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5 Refugees and asylum seekers Introduction This chapter examines how contemporary responses to refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland have been shaped by a legacy of exclusionary state practices and racism.1 As noted in the last chapter, this legacy included overt anti-Semitism within refugee and immigration practices from the late 1930s prior to Ireland’s ratification in 1956 of the UN Convention on Human Rights (1951). The arrival of increasing numbers of asylum seekers in recent years was met by expressions of racism and intolerance within Irish political
Chapter 4 Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers: predictable arrivals Several works exist that compare British governments’ responses to refugees over time.1 Each traces the arrival and reception of groups of refugees, demonstrating how each was treated differently, offering explanations for governments’ varying levels of ‘generosity’. Yet refugee movements are not appropriate for comparison when divorced from the context of Britain’s colonial identity. The relevance of Britain’s contemporaneous identity as an empire, and the connection between this global
Art and migration: revisioning the borders of community is a collective response to current and historic constructs of migration as disruptive of national heritage. This interplay of academic essays and art professionals’ interviews investigates how the visual arts – especially by or about migrants – create points of encounter between individuals, places, and objects. Migration has increasingly taken centre stage in contemporary art, as artists claim migration as a paradigm of artistic creation. The myriad trajectories of transnational artworks and artists’ careers outlined in the volume are reflected in the density and dynamism of fairs and biennales, itinerant museum exhibitions and shifting art centres. It analyses the vested political interests of migration terminology such as the synonymous use of ‘refugees’ and ‘asylum seekers’ or the politically constructed use of ‘diaspora’. Political and cultural narratives frame globalisation as a recent shift that reverses centuries of cultural homogeneity. Art historians and migration scholars are engaged in revisioning these narratives, with terms and methodologies shared by both fields. Both disciplines are elaborating an histoire croisée of the circulation of art that denounces the structural power of constructed borders and cultural gatekeeping, and this volume reappraises the historic formation of national identities and aesthetics heritage as constructed under transnational visual influences. This resonates with migrant artists’ own demands for self-determination in a display space that too often favours canonicity over hybridity. Centring migration – often silenced by normative archives or by nationalist attribution practices – is part of the workload of revisioning art history and decolonising museums.
Introduction A 2017 report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced populations experience a higher rate of mental health issues in comparison with individuals who are citizens of one or more nation-states (WHO, 2017 ). As a result of these findings, the WHO, the European Union, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) recommend that the mental health challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers be viewed as a global priority (WHO, 2017 ; UNHCR, 2018 ). Indeed, the WHO has
‘cold welcome’ offered to Mizrachi 4 Jewish refugees in the 1950s and the treatment of Arabs who remained after the founding of the state. The current discourse shares with that period the exclusionary practices and policies, negative framing and disparaging views. The similarity is not complete, as the possibility of eventual inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers today is more complicated. No question, Mizrachi and Arabs still experience stigma and disparate treatment in Israel. However, due to both the Mizrachi’s political citizenship and nationality rights
Introduction This is the story of a meeting between a humanitarian operation and a conspiracy theory, and what happened next. The operation was a search and rescue mission run on the Mediterranean by many different non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Médecins Sans Frontières, 1 aiming to save the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers lost at sea. The conspiracy theory 2 was that this operation was the opposite of what it
-generating process) ( Piguet, 2018 ). The anti-colonial struggle for independence in the 1950s to the conflict between 1962 and 1965 generated internal mass displacement and large numbers of refugees who fled to neighbouring countries ( Kibreab, 2014 ). The country’s historical transformation and the unceasing conflict and violence have redefined the lives of about 1.4 million IDPs and the 2.25 million refugees and asylum seekers who had moved from South Sudan by
advocate for the rights of migrants, rather than as a modern-day Florence Nightingale. 18 Support for SAR operations is also seen as a way of symbolically snubbing the far right, which has grown in strength not least because its leaders have blamed refugees and asylum seekers for all ills. The Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), or AfD, since the 2017 national elections Germany’s largest opposition party, has long tried to equate private SAR missions with people-smuggling networks. While AfD politicians speak of ‘so-called refugees’ and ‘so
those refugees have fled their home nations, with 53.9 per cent of those refugees and asylum seekers originating from Somalia, while South Sudanese people make up 24.7 per cent, followed by Congolese (9 per cent) and Ethiopians (5.8 per cent). About 44 per cent of the asylum and refugee seekers live in Dadaab, located in the east of the country and hosting three UNHCR-managed camps, while 40 per cent live in Kakuma in the north of the country and 16 percent live in the
Analysis of Discursive Constructions of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 1996–2005 ’, Journal of English Linguistics , 36 : 1 , 5 – 38 . Gatrell , P. ( 2005 ), A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I ( Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press ). Gatrell , P. ( 2013 ), The Making of the Modern Refugee ( Oxford : Oxford University Press ). Gatrell , P. ( 2014 ), ‘ Refugees ’, 1914–1918 Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War , 8 October , doi: 10.15463/ie