conclusion about refugees essay

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 10: Conclusion

Can resettled families hold strong and proud cultural identities while also enduring the adverse residual impacts of displacement in a new society that may replicate much of the oppression they hoped to leave behind? When immigrants and refugees first arrive in the United States, their unique status tends to be quite apparent. Customs and language set them apart (see the chapter on acculturation). They are likely to face many barriers to services, housing, and employment (see the immigration policy and economics chapters). Over time, however, families settle into new patterns in the new community. Individuals learn language and employment skills that allow them to promote their community’s interests. Families learn how to reach and/or modify their goals in the new country. Over time, they join with others to create community and may even establish organizations that address their needs.

So, when does someone stop being a refugee or an immigrant? Some individuals want to retain the label “immigrant” or “refugee”; it represents their struggles and resilience and has become a part of their cultural identity.  Others do not want to be so labeled; it no longer represents their identity. They may reject the negative associations with the label, they may have moved beyond that initial identity, or they have found alternative meaningful ways to express who they are in the new country.

Consistent with our history of immigration, the United States continues to have families coming from all over the world who are beginning a new phase of life in their country of destination. As we conclude this textbook, we would like to offer some possible next steps as individuals and as professionals, to facilitate and support their journey.

How can we help as individuals?

While editing this textbook, I (Jaime) looked through hundreds of photos of displaced children and families. Some of these photos captured the strength and forward momentum of families. Others captured families in their most despairing or terrifying moments. It tore at my heart. I started to look at my toddler son, and to wonder what kind of help I would want others to offer him if we were suddenly displaced. Liz and Cathy have been working with immigrants and refugee families for over a decade and have shaped their scholarship and much of their personal identities around working in close collaboration with immigrant communities.

We feel what many people feel – an urge to help. If you want to find a way to support refugee or immigrant families, here are a few ideas:

• Volunteer with local organizations. Refugee Council USA maintains a directory of volunteer opportunities with organizations assisting refugees. Go to http://www.rcusa.org/volunteer . Volunteer opportunities can be involved (such as meeting weekly with refugees for several months and helping them with transportation, English practice, and job interview practice) or a much smaller commitment, such as spending an afternoon setting up furniture for a refugee’s new home. Volunteers are also needed to tutor English, math, basic computer and employment skills.
• Donate to organizations responding to humanitarian needs. One way to alleviate the refugee crisis is to donate money to the organizations providing for refugees’ basic needs. USAID.gov maintains lists of organizations in need of donations (for example, the list of organizations working with Syrian refugees: https://www.usaid.gov/crisis/syria ). When considering which organization to donate to and how to donate, consider the guidelines for effective giving available at http://www.cidi.org.
• Connect with local immigrants and refugees. We can connect with the immigrants and refugees in our communities in every day ways. Try out a restaurant and try food from a part of the world that’s new to you. Ask the owners or staff about their food and culture. Attend a cultural festival in your area and learn about different customs. Many museums and government offices have events or exhibits that promote multicultural understanding. For example, the Minnesota History Museum has a “We are Hmong” exhibit that displays the political, social, and economic contributions the Hmong have made to Minnesota since their arrival several decades ago. The more connected we can become with another culture and people, the more understanding we can have.

Next Steps in Family Theory Approaches

When we (Liz and Cathy) first taught a graduate course on immigrants and refugee families a few years ago, we found that the research studies on immigrants and refugees were framed primarily within sociology, demography, and anthropology perspectives; these often missed the inclusion of a family perspective. This textbook provides a glimpse of the centrality and importance of understanding immigrants and refugees family experiences as part of the displacement and resettlement global discourse. Family cohesion and support is one of the strongest components of immigrant resilience (see chapter on immigrant resilience), and separation from family can be a profoundly distressing experience for immigrants and refugees (see chapter on mental health).

There are many conceptual frameworks and theories within family and social science fields that address the complexities of immigrant and refugee experiences. Ecological systems theory (and its adaptation – ecodevelopmental theory), biopsychosocial theory, family systems theory, family stress and coping theory, and historical trauma perspectives are all frameworks that highlight the role of the family during stressful transitions. Researchers who use these approaches to conceptualize research with immigrants and refugees will be better equipped to assess and address the role of the family in successfully transitioning to a new country.

Next Steps in Research

As immigrant and refugee groups develop their own capacity to process and lead research, they will be able to design studies that best fit the needs of their communities. As professionals, we can support this journey by using a collaborative research process. Involving local community members and leaders to participate in research design and execution strengthens the relevance of our research, and also builds research capacity within the community. Developing deep and sustainable collaboration across immigrant and refugee communities is also a critical part of raising our ethical standards of research.

We must incorporate multiple methodological approaches when appropriate and use culturally validated instruments. In some cases, we must create these instruments! As we described in the mental health and substance use chapters, much of the research with immigrants and refugees has not paid adequate attention to differences in cultural contexts and language. A survey that asks only about substance use in the past week, for example, will be heavily skewed in cultures where drinking occurs primarily during holiday weeks. As we choose what questions to ask in our research, we must review these questions with cultural informants and attempt to select or design culturally validated instruments.

In addition to these research processes, there are some key content areas that must be addressed in research on immigrant and refugee families. In this textbook, we were unable to fully address LGBT issues, the practice of religion, and changes across the lifecourse in immigrant and refugee families. We hope that future research will thoroughly address these areas.

Next Steps in Practice

As practitioners (whether in mental health therapy, financial counseling, substance abuse counseling, etc.), we should carefully consider the role of relationships and family in our clients’ lives. The client’s goals, supports, and struggles may be greatly influenced by family both living in the same room and/or living thousands of miles away. We can ask about the role of family in our clients’ mental health, financial choices and struggles, substance use habits, assimilation, and resilience. When feasible, we can incorporate Skype, Google hangouts, and phone conferencing to talk with family members and invoke or increase their support.

Next Steps in Advocacy

In the struggle to promote social equity and the successful integration of resettled communities, we must act bravely to combat social ignorance and discrimination, inadequate community infrastructures, ineffective governmental policies, and a range of complex global disparities that often create the very conditions for mass displacement. Advocacy for vulnerable peoples comes in endless forms and we believe we must work collectively to address them in order to bring about social change. We hope that in some way this book has affirmed, inspired, or motivated you to find your role/s in supporting the wellbeing of immigrant and refugee families.

We are excited to contribute our voices to the research, teaching, and practice scholarship related to immigrant and refugee family resettlement. As we stated in our introduction, we hope this book has deepened your understanding of the lives of these families, sparked an interest in continuing to follow ever-changing global migration patterns, and developed and/or strengthened your commitment to supporting families whose life circumstances propel them to relocate, adjust, and thrive in their new homes.

Immigrant and Refugee Families, 2nd Ed. Copyright © 2019 by Jaime Ballard, Elizabeth Wieling, Catherine Solheim, and Lekie Dwanyen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter

Conclusion: Refugees and their History

• Published: September 2013
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

The conclusion argues that refugees belong to the mainstream of history rather than the margins. Wars, revolutions and state-building take on fresh meaning when examined through the prism of population displacement. Refugees might flee in order to save their skin but others were deliberately targeted, expelled or ‘transferred’ by the state. Humanitarian assistance is also part of this story, but it was often accompanied by misguided assumptions about refugees’ incapacity. Refugees did not hesitate to assert claims to recognition and to participate in fashioning explanations for their displacement. History directs our attention to the way in which refugees have been represented by others and how they valorized themselves in order to negotiate their predicament.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• Google Scholar Indexing
• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the  Constructive Conflict Initiative  and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems. 

By Chris McMorran

July 2008   August, 2003

Who Refugees Are

Refugees are people who leave their homes in order to seek safety, or refuge. In general, people become refugees to flee violence , economic disparity , repression, natural disasters, and other harsh living and working conditions.[1] In the context of intractable conflict, refugees are those who flee from inevitable, often long-term violence and other difficult living conditions brought on by the conflict. The United Nations more narrowly defines refugees as "persons who are outside their country and cannot return owing to a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group."[2]

Though all people who flee conflict can be called refugees, refugee agencies commonly distinguish between refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) to decide who is covered by international law and receives assistance and who doesn't. For the most part, little assistance reaches a person fleeing a conflict until he or she crosses an international border. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), established in 1950, distinguishes refugees and IDPs this way: "When a fleeing civilian crosses an international frontier, he or she becomes a refugee and as such is eligible to receive international protection and help. If a person in similar circumstances is displaced within his or her home country and becomes an internally displaced person, then assistance and protection is much more difficult."[3]

On Jan. 1, 2002, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that there were more than 12 million refugees in the world.[4] This number of refugees has remained relatively constant at greater than 10 million since 1981. Some refugees have been living in camps for most of their lives. For example, Afghans have lived in camps in Pakistan and Iran since the early 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded their nation. While some return each year to resettle, almost equal numbers leave to escape new regional fighting. The number of Afghan refugees living abroad now stands at over 3.5 million.[5]

Currently, Asia hosts nearly 50 percent of the world's refugee population, with Africa and Europe both hosting just over 20 percent. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, central Africa (Angola, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi), and Bosnia-Herzegovina have either created new refugees or prevented refugees from returning home in 2001. Each of these countries now has over 400,000 refugees living abroad, with Afghanistan having at least seven times more than any other.[6]

Why Refugees Matter

Refugees are a recognizable result of the breakdown of the economic and/or political situation in an area. Refugees flee violence, discrimination, economic hardship, and political conflict. In some ways, the very existence of refugees is evidence of the world's economic and political disparities, thus proving that many changes need to occur in the world before intractable conflict becomes a thing of the past. According to Albrecht Schnabel, "Refugees and IDPs are prime indicators for social, political, and economic instability, for human atrocities and great human suffering. They signal our failure to provide basic human security for all."[7]

In regions that have little exposure to outside media, refugees can be the first clue that trouble is taking place. North Korean refugees found in China and South Korea tell of famines that the government didn't always acknowledge. Tibetans risking their lives to walk over the Himalayas talk of repression by the Chinese government. When refugees fled Vietnam by boat in 1979 or Cambodia by foot in the late 1970s and early '80s, it was obvious that repressive governments were in power. The same can be said for Cubans who risk their lives to swim or float to Florida.

Refugees have always been used as political pawns. During the Cold War, refugees were considered trophies by the other side. A Soviet defector who spoke of the repressive Soviet regime would further prove the American belief that Communism repressed a person's political and economic freedoms. Today, refugees are used as bargaining chips by powerful governments who don't wish to allow refugees to migrate to their countries. Instead, they convince other governments to take in the refugees in exchange for financial assistance. Refugees and IDPs are also political pawns in places like the Sudan, where opposing armed groups fight over resources that are intended as relief. Refugee camps are raided to kidnap boys as new recruits for the troops.

By understanding what makes a refugee and what life as a refugee is like, it is possible to understand one result of intractable conflicts and conceive of ways to avoid such situations. Also, knowing what refugees encounter allows relief agencies and concerned citizens to provide better assistance that protects refugee independence and human rights and prepares refugees to return home one day or to move elsewhere to a more secure life.

