Contemporary Asylum Narratives


Book Description

Contemporary Asylum Narratives marks a transition from traditional modes of diasporic belonging to the need for identifications that encompass the statelessness of refugees and asylum seekers. This book explores representations of asylum seekers and refugees in twenty-first century literature, film and theatre.




Contemporary Asylum Narratives


Book Description

Contemporary Asylum Narratives marks a transition from traditional modes of diasporic belonging to the need for identifications that encompass the statelessness of refugees and asylum seekers. This book explores representations of asylum seekers and refugees in twenty-first century literature, film and theatre.




Narratives of Forced Mobility and Displacement in Contemporary Literature and Culture


Book Description

Narratives of Forced Mobility and Displacement in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Border Violence focuses on the evidence of the effects of displacement as seen in narratives—cinematic, photographic, and literary—produced by, with, or about refugees and migrants. The book explores refugee journeys, asylum-seeking, trafficking, and deportation as well as territorial displacement, the architecture of occupation and settlement, and border separation and violence. The large-scale movement of people from the global South to the global North is explored through the perspectives of the new mobilities paradigm, including the fact that, for many of the displaced, waiting and immobility is a common part of their experience. Through critical analysis drawing on cultural studies and literary studies, Roger Bromley generates an alternative “map” of texts for understanding displacement in terms of affect, subjectivity, and dehumanization with the overall aim of opening up new dialogues in the face of the current stream of anti-refugee rhetoric.




On the Doorstep of Europe


Book Description

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, Greece has shouldered a heavy burden struggling with internal political and financial insecurity as well as hosting enormous numbers of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive by land and sea. In On the Doorstep of Europe, Heath Cabot presents an ethnographic study of the asylum system in Greece, tracing the ways asylum seekers, bureaucrats, and service providers attempt to navigate the dilemmas of governance, ethics, knowledge, and social relations that emerge through this legal process. Centering on the work of an asylum advocacy NGO in Athens, Cabot explores how workers and clients grapple with predicaments endemic to Europeanization and rights-based protection. Drawing inspiration from classical Greek tragedy to highlight both the transformative potential and violence of law, Cabot charts the structural violence effected through European governance, rights frameworks, and humanitarian intervention while also exploring how Greek society is being remade from the inside out. She shows how, in contemporary Greece, relationships between insiders and outsiders are radically reconfigured through legal, political, and economic crises. Now updated with a preface reflecting on the critical stakes of the book's exploration of refuge in light of events that have transpired in and beyond Europe since its initial publication, On the Doorstep of Europe highlights how border crossers and residents in countries of arrival navigate legal and political violence. Cabot's on-the-ground account of asylum and immigration in Europe's borderlands, based on fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2011, shows how the difficulties encountered by asylum seekers in an earlier time remain relevant and revealing in the face of ongoing crises and challenges today.




Asylum for Sale


Book Description

This explosive new volume brings together a lively cast of academics, activists, journalists, artists, and people directly impacted by asylum regimes to explain how current practices of asylum align with the neoliberal moment and to present their transformative visions for alternative systems and processes. Through essays, artworks, photographs, infographics, and illustrations, Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry regards the global asylum regime as an industry characterized by profit-making activity: brokers who facilitate border crossings for a fee; contractors and firms that erect walls, fences, and watchtowers while lobbying governments for bigger “security” budgets; corporations running private detention centers and “managing” deportations; private lawyers charging exorbitant fees; “expert” witnesses; and NGO staff establishing careers while placing asylum seekers into new regimes of monitored vulnerability. Asylum for Sale challenges readers to move beyond questions of legal, moral, and humanitarian obligations that dominate popular debates regarding asylum seekers. Digging deeper, the authors focus on processes and actors often overlooked in mainstream analyses and on the trends increasingly rendering asylum available only to people with financial and cultural capital. Probing every aspect of the asylum process from crossings to aftermaths, the book provides an in-depth exploration of complex, international networks, policies, and norms that impact people seeking asylum around the world. In highlighting protest as well as profit, Asylum for Sale presents both critical analyses and proposed solutions for resisting and reshaping current and emerging immigration norms.




