{"title":"Interwar statistics, colonial demography, and the making of the twentieth-century refugee","authors":"Anne Schult","doi":"10.1017/S1740022822000195","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The historiography of the twentieth-century refugee typically unfolds as a tale of national displacement followed by international surrogate protection. This article challenges that narrative by reframing the modern refugee as an emerging category of statistics and demography. Focusing on the world’s first international refugee survey, which was led by former British colonial administrator John Hope Simpson in 1937–39, the article situates the attempt to count and classify refugees across borders within scientific debates on global population control and white resettlement. While refugees’ mobility initially eluded established parameters of national demographic measurement, Hope Simpson drew on precedents of census work and migration schemes within the British Empire to counter their unpredictability. Revealing how the tenet of colonial demography shaped mid-century views on the ‘refugee problem’, the article broadens the space of refugee history beyond nation states and international institutions and emphasizes the relevance of statistics in turning refugees into a global post-war category.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Global History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022822000195","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract The historiography of the twentieth-century refugee typically unfolds as a tale of national displacement followed by international surrogate protection. This article challenges that narrative by reframing the modern refugee as an emerging category of statistics and demography. Focusing on the world’s first international refugee survey, which was led by former British colonial administrator John Hope Simpson in 1937–39, the article situates the attempt to count and classify refugees across borders within scientific debates on global population control and white resettlement. While refugees’ mobility initially eluded established parameters of national demographic measurement, Hope Simpson drew on precedents of census work and migration schemes within the British Empire to counter their unpredictability. Revealing how the tenet of colonial demography shaped mid-century views on the ‘refugee problem’, the article broadens the space of refugee history beyond nation states and international institutions and emphasizes the relevance of statistics in turning refugees into a global post-war category.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Global History addresses the main problems of global change over time, together with the diverse histories of globalization. It also examines counter-currents to globalization, including those that have structured other spatial units. The journal seeks to transcend the dichotomy between "the West and the rest", straddle traditional regional boundaries, relate material to cultural and political history, and overcome thematic fragmentation in historiography. The journal also acts as a forum for interdisciplinary conversations across a wide variety of social and natural sciences. Published for London School of Economics and Political Science