Life as a Refugee

Life as a refugee is defined by uncertainty for all but the wealthiest or those who can reside in the homes of relatives. For the most part, refugees are poor and they seek refuge from a conflict or repressive government, uncertain of their destination or if they will ever return home. They often leave home at a moment's notice, either forcibly or voluntarily, and must leave their possessions behind. Occasionally, even family members are lost in the journey, as was the case in Cambodia during the Pol Pot era. Once refugees arrive at a place of refuge, such as a camp run by the UNHCR or a non-governmental organization ( NGO ), they must establish a makeshift home, locate friends and family, receive food and water, and try to discover news that will give them some idea of what is happening.

It is unfortunate and ironic that most refugees flee in order to escape human rights violations and violence , yet their vulnerable situation as refugees exposes them to additional human rights violations and violence. Walking away from danger with one's valuables makes a refugee vulnerable to robbery from armed marauders. Young boys are always susceptible to being kidnapped and forced to fight for a military group. Women of all ages are potential rape victims. Children are no longer assured of receiving an adequate education. NGOs have trouble ensuring the safety of those who live in refugee camps. Refugees also occasionally have problems receiving food and water because such resources are often in short supply and are major targets of armed groups.

Life as a refugee also strongly affects one's sense of identity . Because most refugees are economically dependent on relief agencies and have no way of knowing what their situation will be from one day to the next, they are left with few ways of expressing their independence. Refugees are also removed from their everyday cultural reminders. Life as a refugee always brings the possibility of encountering others who are different. Associating with people from different cultures can make one more tolerant, or it can lead to a group or individual losing his or her cultural identity or clinging to it in a more extreme form. For example, when Afghans fled to Iran in the 1980s, they were exposed to a more conservative form of Islam than they had previously practiced. This led to greater pressure on men to place stricter restrictions on the women in their families. These restrictions included the end of education for women, the imposition of arranged marriages, and in some cases the almost total confinement of women to the home.

Life After Refugee Status

When one crosses an international border, one is supposed to be protected by international law and is eligible to receive assistance from the UNHCR and other NGOs. Many countries recognize their duty to assist refugees, but not all are forthcoming in providing such assistance. Especially in instances of mass violence and mass exodus, a neighboring country lacks the resources or does not wish to welcome such a large number of refugees. Refugees are often thought to strain the resources, land, economy, and culture of the host country.

For many refugees, returning home is their eventual goal, but only when the government has changed or when the violence has ended. Voluntary repatriation is the ideal, but is not always possible. Unfortunately, some countries refuse to allow refugees to enter and receive protection or the countries only allow refugees to stay a short time and then forcibly repatriate them, often placing refugees in the same dangerous situations that they fled in the first place.

Ideally, a refugee will only remain in the host country for a short time. Intractable conflict, however, often prevents voluntary repatriation. Refugees either end up living in camps for years with little or no hope of returning, or they attempt to become residents of another country. By applying for asylum, a refugee can ask a host government for permission to legally reside and work in the country. Each country has its own unique asylum procedures, but all offer the government's protection from deportment and freedom of movement.

Asylum-seekers can cause political headaches, however, as governments are torn between upholding their moral obligations to protect the persecuted, and their obligations to provide adequate services to their own citizens. In some cases, asylum-seekers put a great economic and cultural strain on a host country. All asylum-seekers need the host nation's social services, but those who are poor, unskilled laborers will be able to contribute little to the nation's tax base. These people will require education and training, which will likely be grudgingly provided by the host country's taxpayers. Some asylum-seekers will also require language training and their children will have special educational needs as well.

Despite these potential drawbacks, governments award asylum to thousands of refugees every year. Even though there are always more applicants than can be provided for, many nations, including the United States, accept asylum-seekers and assist them in adjusting to their new lives. Notable examples include political refugees from China and the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of boys who walked to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya before finally beginning new lives throughout the United States.[8]

Internally-Displaced Persons

Refugees who fail to cross an international border do not technically qualify as refugees, nor are they eligible for the protection of international law and many refugee services. These internally-displaced persons flee human-rights abuses and violence exactly like refugees do, yet they are turned away at international borders or unable to reach a border due to the dangers that surround them.

Because of the stricter regulations on refugees and the closing of many borders to those who need protection, the problem of IDPs is ever-increasing. Currently, more than 25 million people are displaced by conflict around the world; more than double the number of refugees. Over 12 million IDPs reside in Africa, more than on any other continent.[9] One reason that the number of IDPs is greater than the number of refugees is that many neighboring countries are undergoing equally violent conflicts. Potential refugees decide that it is safer to stay in their home country than to try their luck in another.

The Global IDP Project maintains that "a large share of the world's IDPs do not find shelter in organized camps or protected areas." Many resort to hiding in jungles or living in areas already destroyed by war.[10] Many relief organizations, including the UNHCR and Amnesty International, recognize the plight of IDPs as being as tragic and sometimes more tragic than that of refugees and call for governments and NGOs to do more to assist refugees and IDPs.[11]

Without better conflict resolution and protection of human-rights standards around the world, the future appears bleak for those innocent victims caught in the middle. They will continue to be forced from their homes in attempts to flee violence, with the hope that they can finally find safety in other countries.

Illustration

Imagine a street with a cluster of six houses, all containing families of various compositions and income levels. The homes are close enough together that the neighbors know each other. Some of the neighbors are friends and some just don't get along. Occasionally a neighbor will visit another neighbor, solidifying relations between them. And sometimes one neighbor will do something that offends another.

One day an argument breaks out in the house of neighbor A. Two family members are arguing over who has control of the family finances. The neighbors hear the argument, and some are concerned, while others try to ignore the problem.

After a few days the conflict escalates. The screaming gets louder and the neighbors hear gunshots. Immediately a member of the household, John, runs out. Two members of his family are fighting and they have shot at each other, though no one is hurt. Obviously, John felt threatened by the shots and left the house. John no longer feels safe in his home and so he tries to find a safe place to stay until the arguing parties resolve their conflict.

John knocks on neighbor B's door and asks if he can come in to safety. The neighbor expresses sympathy for John and gives him some food but says that he cannot come in. Neighbor B already has a full house and is worried that the family doesn't have enough money to house another person for an unknown amount of time. Neighbor B encourages the man to try another house.

John, still fleeing, now tries neighbor C's door. John looks in the door and sees that another argument is taking place in this house, one potentially more dangerous than the one in his own house. He decides to try another house.

John avoids neighbor D because his family has always been at odds with them.

Next, he tries neighbor E. Unfortunately, this family also doesn't want to allow John in. They are very proud of their family heritage and their customs. They tell John that they wish they could help and offer some feeble excuse, but John knows that they don't want him to come in because he looks very different from them. They are concerned that he will negatively affect the family with his different habits. The family lends John a tent but won't let him camp in their yard. John gets the hint and moves on.

Finally John goes to neighbor F. This family also turns him away, saying that they do not want to get involved in the conflict. The family believes that helping John may give the impression that the family is taking sides in family A's conflict.

John gives up, having no place to turn. He decides to sleep in his own yard, dangerously close to the conflict, yet not directly in harm's way. At this point John is an Internally Displaced Person (IDP). If a neighbor had allowed John to enter, he would have become a refugee.

As a bystander to a conflict, one must decide what to do. Doing nothing amounts to allowing the conflict to continue, and possibly escalate. As well, turning away a refugee can lead to the refugee returning to a dangerous area. These are decisions that states must make every day, as conflicts continue around the world and those fleeing conflicts try to cross borders or apply for refugee status.

As one can see in this illustration, there are many reasons for not helping or accepting those displaced by a conflict. Recent years have found states less open to accepting refugees than in the past. States refuse refugees for economic, cultural, and political reasons, as seen above. What is to become of IDPs with nowhere to go? Is life in a temporary camp the best solution for those fleeing from violent conflict? What is the responsibility of those states capable of assisting these people? What can the average citizen do?

[1] Refugees and IDPs displaced by natural disasters, large dam construction projects, other development projects, and mining and oil exploration relate to the issues discussed here but are of peripheral concern with respect to intractable conflict.

[2] United Nations. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. [basic facts on-line] (Accessed 23 September 2002); available from http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home?page=basics ; Internet. For a more detailed discussion of who qualifies as a refugee, please refer to the section on this Web page called "Who is a refugee?"

[3] United Nations. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. [office summary on-line] (Accessed 23 September 2002); available from http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home ; Internet.

[7] Albrecht Schnabel. "Preventing the Plight of Refugees," Peace Review 13 no. 1 (2001): 109.

[8] Ellen Barry,"The Lost Boys," The Boston Globe . 7 January 2001 [newspaper article on-line] (Accessed 25 September 2002); available from http://mwoodward.com/photojournalism/slides1.html ; Internet.

[9] Global IDP Project. [IDP overview on-line] (Accessed 25 September 2002); available from http://www.idpproject.org/global-overview.htm ; Internet.

[11] Amnesty International. [recommendations on-line] (Accessed 25 September 2002); available from http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/refugee/recomend.htm ; Internet.

Use the following to cite this article: McMorran, Chris. "Refugees." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2008 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/refugees >.

Additional Resources

The intractable conflict challenge.

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts.   More...

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Roles - Part 2 -- The first of two posts explaining the actor roles needed for a massively parallel peacebuilding/democracy building effort to work, which combined with an earlier post on strategy roles, makes up the current MPP role list.
• Lorelei Kelly on Strengthening Democracy at the Top and the Bottom -- Lorelei Kelly describes the work of the bipartisan Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress which passed 202 recommendations, many unanimously. Over 1/2 have been implemented and most others are in progress.
• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of March 24, 2024 -- A rename of our regular "colleague and context links" to highlight how these readings and the activities they describe all fit within our "massively parallel" peace and democracy building framework--or show why it is needed.

Get the Newsletter Check Out Our Quick Start Guide

Educators Consider a low-cost BI-based custom text .

Constructive Conflict Initiative

Join Us in calling for a dramatic expansion of efforts to limit the destructiveness of intractable conflict.

Things You Can Do to Help Ideas

Practical things we can all do to limit the destructive conflicts threatening our future.

Conflict Frontiers

A free, open, online seminar exploring new approaches for addressing difficult and intractable conflicts. Major topic areas include:

Scale, Complexity, & Intractability

Massively Parallel Peacebuilding

Authoritarian Populism

Constructive Confrontation

Conflict Fundamentals

An look at to the fundamental building blocks of the peace and conflict field covering both “tractable” and intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability / CRInfo Knowledge Base

Home / Browse | Essays | Search | About

BI in Context

Links to thought-provoking articles exploring the larger, societal dimension of intractability.

Colleague Activities

Information about interesting conflict and peacebuilding efforts.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Intractability or the Conflict Information Consortium.

Beyond Intractability 

Unless otherwise noted on individual pages, all content is... Copyright © 2003-2022 The Beyond Intractability Project c/o the Conflict Information Consortium All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced without prior written permission.

Guidelines for Using Beyond Intractability resources.

Citing Beyond Intractability resources.

Photo Credits for Homepage, Sidebars, and Landing Pages

Contact Beyond Intractability    Privacy Policy The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project  Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess , Co-Directors and Editors  c/o  Conflict Information Consortium Mailing Address: Beyond Intractability, #1188, 1601 29th St. Suite 1292, Boulder CO 80301, USA Contact Form

Powered by  Drupal

production_1

Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

• Accessibility
• Connect with us
• Publications

Refugees: A Very Short Introduction

Gil loescher.

