Humanitarian Dilemmas in a Mobile World

Abstract

This special issue of Refugee Survey Quarterly presents the experiences of frontline staff in Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as they grapple with the implications of the global refugee crisis. Over the past eighteen months hundreds of thousands of people have moved from Africa and the Middle East to Europe, generating widespread media attention and considerable political wrangling. But for aid workers, this situation raises questions that get to the very heart of humanitarianism and its purpose in the contemporary world. How does an organisation like MSF, the pioneer of 'sansfrontierism', engage with the shifting politics of borders and migration? What, practically, does it mean to be a 'borderless' organisation in a world where migration controls are such a big political issue? What are the implications of the refugee crisis for humanitarian principles and medical care? This introduction to the special issue brings some humanitarian dilemmas into focus, arguing that, in reaction to the migration crisis, aid agencies may have no option but to take a more robustly political approach.

Médecins Avec Frontières and the making of a humanitarian borderscape

“…As such, the field of intervention appears markedly different, structured as it is by the forces of mobility and immobility relating to European border policies and practices, and the continuation of territorialised borders of exclusion for migrants (see Scott-Smith, 2016); supporting Weizman's argument that politics needs to be considered in discussions about the humanitarian space (2011: 58-61). One cannot account for the presence of humanitarian actors in SAR missions, on the one hand, and the simultaneous reliance of these actors on state-produced information and legal permission-that makes such missions possible using the rubric of shrinking or expanding space-on the other.…”

“…Cuttitta (2017) has recently argued that humanitarian borderwork follows the delocalisation of the border, while _ Isļeyen (2017) has drawn our attention to the dynamics and productive role of mobility in governing transit migration. I want to focus specifically on what this delocalisation means for the work of humanitarian actors at the borders of Europe, while questioning what such work means for humanitarian practice and ongoing debates about humanitarianism (Scott-Smith, 2016), and the borderscape framework itself (Tallis, 2017).…”

Paradoxes of Resilience: A Review of the World Disasters Report 2016

“…We need to resist resilience, and not because it politicizes the world of aid, nor because it is depoliticizing, but because it is too cosy, too diffuse, too prone to fuzzy thinking. The best response to resilience is not to argue that there is an insidious agenda lurking beneath this bright new concept, but to argue that it supresses the richness, diversity and radicalism of humanitarianism, which is, it seems, increasingly under threat (Scott‐Smith, ).…”

Repoliticization Through Search and Rescue? Humanitarian NGOs and Migration Management in the Central Mediterranean

“…36 Can humanitarian action be politically neutral, or is politics inevitably part of it, and the question should therefore be "not whether to be political, but what kind of politics to promote"? 37 Therefore, this article asks whether SAR NGOs in the Central Mediterranean are doing not only humanitarian but also political borderwork, and, if so, to what extent they are actually repoliticizing the EU border, following Bourdieu's exhortation to restore "political thinking and action" …”