Animated conversations about the intensification of mobility and its relationship to emerging political forms and programs have circled around figures of the immigrant, the cosmopolitan and the nomad. Yet these discussions often seem rather abstract and unconnected to the actual study of how particular forms of mobility might lead to the creation of new social categories or shape political subjects. By following the pathways of serial migrants, I seek to develop a better understanding of how different forms of movement are shaping emerging social and political distinctions.  Rather than studying a population based on culture or ethnicity or class, I explore how particular ways of moving across the world might lead people to have something in common.

Immigrants are defined as those who leave one homeland to settle in another. Oppositions of host to home countries shape discourses about immigration. Standard modes of categorizing people who come from elsewhere to settle do not recognize that someone might have several homelands in the course of a life. By following the paths of serial migrants -people who have lived in more than two countries for significant periods of time-  I break with the double bind that characterizes how we think of migration. By taking an interest in people whose lives include several countries I explore how modes of settlement and mobility shape particular ways of conceiving of life and wonder what repeated experiences of immigration might lead people to have in common.

Listening to serial migrants life stories and spending time in their homes and offices has led me to suggest that in addition to culture or points of origin, we must also consider how patterns of movement influence what people have in common. It is not simply a comparable  trajectory over space but similar way of structuring the story of one’s life that is encouraged by particular patterns of settlement. Serial migration involves confronting different versions of the self as they are elaborated in distinct cultural, political and social settings. The experience of “being” Asian or Arab or American in successive homes is something serial migrants share. In telling the stories if their lives  they tend to highlight the way that they must negotiate these diverse, sometimes contradictory conceptions of who they are or might become. Indeed, they often take pride in their ability to do so effectively. Some say they move precisely in order to work out new ways of “becoming” oneself through coming to terms with diverse modes of identification and subjection to various social and political regimes.

People who have lived in several countries tend not to be concerned with integration or assimilation.  They might participate in transnational networks based on the country of origin, but are just as likely to do so with respect to their second or third homeland. Why not simply consider them to be cosmopolitans? They nearly unanimously refuse this label as too elitist and too abstract; for most, the purview of the “cosmos” seems too wide ranging.   The paths they have taken have led them to be wary of claims of an emerging global subject. This does not mean that they are disengaged or indifferent. Indeed, many explain that what has motivated their moves is not economic gain or hopes for social mobility but the possibility of pursuing projects that give a large place to ethical and political commitments.

Serial migrants lives are fascinating in themselves. But the study of their pathways  is connected to a broader project to explore how particular forms of mobility and settlement produce particular kinds of subjects. Ways of moving are related to where people might go and to who they can become. A middle aged housewife in Casablanca might hesitate to go downtown; she shapes her ideas of the world in close proximity to where she lives, meeting friends at home, in the local shops or perhaps a beauty salon. A young office worker living in the same neighbourhood might favour meetings the more anonymous areas of the town center. Her ways of judging things and interacting with others shaped by notions of abstract space and time and value she learned at school. These two women live in the same social milieu and share a religion and culture , but their moves within a single city lead them to engage in profoundly different kinds of places and shape their expectations of themselves and the  world following quite different modes of judgment which I describe in detail in a study of beauty salons (Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Paris, Cairo,  Duke U Press, 2002).

Serial migrants are labelled as immigrants wherever they live and they are often categorized as belonging to a culture associated with their place of origin. But as in the example of the two women from the same neighbourhood, using these identifications to guide our study might lead us to ignore crucial differences.  Instead, we need to attend to how particular patterns of movement or settling  encourage ways of shaping the self and coming to terms with the world. Problems of shifting among social worlds are highlighted in the lives of serial migrants, but they are not absent from the lives of those who never move. By developing accounts of how different kinds of people are produced by different patterns of movement and stasis, we might progressively come to develop a finer understanding of how power and subjectivity are intertwined with the gestures of settlement.

The Places We Share: Migration, Subjectivity and Global Mobility ( Lexington Press, 2007) offers reflections on this topic from scholars and writers who are themselves serial migrants.  In an upcoming book, I follow up on the ideas that emerged from this project as they developed in the course of research over the past five years. The study involves people of varied educational and class backgrounds and citizens of thirty different states.