Refugees and other forced migrants are one of the great contemporary challenges the world is confronting. Throughout the world people leave their home countries to escape war, natural disasters, and cultural and political oppression. Unfortunately, even today, the international community struggles to provide an adequate response to this vast population in need. This Very Short Introduction covers a broad range of issues around the causes and impact of the contemporary refugee crisis for both receiving states and societies, for global order, and for refugees and other forced migrants themselves. Gil Loescher discusses the identity of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons and how they differ from other forced migrants. He also investigates the long history of the refugee phenomenon and how refugees became a central concern of the international community during the twentieth and twenty first centuries, as well as considering the responses provided by governments and international aid organisations to refugee needs. Loescher concludes by focussing on the necessity of these bodies to understand the realities of the contemporary refugee situation in order to best respond to its current and future challenges.

More information

Oxford University Press

Publication Date

Total pages.

Conclusion—Rethinking Asylum Policies in a Changing World

• First Online: 22 September 2023

Cite this chapter

• Fethi Mansouri 2  

98 Accesses

Reflecting on contemporary trends in international approaches to refugee protection, this chapter examines current and dominant policy approaches, and argues for a new vision and a recalibrated mechanism for dealing with novel flows of asylum seekers to Western nations. The chapter begins by examining the status of the key refugee protection instruments and whether they are in need of major overhaul. And while the major instrument, the 1951 Refugee Convention, faces legitimate questions in relation to its aptness for current global circumstances, the chapter argues that, at present, the international community cannot do away with it – it remains the only regulatory framework we have for dealing with asylum crises. The chapter then discusses the complexity of state responses to forced migration invoking some high profile illustrative case studies in Europe as well as Australia. States responses though driven by domestic political and legal prerogatives, have nevertheless tended to proceed against the spirit of the Convention, with asylum policies being oriented towards the most minimal form of substantive, durable protection. The chapter concludes with critical reflections on how it might be possible to reimagine the international governance of asylum, specifically in relation to sustainable local and regional protection within the global south as well as the nature of temporary protection regimes in settlement states of the global north. These two dimensions of the refugee governance regime should be viewed as complementary tools in the pursuit of permanent and effective protection for refugees.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee camps and humanitarian government . Polity Press.

Google Scholar  

Appelqvist, M. (2000). Party politics and the Bosnian question: The Swedish decision to grant permanent residence. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 26 (1), 89–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/136918300115660

Article   Google Scholar  

Barnett, L. (2002). Global governance and the evolution of the international refugee regime. International Journal of Refugee Law, 14 (2/3), 238–262. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/14.2_and_3.238

Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others: Aliens, residents and citizens . Cambridge University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Betts, A., & Collier, P. (2016). Refuge: Rethinking refugee policy in a changing world . Oxford University Press.

Borelli, C., Poy, A., & Rué, A. (2023). Governing asylum without “being there”: Ghost bureaucracy, outsourcing, and the unreachability of the state. Social Sciences, 12 , 169. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030169

Chouliaraki, L., & Stolic, T. (2017). Rethinking humanity and responsibility in the refugee ‘crisis’: A visual typology of news media. Media, Culture and Society, 39 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443717726163

Crisp, J. (2004). A new asylum paradigm? Globalisation, migration and the uncertain future of the international refugee regime (New issues in refugee research, working paper no. 100). UNHCR. Retrieved February 7, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/research/working/3fe16d835/new-asylum-paradigm-globalization-migration-uncertain-future-international.html

Crisp, J., & Long, K. (2016). Safe and voluntary refugee repatriation: From principle to practice. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 4 (3), 141–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/233150241600400305

Crock, M., & Bones, K. (2015). Australian exceptionalism: Temporary protection and the rights of refugees. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 16 (2), 522–549. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048318000287

Drazanova, L., & Geddes, A. (2022). Europeans welcome refugees but governments need to show they can manage . Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/attitudes-towards-ukrainian-refugees-and-the-responses-of-european-governments/

Durieux, J. F. (2015). Temporary protection: Hovering at the edges of refugee law. In M. Ambrus & R. Wessel (Eds.), Netherlands yearbook of international law 2014 (pp. 221–253). T.M.C. Asser Press.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Edwards, A. (2012). Temporary protection, derogation and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 13 (2), 1–41.

Ghezelbash, D. (2020). Hyper-legalism and obfuscation: How states evade their international obligations towards refugees. American Journal of Comparative Law, 68 (3), 479–516. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avaa019

Gibney, M. J. (2006). A thousand little Guantanamos: Western states and measures to prevent the arrival of refugees. In K. E. Tunstall (Ed.), Displacement, asylum, migration: The Oxford amnesty lectures 2004 (pp. 139–160). Oxford University Press.

Gibney, M. (2015). Refugees and justice between states. European Journal of Political Theory, 14 (4), 448–463.

Haddad, E. (2008). The refugee in international society . Cambridge University Press.

Hansen, F., Mutabaraka, J. J., & Ubricao, P. (2008). Repatriation, resettlement, integration: A study of the three refugee solutions (The Niapele project).

Hedetoft, U. (2006). Denmark: Integrating immigrants into a homogeneous welfare state . Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved March 4, 2020, from http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/denmark-integrating-immigrants-homogeneous-welfare-state

Ineli-Ciger, M. (2016). A temporary protection regime in line with international law: Utopia or real possibility? International Community Law Review, 18 (3–4), 278–316. https://doi.org/10.1163/18719732-12341332

Ineli-Ciger, M. (2018). Temporary protection in law and practice . Brill Nijhoff.

Karp, P. (2022, December 20). Labor to allow 19,000 refugees to stay permanently in Australia from early 2023. The Guardian . Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/20/labor-to-allow-19000-refugees-to-stay-permanently-in-australia-from-early-2023

Kneebone, S. (2017). Australia as a powerbroker on refugee protection in Southeast Asia: The Relationship with Indonesia. Refuge, 33 , 29–41.

Koser, K. (2015). Australia and the 1951 Refugee Convention . Lowy Institute for International Policy. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/australia-1951-refugee-convention

Leach, M., & Mansouri, F. (2004). Lives in limbo: Voices of refugees under temporary protection . UNSW Press.

Line, B., & Poon, L. (2013, June 30). How other countries handle immigration: Countries struggle to find the best way to deal with immigrants knocking at their doors. National Geographic . Retrieved February 7, 2023, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/130630-immigration-reform-world-refugees-asylum-canada-japan-australia-sweden-denmark-united-kingdom-undocumented-immigrants

Long, K. (2010). No entry! A review of UNHCR’s response to border closures in situations of mass refugee influx . UNHCR. Retrieved February 7, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/research/evalreports/4c207bd59/entry-review-unhcrs-response-border-closures-situations-mass-refugee-influx.html

Long, K., & Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2017). Migration, forced displacement and social protection . Institute of Development Studies.

Martin, S., Davis, R., Benton, G., & Waliany, Z. (2018). International responsibility-sharing for Refugees (Knomad working paper 32). Retrieved January 26, 2023, from https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/KNOMAD%20WP_International%20Responsbility-Sharing%20for%20Refugees.pdf

Mansouri, F. (2023). The future of migration, multiculturalism and diversity in Australia’s post-COVID-19 social recovery. Social Sciences and Humanities (Open) . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100382

McAdam, J. (2017). The enduring relevance of the 1951 Refugee Convention. International Journal of Refugee Law, 29 (1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eex017

McNevin, A. (2017). Learning to live with irregular migration: Towards a more ambitious debate on the politics of ‘the problem’. Citizenship Studies, 21 (3), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2017.1281223

Querton, C. (2022). Non-state actors of protection and the sliding scale of protection for refugee women. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 41 , 444–471. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdac020

Reynolds, J. (2020). Fortress Europe, global migration and the global pandemic. AJIL Unbound, 114 , 342–348. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2020.64

Remeikis, A., & Doherty, B. (2023). Nearly 20,000 refugees to get same rights as other permanent residents after being kept ‘in limbo’. The Gurdian . Retrieved February 13, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/13/nearly-20000-refugees-to-get-same-rights-as-other-permanent-residents-after-being-kept-in-limbo

Schoenholtz, A. (2015). The new refugees and the old treaty: Persecutors and persecuted in the twenty-first century. Chicago Journal of International Law, 16 (1), 81–126.

Sherrell, H. (2022). The central role of cooperation in Australia’s immigration enforcement strategy . Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/tcm_sherrell-australia-2022_final.pdf

Thomaz, D. (2017). What’s in a category? The politics of not being a refugee. Social & Legal Studies, 27 (2), 200–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663917746488

Tunstall, K. (2006). Displacement, asylum, migration . Oxford University Press.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (1951). Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees . Retrieved February 7, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/3b66c2aa10

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2018). Global compact on refugees . Retrieved February 7, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/the-global-compact-on-refugees.html

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2021). ‘Italy: Government must break cycle of exploitation of workers, hold businesses accountable’ – UN experts . UNHCR. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/10/italy-government-must-break-cycle-exploitation-workers-hold-businesses

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2022a). UNHCR Global Trends . Retrieved January 26, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/figures-at-a-glance.html

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2022b). Global displacement hits another record, capping decade-long rising trend [media release]. Retrieved January 26, 2023, from https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2022/6/62a9d2b04/unhcr-global-displacement-hits-record-capping-decade-long-rising-trend.html

Vergani, M., Mansouri, F., & Orellana, L. (2022). Terrorism concern and persistence of negative attitudes towards Islam and Muslims. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 32 (6), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2633

Wood, T., & Higgins, C. (2018). Special humanitarian intakes: Enhancing protection through targeted refugee resettlement (Policy brief 7). Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Fethi Mansouri

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Mansouri, F. (2023). Conclusion—Rethinking Asylum Policies in a Changing World. In: The Global Politics of Forced Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26336-1_7

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26336-1_7

Published : 22 September 2023

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-26335-4

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-26336-1

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Join the SCA
• Cultural Anthropology

Editors’ Forum Hot Spots

Introduction: Refugees and the Crisis of Europe

From the Series: Refugees and the Crisis of Europe

By Mayanthi Fernando and Cristiana Giordano

June 28, 2016

Cite As: Fernando, Mayanthi, and Cristiana Giordano. 2016. "Introduction: Refugees and the Crisis of Europe." Hot Spots, Fieldsights , June 28. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/introduction-refugees-and-the-crisis-of-europe

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email

Since the beginning of 2015, an unprecedented number of people from Middle Eastern and African countries—many of them fleeing war, persecution, and unrelenting poverty—have been crossing borders into and within Europe, traversing the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the English Channel. This “refugee crisis”—and we use scare quotes deliberately—has turned immigration, asylum, border control, and state sovereignty into interconnected problems, making migration not only a political event but also a media spectacle. In so doing, it has brought certain issues to the fore, from refugee quotas and the moral imperatives that ostensibly ground European humanism to the impossibility of European unity (witness the Brexit referendum), even as it has simultaneously rendered others invisible, including older patterns of migration, border control, and state violence.

