1,721,036 research outputs found
Disentangling "Forced Displacement" from Pastoral Mobility: Recovery and Reconstruction in the Sahel and in South Sudan
No full textBread, salt and book-keeping:The shaweesh as the interface between Syrian refugees and the humanitarian system in Lebanon
Full text linkDefining hunger, redefining food: humanitarianism in the twentieth century
Full text linkThis thesis concerns the history of humanitarian nutrition and its political implications. Drawing on aid agency archives and other historical sources, it examines how food has been delivered in emergencies, from the First World War to the present day. The approach is ethnographic: this is a study of the micro-level practices of relief, examining the objects distributed, the plans made, the techniques used. It is also historical: examining how such practices have changed over time. This thesis makes five interlocking arguments. First, I make a political point: that humanitarian action is always political, and that it is impossible to adhere to ‘classical’ humanitarian principles such as neutrality, impartiality and independence. Second, I make a sociological argument: that the activities of humanitarian nutrition have been shaped by a number of themes, which include militarism, medicine, modernity, and markets. Third, I make a historical argument: that the main features of humanitarian nutrition were solidified between the 1930s and the 1970s, and were largely in place by the time of the Biafran war. Fourth, I make a sociological argument: that these mid-century changes involved a profound redefinition of hunger and food (with hunger conceived as a biochemical deficiency, and food as a collection of nutrients). Finally, I make a normative argument, suggesting that this redefinition has not necessarily benefited the starving: the provision of food in emergencies, I argue, is often concerned with control and efficiency rather than the suffering individuals themselves
Mercenaries, missionaries and misfits: Competition in the ‘aid marketplace’ in Afghanistan.: A case study of UNHCR (2001-2015)
Full text linkBoth practitioners and academics have recently begun referring to humanitarian agencies operating within an active ‘aid marketplace’ in which limited funding pits actors against each other in pursuance of their own projects and wider aims. This thesis seeks to explore how the pressures of a competitive environment impact on the motivations and actions of aid actors at an individual and organizational level. Based on the common saying that aid workers are ‘mercenaries, missionaries and misfits’, I construct a typology of pressures (interest-based, altruistic, and bureaucratic), which, it is argued, can be used to explain and understand much of this competitive and collaborative behaviour. A particular focus of the thesis is the impact of these various influences on the process and politics of information transfer and discourse creation regarding the process of needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation. I explore all of these issues through the medium of a case study of UNHCR’s interventions in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2015, and seek to provide a detailed history of the agency’s activities, politics and challenges during this period. In particular I am interested in the motivations driving the agency’s actions; the strategies it has employed to achieve its aims; the calculated narratives that it has crafted to justify its interventions and attract greater support; and the very different ways in which it has approached the needs of different categories of displaced people
Education, aspiration, and mobility in the Karen borderlands: An ethnography of youth transitions amongst the Kwaegabon Plong Karen of southeastern Burma/Myanmar
Full text linkExisting research on education-to-employment transitions in complex and contested settings in the global South is consumed with the debilitating effects of the ‘crisis of youth’ and its negative outcomes in which many emerge un/under-employed. Young people are often depicted as in thrall to this predicament rather than probing their agentive capacities for affirmative action to move beyond the impasse. Consequently, few studies explore how youth transitions relate and respond to wider socio-economic and political transformation as young people set about changing the self and the situation.
Based on fieldwork conducted throughout 2015 and 2016 in a remote region of southeastern Burma/Myanmar emerging from decades of armed conflict, government restriction and underdevelopment, this thesis explores how a community of Plong Karen in the Karen State capital Hpa-an, engaging around alternative forms of higher education, are responding directly to local configurations of privation and possibility. By shaping the aspirations and agency of high school and university students to safeguard the legacy of this, this provision amounts to a formidable vision and vehicle of social change.
