Deindustrialized cities in the United States are at a particular crossroads when it comes to the contest over refugees. Do refugees represent opportunity or danger? These cities are in desperate need ...to stem population and resource loss, problems that an influx of refugees could seemingly help address. However, the cities are simultaneously dealing with local communities that are already feeling internally displaced by economic and technological flux. For these existing citizens, the prospect of incoming refugee populations can be perceived as a threat to financial, cultural, and personal security. Few U.S. locations provide a more vivid case study of this fight than Metro Detroit, where competing interest groups are waging war over the meaning of the figure of the refugee. This book dives deeply into the discourse on refugees occurring among various institutions in Metro Detroit. The way in which local institutions talk about refugees gives us vital clues as to how they are negotiating competing pressures and how the city overall is negotiating competing imperatives. Indeed, this local discourse gives us a crucial glimpse into how U.S. cities are defining and redefining themselves today. The figure of the refugee becomes a slate on which groups with varied interests write their stories, aspirations, and fears. Consequently, we can figure out from local refugee discourses the ongoing question of what it means to be a Metro Detroiter—and by extension, what it means to be a revitalizing U.S. city in this age.
International migration, particularly to Europe, has increased in the last few decades, making research on aspects of this phenomenon, including numbers, challenges, and successes, particularly ...vital. This Special Issue highlights this necessary and relevant area of research. It presents 37 articles including studies on diverse topics relating to the health of refugees and migrants. Most articles (28) present studies focusing on European host countries. The focus on Europe is justified if we take into consideration the increased number of refugees and migrants who have come to Europe in recent years. However, there are also articles which present studies from countries in other continents. The topics discussed in the Issue include healthcare utilization, infectious diseases, mother and child health, mental health, and chronic diseases. Finding from the included articles indicate that further development of guidelines and policies at both local and international levels is needed. Priorities must be set by encouraging and funding in-depth research that aims to evaluate the impact of existing policies and interventions. Such research will help us formulate recommendations for the development of strategies and approaches that improve and strengthen the integration of migrants and refugees into the host countries.
Seeking refuge Garcia, Maria Cristina; Garcia, Maria Cristina
2006., 20060204, 2006, 2006-03-06
eBook
The political upheaval in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala had a devastating human toll at the end of the twentieth century. A quarter of a million people died during the period 1974-1996. Many ...of those who survived the wars chose temporary refuge in neighboring countries such as Honduras and Costa Rica. Others traveled far north, to Mexico, the United States, and Canada in search of safety. Over two million of those who fled Central America during this period settled in these three countries.
The recent influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Lebanon has stimulated domestic political action against these countries' governments. This is the dramatic argument at the heart of Anne Marie ...Baylouny's When Blame Backfires. Baylouny examines the effects on Jordan and Lebanon of hosting huge numbers of Syrian refugees. How has the populace reacted to the real and perceived negative effects of the refugees? In thought-provoking analysis, Baylouny shows how the demographic changes that result from mass immigration put stress on existing problems in these two countries, worsening them to the point of affecting daily lives. One might expect that, as a result, refugees and minorities would become the focus of citizen anger. But as When Blame Backfires demonstrates, this is not always the case. What Baylouny exposes, instead, is that many of the problems that might be associated with refugees are in fact endemic to the normal routine of citizens' lives. The refugee crisis exacerbated an already dire situation rather than created it, and Jordanians and Lebanese started to protest not only against the presence of refugees but against the incompetence and corruption of their own governments as well. From small-scale protests about goods and public services, citizens progressed to organized and formal national movements calling for economic change and rights to public services not previously provided. This dramatic shift in protest and political discontent was, Baylouny shows, the direct result of the arrival of Syrian refugees.
A fifth of West Germany's post-1945 population consisted of ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe, a quarter of whom came from Silesia. As the richest territory lost inside Germany's ...interwar borders, Silesia was a leading objective for territorial revisionists, many of whom were themselves expellees. The Lost German East examines how and why millions of Silesian expellees came to terms with the loss of their homeland. Applying theories of memory and nostalgia, as well as recent studies on ethnic cleansing, Andrew Demshuk shows how, over time, most expellees came to recognize that the idealized world they mourned no longer existed. Revising the traditional view that most of those expelled sought a restoration of prewar borders so they could return to the east, Demshuk offers a new answer to the question of why, after decades of violent upheaval, peace and stability took root in West Germany during the tense early years of the Cold War.
In May of 1945, there were more than eight million "displaced persons" (or DPs) in Germany-recently liberated foreign workers, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from all of ...Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as eastern Europeans who had fled west before the advancing Red Army. Although most of them quickly returned home, it soon became clear that large numbers of eastern European DPs could or would not do so. Focusing on Bavaria, in the heart of the American occupation zone,Between National Socialism and Soviet Communismexamines the cultural and political worlds that four groups of displaced persons-Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish-created in Germany during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The volume investigates the development of refugee communities and how divergent interpretations of National Socialism and Soviet Communism defined these displaced groups.
Combining German and eastern European history, Anna Holian draws on a rich array of sources in cultural and political history and engages the broader literature on displacement in the fields of anthropology, sociology, political theory, and cultural studies. Her book will interest students and scholars of German, eastern European, and Jewish history; migration and refugees; and human rights.
The Precarious Lives of Syrians reveals the vulnerability and insecurity that Syrian refugees confront in Turkey, including their socio-legal status, living conditions, and mobility. Drawing on legal ...and scholarly materials, as well as extensive field research, it provides a thoughtful and compelling appraisal of the experience of migration.
As an unprecedented number of people are displaced around the world, scholars continue to strive to make sense of what appear to be a series of constantly unfolding 'crises.' Drawing on research in a ...range of regions - from Latin America, to Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, North America, post-Soviet regions, and South and South-East Asia - Displacement offers an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to thinking about structures, spaces, and lived experiences of displacement. The contributors engage in a historical, transnational, interdisciplinary dialogue to offer different ways of theorizing about refugees, internally displaced persons, stateless people and others that have been forcibly displaced. Representing a collective effort by sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, political scientists, historians and migration studies scholars, this volume develops new cross-regional conversations and theoretically innovative vocabularies in the work on forced displacement. It also draws forced displacement together with other contemporary issues across different disciplines such as urbanisation, race, and imperialism.