This Hot Spots series therefore takes as its starting point an interrogation of the spectacle of crisis, of crisis as spectacle. How, we ask, ought we interpret the media focus on Syrian refugees, and how might this focus reinscribe a (racialized) distinction between “deserving” or “real” refugees and so-called economic migrants? How do we locate the migration crisis within an ongoing alternation on the part of the European Union and its member states between humanitarianism and border control, between a Liberal Europe committed to moral humanism and a Fortress Europe committed to expelling undesirables? How do the strategies of, on the one hand, custody and control (of foreign bodies and borders) and, on the other, rescue and care (of victims of human trafficking, asylum seekers, and refugees) reflect and refract the nature of power and sovereignty in Europe today?

The images of dead bodies at sea, of drenched refugees on overloaded, rickety boats, and of families climbing frantically through border fences made of barbed wire have become iconic in our collective imagination. No image is as iconic as the figure of Aylan Kurdi, whose tiny body washed ashore on a Turkish beach in September 2015. He and his family, fleeing the civil war in Syria, had boarded a boat bound for Greece that capsized soon after departing Turkey. The figure of Aylan became the emblem of innocence and injustice, mobilizing an international public outcry about the destruction wrought by the Syrian civil war, the cruel forms of trafficking it has produced, and the ineffective European response to that humanitarian crisis. The affective reactions generated by the image of Aylan seemed to have an effect on the decisions of European nation-states: German Chancellor Angela Merkel opted for open borders, and the Refugees Welcome movement gathered momentum across the continent.

Yet the very iconicity of that image of Aylan—its easy visibility and legibility to an international audience—also made invisible and illegible other figures, other moments, other histories. The intense focus on the image of Aylan brought with it a narrative of unprecedented tragedy that is the death of an innocent child, foreclosing potentially troubling reflections on longue durée geopolitics and the complexity of the present moment. In fact, we keep referring to “the image” and “the figure” of Aylan for a reason. It turns out that the boy’s name was likely Alan Shenu—his family took or were given the name Kurdi once in Turkey because of their ethnic background—but few readers would have recognized that name. We knew and we mourned Aylan Kurdi.

The essays in this series are an attempt to bring to the fore some of these buried histories, illegible moments, and invisible figures, to interrogate the discourse of crisis and to problematize the very framing of refugee migration as a hot spot. As Didier Fassin notes, hot spots are also the name for refugee processing centers that the European Union has put in place to triage applicants (with the goal of mass rejection), part of a long-term project of border control that increasingly extends the European frontier to its most marginal perimeters. Other essays similarly refute the notion that the 2015 migration phenomenon is extraordinary or unprecedented. Heath Cabot writes of the asylum seekers and caseworkers who constituted the grinding machinery of migration and deportation well before the present crisis and who will do so well after. Cristiana Giordano likewise draws our attention to the everyday, ordinary rhythms of migration and violence that are occluded by the spotlight on the so-called refugee crisis. Francesco Vacchianno details the thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean, rendered uneventful by their sheer quantity, and points out the neoliberal structural adjustments in Europe that created the conditions of possibility for a narrative of scarcity and crisis. While none of the essays here address the Brexit referendum since they were commissioned months ago, the success of the Leave campaign, built on xenophobia in a context where many Britons feel socioeconomically vulnerable, underscores the need to problematize discourses of scarcity and to undermine the concomitant presentation of crisis as spectacle.

Given its place in the spectacle of crisis, the iconicity of Aylan Kurdi serves as the springboard for a number of essays: Miriam Ticktin interrogates the politics of innocence and the racial hierarchy on which that politics draws, while Andrea Muehlebach juxtaposes “little Aylan” to his more menacing double, the figure of the sexually aggressive North African man whom many Europeans assume he would have become had he survived (a connection crassly depicted by Charlie Hebdo after the 2015 New Year’s Eve mass sexual assaults in Cologne). Damani Partridge, also writing about Germany, examines the role of pity and wonders what a politics of solidarity, rather than pity, might look like. The remaining three essays locate the ostensibly European crisis within a broader geopolitical frame. Mehmet Fatih Tatari documents how the Syrian war has eclipsed Turkey’s military operations in and destruction of Kurdish areas, and how both wars enable the Turkish state to reinforce its sovereignty. Suvendrini Perera connects Fortress Europe to Fortress Australia, detailing the ways in which Australia, like Europe, increasingly outsources its detention regime, turning its border into a “set of makeshift and protean geographies.” Finally, Jeffrey Kahn historicizes this spatial-qua-juridical outsourcing, showing how the modular nature of border control—including its law-evading tendencies and its constant extending of geo-juridical boundaries—has its roots in the United States’s interdiction of Haitian refugees in the early 1980s.

Our contributors map the histories, geopolitics, ethical imaginaries, forms of sovereignty, and patterns of circulation that state categories of crisis and emergency render visible and/or invisible, in Europe and elsewhere. Each essay is, moreover, accompanied by an image from End of Dreams , an installation and photo project by Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen that memorializes the massive loss of human life in the Mediterranean. As Rhiannon Welch explains in her essay on the installation, Larsen dropped forty-eight figures, wrapped in concrete canvas meant to resemble body bags or funerary sheets, into the sea near the southern Italian port city of Pizzo Calabro. In a stark reenactment of the vulnerability of the migrants themselves, a number of the sculptures came unmoored from their anchors and were cast out to sea during a violent storm, just like the human beings they were meant to memorialize.

Back to Series Description

Begin typing to search.

Showing results mentioning: “ ”, sca website.

These results are drawn from our Fieldsights content, as well as announcements and information pages.

Our Journal

These results are drawn from articles published in Cultural Anthropology since 2014.

"Our inheritance was left to us by no testament" – René Char

“We Refugees” – an essay by Hannah Arendt

There is something powerfully raw and vivid about Hannah Arendt’s essay that came out in the midst of Europe’s darkness in the Second World War, before the worst horrors inflicted upon the Jews were fully unveiled. Originally published in January 1943 as “We Refugees” in a small Jewish journal called Menorah (shut down in 1961), the piece captures what it really means to be a refugee – the endless anxiety, ravaging despair, deluded optimism, jolting absurdity and even the humour of the “refugee.” What it is to be a wandering individual in search for dignity within a larger collective that “fight like madmen for private existences with individual destinies.” Arendt’s larger lesson is poignant: “The comity of European peoples went to pieces when, and because, it allowed its weakest member to be excluded and persecuted.” A message that projects a long arm into the present and can be read in the current global context that sees indifference and outright hostility to refugees, a political and social attitude that can only come at the price of exacerbating tensions and rupturing the moral fabric of the perpetrators of such indifference and hostility. 

“We Refugees”

In the first place, we don’t like to be called “refugees.” We ourselves call each other “newcomers” or “immigrants.” Our newspapers are papers for “Americans of German language”; and, as far as I know, there is not and never was any club founded by Hitler-persecuted people whose name indicated that its members were refugees.

A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical opinion. With us the meaning of the term “refugee” has changed. Now “refugees” are those of us who have been so unfortunate as to arrive in a new country without means and have to be helped by Refugee Committees.

Before this war broke out we were even more sensitive about being called refugees. We did our best to prove to other people that we were just ordinary immigrants. We declared that we had departed of our own free will to countries of our choice, and we denied that our situation had anything to do with “so-called Jewish problems.” Yes, we were “immigrants” or “newcomers” who had left our country because, one fine day, it no longer suited us to stay, or for purely economic reasons. We wanted to rebuild our lives, that was all. In order to rebuild one’s life one has to be strong and an optimist. So we are very optimistic.

Our optimism, indeed, is admirable, even if we say so ourselves. The story of our struggle has finally become known. We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.

Nevertheless, as soon as we were saved—and most of us had to be saved several times—we started our new lives and tried to follow as closely as possible all the good advice our saviors passed on to us. We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody ever could imagine. In a friendly way we were reminded that the new country would become a new home; and after four weeks in France or six weeks in America, we pretended to be Frenchmen or Americans. The most optimistic among us would even add that their whole former life had been passed in a kind of unconscious exile and only their new country now taught them what a home really looks like. It is true we sometimes raise objections when we are told to forget about our former work; and our former ideals are usually hard to throw over if our social standard is at stake. With the language, however, we find no difficulties: after a single year optimists are convinced they speak English as well as their mother tongue; and after two years they swear solemnly that they speak English better than any other language—their German is a language they hardly remember.

In order to forget more efficiently we rather avoid any allusion to concentration or internment camps we experienced in nearly all European countries—it might be interpreted as pessimism or lack of confidence in the new homeland. Besides, how often have we been told that nobody likes to listen to all that; hell is no longer a religious belief or a fantasy, but something as real as houses and stones and trees. Apparently nobody wants to know that contemporary history has created a new kind of human beings—the kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes and in internment camps by their friends.

Even among ourselves we don’t speak about this past. Instead, we have found our own way of mastering an uncertain future. Since everybody plans and wishes and hopes, so do we. Apart from the general human attitudes, however, we try to clear up the future more scientifically. After so much bad luck we want a course as sure as a gun. Therefore, we leave the earth with all its uncertainties behind and we cast our eyes up to the sky. The stars tell us—rather than the newspapers—when Hitler will be defeated and when we shall become American citizens. We think the stars more reliable advisers than all our friends; we learn from the stars when we should have lunch with our benefactors and on what day we have the best chances of filling out one of these countless questionnaires which accompany our present lives. Sometimes we don’t rely even on the stars but rather on the lines of our hand or the signs of our handwriting. Thus we learn less about political events but more about our own dear selves, even though somehow psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion. Those happier times are past when bored ladies and gentlemen of high society conversed about the genial misdemeanors of their early childhood. They don’t want ghost-stories any more; it is real experiences that make their flesh creep. There is no longer any need of bewitching the past; it is spellbound enough in reality. Thus, in spite of our outspoken optimism, we use all sorts of magical tricks to conjure up the spirits of the future.

I don’t know which memories and which thoughts nightly dwell in our dreams. I dare not ask for information, since I, too, had rather be an optimist. But sometimes I imagine that at least nightly we think of our dead or we remember the poems we once loved. I could even understand how our friends of the West coast, during the curfew, should have had such curious notions as to believe that we are not only “prospective citizens” but present “enemy aliens.” In daylight, of course, we become only “technically” enemy aliens—all refugees know this. But when technical reasons prevented you from leaving your home during the dark house, it certainly was not easy to avoid some dark speculations about the relation between technicality and reality.

No, there is something wrong with our optimism. There are those odd optimists among us who, having made a lot of optimistic speeches, go home and turn on the gas or make use of a skyscraper in quite an unexpected way. They seem to prove that our proclaimed cheerfulness is based on a dangerous readiness for death. Brought up in the conviction that life is the highest good and death the greatest dismay, we became witnesses and victims of worse terrors than death—without having been able to discover a higher ideal than life. Thus, although death lost its horror for us, we became neither willing nor capable to risk our lives for a cause. Instead of fighting—or thinking about how to become able to fight back—refugees have got used to wishing death to friends or relatives; if somebody dies, we cheerfully imagine all the trouble he has been saved. Finally many of us end by wishing that we, too, could be saved some trouble, and act accordingly.

