Rights in Exile

Constructing Rights and Wrongs in Humanitarian Action: Contributions from a Sociology of Praxis

“…In his analysis, the availability of international assistance contributed to the de-politicisation of governments' neglect of human rights, with the consequence that people did not hold their governments accountable for their misdeeds. Similar arguments have been made in the course of time with regard to humanitarians' role in the 'warehousing' of refugees in camps, which legitimises the state's seclusion of refugees, often with severe limitations on basic human rights (Verdirame and Harrell-Bond, 2005).…”

Introduction. Refugee Resettlement as Humanitarian Governance: Power Dynamics

“…Agier (2011) for instance focuses on instruments used to "manage" the "undesirables" in refugee camps. In this volume, and following Harrell-Bond's (1986;Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005) advice to not neglect the agency of refugees themselves, we explore the variety of power dynamics at the core of refugee resettlement. A common definition of power is "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events" (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d).…”

“…This edited volume takes a different tack by understanding refugee resettlement as a form of humanitarian governance at the international, national and local level. As is further explored below, we understand humanitarian governance as involving care and control: it is driven by a humanitarian ethos of helping the most vulnerable, but in doing so involves practices ruling the lives of the most vulnerable without providing them with a means of recourse to hold the humanitarians accountable for their actions (Harrell-Bond 1986;Hyndman 2000;Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005;Nyers 2005;Feldman and Ticktin 2010;Agier 2011;Pallister-Wilkins 2015). This analytical approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the political, social and symbolic properties of contemporary resettlement practices.…”

“…This line of inquiry also incorporates analyses of the significance of states' interests in the emergence of international co-operation on refugee resettlement (Suhrke 1998;van Selm 2003;Garnier 2014). A second theme is the assessmentoften through ethnographic methods (Horst 2006;Sandvik 2009Sandvik , 2010Sandvik , 2011Thomson 2012) or advocacy research (Verdirame and Harrell Bond 2005) -of refugees' experiences of the selection process, and the accountability problems it engenders. This literature is often framed around investigations of refugees' vulnerability and resilience, and the motivations, actions and omissions of resettlement bureaucrats at different levels.…”

Making Refuge

“…39 Refugee studies scholars and activists Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond conducted a detailed review in 1997 of the conditions of unhcr refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda, and their published exposé offers a devastating portrait of unhcr management of the Kenyan refugee camps that housed Somalis, charging unhcr and its subcontractors with allowing discrimination against Somali Bantus, exploiting refugee employees by paying them minimal incentives rather than salaries, withholding food as a form of control, engaging in humiliating, degrading practices toward refugees by treating them as potential liars and cheats, utilizing various strategies to keep refugees from being able to get ration cards in order to minimize the number of people with refugee status, withholding information about asylum applications and procedures to which refugees are legally entitled, and denying any right of appeal for administrative decisions about refugee status or asylum applications. 40 Echoing Philip Gourevitch's charge in his New Yorker article about the humanitarian industry that "humanitarians . .…”