{"title":"Why is Syria a War but Not Afghanistan? Nationality-based Aid and Protection in Turkey’s Syria Refugee Response","authors":"Shaddin Almasri","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac028","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that, following the most recent influx of Syrians, refugee reception and aid policies in Turkey has shifted to be differentiated depending on the nationality of refugee groups. This research relies on a case study methodology and assesses changes in reception and aid access policies undertaken in Turkey post the Syrian influx and European Union (EU)–Turkey deal. In doing so it critically analyses differentiated access by refugee nationality, specifically Syrians and Afghans. This begins with an analysis of differences between refugee groups in how protection status is issued, followed by an investigation of differentiated access to programmes and assistance, and the role that EU-led negotiations and aid programmes play in re-enforcing Syrian-focused inclusion. Through a methodology that combines a review of law, policy and relevant literature and semi-structured interviews with key informants, this article makes two conclusions: first, that policies in Turkey unfolded to differentiate and distinguish Syrian refugees, against other refugee groups, as part of the response to the influx. Secondly, as objects of migration diplomacy between the EU and Turkey, aid and assistance programmes for refugees were also distinct by citizenship and re-enforced this differentiation, characterising the response by a condition of nationality-based aid.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":"21 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138496063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Behind the Politics of Resilience: the Limits of the EU’s Response to Syrian Refugees in Lebanon","authors":"Lyla André","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac029","url":null,"abstract":"The Syrian crisis that began expanding in 2012 has sent millions of refugees into neighbouring countries and beyond and proved to be a testing ground for the European Union’s new approach to humanitarian crises. Focused on European Union-funded educational programmes carried out in response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon, this article argues that the European Union’s approach has nevertheless negatively impacted refugees’ lives because of its embeddedness in the international regime of resilience that has gained ground in the field of refugee protection. Indeed, while the resilience regime appears to be a continuation of the neoliberal system of rule, it in fact represents a paradigmatic shift that implies political and moral retreat from donors’ responsibility. Applied to refugee management, the agenda of “resilience” thus contradicts the rationale for burden-sharing that previously involved a “shared responsibility” between external donors and the hosting State. Based on Kratochwil’s praxis approach, this article therefore aims to empirically expand upon the recent literature centred on “resilience” and “self-reliance” in the field of refugee management. In doing so, it demonstrates how neoliberal features of resilience further hinder refugees’ lives as these features entail a total separation from an adequate rights-based approach.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":"21 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138496064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating the Intersection of Scepticism, Gender Blindness, and Ethnocentricity in the Asylum Tribunal: the Urgent Case For Empathy Enhancement","authors":"Helen O’Nions","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Adopting a critical legal studies position, informed by procedural justice theory, this article argues that the intersection of scepticism with ethnocentric and gender-blind expectations of behaviour from tribunal judges impacts the fairness of proceedings, to the particular detriment of women asylum-seekers in the UK. Procedural justice theorists argue that fair procedures help court users to accept adverse outcomes. Yet an attempt to apply these principles to the asylum tribunal where there is no common experience and where decision-making occurs within a culture of disbelief proves futile. This analysis is informed by the experiences of 14 women who appealed an adverse asylum decision before the tribunal. It is evident that whilst judicial discretion allows judges to make procedural enhancements, this leads to inconsistency (itself a marker of unfairness) and the opportunity for an appellant to rebut assumptions through meaningful participation is rarely available. It is argued that principles of procedural justice need to be tailored in the specific context of asylum. Empathy-informed reasoning is urgently required. This needs to be embedded, through training, guidelines, and greater accountability. Without such enhancement, the tribunal appears to lack impartiality and serves only to replicate the flaws of initial decision-making.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47591604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Saving Brown Women from Brown Men? “Refugee Women”, Gender and the Racialised Politics of Protection","authors":"H. Crawley","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 White feminist scholarship in the Global North has drawn attention to the challenges facing women seeking protection under international refugee law (IRL). Whilst these efforts have improved outcomes for some women, they have largely failed to reconfigure the ways in which gendered experiences of persecution are conceptualised and represented. Drawing on postcolonial feminist scholarship, this article suggests that white feminist scholars have been largely complicit in a script that essentialises the experiences of women originating from the Global South. Where gender is taken into account, women from the Global South are typically understood and represented through a neo-imperial frame as disempowered, helpless “victims”, or as “Exotic Others” who need to be rescued from their “backward” cultures. The framing of “Refugee Women” as a homogenous and undifferentiated category ignores the complex intersections of race and gender shaping both women’s experiences and the racialised politics of protection. Moreover, because white feminist approaches have a colonial “blind spot”, they ignore the ways in which the international refugee regime is deeply entangled with the history of colonialism. In so doing, they replicate and reinforce racialised representations of Black and Muslim men as perpetrators of violence against women.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44645790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The “Guardian of the Treaties” is No More? The European Commission and the 2021 Humanitarian Crisis on Poland–Belarus Border","authors":"Maciej Grześkowiak","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 2021, a humanitarian crisis developed at the Poland–Belarus border due to the considerable influx of migrants from Belarus. Polish authorities responded with a systematic practice of pushbacks, sanctioned prima facie by legislative action, that are incompatible with Poland’s obligations under international and EU legal systems. This policy led to the suffering of migrants stranded between borders and more than a dozen confirmed deaths. Despite credible reports of abuses by Polish authorities, the European Commission largely acquiesced to this practice. The article employs both dogmatic and empirical methods to explore the rationale behind such an approach. It is demonstrated that the Commission’s conduct illustrates a pattern evident in the years following the 2015 migration crisis in Europe. Moreover, the analysis suggests that the 2021 crisis had unique characteristics that further incentivized passivity by the Commission.