Since 1938—since Hitler’s invasion of Austria—we have seen how quickly eloquent optimism could change to speechless pessimism. As time went on, we got worse—even more optimistic and even more inclined to suicide. Austrian Jews under Schuschnigg were such a cheerful people—all impartial observers admired them. It was quite wonderful how deeply convinced they were that nothing could happen to them. But when German troops invaded the country and Gentile neighbours started riots at Jewish homes, Austrian Jews began to commit suicide.

Unlike other suicides, our friends leave no explanation of their deed, no indictment, no charge against a world that had forced a desperate man to talk and to behave cheerfully to his very last day. Letters left by them are conventional, meaningless documents. Thus, funeral orations we make at their open graves are brief, embarrassed and very hopeful. Nobody cares about motives, they seem to be clear to all of us.

I speak of unpopular facts; and it makes things worse that in order to prove my point I do not even dispose of the sole arguments which impress modern people—figures. Even those Jews who furiously deny the existence of the Jewish people give us a fair chance of survival as far as figures are concerned—how else could they prove that only a few Jews are criminals and that many Jews are being killed as good patriots in wartime? Through their effort to save the statistical life of the Jewish people we know that Jews had the lowest suicide rate among all civilized nations. I am quite sure those figures are no longer correct, but I cannot prove it with new figures, though I can certainly with new experiences. This might be sufficient for those skeptical souls who never were quite convinced that the measure of one’s skull gives the exact idea of its content, or that statistics of crime show the exact level of national ethics. Anyhow, wherever European Jews are living today, they no longer behave according to statistical laws. Suicides occur not only among the panic-stricken people in Berlin and Vienna, in Bucharest or Paris, but in New York and Los Angeles, in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

On the other hand, there has been little reported about suicides in the ghettoes and concentration camps themselves. True, we had very few reports at all from Poland, but we have been fairly well informed about German and French concentration camps.

At the camp of Gurs, for instance, where I had the opportunity of spending some time, I heard only once about suicide, and that was the suggestion of a collective action, apparently a kind of protest in order to vex the French. When some of us remarked that we had been shipped there  “pour crever”  in any case, the general mood turned suddenly into a violent courage of life. The general opinion held that one had to be abnormally asocial and unconcerned about general events if one was still able to interpret the whole accident as personal and individual bad luck and, accordingly, ended one’s life personally and individually. But the same people, as soon as they returned to their own individual lives, being faced with seemingly individual problems, changed once more to this insane optimism which is next door to despair.

We are the first non-religious Jews persecuted—and we are the first ones who, not only  in extremis , answer with suicide. Perhaps the philosophers are right who teach that suicide is the last and supreme guarantee of human freedom; not being free to create our lives or the world in which we live, we nevertheless are free to throw life away and to leave the world. Pious Jews, certainly, cannot realize this negative liberty: they perceive murder in suicide, that is, destruction of what man never is able to make, interference with the rights of the Creator.  Adonai nathan veadonai lakach  (“The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away”); and they would add:  baruch shem adonai  (“blessed be the name of the Lord”). For them suicide, like murder, means a blasphemous attack on creation as a whole. The man who kills himself asserts that life is not worth living and the world not worth sheltering him.

Yet our suicides are no mad rebels who hurl defiance at life and the world, who try to kill in themselves the whole universe. Theirs is a quiet and modest way of vanishing; they seem to apologize for the violent solution they have found for their personal problems. In their opinion, generally, political events had nothing to do with their individual fate; in good or bad times they would believe solely in their personality. Now they find some mysterious shortcomings in themselves which prevent them from getting along. Having felt entitled from their earliest childhood to a certain social standard, they are failures in their own eyes if this standard cannot be kept any longer. Their optimism is the vain attempt to keep head above water. Behind this front of cheerfulness, they constantly struggle with despair of themselves. Finally, they die of a kind of selfishness.

If we are saved we feel humiliated, and if we are helped we feel degraded. We fight like madmen for private existences with individual destinies, since we are afraid of becoming part of that miserable lot of  schnorrers  whom we, many of us former philanthropists, remember only too well. Just as once we failed to understand that the so-called  schnorrer  was a symbol of Jewish destiny and not a  shlemihl , so today we don’t feel entitled to Jewish solidarity; we cannot realize that we by ourselves are not so much concerned as the whole Jewish people. Sometimes this lack of comprehension has been strongly supported by our protectors. Thus, I remember a director of a great charity concern in Paris who, whenever he received the card of a German-Jewish intellectual with the inevitable “Dr.” on it, used to exclaim at the top of his voice, “Herr Doktor, Herr Doktor, Herr Schnorrer, Herr Schnorrer!”

The conclusion we drew from such unpleasant experiences was simple enough. To be a doctor of philosophy no longer satisfied us; and we learnt that in order to build a new life, one has first to improve on the old one. A nice little fairy-tale has been invented to describe our behaviour; a forlorn émigré dachshund, in his grief, begins to speak: “Once, when I was a St. Bernard …”

Our new friends, rather overwhelmed by so many stars and famous men, hardly understand that at the basis of all our descriptions of past splendors lies one human truth: once we were somebodies about whom people cared, we were loved by friends, and even known by landlords as paying our rent regularly. Once we could buy our food and ride in the subway without being told we were undesirable. We have become a little hysterical since newspapermen started detecting us and telling us publicly to stop being disagreeable when shopping for milk and bread. We wonder how it can be done; we already are so damnably careful in every moment of our daily lives to avoid anybody guessing who we are, what kind of passport we have, where our birth certificates were filled out—and that Hitler didn’t like us. We try the best we can to fit into a world where you have to be sort of politically minded when you buy your food.

Under such circumstances, St. Bernard grows bigger and bigger. I never can forget that young man who, when expected to accept a certain kind of work, sighed out, “You don’t know to whom you speak; I was Section-manager in Karstadt’s [A great department store in Berlin].” But there is also the deep despair of that middle-aged man who, going through countless shifts of different committees in order to be saved, finally exclaimed, “And nobody here knows who I am!” Since nobody would treat him as a dignified human being, he began sending cables to great personalities and his big relations. He learnt quickly that in this mad world it is much easier to be accepted as a “great man” than as a human being.

The less we are free to decide who we are or to live as we like, the more we try to put up a front, to hide the facts, and to play roles. We were expelled from Germany because we were Jews. But having hardly crossed the French borderline, we were changed into “boches.” We were even told that we had to accept this designation if we really were against Hitler’s racial theories. During seven years we played the ridiculous role of trying to be Frenchmen—at least, prospective citizens; but at the beginning of the war we were interned as “boches” all the same. In the meantime, however, most of us had indeed become such loyal Frenchmen that we could not even criticise a French governmental order; thus we declared it as all right to be interned. We were the first “prisonniers volontaires” history has ever seen. After the Germans invaded the country, the French Government had only to change the name of the firm; having been jailed because we were Germans, we were not freed because we were Jews.

It is the same story all over the world, repeated again and again. In Europe the Nazis confiscated our property; but in Brazil we have to pay 30% of our wealth, like the most loyal member of the  Bund der Auslandsdeutschen.  In Paris we could not leave our homes after eight o’clock because we were Jews; but in Los Angeles we are restricted because we are “enemy aliens.” Our identity is changed so frequently that nobody can find out who we actually are.

Unfortunately, things don’t look any better when we meet with Jews. French Jewry was absolutely convinced that all Jews coming from beyond the Rhine were what they called  Polaks —what German Jewry called  Ostjuden . But those Jews who really came from eastern Europe could not agree with their French brethren and called us  Jaeckes . The sons of these  Jaecke -haters—the second generation born in France and already duly assimilated—shared the opinion of the French Jewish upper class. Thus, in the very same family, you could be called a  Jaecke  by the father and a  Polak  by the son.

Since the outbreak of the war and the catastrophe that has befallen European Jewry, the mere fact of being a refugee has prevented our mingling with native Jewish society, some exceptions only proving the rule. These unwritten social laws, though never publicly admitted, have the great force of public opinion. And such a silent opinion and practice is more important for our daily lives than all official proclamations of hospitality and good will.

Man is a social animal and life is not easy for him when social ties are cut off. Moral standards are much easier kept in the texture of a society. Very few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political and legal status is completely confused. Lacking the courage to fight for a change of our social and legal status, we have decided instead, so many of us, to try a change of identity. And this curious behavior makes matters much worse. The confusion in which we live is partly our own work.

Some day somebody will write the true story of this Jewish emigration from Germany; and he will have to start with a description of that Mr. Cohn from Berlin who had always been a 150% German, a German super-patriot. In 1933 that Mr. Cohn found refuge in Prague and very quickly became a convinced Czech patriot—as true and loyal a Czech patriot as he had been a German one. Time went on and about 1937 the Czech Government, already under some Nazi pressure, began to expel its Jewish refugees, disregarding the fact that they felt so strongly as prospective Czech citizens. Our Mr. Cohn then went to Vienna; to adjust oneself there a definite Austrian patriotism was required. The German invasion forced Mr. Cohn out of that country. He arrived in Paris at a bad moment and he never did receive a regular residence-permit. Having already acquired a great skill in wishful thinking, he refused to take mere administrative measures seriously, convinced that he would spend his future life in France. Therefore, he prepared his adjustment to the French nation by identifying himself with “our” ancestor Vercingetorix. I think I had better not dilate on the further adventures of Mr. Cohn. As long as Mr. Cohn can’t make up his mind to be what he actually is, a Jew, nobody can foretell all the mad changes he will have to go through.

A man who wants to lose his self discovers, indeed, the possibilities of human existence, which are infinite, as infinite as is creation. But the recovering of a new personality is as difficult—and as hopeless—as a new creation fo the world. Whatever we do, whatever we pretend to be, we reveal nothing but our insane desire to be changed, not to be Jews. All our activities are directed to attain this aim: we don’t want to be refugees, since we don’t want to be Jews; we pretend to be English-speaking people, since German-speaking immigrants of recent years are marked as Jews; we don’t call ourselves stateless, since the majority of stateless people in the world are Jews; we are willing to become loyal Hottentots, only to hide the fact that we are Jews. We don’t succeed and we can’t succeed; under the cover of our “optimism” you can easily detect the hopeless sadness of assimilationists.

With us from Germany the word assimilation received a “deep” philosophical meaning. You can hardly realize how serious we were about it. Assimilation did not mean the necessary adjustment to the country where we happened to be born and to the people whose language we happened to speak. We adjust in principle to everything and everybody. This attitude became quite clear to me once by the words of one of my compatriots who, apparently, knew how to express his feelings. Having just arrived in France, he founded one of these societies of adjustment in which German Jews asserted to each other that they were already Frenchmen. In his first speech he said: “We have been good Germans in Germany and therefore we shall be good Frenchmen in France.” The public applauded enthusiastically and nobody laughed; we were happy to have learnt how to prove our loyalty.

