Research and Orientation Workshop and International Conference
on
'The State of the Global Protection System for Refugees and Migrants'

Calcutta Research Group, (25-30 November 2018)

Module A

 

Module A. Promises and Paradoxes of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants : The Need for New Global, Regional and National Responses

Coordinators: Dr. Nasreen Chowdhory & Professor Ranabir Samaddar

 

Abstract

 

The Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, mandated by the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, 2016, and currently being considered by the United Nations have been widely considered as opportunities for the world to reconsider old approaches to refugee and migrant protection. Annex 1 of the Declaration speaks of a comprehensive refugee response framework (CRRF) and the resolution invites the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to engage with States and consult with all relevant stakeholders, with a view to evaluating the detailed practical application of the comprehensive refugee response framework and assessing the scope for refinement and further development. It also specifies that the objective is to ease pressures on the host countries involved, enhance refugee self-reliance, expand access to third-country solutions and support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity. Annex II, likewise, proposes a process of intergovernmental negotiations leading to the adoption of a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. The proposed global compact would be an important contribution to global governance and would deal with humanitarian, developmental, human rights-related, and other aspects of migration.

The Declaration is global not only because it emanates from a global institution, but also because of the following aspects, to be detailed out in course of this article: (a) First, a single declaration covering subjects of migration and forced migration is an acknowledgement of the reality that the two have deep relations, and that population flows are increasingly mixed and massive in nature defying neat categorization. (b) Second, the Declaration also highlights the limits and or unwillingness of States to carry primary responsibility of the refugees and migrants, and hence opens up the possibility to include the “whole of society”, which is to say the “whole of globe” covering various stakeholders including business and commercial segments. (c) Third, the Declaration suggests uneven geographies of protection and labor market, and conceives of the globe in terms of sanctuaries, third countries, hotspots, border zones, safe corridors, legally run labor regimes, remittance-centric segments of global economy, as well places characterized by multi-stakeholder operations. These geographies are in part created by spatial planning for refugees and migrants, in part by financial and security operations. (d) Fourth, the new approach is global because refugees and migrants are conceptualized as subjects of global development. (e) Fifth, migration and refugee “crises” are going to be inevitable unless the world works towards durable solutions – hence the need for globally relevant comprehensive response framework, such as the “comprehensive refugee response framework”, and what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has popularized as a “framework for effective practices with regard to management capacity building.” (f) And, finally, solutions can become durable only becoming global, through as indicated above practicing a new geography of care and labor market, and through pursuing a technological mode of management that would circumvent borders and boundaries to cope with the complex reality of global migration.

In this background, this article focuses on the proposed global compact on refugees. In course of the analysis it also refers to the global initiative on “safe and orderly migration” as the counterfoil, the other scene of refugee management. The article aims to show how a global gaze as an apparatus of power is born, how it becomes a material reality, how a particular ideology, in this case humanitarianism, works as the gradient of such a global machine, how the global must erase out local histories of care and protection as the global become technological in its strategy, and finally what happens to the agenda of rights which had been the backbone of much of the welfare and protection ethos in the preceding century.

It is a lengthy paper that will present a postcolonial critique of an emerging global apparatus of power.

 

Draft of Full Paper: CLICK HERE

Participants

 

Sl.No. Name & Details of the Participants Country Photo Research Articles Comments by Coordinator
1.

Buddha  Singh Khepchhaki, Pravasi Nepali Coordination Committee
Email:  programdevelopment@pncc.org.np
Bionote:
Buddha Singh Kepchhaki graduated in Masters in English, Political Science and Sociology from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. He has spent almost 10 years in teaching profession at school/college level. ... continue

Nepal

The Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants

Full Paper

 

2.

G. M. Arifuzzaman, Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka    
Email: gmarif1990@gmail.com
Bionote:
G.M. Arifuzzaman is currently working as a Research Associate of Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka. He graduatedin the department of Women and Gender studies, University of Dhaka in 2014. He completed his masters in 2015. ... continue

Bangladesh

“Regional and global responses to the Rohingya Repatriation Process: Opportunities and challenges”

Full Paper

 
3.

Laura Amadori, International Organization of Migration                
Email: lamadori@iom.int
Bionote:
Laura Amadori has more ten years of working experience in project and programme management in West Africa. She worked for UNWOMEN Regional office of Dakar, providing policy analysis and advice on West Africa programming on gender equality. She also conducted research on women’s migration and cross-border trade and supported implementation of a sub-regional project on this domain. ... continue

Africa
(Guinea-Bissau)

The Global Compact for Migration: keeping promises in the context of fragile states  - The case of Guinea Bissau

Full Paper

 
4.

Rajkumar Nagarajah, Ministry of Policy Planning , Sri Lanka                
Email:

 

       
5.