Refugee Imaginaries


Book Description

Charts new directions for interdisciplinary research on refugee writing and representationPlaces refugee imaginaries at the centre of interdisciplinary exchange, demonstrating the vital new perspectives on refugee experience available in humanities researchBrings together leading research in literary, performance, art and film studies, digital and new media, postcolonialism and critical race theory, transnational and comparative cultural studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, human geography and cultural politicsThe refugee has emerged as one of the key figures of the twenty-first-century. This book explores how refugees imagine the world and how the world imagines them. It demonstrates the ways in which refugees have been written into being by international law, governmental and non-governmental bodies and the media, and foregrounds the role of the arts and humanities in imagining, historicising and protesting the experiences of forced migration and statelessness. Including thirty-two newly written chapters on representations by and of refugees from leading researchers in the field, Refugee Imaginaries establishes the case for placing the study of the refugee at the centre of contemporary critical enquiry.




Threads


Book Description

A heartbreaking, full-color graphic novel of the refugee drama In the French port town of Calais, famous for its historic lace industry, a city within a city arose. This new town, known as the Jungle, was home to thousands of refugees, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, all hoping, somehow, to get to the UK. Into this squalid shantytown of shipping containers and tents, full of rats and trash and devoid of toilets and safety, the artist Kate Evans brought a sketchbook and an open mind. Combining the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling, Evans has produced this unforgettable book, filled with poignant images—by turns shocking, infuriating, wry, and heartbreaking. Accompanying the story of Kate’s time spent among the refugees—the insights acquired and the lives recounted—is the harsh counterpoint of prejudice and scapegoating arising from the political right. Threads addresses one of the most pressing issues of modern times to make a compelling case, through intimate evidence, for the compassionate treatment of refugees and the free movement of peoples. Evans’s creativity and passion as an artist, activist, and mother shine through.




Troubled Transit


Book Description

Troubled Transit considers the situation of asylum seekers stuck in limbo in Indonesia from a number of perspectives. It presents not only the narratives of many transit migrants but also the perceptions of Indonesian authorities and of representatives of international and non-government organizations responsible for the care of transiting asylum seekers. Fascinated by the extraordinary and seemingly limitless resilience shown by asylum seekers during their often lengthy and dangerous journeys, the author highlights one particular fragment of their journeys — their time in Indonesia, which many expect to be the last stepping stone to a new life. While they long for their new life to unfold, most asylum seekers become embroiled in the complexities of living in transit. Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is more than a location where people spend time waiting; it is a nation state that interacts with transiting asylum seekers and formulates policies that have a profound impact on their experience in transit there. Troubled Transit tries to explain the complexities faced by the transiting migrants within the context of the Indonesian government and its political challenges, including its relationship with Australia. The Australia-centric view of recent asylum seeker issues has tended to ignore the larger socio-political context of the migratory routes and the perspectives of transit states towards asylum seekers stuck in transit. This book hopes to direct the Australia-centric gaze northwards to take Indonesian policies and policymaking into account, thereby giving Indonesia more relevance as a transit country and as an important partner in regional protection schemes and migration management. Even though some Indonesian policies and practices are less than favourable for asylum seekers, and even reprehensible from a human rights perspective, more attention must be paid to ongoing developments that impact on transiting asylum seekers in Indonesia if any of the hardships they suffer there are to be alleviated.




The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives


Book Description

This Handbook presents a transnational and interdisciplinary study of refugee narratives, broadly defined. Interrogating who can be considered a refugee and what constitutes a narrative, the thirty-eight chapters included in this collection encompass a range of forcibly displaced subjects, a mix of geographical and historical contexts, and a variety of storytelling modalities. Analyzing novels, poetry, memoirs, comics, films, photography, music, social media, data, graffiti, letters, reports, eco-design, video games, archival remnants, and ethnography, the individual chapters counter dominant representations of refugees as voiceless victims. Addressing key characteristics and thematics of refugee narratives, this Handbook examines how refugee cultural productions are shaped by and in turn shape socio-political landscapes. It will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners committed to engaging refugee narratives in the contemporary moment. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.




Bad News for Refugees


Book Description

Bad News for Refugees analyses the political, economic and environmental contexts of migration and looks specifically at how refugees and asylum seekers have been stigmatised in political rhetoric and in media coverage. Through forensic research it shows how hysterical and inaccurate media accounts act to legitimise political action which can have terrible consequences both on the lives of refugees and also on established migrant communities. Based on new research by the renowned Glasgow Media Group, Bad News for Refugees is essential reading for those concerned with the negative effects of media on public understanding and for the safety of vulnerable groups and communities in our society.