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46574428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between a Rock and a Hard Place: a Human Rights Assessment of the Fate of Excluded Asylum-seekers and Criminal Refugees in Australia","authors":"Júlia Zomignani Barboza","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Migrants fearing harm in their own country may benefit from the protection of refugee law. This protection, however, is not extended to those considered undeserving of it, for example, because they committed atrocities in the past, and may be removed from those who become a threat to the host State’s national security. In practice, States need to find solutions for such migrants, who are often failed asylum-seekers or criminal refugees who lost their protection status. In this regard, Australia is infamous for its extensive use of immigration detention, which is frequently applied to such migrants. The country’s practices have stirred much academic debate and gave rise to a multitude of legal cases and legislation changes. This contribution provides a human rights assessment of Australia’s practices towards failed asylum-seekers and criminal refugees, showing that when faced with such migrants, States may adopt measures that violate their international human rights obligations, such as returning them to harm or placing them in indefinite detention. As States are increasingly adopting similar practices, especially regarding the use of immigration detention, this analysis of the Australian context can inform the assessment of these practices anywhere they may be applied.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44260639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women Refugees and the Development of US Asylum Law: 1980-present","authors":"Deborah E. Anker","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Over the past three decades, the US has developed a robust body of gender asylum law, including claims of women subject to sexual violence or other serious harm for reasons of gender. This body of law both reflects and has been a catalyst for larger shifts in US jurisprudence recognising the international treaty law basis of domestic asylum law. For years such progress was stymied by a dominant Cold War ideological decision-making paradigm and a woefully inadequate and politicised administrative bureaucracy. The growth of a domestic and international women’s rights movement, and more meaningful engagement by the US judiciary, have resulted in substantial changes. Although progress remains incomplete, today there is a significant body of administrative and federal judicial case law incorporating gender into the interpretation of key categories in refugee law, including gender-defined particular social groups (PSG) and gender-based claims under the political, race and religion grounds in the definition of refugee. These more principled developments have proven vulnerable to politics, particularly under the administration of President Donald J. Trump. However, a new approach, based in part on a clearer, regulatory articulation of doctrine, holds promise for the development of a more coherent and principled body of jurisprudence. This article places US gender asylum in the context of the larger political landscape (i.e., the Cold War, and post-Cold War politics). The article also attempts to draw the links between the development of gender asylum law and larger social and legal change movements, including a domestic and international women’s rights movements focused on issues of sexual violence and violence in the home or “domestic violence.”","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42552689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women in Refugee Law, Policy and Practice: An Introduction to the Refugee Survey Quarterly Special Issue","authors":"M. Dustin, Christel Querton","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac023","url":null,"abstract":"As co-founders and conveners of the Women in Refugee Law (WiRL) network, we are delighted to introduce this Special Issue. The contributors are WiRL members who take forward the network’s objectives of recentring the study of refugee women by reviewing the state of protection in domestic jurisdictions and internationally, identifying setbacks to adequate protection for women at risk of persecution, and proposing inclusive ways forward.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44950781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refugee Women and the Gendered Violence of Australia’s Extraterritorial Asylum Regime on Nauru","authors":"Saba Vasefi, S. Dehm","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the gendered harms of state refugee externalisation laws and policies using the case study of Australia’s extraterritorial asylum regime on Nauru. While the regime has been widely criticised, the particular carceral experiences and structural vulnerabilities of refugee women and girls have received limited attention in refugee law scholarship. Drawing on interviews with 10 refugee women, this article documents and conceptualises the abusive nature of the regime from a gender perspective: first in relation to the produced insecurity and sexual violence in immigration detention and temporary resettlement in Nauru; next, in relation to the gendered medicalisation of refugee bodies under the official medical evacuation processes for transferring refugees from Nauru to Australia for healthcare; and finally, in relation to the continued punitive legal limbo and produced deportability for refugee women once transferred to Australia who nonetheless remain subject to the legal exclusions under Australia’s “offshore” detention and processing regime. We argue that, rather than being incidental to its operation, gendered harms have become a defining feature of the structural violence of Australia’s deterrence framework and practices of refugee expulsion and exclusion.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43841083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Privilege to Work: Syrian Refugees in Jordan, Technical and Vocational Education Training, and the Remote Work Loophole","authors":"Jinan Bastaki, L. Charles","doi":"10.1093/rsq/hdac017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Jordan is the second biggest host of Syrian refugees per capita in the world, yet, initially, refugees were not given the legal right to work. Investment in Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) was seen as a way to equip refugees and host communities to find employment, and with the 2016 Jordan Compact, a formal pathway for employment was created for Syrians refugees in Jordan. It appears that, despite some avenues for formal work and the significant investment in TVET programmes, many refugees still prefer to work in the informal sector. Through interviews with TVET providers in Jordan, this article assesses the role of TVET and explores the reasons for the preference for informal work among Syrian refugees in Jordan. The research shows that the most successful TVET programmes include digital skills training, as this enables refugees to work remotely, and informally, circumventing local laws that limit their participation in the local labour market. Yet, while digital skills appear to be the most promising in terms of actually helping refugees acquire work, there are still significant challenges.","PeriodicalId":39907,"journal":{"name":"Refugee Survey Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48182540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}