If patriotism were a matter of routine or practice, we should be the most patriotic people in the world. Let us go back to our Mr. Cohn; he certainly has beaten all records. He is that ideal immigrant who always, and in every country into which a terrible fate has driven him, promptly sees and loves the native mountains. But since patriotism is not yet believed to be a matter of practice, it is hard to convince people of the sincerity of our repeated transformations. This struggle makes our own society so intolerant; we demand full affirmation without our own group because we are not in the position to obtain it from the natives. The natives, confronted with such strange beings as we are, become suspicious; from their point of view, as a rule, only a loyalty to our old countries is understandable. That makes life very bitter for us. We might overcome this suspicion if we could explain that, being Jews, our patriotism in our original countries had rather a peculiar aspect. Though it was indeed sincere and deep-rooted. We wrote big volumes to prove it; paid an entire bureaucracy to explore its antiquity and to explain it statistically. We had scholars write philosophical dissertations on the predestined harmony between Jews and Frenchmen, Jews and Germans, Jews and Hungarians, Jews and … Our so frequently suspected loyalty of today has a long history. It is the history of a hundred and fifty years of assimilated Jewry who performed an unprecedented feat: though proving all the time their non-Jewishness, they succeeded in remaining Jews all the same.

The desperate confusion of these Ulysses-wanderers who, unlike their great prototype, don’t know who they are is easily explained by their perfect mania for refusing to keep their identity. This mania is much older than the last ten years which revealed the profound absurdity of our existence. We are like people with a fixed idea who can’t help trying continually to disguise an imaginary stigma. Thus we are enthusiastically fond of every new possibility which, being new, seems able to work miracles. We are fascinated by every new nationality in the same way as a woman of tidy size is delighted with every new dress which promises to give her the desired waistline. But she likes the new dress only as long as she believes in its miraculous qualities, and she discovers that it does not change her stature—or, for that matter, her status.

One may be surprised that the apparent uselessness of all our odd disguises has not yet been able to discourage us. If it is true that men seldom learn from history, it is also true that they may learn from personal experiences which, as in our case, are repeated time and again. But before you cast the first stone at us, remember that being a Jew does not give any legal status in the world. If we should start telling the truth that we are nothing but Jews, it would mean that we expose ourselves to the fate of human beings who, unprotected by any specific law or political convention, are nothing but human beings. I can hardly imagine an attitude more dangerous, since we actually live in a world in which human beings as such have ceased to exist for quite a while, since society has discovered discrimination as the great social weapon by which one may kill men without any bloodshed; since passports or birth certificates, and sometimes even income tax receipts, are no longer formal papers but matters of social distinction. It is true that most of us depend entirely upon social standards, we lose confidence in ourselves if society does not approve us; we are—and always were—ready to pay any price in order to be accepted by society. But it is equally true that the very few among us who have tried to get along without all these tricks and jokes of adjustment and assimilation have paid a much higher price than they could afford: they jeopardized the few chances even our laws are given in a topsy-turvy world.

The attitude of these few whom, following Bernard Lazare, one may call “conscious pariahs,” can as little be explained by recent events alone as the attitude of our Mr. Cohn who tried by every means to become an upstart. Both are sons of the nineteenth century which, not knowing legal or political outlaws, knew only too well social pariahs and their counterpart, social parvenus. Modern Jewish history, having started with court Jews and continuing with Jewish millionaires and philanthropists, is apt to forget about this other trend of Jewish tradition—the tradition of Heine, Rahel Varnhagen, Sholom Aleichemn, of Bernard Lazare, Franz Kafka or even Charlie Chaplin. It is the tradition of a minority of Jews who have not wanted to become upstarts, who preferred the status of “conscious paria.” All vaunted Jewish qualities—the “Jewish heart,” humanity, humor, disinterested intelligence—are pariah qualities. All Jewish shortcomings—tactlessness, political stupidity, inferiority complexes and money-grubbing—are characteristic of upstarts. There have always been Jews who did not think it worth while to change their humane attitude and their natural insight into reality for the narrowness of castle spirit or the essential unreality of financial transactions.

History has forced the status of outlaws upon both, upon pariahs and parvenus alike. The latter have not yet accepted the great wisdom of Balzac’s  “On ne parvient pas deux fois” ; thus they don’t understand the wild dreams of the former and feel humiliated in sharing their fate. Those few refugees who insist upon telling the truth, even to the point of “indecency,” get in exchange for their unpopularity one priceless advantage: history is no longer a closed book to them and politics is no longer the privilege of Gentiles. They know that the outlawing of the Jewish people in Europe has been followed closely by the outlawing of most European nations. Refugees driven from country to country represent the vanguard of their peoples—if they keep their identity. For the first time Jewish history is not separate but tied up with that of all other nations. The comity of European peoples went to pieces when, and because, it allowed its weakest member to be excluded and persecuted.

Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” Menorah Journal 31, no. 1 (January 1943): pp 69-77. 

Related Posts:

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Refugee — Complexities of the Global Refugee Crisis

Complexities of The Global Refugee Crisis

• Categories: Illegal Immigration Refugee Syrian Refugee Crisis

About this sample

Words: 557 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 557 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Background on refugees, legal framework and international relations, social, political, and economic impacts of refugees, humanitarian response and refugee assistance, refugees and security concerns.

• UNHCR. (2020). Figures at a Glance. https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
• United Nations. (1951). Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/protection/global-refugee-crisis.html
• International Rescue Committee. (2019). The Economics of Refugee Integration. https://www.rescue.org/report/economics-refugee-integration

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 879 words

2 pages / 1006 words

2 pages / 748 words

5 pages / 2489 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Refugee

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Riverhead Books, 2017.Tolentino, Jia. 'A novel about refugees that feels instantly canonical.' The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2017, [...]

With over 80 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. Syria has been at the forefront of this crisis, with millions of Syrians fleeing the country due to the ongoing civil war. As a Syrian refugee myself, I have [...]

Gratz, A. (2017). Refugee. Scholastic Press.

Throughout history countries have been going through war, whether its country turning against country, or the country turning against their own people. In the novel, Inside Out & Back Again we learn how a girl named Ha and [...]

From the wealthy, utopian space station Elysium in Elysium to Hugo Drax’s space station occupied by a “perfect” human race in the classic 007 film Moonraker, science fiction has imagined a “city upon a hill,” closed off from a [...]

Over the past several decades, roughly 35,000 Syrian refugees have been accepted into Canada. As the refugee population increases, it is becoming more important to understand the factors that promote and foster pre- and post [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best refugee topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on refugee, ⭐ most interesting refugee topics to write about, 📑 good research topics about refugee, ✅ simple & easy refugee essay titles, ❓ refugee essay questions.