Susan Ossman‘s current research explores the relationship of forms of mobility to emerging forms of social life. Her books include Picturing Casablanca, Portraits of Power in a Modern City (California 1994), Three Faces of Beauty, Casablanca, Paris, Cairo (Duke 2002) and The Places we Share, Migration, Subjectivity and Global Mobility (Lexington 2007). She has held positions in France, Morocco, Belgium the UK and the USA.  She is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Program of Global Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Photo credit: Turkairo/Flickr

According to the World Refugee Survey 2009 statistics, the five East African Community States host a combined population of 949,000 refugees. Of this number, about 300,000 are citizens of East African States living as refugees in the territory of other Community member States. As conflicts in traditional refugee-producing Community member states  abate and their citizens return home, conflict in previously tranquil states like Kenya have injected more refugees into the Community pool. Globally, there seems a consensus among states on finding durable solutions to refugee situations and minimizing the circumstances that forcibly displace people and force them to cross international borders in search of refuge. Whether this consensus translates to tangible policies and practices is another question entirely.

On the occasion of this year’s World Refugee Day commemorations, the global focus is on creating conditions that make it conducive for refugees to return home in dignity and creating situations that enable them to make their countries of asylum as much ‘home’ as possible.

At a sub-regional level, efforts are in full gear to implement the East African Community, an economic and political entity which aims to ‘improve the standard of living of the population’ and ‘promoting the sustainable development of the region with a view to creating a prosperous, internationally competitive, secure, stable and politically united’ entity.
It is important to note that no economic or political community can truly attain this lofty goal while ignoring the question of forced displacements and the status of refugees. It is worrisome that in the 120-paged ‘Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community’, the word ‘refugee’ is mentioned only twice in Article 124 (4), (5)(h) which respectively provide that ‘Partner states undertake to establish common mechanisms for the management of refugees’. Little or nothing more, has been done to give effect to this Treaty commitment, instead the EAC has witnessed an increase in number of refugees being generated from Community member states owing to bad governance, flagrant abuse and disrespect for human rights, political and ethnic persecution among others. The region has also increased intolerance towards refugees, a greater willingness by member states to deny asylum to citizens of community member states and to deport asylum seekers to situation where their safety from abuse and torture is less than guaranteed as well as political
manoeuvring by certain states to frustrate efforts by their citizens to gain asylum in other states.

The question on the lips of many community refugees is what their status will be under an East African Federation. Will community citizens, under a regime that allows for freedom of movement and mobility of labour still be regarded as refugees within the Federation? The lack of initiatives towards the establishment of a refugee regime within the EAC leaves much scepticism as to how much thought is actually going into the implementation of the EAC and the formation of the Federation.

As states like Rwanda and Burundi explore avenues to invoke a cessation of refugee status for their citizens and the states hosting them seem eager to repatriate these refugees back to their countries, care must be taken to avoid creating situations that will precipitate further
conflict and generate more refugees. EAC member states should rather begin to take steps towards creating a community where every community citizen irrespective of nationality will feel safe and able to actualize his/her full potential. While Community member states plan towards establishing a common mechanism for the management of refugees, individual member states should show their commitment to this Treaty obligation by changing or amending laws and policies that restrict access to employment, social services and naturalisation for refugees. The greatest challenge facing refugees in the East African region today is an inability to attain self-reliance because of laws and policies which quarantine them in refugee camps, deny them access to employment and consequently economic independence, and condemn them to live in perpetual limbo by denying them a chance to naturalisation which is constitutionally guaranteed to other categories of aliens. Until these legal and political impediments are addressed the idea of an East African Community where
community citizens live prosperous, secure and stable lives will remain a mirage.

The question of refugees within an economic and political union should not be one to be viewed with suspicion by Community member states; East Africa will not be the first economic community to deal with the question of refugee community citizens. The 16-state Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] has succeeded in establishing an economic union where community citizen reside freely and safely in community member states. ECOWAS has also taken very practical steps to address the issue of refugees within
that Community. These steps include the adoption of the Protocol relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment and its four supplementary Protocols [collectively known as the Free Movement Protocols]. Together, these Protocols create a regime which – grants community citizens the right to enter and reside in member states; provide valid travel documents to their citizens; grant community citizens the right of residence for the purpose of seeking and carrying out income-earning employment; ensures
appropriate treatment for persons being expelled; places an obligation on ECOWAS states not to expel Community citizens en masse; and limit the grounds for individual expulsion to reasons of national security, public order or morality, public health or non-fulfilment of an
essential condition of residence. Similarly, ECOWAS by a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR has agreed to cooperate on measure to guarantee the full enjoyment of the rights of community refugees as other community citizens.