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, I bring a concern for temporalities into conversation with socio-spatial mobilities to explore ways in which young people navigate their structured positions and exploit the possibilities around them before and into Myanmar’s political transition, and across the Karen borderlands into neighbouring Thailand. I explore how specific struggles and successes around education, shared by this particular social ‘generation’ across these time-spaces, have informed their capacity to act and the manner in which they are doing so. I suggest that these outcomes are stimulating broader socio-economic transformations within and beyond this community. Access to this education and the opportunities it promises, nevertheless presents young people with new and beguiling possibilities beyond the constraints and concerns of those communities, which remain marked by the spectre of intra-ethnic and religious tensions testing the identifications and affiliations of young people living and learning in contemporary Hpa-an
Examining the role of traditional health networks in the Karen self determination movement along the Thai-Burma border: Examining indigenous medical systems and practice among displaced populations along the Thai-Burma border
Full text linkAccording to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by 2012 there were 15.4 million refugees and 28.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced to flee their homes due to war or violent conflict across the globe. Upon arrival in their host settings, forced migrants struggle with acute health and material needs, as well as issues related to identity, politics, power and place. The Karen ethnic minority of Burma (also known as Myanmar) has been involved in a prolonged civil conflict with the Burmese military government for nearly six decades. This fighting has resulted in massive internal displacement and refugee flight, and although a ceasefire was signed in 2012, continued violence has been reported. This study among the displaced Karen population along the Thai-Burma border examines the relationships between traditional – or indigenous – medicine, the population's health needs, and the broader social and political context. Research was conducted using an ethnographic case-study approach among 170 participants along the Thai-Burma border between 2003 and 2011. Research findings document the rapid evolution and formalisation of the Karen traditional medical system. Findings show how the evolutionary process was influenced by social needs, an existing base medical knowledge among traditional health practitioners, and a dynamic social and political environment. Evidence suggests that that Karen traditional medicine practitioners, under the leadership of the Karen National Union (KNU) Department of Health and Welfare, are serving neglected and culturally-specific health needs among border populations. Moreover, this research also provides evidence that Karen authorities are revitalising their traditional medicine, as part of a larger effort to strengthen their social infrastructure including the Karen self-determination movement. In particular, these Karen authorities are focused on building a sustainable health infrastructure that can serve Karen State in the long term. From the perspectives of both refugee health and development studies, the revival of Karen traditional medicine within a refugee and IDP setting represents an adaptive response by otherwise medically under-served populations. This case offers a model of healthcare self-sufficiency that breaks with the dependency relationships characteristic of most conventional refugee and IDP health services. And, through the mobilisation of tradition for contemporary needs, it offers a dimension of cultural continuity in a context where discontinuity and loss of culture are hallmarks of the forced migration experience
Long-term diasporic return migration in post-Soviet Armenia: Balancing mobility and sedentarism
Full text linkThis thesis examines the immigration to and long-term settlement in post-Soviet Armenia of Armenians from well-established diasporic communities — mostly from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Canada, and the United States. It argues that diverse levels and combinations of anchoring and floating co-exist in the diasporan returnees’ return motivations, post-return integration experiences, and identity and belonging (re)conceptualization processes. They are manifested in the returnees’ habitual dispositions, imaginative aspirations, and practical considerations, which develop within a particular sociohistorical environment. The study also considers the changes that occur over time in the structural context and in the ways returnees engage with it. It demonstrates that the inclination of returnees toward more rooted or more mobile directions depends, to a large extent, on their diasporic community background, the generation they belong to, and more immediate factors related to their life-cycle stages. Throughout the analysis, the important role of emotions in the return visions and experiences is highlighted. The thesis makes an empirical contribution by studying the largely uncharted case of Armenian diasporic return in the post-Soviet era. At a more theoretical level, it promotes a balanced approach that goes beyond the overemphasis on mobility and the relative neglect of sedentarism that have characterized many works in the fields of diaspora and migration studies over the past few decades. Underlying this balanced path is the goal of recognizing the equal importance of and complex inter-relationship between human agency and objective structures. To this end, the thesis relies on a theoretical framework based primarily on some of Pierre Bourdieu’s key conceptual tools, with certain modifications. Thus, the study frames the topic of long-term diasporic return migration within broader social theory. This way, not only does it link diasporic return to paradigms in migration and diaspora studies, but it also views it from a wider angle of social action
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