• Essay Review on the Refugee by Alan Gratz Despite the different reasons that prompted Isabel and Josef to leave their native country, and the fate of their loved ones that affected the emotional state of the children, they are similar in that the […]
• The Refugee Crisis and How to Overcome It While the current situation of Syrian and Iraqi refugees is unprecedented, the problem of refugees, in general, is well-known, and it was studied since the middle of XX century. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• ”Refugees From Amerika: A Gay Manifesto” Context Review In the 1950s, the West Coast became one of the pulsing centers of the counterculture, heralded in San Francisco by exponents of the Beat generation, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, the latter openly gay.
• Life in the Kenya Refugee Camp The onset of the politically instigated violence in my country meant that circumstances had taken a turn for the worst. Life in the refugee camp is so challenging with so little to smile about as […]
• House of Refugee vs. Life-Saving Station: In Search for a Shelter It is quite remarkable that the difference between the two houses comes into the limelight as the correspondent, who clearly incorporates the elements of media as the author perceived it, cunning, two-faced and at the […]
• Attitudes Toward Newly Arrived Refugees The crisis demonstrates the evolution of interactions between refugees and host nations and the impact of close geographical proximity on attitudes toward immigrants. The war broke out on the 24th of February 2022, to the […]
• Attitudes Toward Newly Arrived Refugees: Theories and Models Authors distinguish the existence of several approaches to understanding the concept of refugees and the application of world systems theory, integration of theory, and theories of assimilation and citizenship.
• Addressing the Healthcare Language Barrier of Afghan Refugees in California The foundation of the problem lies in the lack of adequate infrastructure in the places where medical services are provided to interpret information for immigrants and refugees.
• The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada The IRB is comprised of the Immigration Appeal Division, the Immigration Division, and the Refugee Protection Division. The governor-in-council appoints the Chairperson of the IRB who is supported by the vice-chairperson and deputy chairperson.
• Access of Refugees to Healthcare in Nevada The issues were identified only by the resettlement workers, yet the struggle to cope with existing problems and the resettlement process can lead to serious health implications.
• Refugees, Migrants and Asylum-Seekers in Nevada The movement of refugees from one asylum country to another that has agreed to accept them and eventually offer them permanent status is known as resettlement.
• Researching the Concept of Refugee Status It is to make sure that a person is fit to settle as a refugee in a country to legitimize them.
• Refugee Mental Health & Transcultural Psychiatry Because of this, many refugees have resorted to seeking refugee camp mental health services to cope with their situation in a new country and feel less stress.
• Syrian Refugees in Ottawa: Health Promotion Needs This report will highlight the difficulties of neglected facets such as mental health and the crucial role of implementing global proficiency in health professionals and organizations that work with refugees.
• African Refugees’ Experience of Mediterranean Passage One of the central messages of this chapter, in my opinion, is rendered through the quote of the passage survivor: “We do not know who will pick us up.
• Psychiatry: PTSD Following Refugee Trauma The psychiatrists finally recognized PTSD in the first version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders after the mass occurrence of similar symptoms in Vietnam veterans.
• America’s Refugee Act’s Bottlenecks The Act replaced the earlier versions of laws touching on the issue of refugees, mainly the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
• Creating Organization to Help Refugee Children Specifically, the legal standards for refugee admission and resettlement will have to be taken into account since they will define the vulnerable population’s accessibility to the services provided by the organization, as well as the […]
• Social Work & Movements of Refugees and Migrants The profession of social workers acts as an advocate for the human rights of refugees and migrants in education and practice.
• Societal Views on Refugees and Children’s Mental Wellbeing Just like the definition given by UNHCR, the OAU also believes that an individual becomes a refugee when they cross the border of their country of origin to a foreign country.
• How Refugees Affect the Host Country By contrast, a positive effect of refugees, which usually remains unconsidered, is that they contribute to the aggregate demand of the host country.
• “Race, Refugees, and International Law” by Achiume In the article “Race, Refugees, and International Law,” the author describes the definition of the term “race” as the social systems of meaning that attach to elements of morphology and ancestry.
• Democratic Republic of Congo’s Refugee Crisis The refugee crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example of how refugees suffer because of poor healthcare access and the inability to provide for themselves.
• “Refugee Trauma” Article Critique The main hypothesis of the work could be assumed to be in two things: first, the fact refugees experience trauma that needs specific and specialized approaches to be properly addressed, and second that the Multiphase […]
• Influx of Syrian Refugees in North Jordan To mitigate the tension between the Syrian refugees and the surrounding communities in Jordan, the primary aim of this proposed research study is to investigate tension factors.
• Unintentional Injuries Among Refugee and Immigrant Children The research question is not formulated evidently, but the readers can understand that the authors pose the question about the differences in injury rates as related to the country and status of immigrants and refugee […]
• Maternity Care for Asylum Seekers and Refugees In the process of the study, Judith Nabb focuses on a set of particular issues representing interest to her personally and being relevant in the course of general medical care studies, such as the level […]
• Cultural Perspectives on Health of Sudanese Women Refugees in Australia This study aims of understanding FGM among the Sudanese refugee women in Australia and its impact on the health of the women.
• Immigration and Refugee Law in New Zealand Consequently, the refugee policy comes about due to the flow of obligations courtesy of the 1960 UNHCR Convention, that is to say, the provision of refugees’ protection.
• Refugees Issues: Rights and Challenges The specified rights allow refugees to ensure that the factors which have compelled them to escape their native country will not affect them in the environment of the UN.
• Anxiety Among Refugees and the Crucial Need for Professional Interpreters This review appraises three studies examining the issue of anxiety among refugees and the role of professional interpreters in reducing anxiety.
• The Politics of Refugee Protection The paper will first review the background of the literature to explain the issues of migration and provide insight into the functions, roles, and organs of the Council of Europe.
• Egypt and Sudan Refugees and Asylum Seekers Face Brutal Treatment and Human Trafficking In this report by Amnesty International, the issue of the security of refugees and asylum seekers in Shagarab refugee camps, which are located in the eastern parts of Sudan, is raised.
• Rights, Needs, or Assistance? The Role of the UNHCR in Refugee Protection in the Middle East Ultimately, the author seeks to understand the concept of protection as defined by the UNHCR and how such definition plays out in the context of Syrian and Iraqis refugees in the Middle East.
• How to Stop Being Afraid and Welcome Refugees The current strategy of the White House suggests resettling 10,000 Syrians next year in order to help the Old World to overcome the worst refugee crisis since the times of the Second World War.
• African Refugee Life Challenges According to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who “”owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a […]
• Global Warming and Environmental Refugees Moreover, since environmental refugees have to leave their homelands, the developed countries are responsible for their relocation; thus, have to provide refugees with all the necessary financial and emotional support to ease their adaptation process […]
• Government-Funded Settlement Programs for African Refugees This will come in handy when assessing and evaluating the ability of the service providers, especially the government, to satisfy the needs of the refugees.
• Refugees and Migration: Issue Analysis Culmination of the conflicts and the crises were witnessed in Rwanda in April to mid July 1994, when genocide occurred following the assassination of the then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.
• Refugee Crisis: Term Definition In addition to the above mentioned, the Iraqi government had reduced the garrisons in the Kurdistan regions were reduced or abandoned.
• UN, WTO and the Solving the Palestinian Refugee Subject The end of the war was also marked by the creation of a massive number of refugees 10,000 of them Jewish and 711,000 of them Palestinian.
• Visa System and Refugee Law in Australia According to Suhad et al, the basic requirements that individuals need to meet for them to be accorded the protection visa are processed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
• Refugees as a Tactic in War: History, Types, and Number A refugee is defined as a person who due to a justifiable reason of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a certain social or a political group is out of the […]
• Refugee Women and Their Human Rights According to the researches have been made by UNHCR, 1998, found that 80% of the refugees immigrating to the United States and other countries of second asylum are women or children.
• Examining Street-Based Child Labor Amongst Syrian Refugees in Lebanon The research aims at answering the following question, “What are the legal and social improvements that should be made to improve the situation of Syrian refugee children working on the streets of Lebanon via the […]
• Stereotypes About Immigrants and Refugees The majority of these stereotypes develop due to the lack of education and understanding of immigration and people’s relocation. For instance, the history of the US heavily focuses on the achievements of white people, while […]
• South Sudan Refugees: Women Empowerment The subject of this work is the study of women’s empowerment in the country in question in order to ensure the greater rights and freedoms of this group.
• Refugees in Iowa Has Changed in 40 Years Iowa played a unique role in the reception of Vietnamese refugees in that it was the only state to actively offer asylum to these people.
• Syrian Refugees in the United States Zakaria supports this idea and mentions that foreigners search for a better life in the US because they follow the image of the American Dream that was created in the past and still attracts different […]
• Syrian Refugees in Jordan as Security Threats In a statement by the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Jeh Johnson states that foreign jihads are trained in Syria and later cross to Jordan, and then to Europe and America as refugees. The first […]
• South Sudan Refugees and Their Status Also, the situation in Southern Sudan, low productivity, ongoing conflicts, and the lack of required aid might lead to a humanitarian crisis.[2] Many refugees are forced to live under the open sky, they do not […]
• Canadian Refugees and the Refugee Crisis While some countries, especially in the Middle East and Africa, are the source of the refugees, countries in the west, including the USA and Canada are among the popular destinations.
• Trump’s Refugee Order: Suppression or Protection There are a lot of other countries where the majority of the population are Muslims, and their citizens are allowed to come to the USA.
• Discrimination Against Refugees in a New Country However, the report argues that the educational interventions are particularly important because of their ability to affect attitudes and the lack of awareness, which appear to be the major reasons for the existence of discrimination.
• Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for Women The main problem facing women asylum seekers within Canada is the failure of decision makers to incorporate gender related claims of women into the interpretation of the existing enumerated grounds and their failure to recognize […]
• Refugees Self-Sufficiency Program in Miami S military invasion of Iraq and Fidel Castro’s reign in Cuba resulted in Thousands of Iraqi and Cuban refugees being resettled in the U.S.
• Challenges Experienced by Syrian Refugees Even though the right to seek asylum and find the protection in different countries is granted to Syrian refugees according to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the problem is in […]
• Gulf Cooperation Council and Syrian Refugees However, there is a great number of other facts that should not be omitted and which prove the fact that the GCC countries do not refuse to shelter refugees.
• Attitudes Towards Refugees in an Australian Sample The research paper compares the findings of an investigation that was based on Pearson correlation as well as summarizes the core outcomes of the previous studies that were aimed at different groups of refugees’ integration.
• International Relations: The Palestinian Refugees Problem The best way to solve the crisis is to analyze the problem through an International Relations framework, such as, the application of knowledge gleaned from the study of the international system.
• Syrian Refugee in Toronto However, this process is very complicated and the war in Syria could be taken as the best evidence of the complexity of the situation. The evolution of ISIS resulted in the war on the territory […]
• Syrian Refugees Crisis: Turkey, Sweden, and Iraq The debate about the status of the refugees divided the society into two groups, the protestors and the supporters of the decision to grant Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship.
• Refugees and Mental Health They live their lives on the edge because they are unsure of what is going to happen to them and their families.
• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Despite the fact that UNHCR has in the recent past executed its duty in the best interest of all the refugees across the globe, the agency faces some setbacks and failures that need to be […]
• Working With Iraqi and Cuban Refugees as a Career Counselor The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of the lives of Iraqi and Cuban refugees who have arrived the United States.
• Immigrants and Refugees Differences 3 The country of origin may push them as a result of harsh economic conditions, and on the other hand, the destination country may pull them due to better standards of living and promise of […]
• System of Protection for Asylum Seekers and Refugees Internship The system has identified the need to have respect among the refugees in a given camp and between the refugees and the staff that run the protection institutions.
• Refugees and Economic Migrants The refugee migrants are not in a position, or have no willingness, to go back to their country of origin and this is because they have the fear of being persecuted and therefore, these people […]
• Cross-Cultural Communication: Helping Refugees From Syria Good communication is based on the capability of the recipient to listen and comprehend the intention of the speaker and vice versa.
• Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon The purpose of this brief is to outline the current situation and to push for reforms in Lebanon pertaining to the ownership of property, land and housing by Palestinian refugees.
• Indonesia and Its Relationship With Refugees To accomplish this task, a brief history of the country and apartheid, the country’s relationship with asylum seekers and refugees and finally the current situation are succinctly covered.
• Essential Services for Refugees in Auburn, New South Wales To enhance accessibility of health care services, the Refugee Health Plan recognizes complex medical needs of refugees and thus incorporate elements of culture and language as some of the factors that need consideration in the […]
• Briefing Paper on Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon The paper aims to elucidate on the plight of the refugees and the gains that would be attained from application of their full rights as well as some practical solutions to the predicaments.
• Can Art Change How We Think About Refugees? The group had identified that the refugees used art to negotiate their way of becoming part and parcel of the indigenous people of the new home, despite the varying degrees of prejudice and exclusion that […]
• Media Discourse on Refugees in Australia The article is meant to reduce the conflict between the public and the government regarding the issue of asylum seekers and refugees.
• Is It Important to Distinguish Between Immigrants and Refugees? It is really important to distinguish between immigrants and refugees, as representatives of the two groups experience various acculturation processes in different ways.
• The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization is a community organization which focuses on issues concerning proper integration of immigrants and refugees into the US society.
• Thailand ‘Interested’ in Refugee Swap Deal With Australia The genre of the text refers to journalistic genre, which means that the main purpose of the text should be to attract the readers and make them read the article until the end.
• Australia and Humanitarian Rights of Refugees In order to curtail the escalating humanitarian crisis, the Australian government came up with Humanitarian action policy of 1995. Creation of a link between development and humanitarian programme helps the government to come up with […]
• Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Australia Deviance is associated to foreigners; the feeling of substantial section of society is that refugees pose a threat to the society and to the moral order.
• The Protracted Sri Lankan Refugee Situation in India: Challenges and Possible Solutions There are a lot of people, government agencies perhaps and international organizations that speak well of the need to help refugees, but at the heart of the matter is a social problem that is difficult […]
• Refugees Detention in the U.S. and Australia The civil groups argue that most of the detention facilities are in the remote areas and the facilities are of poor quality.
• Refugees And Ordinary Migrants The immigrant countries should grant and approve visas to the refugees to allow them to live in them according to the laws on refugees.
• Differences and Similarities Between Refugees and Economic Immigrants Additionally, the UN recognizes the universal right of refugees to claim asylum and endeavors to communicate the same to their member countries.
• Across the Sands: African Refugees in the Eyes of the World Among the most notorious issues of the present-day political affairs, the one concerning the problem of the African refugees remains on the agenda of the modern politics and culture.
• Artists in Exile: How Refugees From Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts, by Joseph Horowitz Knowledge of the type of music in that era is will help in the understanding of the book especially the German way of expressing inner motion.
• Korean Immigrants and Refugees in New York The second phase of Koreans to immigrate to the US occurred in 1950 to 1953, this was after the Korean War.
• Are Refugees, or Diasporic Migrants Are Different From or Similar to the “Ordinary” Labor/Economic Migrants? The aim of the study is to discuss how refugees are different from or similar to the “ordinary” labor or economic migrants.
• The Ramifications of Hosting Refugees in the Society in Case of Kenya In the case of Kenya, the nation I went to, a majority of these camps are located in the Arid and Semi Arid Lands.
• Mental Health Status and Syndrome Patterns Among Young Refugee Children in Germany
• The Difference Between Emigration and Refugee
• Welcoming Refugees and the Cultural Wealth of Cities: Intersections of Urban Development and Refugee Humanitarianism
• Refugee Women During the 21st Century
• Employer Attitudes Towards Refugee Immigrants
• Refugee Resettlement, Redistribution, and Growth
• The Best Practices for Addressing Refugee Adjustment
• Refugee Admissions and Public Safety: Are Refugee Settlement Areas More Prone to Crime
• Borderless Lullabies: Musicians and Authors in Defense of Refugee Children
• Regional Migration Patterns and Homeownership Disparities in the Hmong-American Refugee Community
• Jobs, Crime, and Votes: A Short-Run Evaluation of the Refugee Crisis in Germany
• Refugees and Refugee Crises: Some Historical Reflections
• The European Refugee Crisis: The Struggles of Survival
• Winners and Losers Among a Refugee-Hosting Population
• Getting the First Job – Size and Quality of Ethnic Enclaves for Refugee Labor Market Entry
• Benefits and Costs With High Refugee Population
• Mapping Complex Systems: Responses to Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Three Refugee Camps
• Harnessing and Advancing Knowledge in Social Enterprises: Theoretical and Operational Challenges in the Refugee Settlement Experience
• Pre-school Teachers’ Stereotypes and Perceptions of Behavior Problems in Newly Arrived Refugee Children
• Racism and the European Refugee Crisis
• Local Labor Markets and Earnings of Refugee Immigrants
• Escape From Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World
• Mental Health Interventions for Refugee Youth
• Estimating Poverty for Refugee Populations: Can Cross-Survey Imputation Methods Substitute for Data Scarcity
• Administrative State Refugee Protection
• Blaming Brussels: The Impact of the Refugee Crisis on Attitudes Towards the EU and National Politics
• Assisting the Least Among Us: Social Work’s Historical Response to Unaccompanied Immigrant and Refugee Youth
• Syrian Refugee Crisis: Global Impacts and Sustainable Solutions
• Americans and the German Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 1930s
• Inclusive Education for Refugee Children With Disabilities
• Belonging: Decision Theory and Refugee
• Refugee Movement: Causes, Impacts, and Solutions
• Entrepreneurship and the Business Cycle: The “Schumpeter” Effect Versus the “Refugee” Effect
• Assessing the Direct and Spillover Effects of Shocks to Refugee Remittances
• Mental Illness and Addiction Among Immigrant, Refugee, and Asylum-Seeking
• Europe’s Refugee and Migrant Crisis: Economic and Political Ambivalences
• Refugee Camps and the Application of Florence Nightingale’s Environmental Theory
• Gratitude and Hospitality: Tamil Refugee Employment in London and the Conditional Nature of Integration
• Assigning Protection: Can Refugee Rights and State Preferences Be Reconciled
• Canada’s Refugee Strategy: How It Can Be Improved
• Does Entrance With Family Influence the Way Minors Leave a Refugee Centre?
• Are Refugee Settlement Areas More Prone to Crime?
• Who Was the First Refugee?
• What Are the Leading Causes of Refugees?
• How Did the ISIS Terror Group and Syrian Refugee Crisis Start?
• What Is the Main Problem With Refugees?
• Who Should Determine Refugee Policy?
• What Is Causing the Refugee Crisis?
• What Is the Biggest Refugee Crisis?
• Which Country Is Most Welcoming to Refugees?
• Are Refugee Flows Associated With International Trade?
• Why Is It Essential to Study Refugees?
• Which Country Has the Most Refugee?
• Does Halting Refugee Resettlement Reduce Crime?
• How Can We Help Refugees?
• What Is the Importance of Refugees?
• Which Are the Significant Problems of Refugees?
• Is the Syrian Refugee Crisis an Outcome of the Civil War?
• What Countries Do Not Allow Refugees?
• Who Is the Most Famous Refugee in the World?
• Why Are Refugee Children Shorter Than the Hosting Population?
• What Are the Types of Refugees?
• What Are Some Struggles Refugees Face?
• Why Is the Refugee Crisis Significant?
• Does Reduced Cash Benefit Worsen the Educational Outcomes of Refugee Children?
• Is the Syrian Refugee Crisis Becoming a Major Part of Internation?
• Why Do Refugee Burden Sharing Initiatives Fail?
• Is the Syrian Refugee Crisis Today’s Worst Humanitarian?
• Who Is Affected by the Refugee Crisis?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/refugee-essay-topics/