It is recommended that the East African Community borrows a leaf from other economic and political communities that have developed policies and effective refugee regimes in order to ensure the region’s refugee situation does not become the neglected element that
defeats the idea of a stable, prosperous and united East African Community.

Kenechukwu C. Esom is Head of the Legal and Psychosocial Department, Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University Kampala.

Photo credit: UN Photo/Flickr

by Wendy Harcourt

Domestic work the unrecognized pillar of the economy
Andrea’s intervention raised important insights into gender problems of migration within the European context where domestic work is being carried out more and more by migrant women, particularly in South Europe (Italy, Spain and Greece). She pointed out that domestic work is not another market, but a socially constructed gender activity where women are seen as primarily responsible for taking care of the home, family, children, disabled and  elderly. Though it is a largely unvalidated it is a profoundly important economic and social activity needed all over Europe. However much of the work in the household is invisible, unregulated and mostly in the informal and unpaid or badly paid sector.

She argued that there is a new gender order now taking place in Europe as a growing number of European women have moved into paid work in the public and private sector. This is a positive move, challenging the male bread winner role and leading to more economic independence for women. However it has not been followed by equal distribution of the household work between women and men. Instead of men taking up responsibilities for domestic care work, it is migrant women who are stepping in. Particularly in southern  Europe where there is a strong conservative  tradition of relying on the family rather than state, migrant women have taken up domestic work in large numbers.

Essentially domestic workers are helping to reconcile the balance between productive and reproductive work in family life in Europe. However, as Andrea points out those very same female workers are excluded from all policy agendas in European. In European debates on gender quality no recognition of their contribution to European gender equality project is evident. They are invisible from European discussions around rights, benefits, health care and economic security. As a result they earn low wages, work long and antisocial hours, are often undocumented and in the informal sector.

Revalidating domestic care work
But the main reason Andrea suggests for their poor economic and social conditions is because domestic care work is not seen as real work. Unpaid or badly paid care work is just not seen as contributing to European economic growth. It is stigmatized and seen as some how natural and rewarded in ways other than money. She argues that we need to challenge the stigma and low economic value given to the work and transform gender equality laws to value domestic work in order to improve the rights of migrant domestic workers. Domestic work and migrant rights needs to be reincluded in discussions of the European women’s movement on rights or development

She proposes strategies that cannot only help reinstate an understanding of migration but also help unravel today’s global world and the current economic crisis. She reminds us that in the 1960s and 1970s a major feminist battle had been for pay for domestic work and for the state to take up responsibility for care work. In different parts of Europe more child care facilitates, more state involvement in domestic  and care work were seen as the strategic way to break down structures of inequality between men and women, and change the public order of domestic life.

Although there are child care facilities in many places in Europe, Andrea questions if this strategy did indeed work. As we see in the current economic crisis, it is assumed that women who had moved out of the home to take up (largely) low paid jobs can now just return home.

What happened to gender equality for life/work balance. Is the answer for more state control of family life? Does that help the revaluing of domestic work, will it help the rights of migrant workers? What is the evidence that state policy helps to change the gender order regarding domestic work? Why does it remain undervalued and feminine, despite incentives such as paternity leave etc.

Who is the champion now?
Certainly the state support families but Andrea points out family policy even in Sweden, which is seen as the champion of gender, state policy did not change the gender order. Since the 1970s Sweden has offered comprehensive childcare, parental leave and child allowance but only  20% of Swedish fathers use parental leave. Furthermore, jobs in Sweden are highly segregated. Men tend to work in the private sector and women in the public sector. In the child care sector 95% percent of the employees are women. Essentially the responsibility duty and obligations for care have just been moved to women working in the public sector . So the trend has gone from women working unpaid in the home to women paid low wages to do care in the  public sector.  Nurses and teachers for example in Sweden are mainly women, and paid very badly. For example a nurse in a Swedish hospital with 3 years university education earns 35 % less than a male technician same hospital with no university education.
State involvement does not change the gender order, even if it may reduce gender inequality.

Organising for change
The question is how  to revalorize domestic work and care work at the national level. How to put care on the political agenda and on the trade union agenda? Solidarity is required to support care workers, both European and migrant domestic and care workers, perhaps the answer is to organize themselves.