Sucharita Sengupta, Graduate Institute Of International and Developmental Studies, Geneva       
Email:  sucharitaseng@gmail.com
Bionote:
Sucharita Sengupta is a Doctoral Candidate at the department of Anthropology and Sociology in the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Before this, she has been working on issues related to migration and forced migration in Asia as part of her work in the Calcutta Research Group. ... continue

India Revisiting Statelessness and global protection regime: the Rohingyas  

 

Readings

 

Research Articles

1. “African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights,” Nairobi, 1981

2. “Bali Declaration on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime,” Bali 2016

3. “Cartagena Declaration on Refugees,” UNHCR, 1984

4. “Dialogue on Protection Strategies for People in Situations of Forced Migration”, Report, Calcutta Research Group & UNHCR, December 2008

5. “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration”, General Concept Note, Phase-I, consultations (April to November) 2017

6. “Human Rights of Migrants”, Note by the UN Secretary-General, 2012

7. “In safety and dignity: Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants”, Report of the UN Secretary-General, 2016

8. “Making Migration Work for All”, Follow-up to the Outcome of the Millennium Summit, Report of the UN Secretary-General, 2017

9. “Migration Governance Framework” IOM

10.“Modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration” Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly, 2017.

11. “Model National Law on Refugees” (accessed on 22 February, 2015).   

12. “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants” Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly, 2016.

13. “Profiling the Vulnerability of Palestine Refugees from Syria living in Lebanon,” UNRWA, 2015.

14. “Progress, Challenge, Diversity: Insights into the Socio economic conditions of Palestinian Refugees in Jordon,” UNRWA, 2013.

15. “Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration: A 10-Point Plan of Action” UNHCR, 2007.

16. “Syria Regional Crisis, Emergency Appeal,” UNRWA, 2018.

17. “Towards a global compact on refugees: a roadmap”, UNHCR, 2017.

18. “Towards a global compact on refugees”, High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges 2017, 2017, Summary report.

19. “Towards a global compact on refugees”, UN High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges Geneva, 2017, Concept paper.

20. “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly, 2015.

21. “Voices of the Internally Displaced in South Asia,” A report by Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata 2006.

22. Global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, “Contributions of migrants and diaspora to all dimensions of sustainable development, including remittances and portability of earned benefits”, Co-facilitators’ summary, UN Headquarters New York,2017.

23. IOM vision on the global compact on migration.

24. Refugee Protection and International Migration: Trends August 2013-July 2014, Study prepared by UNHCR Division of International Protection, Geneva, November 2014, particularly pp. 17-19

Books and Articles

25. Abraham, Itty, “Refugees and Humanitarianism,”Refugee Watch, Special Issue Nos. 24 – 26, October 2005   

26. Agier, Michel, "Between 'War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee Camps”, Ethnography, Volume 3 (3), 2002, pp. 317-366

27. Agier, Michel, “The Chaos and the Camps: Fragments of a Humanitarian Government” in Ursula Biemann and Brian Holmes (eds.), The Maghreb Connection: Movements of Life Across North Africa, (Barcelona: ActarDInc, 2006), pp. 260–282

28. Agier, Michel, Hanging the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010)

29. An interview with Sylvia Federici, “The Reproduction Crisis and the Birth of a New “Out of Law” Proletariat”, LeftEast, 2017, (accessed on 15 December 2017

30. Andersson, R., “Hunter and Prey: Patrolling Clandestine Migration in the Euro-African Borderlands”, Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 87 (1), 2014, pp. 119–49

31. Banerjee, Paula (ed.), Unstable Populations, Anxious States: Mixed and Massive Population Flows in South Asia (Kolkata: Samya, 2013)

32. Banerjee, Paula, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhuri, and Samir K. Das (eds.), Internal Displacement in South Asia : The Relevance of the UN Guiding Principles (New Delhi: Sage, 2005)

33. Berman, Paul Schiff, “The New Legal Pluralism”, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 5, 2009, pp. 225-242

34. Berman,Paul Schiff, “Global Legal Pluralism”, South California Review, Volume 80, 2007, pp. 1155-1165

35. Betts, Alexander and Paul Collier, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System (London: Allen Lane, 2017)

36. Bonjour, Saskia and Jan Willem Duyvendak, “The ‘Migrant with Poor Prospects’: Racialised Intersections of Class and Culture in Dutch Civic Integration Debates”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 41 (5), 2018, pp. 882-900

37. Bradley, Megan, “Return of Forced Migrants,“ Forced Migration Online, 2006, 

38. Bradley, Megan, “The International Organization for Migration (IOM): Gaining Power in the Forced Migration Regime”, Refuge, Volume 33 (1), 2017, pp. 97-106 (accessed on 20 March 2018)

39. Bulmer, Martin, and John Solomos, “Migration and Race in Europe”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 41 (5), 2018, pp. 779-784; 

40. Castles, Stephen, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (Fifth edition, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014)