"159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/refugee-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/refugee-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/refugee-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "159 Refugee Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/refugee-essay-topics/.

• Disaster Essay Titles
• Immigration Titles
• Global Issues Essay Topics
• Illegal Immigration Topics
• Patriotism Research Ideas
• Immigration Reform Topics
• Racism Paper Topics
• Genocide Essay Titles
• Moral Dilemma Paper Topics
• Philanthropy Paper Topics
• Human Rights Essay Ideas
• Red Cross Titles
• Public Safety Research Ideas
• Demography Paper Topics

Essay on Refugees

Students are often asked to write an essay on Refugees in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Refugees

What are refugees.

Refugees are people who leave their homes because it’s not safe. They could be facing war, violence, or bad treatment because of who they are or what they believe. They move to other countries hoping to find safety and peace.

Why do People Become Refugees?

People become refugees for many reasons. Some are forced to leave because of war or violence. Others might leave because they’re treated badly for their beliefs or who they are. They hope to find a better life in a new country.

Life as a Refugee

Life as a refugee can be very hard. Often, they leave everything behind. They might live in camps or cities, waiting for a chance to start a new life. They often face many challenges, like learning a new language or finding a job.

Helping Refugees

We can help refugees in many ways. We can donate money or goods to help meet their needs. We can also show kindness and understanding, making them feel welcome in their new homes. Everyone deserves to live in safety and peace.

250 Words Essay on Refugees

What are refugees.

Refugees are people who have to leave their home country. They do this because it is not safe for them to stay. They might be in danger because of war, violence, or because they are treated badly for their beliefs.

Why Do People Become Refugees?

People do not want to become refugees. They are forced to leave their homes. They might be scared of being hurt, or even killed. They might also not have enough food or water. These things make them leave their home and go to a safer place.

The Journey of Refugees

The journey to a new place is often very hard for refugees. They might have to walk for many days, or travel in small boats. They often do not have a lot of food or water. They might also get sick on the journey. But they keep going because they hope to find a safer place.

Life in a New Country

When refugees reach a new country, life can still be hard. They might not speak the language. They might not have a job. They might miss their home. But they are safer than before. They can start to build a new life.

How Can We Help Refugees?

There are many ways to help refugees. We can give money to groups that help them. We can learn about their stories and tell others. We can be kind and welcoming. By doing these things, we can help refugees feel more at home in their new country.

In conclusion, refugees are people who have to leave their home because it is not safe. They face many challenges, but they also have a lot of courage. We can all do our part to help them.

500 Words Essay on Refugees

Refugees are people who have to leave their homes and countries because of dangerous situations. These situations can include wars, natural disasters, or harsh treatment because of their beliefs or who they are. They move to other countries in search of safety and a better life.

People become refugees for many reasons. The biggest reason is war. When there is fighting in a country, people’s lives are in danger. They might lose their homes or even their loved ones. So, they decide to leave for a safer place.

Other reasons can be natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, or droughts. Sometimes, people are treated badly because of their religion, race, or political views. When this treatment becomes too harsh, they are forced to leave their homes and become refugees.

The journey of refugees is often very hard. They may have to walk for many days or even weeks. They might not have enough food or water. They have to leave behind their homes, their friends, and sometimes even their families. Many times, they face danger during their journey. But they keep going because they hope for a better and safer life.

When refugees reach a new country, life is not easy. They may not know the language. They might not have a job or a home. They have to learn new customs and ways of life.

But many countries and organizations try to help. They provide food, shelter, and medical care. They help refugees learn the language and find jobs. They also help them adjust to their new life.

The Importance of Helping Refugees

Helping refugees is very important. They are people just like us, but they have gone through very hard times. They have left everything behind in hope of a safer life.

When we help refugees, we show them that they are not alone. We show them that there are people who care about them. We give them hope for a better future.

In conclusion, refugees are people who leave their homes and countries because of dangerous situations. Their journey is hard, and life in a new country is not easy. But with help and support, they can start a new life. It is important for us to understand their struggles and do what we can to help.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Reign Of Terror DBQ
• Essay on Relationship Between Father And Daughter
• Essay on Relationship Between Boyfriend And Girlfriend

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Immigration / Refugee

Refugee Essay Examples

Migration and human rights.

Migration can be temporal or permanent, and it may be voluntary or forced. Migration is not a new thing — it is known historically, that people have always had migratory lifestyles. There is enough evidence that people have moved from faraway places to inhabit new...

Becoming a Responsible Citizen: Significance of Active Citizenship

To start with, this is importance of citizenship essay in which this topic is discussed. Citizenship is given by a sovereign state or nation to a person to make him/her a legal member of the state. It provides a legal basis to acquire basic human...

Refugee Crisis and the Rise of Nationalism in Europe

In recent times, Europe has been faced with the biggest movement of people since the ending of World War II. The ongoing refugee crisis has become one of the main focuses on the European political agenda. In situations where there are immense linguistic, religious, social,...

The Migrants and Refugees as Part of Globalization

This assignment sets out to critically discuss the implications of the increased mobility of the world’s population on the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Health Service (NHS); specifically focusing on migrant and refugee populations. This debate will further extend to critically explore the impact movement of...

The Effects of Conditions in Refugee Camps on the Physical and Mental Health of Syrian Refugees

This study will outline the impact of spatial conditions in refugee camps upon the physical and mental health of Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon. The conditions of the refugee camps vary in size, capability, facility and materiality. However, it is core to analyse how each...

The Portrait of Refugees and Their Lives in the 'Inside Out and Back Again'

A refugee is a regular person who has had to leave their country due to war or things like racism or persecution due to their religion. While leaving home their lives turn inside out because they are forced to go to a new place where...

Factors Behind the Rise of Refugee

In recent years, researchers have become interested in the increasing number of refugees around the world. According to the United Nation, just at the end of 2014, there were over 60 million refugees that were forced to leave and displace the country. In its essence,...

The Repercussions of the Syrian Refugee Crisis on European Security

Country historically known for massive displacement of people, Germany is still in the spotlight of mass migration in this day and age. Far different from the forced displacements of the Holocaust, the modern Syrian refugee crisis in Europe has impacted Germany the most out of...

The EU Failure to Offer a Viable and Compassionate Response to the Refugee Crisis

Jean Monnet, frequently viewed as the forefather of European integration and the neofunctionalist perspective, “always believed that Europe would be built through crises, and that it would be the sum of their solutions”. Howbeit, the European Union’s response to the refugee crisis has been insufficient,...

Gender and Migration: the Case of European Refugee Crisis 

With over a million asylum seekers making their way towards Western Europe in 2015, the European nations witnessed the largest refugee crisis in the region since the Second World War. “By November 2015, women and children comprised up to 42% of the affected population”. By...

Trying to find an excellent essay sample but no results?

Don’t waste your time and get a professional writer to help!

You may also like

• Discrimination
• Affirmative Action
• Cyber Bullying
• Gay Marriage
• Illegal Immigration Essays
• Immigration to America Essays
• Moving to America Essays
• Daca Essays
• Capital Punishment Essays
• Cruelty to Animals Essays
• Gender Inequality Essays
• Homelessness Essays
• Malcolm X Essays
• Freedom of Speech Essays

About Refugee

A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

25.4 million

Right of return, Right to non-refoulement, Right to family reunification, Right to travel

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->