This is a question for each nation state to deal with. Although the EU and international laws are there for domestic workers, the different migrant and gender regimes at the national level are really what determine change. In reality the EU has no capacity to inform national legislation. It is the national context which is the most important. For example when women in Slovenia and Croatia tried to put into practice policy that was passed at the EU and international level they found it did not work, such policy did not adapt to their reality.

One strategy is to reformulate migrant and domestic work as about labour rights, rather than women’s politics per se and therefore work along with trade unions. But perhaps most importantly, is for European and migrant women to network together, much openly about the problems they face in order to see they can collectively work together to put in place a new gender order. In this the WIDE Conference was an important step forward.

Related article: Taking Citizenship Rights with You – A new vision for human mobility

For more information on the WIDE conference, click here

Photo credit: celesteh/Flickr

The criminalization of immigration has garnered considerable media attention in the United States due to the harsh new anti-immigrant law recently enacted in the state of Arizona.  That law makes it a state crime to not carry proper immigration documents (making it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second offense).  Moreover, the law requires police in Arizona to determine a person’s immigration status if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an unauthorized immigrant.  Needless to say, this new directive to the police is so broad and ambiguous that it is likely to promote racial stereotyping of all Latinos in the state, including legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens.  The law has provoked a furious outcry from advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants, Latinos, and civil rights, which object to what they see as the targeting of an entire group of people in Arizona based on nothing more than ethnicity.  Adding insult to injury, the new law comes at the same time law-enforcement officers in the state’s Maricopa County, under the leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have transformed themselves into immigration-enforcement agents.  Among many other ethical and human-rights transgressions, the sheriff and his deputies in Maricopa County have used the state’s anti-smuggling law to criminally charge unauthorized immigrants with conspiring to smuggle themselves into the United States.

However, it is important to keep in mind that the criminalization of immigration in the United States extends far beyond Arizona, and applies to legal immigrants as well as the unauthorized.  For instance, in 1996 the U.S. government enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which expanded the list of crimes for which legal immigrants can be deported.  More precisely, the law expanded the definition of an “aggravated felony,” which was originally defined for immigration purposes as murder and other crimes so heinous that no relief from deportation should be available to the perpetrator.  But IIRAIRA re-defined it to encompass nearly all crimes, no matter how minor the infraction or small the punishment.  This includes many relatively minor, non-violent crimes – such as shoplifting, drug possession, and tax evasion – which are not necessarily felonies under federal or state criminal law.  In addition, the law is applied retroactively, meaning that legal immigrants can be deported for crimes committed years before those crimes were made deportable offenses.  The law made even more harsh and inflexible the two-tiered system of justice which already existed for legal immigrants in the United States; a system in which they pay twice for their crimes: once in the criminal justice system, and then again in immigration court – where the penalty is deportation.

An ironic aspect of these sorts of measures to criminalize immigrants is that they are often carried out in the name of fighting crime.  Despite a century’s worth of compelling evidence that immigrants of all nationalities and education levels are less likely than the native-born to commit serious crimes or be incarcerated, the popular stereotype of immigrants as violent criminals persists.  This stereotype has served to fuel the passage of anti-immigrant measures such as Arizona’s new law and IIRIRA in 1996, which then turns the myth of immigrant criminality into a self-fulfilling prophecy as new classes of “criminals” are created (such as the immigrants-only definition of “aggravated felons” under IIRIRA).  This sort of circular reasoning notwithstanding, the fact remains that the vast majority of immigrants are not “criminals” in any commonly accepted sense of the word.  Anti-immigrant measures such as IIRIRA and Arizona’s new law target a group of people who are less likely to engage in serious crimes than native-born Americans.  Yet this crucial fact is too often lost in the emotional rhetoric that defines so much of the immigration debate in the United States.

Related article: Policing Migration in South Africa: Disinformation, Development, and Accountability by Loren Landau

* Walter A. Ewing is Senior Researcher at the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) of the American Immigration Council in Washington, DC. He has written or co-written roughly 25 reports for the IPC and contributes regularly to IPC’s Immigration Impact blog. He has also written articles for the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and Society; as well as opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sacramento Bee, and Politico.  Prior to joining the IPC, he was an Immigration Policy Analyst at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a Program Director at the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School in 1997.