41. Chak, Tings, “Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention”, Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, Volume 2 (1), 2016, pp. 6-29

42. Chaudhuri, Shreyashi,  “Is the Right to returna Symbolic Right?“ Refugee Watch Online, 2006.

43. Chimni, B.S. (ed.), International Refugee Law: A Reader (New Delhi: Sage, 2000) 

44. Collyer, Michael “Steel Wheels: The Age of Migration 5.0”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 38 (13), 2015, pp. 2362-2365

45. D’Souza, Radha, What is Wrong with Rights: Social Movements, Law, and Liberal Imaginations (London: Pluto Press, 2018)

46. Derrida, Jacques, Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)

47. Derrida, Jacques, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Richard Kearney (New York: Routledge, 2005) 

48. Dey, Ishita, and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaushury (eds), “The Responsibility to Protect: IDPs and Our National and State Human Rights Commissions”, Report, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, 2007 

49. Dhavan, Rajeev, “India’s Refugee Law and Policy”, - The Hindu, 25 June 2004 (accessed on 22 February 2015)

50. Doomernik, J., “A Study of the Effectiveness of Integration” (ILO Migration Programme series, Geneva, 1998)

51. Genova, Nicholas De (ed), The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017)

52. Gibney, Matthew J., The Ethics and Politics of Asylum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

53. Heidemann, Frank and Abhijit Dasgupta, “Learning to Live in the Colonies and Camps: Repatriates and Refugee in Tamil Nadu”, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 53 (8), 2018, pp. 39-47

54. Kermani, Navid, Upheaval: The Refugee Trek through Europe, trans. Tony Crawford (London: Polity Press, 2017)

55. Krisch, Nico, “The Case for Pluralismin Postnational Law”, LSE Legal Studies Working Paper, Volume 12, 2009

56. Landau, Loren, “Communities of Knowledge or the Tyrannies of Partnership: Reflections on North-South Research Networks from a South African University on Research Networks and the Dual Imperative”, Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 25 (4), 2012, pp. 555-570

57. Marrus, Michael R., The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)

58. McConnachic, Kirsten Governing Refugees: Justice, Order, and Legal Pluralism (London: Routledge, 2014)

59. Nair, Arjun, National Refugee Law for India: Challenges and Roadblocks, ICPS Research Paper 11, December 2007

60. Noll, Gregor, “Why Human Rights Fail to Protect Undocumented Migrants“, European Journal of Migration and Law, Volume 12 (2), 2010, pp. 241-272

61. Novak, Paolo, “Back to Borders”, Critical Sociology, Volume 43 (6), 2017, pp. 847-864

62. Rahola, Federico, “The Space of Camps: Towards a Genealogy of Places of Internment in the Present” in  A. Dal Lago and S. Palidda (eds.), Conflict, Security and the Reshaping of Society: The Civilisation of War (Milton Park: Routledge, 2010), pp. 185-199

63. Ramachandran, Sujata, “Indifference, Impotence, and Intolerance: Transnational Bangladeshis in India”, Global Migration Perspectives, Volume 42, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva, 2005 

64. Rudiger, Anja and Sarah Spencer, “The Economic and Social Aspects of Integration”, OECD Report, Brussels, January 2003

65. Said, Edward, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

66. Samaddar, Ranabir(ed.), Refugees and the State (Delhi: Sage, 2003)

67. Soguk, Nevzat, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)

68. Stedman, Stephen John and Fed tanner (eds.), Refugee manipulation – War, Politics, and the Abuse of Human Sufferings (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2003)

69. Tometten, Cristophe, “Juridical Response to Mixed and Massive Population Flows”, Refugee Watch, 39-40, June -December 2012, pp. 125-140 

70. Urbina, Ian “Tricked and Indebted on Land, Abused or Abandoned at Sea” The New York Times, 8 November 2015  

71. Walters, William, “Migration, Vehicles, and Politics: Three Theses on Viapolitics”, European Journal of Social Theory, Volume 18 (4), 2014, pp. 469-488

72. Warner, Daniel “We are all Refugees”, International Journal of Refugee Law, Volume 4 (3), 1992, pp. 365-372

International Migration Review

Bueker, Catherine Simpson, “Political Incorporation Among Immigrants from Ten Areas of Origin: the Persistence of Source Country Effects,”  International Migration Review, Volume 39(1), 2005, pp 103-140

 Castles, Stephen, The Factors that Make and Unmake Migration Policies, , International Migration Review, Volume 38 (2), 2004, pp 852-884

Jacobson, Karen, “Factors Influencing  the Policy Responses of Host Governments to Mass Refugee Influxes,” International Migration Review, Volume 30 (3), 1996, pp 655-678

Jenkins, J. Craig and Susanne Schmeidl, “The Early Warning of Humanitarian Disasters: Problems in Building an Early Warning System,” International Migration Review, Volume 32(2), 1998, pp 471-486