisis Management for Developing States" Thursday, May 18th. 2017 9:00-12:00 Group Projects - Sunday, May 21, 2017 Main Building, Room 710 16:00 – 18:30 Session 4: Causes of the Refugee Crisis: Conflict and Climate In this session we will delve into the conflicts and forms of persecution that produce refugees. This section would be largely theoretical, drawing on the work on ethnic and religious conflict that I and others have done. We will begin by looking at who is being persecuted today and why, showing that most of today’s conflicts that produce large numbers of refugees are ethnic and religious in nature. Then we will examine theories of conflict from social psychology as well as evolutionary/primordial theories, religious exceptionalism, and constructivist theories, particularly those espoused by Crawford, Brubaker, Laitin, and Fearon. We will then turn to the question of disaster and climate refugees as a neglected cause of forced displacement. The focus here will be on the estimated 20 million refugees from Africa and Asia, and the fact that there is no international protection for these “refugees.” 18:30-20:00 Guest Speaker: Gamar Adam, Spokesman, "Holot Refugee Prisoners (tbc)Fleeing from Sudan to Israel" Read:
And for those who wish to read more deeply:
Monday, May 22nd, 2017 9:00-14:00 Individual Preparation Session - Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017 Wednesday, May 24 9:00-14:00 Field Trip 3: Golan and the border with Syria
14:00-16:00 Druse Lunch in Majd Al Shams In this session, we will take the theories and information from the previous session and use them as tools to dissect the causes of the Syrian war and why it has produced so many refugees.
Read:
Thursday, May 25th, 2017 9:00-12:00 Group Projects 14:30-16:00 HCGES Colloquium 17:00-19:00 Movie Screening "Watani-My Homeland” and discussion (Dormitory Club) 19:00-20:00 Guest Lecture: Dr. Niveen Rizkalla, Mack Center for Mental Health and Social Conflict, "The Situation of Refugees in Jordan"
Sunday, May 28th, 2017 Session 6: Solutions and Conclusion Main Building, Room 710 9:00-12:00 Field Trip 3 - Holot 13:00--15:00 Lecture, Discussion, and Group Project Presentation: Solutions and Conclusion 15:00-18:00 Bedouin Dinner Read:
And for those who wish to read more deeply:
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