Photo Credit: Crunchy Footsteps

As the five East African governments accelerate the momentum towards regional integration, which is contemplated to be complete and functional by the year 2015 some important issues compel thoughtful considerations. This is partly because policies and decisions made will have far reaching impact- probably more than what is anticipated by government officials and politicians- but also partly the human element about this construction has not received adequate attention. Further more the process is not well synchronised especially with regard to cross border migration. On this score suspicion still characterizes the relationship between Kenya and Tanzania regarding issues of trade and migration. For cross border migration, a few but salient realities will need to be thoroughly considered by the five governments.

A huge and porous border: with an area covering 1.8 million square km, the outer border of this region will be probably longer than that of the entire Western Europe. This boundary is by no means static however; projections are that upon attaining peace Somalia may opt to join the union. Depending on the outcome of the referendum scheduled for next year Sudan, Southern Sudan might be the next candidate. The long and porous border has practical implications besides security issues. One is that EAC will have as her neighbours, seven different countries with whom to deal with in matters of cross border migration. The concern is, does EAC have the capacity to monitor and control such a huge border? The practical reality is that even if it wanted to, the resources available are desperately needed to tackle more pressing matters such as education, health and infrastructure. The best alternative would then for EAC to change its diplomatic orientation towards active cooperation to ensure that there is considerable peace in the neighbouring countries. Sharing of information, technology and skills may make border management easier and amicable.
Trans-national communities: the other challenge which is directly linked to the first is that of trans-national communities, that is ethnic or linguistic communities straddling common borders. Given the arbitrary nature of most boundaries in Africa communities are scattered in different neighbouring countries. While the expansion of borders will definitely benefit some communities by bringing them  together in one political and administrative unit such as the Masaai and Kuria of Kenya and Tanzania, Teso, Samia and Luo of Uganda and Kenya but it still leaves others out.   The question, how does the EAC plan to deal with such communities who have their kith and kin within the boundary? Will special considerations be given to such people when they want to visit relatives!

Common drivers of cross-border migration: the apprehension of some member countries of their labour market being flooded by immigrant workers from the other countries may be best addressed by considering the actual drivers of migration in the region. Consider the movement of labour. Although it is true that skilled labour normally follows capital, it is also true that unskilled labour goes the opposite direction. For example, Kenya’s capital investment in Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania will attract highly skilled professionals, the unskilled labour from Kenya are not likely to go to these places. This is because unskilled labour in these places will fetch very little in terms of real income. Instead the unskilled labour from Tanzania or Uganda can easily move to Kenya because the pay is relatively better. The other driver is education. Uganda for example benefits greatly from the education industry as many Kenyans join secondary schools and tertiary institutions there. Kenyans prefer going to Uganda because education is affordable and one is likely to complete their studies in time. This way, Kenya and Uganda benefits from regional migration. Trade and commerce is equally and important driver. New products and services get exchanged and new markets are created.  With a population of 120 million people region provides a great opportunity for all those concerned to benefit. However forced displacement also contributes significantly to cross border migration. The region will have to deal with this phenomenon constructively.  If member states consider and improve their areas of strength in this matrix they are likely to benefit from cross border migration.

Common Visa: Given that EAC will soon be a political entity there are the travel implications for those wishing to visit the region from outside.  While the EAC has experimented with a common East African passport, a common visa has never been tried. In the future these two issues will be critical. Issuing a common visa will be greatly useful in reducing bureaucracy at border points, ease movements and make the regional attractive to visit and to do business. Experience shows that most people who come to the region normally visit two or more of the countries. These four agenda should inform the policy processes of EAC with regard to cross border migration.

On 2 March 2010, Provincial Police commissioners went before the South African parliament insisting that, ‘illegal immigrants are stretching police resources and manpower.’ The acting chief of police for Gauteng Province—home to Johannesburg and Pretoria—argued that the government had simply not budgeted for the 3 million illegal immigrants in Gauteng and the millions elsewhere in the country. With such an influx, it was nary impossible to combat crime. While their claims are misleading and inaccurate, they do point to the lack of adequate planning for human mobility and the ease which human mobility can be blamed for development failures.

The realities of migration and criminality

Although South Africa has long relied on labour from across its borders, international migrants—regardless of legal status—have been continually blamed for many of the country’s social ills: HIV/AIDS, cultural decay, unemployment and, naturally, crime. In May 2008 these tensions helped generate anti-migrant violence that killed more than 60 people and displaced well over 100 000. In this light, it is not surprising to hear the police express the unrealistic assertion that tightly controlling the borders would effectively combat local and transnational crime and may even help protect migrants themselves.

To be sure, a larger population, mobility, and heightening social and economic heterogeneity make policing more a more challenging task. But good policing —like any form of policy — relies on a sound understanding of the empirics. If police claims were right, illegal immigrants would represent almost 30% of Gauteng Province’s total population. However, the 2007 Community Survey by Statistics South Africa —the most recent and most accurate data available— show that international migrants comprise only 5% to 6% of the population; roughly 580,000 people. At a national level,the same survey found that foreign-born residents (including South African citizens) were just 2.79% of the total population, somewhere around 1.2 million. That number is has since climbed, but is unlikely to have topped 2 million.

Not only are there fewer foreigners than the police (and many South Africans) imagine, but there is no empirical evidence that foreigners are disproportionately involved in criminal activity. With immigration so much less significant than the police’s alarmism suggests and crime so prevalent, it would take a hyper-active, criminally inclined immigrant population to claim a serious portion of the country’s robberies, rapes, and murders.

What’s behind these claims and what are they costing?

Given the country’s inability to combat developmentally disabling levels of criminality, the migrant spectre provides the police a materially and politically profitable resource. Since immigrants are easy to find and have few legal protections, police can embellish their performance statistics through night raids, round ups, road blocks, and arbitrary arrests. At other times, threats of such actions can be used to generate extra pocket money. The fact that so many citizens believe that the country is being drowned by a ‘human tsunami’ , makes these actions all the more possible.

While politically valuable, current immigration policing practice comes at significant costs to the country’s finances and security. In a report issued in September 2009 (One Burden Too Many? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Immigration Policing in Gauteng), researchers concluded that the Gauteng police spend approximately one quarter (26%) of its human resource budget on immigration policing. This without evidence that their efforts are making South Africa safer. Indeed, in an environment of resource scarcity, targeting people because they are foreign means not targeting people because they are criminals. To be fair, some station commissioners have issued instructions to restrain immigration enforcement. However, to fully counter these tendencies will require more prohibitive directives and different ways of measuring police performance.

Where the police is right

The police have exaggerated the numbers, but they are right that migration is a concern for public servants across the country. While Gauteng may not have 3 million immigrants the police claims, there are close to 3.9 million Gauteng residents who were born in other provinces. Other urban centres are also becoming destinations and transit points for people leaving villages, rural areas, and former ‘homelands’. In many instance, the fastest urbanisation rates are in small or peri-urban municipalities with few financial and human resources.

Unfortunately, few municipalities or provinces have projected this growth, let alone planned for it. Even if they had, the national system of resource allocation provides little support for local authorities preparing for growing populations. Instead, resources are allocated based on past numbers, all but guaranteeing shortfalls. Migration is not the only cause of lagging service delivery, but poor planning makes such underperformance almost inevitable.

Where to go from here?

It is imperative to find ways to improve planning for human mobility across South Africa’s public services. Without a good grip on how people are moving, where they live and what they do, planning for security, education, waste management, housing, and health care will all be compromised. The first step in addressing this need is to develop a sound empirical basis for public policy decisions. The country’s budgeting process must also be reformed so local authorities are supported for the population they have and those that are likely to come through migration or natural increase. There is also an imperative to shift policy so the police are not doing immigration control. This can begin with pragmatic reforms to immigration policy that allow people to move into the country legally and without fear. Pragmatic reforms will also help prevent migrants from slipping further into zones of informality and illegality by giving them a chance to embrace the formal system of policing, access the courts, and help fight crime.

Related article: Two-Tiered Justice: Anti-Immigrant Laws in the United States by Walter A. Ewing

* Julia Hornberger is researcher with the Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburgh.

Bethany’s article takes a close and hard look at the condition of being a refugee, going beyond any use of definitions and categories. The stories that Bethany tells, remind us that refugees are first and foremost people and like every human being,  have their own cognitive psychological process. In other words, they are people with emotions, feelings, aspirations, fears, dreams, frustrations, traumas.

Refugees are people who live in a space that is temporarily supposed to protect them but that works instead almost as a permanent enclosure with the ultimate effect of limiting their freedom. Following Bethany’s contribution, I would like to shift the focus from the micro to the macro dimension of the equation, drawing attention to questions of political roles and responsibilities.

When it comes to dealing with human mobility and migration – be it at academic, policy or advocacy level – there is a growing tendency to read and interpret reality through the use of definitions and categories. Forced migrants, voluntary migrants, foreign communities, Diaspora, refugees, asylum seekers, displaced, environmental displaced, etc, can be useful definitions for legal or economic purposes. However an indiscriminate use of them may pave the way to the construction of mental ghettos which may in turn affect the perception that migrants and non migrants have of themselves and of others in society.

What happens when people – including those who might be on the move for any number of reasons – do not fit such categories? What I mean is that the cognitive-psychological process of the entire society – within which people shape and recognise theirs and others’ roles, attitudes, behaviours -  gets affected generating cultural, social and political exclusion.

When it comes to dealing with human mobility and migration, the reality is strikingly characterised by the dichotomy of: forced migration vs forced sedentarisation. In both these situations – of people forced to stay (like IDPs and refugees) and people forced to move – the fundamental right of choice and thought is increasingly compromised. This is because of the callous conditions migrants are doomed to face either in camps, or during the journey, or at the arrival in the desired place of destination. Bethany interestingly points out that people in the camps do not lose their agency; rather they develop adaptive patterns to their new condition of life.

But what does a camp ultimately represent and imply for the rest of society – particularly for those looking at it from outside? What I want to stress here, is that refugees and the rest of the people on the move are likely to become the undesired new victims of political attempts to establish social order and political stability.

The quest for security may end up generating insecurity either mental, physical, political, etc.  Camps, including refugee camps, are the emblems of this and the population – within and outside – is the major victim.  To this extent it is necessary not to forget the experience of some refugee camps in Africa (ex. Uganda) as well as that of detention camps for undocumented migrants in southern Europe.

To my mind, migration and more generally people’s circulation – in the way it is experienced today – is increasingly associated with grave forms of abuse of the freedom of choice, thought and decision. Images of lifeless bodies abandoned in the Sahara desert speak eloquently. However, this reality does not seem to have been fully understood yet.

Now, since I am less interested in conceptual speculations and more interested in the implications that political decisions may have on people and society from a development based point of view, my concern is on how to raise political awareness and to enhance people’s understanding of such processes? How can the attention of policy-makers and society on those aspects be raised?
Whether we talk of refugees, IDPs, or migrants, one compelling question is whether and how these people are granted the proper protection during their stay in camps, when they leave a camp, and /or when they arrive at their destination (if they do).
How are the psychological implications of their experiences are taken in consideration, if at all? Whose political responsibility is this?
As the number of people on the move increases worldwide,  border controls are tightened and migrants’ conditions are worsened, one may imagine that the world’s proportion of people getting limitations in their choices and abuse of their freedom is doomed to grow. Is such a scenario acceptable and desirable?

Builiding on the initial conversation between Bethany and Jacob, I would like to move the focus on the relation occurring between macro-policy decisions (with regards to refugees and migration) and the implications on people and society, in psychological terms. Refugees and migrants are not a side category, nor part of a different reality, simply because they live in a camp or in an urban/rural ghetto.

They are and do represent a part of society. Their agency, their will, their experiences and their traumas do not remain confined in a camp. They affect all. Are we well aware of this?

To read the previous  conversation between Bethany and Jacob, go to:
The cognitive landscape of a refugee camp: part I, part II and part III

Photo credit: Dr John2005

Jacob Akech raises an intriguing and perennial question in the study of human cognition. How do our global portraits of human thought account for the striking local diversity of individual minds? In any group of people there exist profound individual differences in thought and behavior—indeed, each individual exhibits internal variability in his or her development over time. As Mr. Akech notes, the experience of refugees in a camp like Kakuma is far from homogenous. Indeed, many of the refugees who shared their thoughts with me in interviews were entrepreneurs, teachers, NGO incentive staff, artists, and journalists. Each one brought a rich tapestry of unique ideas and complex experiences to bear on our conversations.

But Mr. Akech’s emphasis on individual differences may be misleading as an interpretation of the perspective offered in this article. I do not argue that all refugees adopt the same mindset or have the same psychological profile in a refugee camp. Far from it. Rather, I propose that the strange parameters of encampment challenge refugees to deal with a new landscape. As my refugee friends and colleagues spoke about their experiences, they highlighted intriguing spatial and temporal dimensions of daily life that mapped onto a notion of the camp as a cognitive landscape in both literal and metaphorical ways.

My exploratory observations in this paper are based on a cognitive ethnographic approach to Ethiopian refugees’ discourses about space and time. The project was not geared to look for individual differences; indeed, this was not the nature of the question. Here I sought to explore how prolonged encampment in a sub-Saharan desert camp influences high-level perceptions of time and space. To put it in more concrete terms, this might be akin to asking how moving to a foreign culture challenges newcomers to adapt to a new landscape of language, culture, and social patterning. Of course the room for individual differences is enormous.

In any research inquiry, the nature of the question will determine whether we attend to emergent patterns across minds, or differences between individual minds. As Mr. Akech wisely points out, the human reality is always simultaneous. Our understanding will only be enriched by a continuous effort to investigate how unique differences arise between and within individual human minds across space and time.

To follow the conversation on this article between Bethany Ojalehto and Jacob Akech (SID), read also:

The Cognitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Part I
The Cognitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Conversation Part II
The Coginitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Part IV

Photo credit:  mknobil

The Rosarno riots between African immigrants and residents came as a sad opening of the year 2010. Rosarno, with its fertile land, is famous for producing citrus and olive, also produces xenophobia and racism. What happened in Rosarno is just a piece in the immigration puzzle of Europe. The last few years witnessed similar events, not only in Italy, but also in many other countries such as Great Britain, Spain, Germany, and France. It is clear that, despite the openness, globalization, and inter-regionalism, perverse tendencies of fear and racism are emerging more and more in Europe. Rosarno and Rosarno-like riots and violence contribute to draw a negative image of Europe all over the World and it will have its negative consequences on regional and international relations.

European politicians should be up to the challenges of globalization. Globalization is about the transfer of knowledge, capital, and labor. But labor is composed of humans, and humans should not be treated like capital. Europe cannot import labor without humans. Humans are not machines or raw materials. Immigration issues are undoubtedly becoming more and more instruments of political rhetoric, but politician are not up to the economic realities in Europe. It is true that thousands of immigrants work as fruit and vegetables vendors, but can Europe survive without fruits and vegetables? Can Europe survive without the semi-skilled workers who do the dirty job for less? Immigrants are exploited, but at the end of the day, immigrants are humans who boost the economy by their labour contribution. In additions, immigrants are consumers and tax payers, at least indirect taxes. Moreover, immigrants subsidize the prices of goods and commodities by providing cheap labor that makes more profits for producers and less prices for end users in Europe.

The conclusion to be drawn from this quick appraisal shows that restrictive and blind migratory policies within people and society and the perverse tendency of fear and racism are against the economy. More openness is needed and balanced policies that match the economic needs of Europe should be adopted to contain the destructive tendencies of fear and xenophobia. Europe, from a southern point of view, is no more the El Dorado; it is more or less the same as the Arab Gulf states, a labour importing region and most of the semi-skilled workers in Europe dare to go back to their countries if they have a guarantee to return to Europe. Hence, circular migration between origin (in the south) and destination countries (in Europe) would be a possible solution.

Photo credit: noborder network

Bethany’s work makes an important contribution to our understanding of violation of refugee rights.  More needs to be written on psychological dimension of human rights violation, especially in refugee camps.

However in my view, the article treats refugees (Ethiopian refugees) as a homogenous category, presumably a category that is evenly affected by encampment.  I think a look at the refugees as a heterogonous category, and a category that related to time and space differently, would reveal interesting differences in terms of how refugees relate to time and space. Time in relation to the glorious or inglorious past and time in relation to uncertain future, but a future that hold promise of a glorious return or total escape.

Certainly, differences matter.  A refugee, who engages in small-scale trade, owns a shop or a pub does relate to

the camp, space and time differently.  A refugee who was a professional or peasant would relate to an arid area like Kakuma differently.

A refugee who goes to school or attends the Jesuit ran ‘UNISA campus’ does relate to the space and time differently.  School and exam time-table does mediate their sense of time and space. Similarly, a refugee who loves football will relate to time and space differently from one who does not.

A refugee who depends on remittance or waiting for a third country re-location does relate to the camp differently (see or google ECO sondu’s award winning short-story ‘Waiting’ Caine 2009).  In other words, one’s sense of time and space in a refugee camp is mediated or refracted through several calendars.  It would be great if the author can capture some of these nuances.

To follow the conversation on this article between Bethany Ojalehto and Jacob Akech (SID),  read also:

The Cognitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Part I
The Coginitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Part III
The Coginitive Landscape of a Refugee Camp: Part IV

Photo credit:  mknobil