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Refugees: Justice and Ethics Library Display 2020

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Images of Immigrants and Refugees

The topic of migration has become particularly contentious in national and international debates. Media have a discernable impact on overall societal attitudes towards this phenomenon. Polls show time and again that immigration is one of the most important issues occupying people's minds. This book examines the dynamic interplay between media representations of migrants and refugees on the one hand and the governmental and societal (re)actions to these on the other. Largely focusing on Belgium and Sweden, this collection of interdisciplinary research essays attempts to unravel the determinants of people's preferences regarding migration policy, expectations towards newcomers, and economic, humanitarian and cultural concerns about immigration's effect on the majority population's life. Whilst migrants and refugees remain voiceless and highly underrepresented in the legacy media, this volume allows their voices to be heard. Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content).

Bad News for Refugees

Bad News for Refugees analyses the political, economic and environmental contexts of migration and looks specifically at how refugees and asylum seekers have been stigmatised in political rhetoric and in media coverage.Through forensic research, conducted through interviews and analysis of media accounts, a history of contemporary migration and asylum is written. The authors examine the various catalysts for migration, in doing so reveal how economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are often conflated by the media. They explain negative reactions to new arrivals, describing the benefit cheat, criminals and job stealing narratives that dominate anti-migrant discourse. Case studies reveal how hysterical and inaccurate media accounts act to legitimise political action can have terrible consequences both on the lives of refugees and also on established migrant communities.Based on new research by the renowned Glasgow Media Group, this book is essential reading for those concerned with the negative effects of media on public understanding and for the safety of vulnerable groups and communities in our society.

Immigrant and Refugee Children and Families

Designed for students of social work, public policy, ethnic studies, community development, and migration studies, Immigrant and Refugee Children and Families provides the best knowledge for culturally responsive practice with immigrant children, adolescents, and families. This textbook summarizes the unique circumstances of Asian/Pacific Islander, Latino, South Asian, African, and Middle Eastern immigrant and refugee populations and the challenges faced by the social service systems, including child welfare, juvenile justice, education, health, and mental health care, that attempt to serve them. Each chapter features key terms, study questions, and resource lists, and the book meets many Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) competencies. The book addresses the policy landscape affecting immigrant and refugee children in the United States, and a final section examines current and future approaches to advocacy.

Rising Tides

"Deals masterfully with a neglected crisis, how climate change is driving migration . . . The work broaches solutions both practical . . . and political."--Christopher E. Goldthwait, former US Ambassador   With global climate change upon us, it is imperative to start thinking about the massive numbers of people who will be displaced by environmental crises. The rise in sea levels alone will account for hundreds of millions of refugees around the globe.   In Rising Tides, John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins face the difficult questions that will have to be answered: How will people be relocated and settled? Is it possible to offer environmental refugees temporary or permanent asylum? Will these refugees have any collective rights in the new areas they inhabit? And lastly, who will pay the costs of all the affected countries during the process of resettlement?   Offering an essential, continent-by-continent look at these dangers, Rising Tides is "a passionately argued, well-documented wake-up call on the dire, current and undeniable human fallout from climate change. Looking behind the headlines, it connects the dots in a way that will inform and should alarm us all" (Eugene L. Meyer, author of Five for Freedom).   "This chilling and urgent call to action spares no detail in its mission to present the facts on a looming humanitarian disaster. Climate-change warning messages too often focus on the environment without going into specifics of how humans will be hurt by global warming. Rising Tides singlehandedly rectifies this issue."--Foreword Reviews   "A must read for policymakers and those in positions of power, especially the ones who remain in a state of denial about climate change and refuse to do enough to address the crisis."--The Hindu

Gender, Migration and Categorisation

This collection explores how Western countries have historically distinguished between categories of migrants--such as labor, refugee, family, and postcolonial migrants. Covering France, the United States, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, the contributors explain how concepts such as "refugee," "family," and "difference" have been defined through policy and public debate. Tightly intertwined, these definitions are continuously changing with the economic and geopolitical climate, as well as in relation to migrants' gender, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and countries of destination and origin.

Border Walls Gone Green

How is it that self-identified environmental progressives in America can oppose liberalizing immigration policies? Environmentalism is generally assumed to be a commitment of the political left and restrictionism a commitment of the right. As John Hultgren shows, the reality is significantly more complicated. American environmentalists have supported immigration restrictions since the movement first began in the late 1800s, and anti-immigration arguments continue to attract vocal adherents among contemporary mainstream and radical "greens." Border Walls Gone Green seeks to explain these seemingly paradoxical commitments by examining what is actually going on in American debates over the environmental impacts of immigration. It makes the case that nature is increasingly being deployed as a form of "walling"--which enables restrictionists to subtly fortify territorial boundaries and identities without having to revert to cultural and racial logics that are unpalatable to the political left. From an environmental point of view, the location of borders makes little sense; the Mexican landscape near most border crossings looks exactly like the landscape on the American side. And the belief that immigrants are somehow using up the nation's natural resources and thereby accelerating the degradation of the environment simply does not hold up to scrutiny. So, Hultgren finds, the well-intentioned efforts of environmentalists to "sustain" America are also sustaining the idea of the nation-state and in fact serving to reinforce exclusionary forms of political community. How, then, should socially conscious environmentalists proceed? Hultgren demonstrates that close attention to the realities of transnational migration can lead to a different brand of socio-ecological activism--one that could be our only chance to effectively confront the powerful forces producing ecological devastation and social injustice.

Climate Change and Displacement

Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both within states and across international borders. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise and desertification, which will impact upon people's ability to survive in certain parts of the world. This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of the phenomenon, which can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike. Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical frameworks from which sound policy can be constructed. The specialist expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-based responses, and establish climate-induced displacement as an important aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.

Native but Foreign

Winner, 2019 Spur Award for Best Historical Nonfiction Book, sponsored by Western Writers of America In Native but Foreign, historian Brenden W. Rensink presents an innovative comparison of indigenous peoples who traversed North American borders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining Crees and Chippewas, who crossed the border from Canada into Montana, and Yaquis from Mexico who migrated into Arizona. The resulting history questions how opposing national borders affect and react differently to Native identity and offers new insights into what it has meant to be "indigenous" or an "immigrant." Rensink's findings counter a prevailing theme in histories of the American West--namely, that the East was the center that dictated policy to the western periphery. On the contrary, Rensink employs experiences of the Yaquis, Crees, and Chippewas to depict Arizona and Montana as an active and mercurial blend of local political, economic, and social interests pushing back against and even reshaping broader federal policy. Rensink argues that as immediate forces in the borderlands molded the formation of federal policy, these Native groups moved from being categorized as political refugees to being cast as illegal immigrants, subject to deportation or segregation; in both cases, this legal transition was turbulent. Despite continued staunch opposition, Crees, Chippewas, and Yaquis gained legal and permanent settlements in the United States and successfully broke free of imposed transnational identities. Accompanying the thought-provoking text, a vast guide to archival sources across states, provinces, and countries is included to aid future scholarship. Native but Foreign is an essential work for scholars of immigration, indigenous peoples, and borderlands studies.

World of Walls

"We're going to build a wall." Borders have been drawn since the beginning of time, but in recent years artificial barriers have become increasingly significant to the political conversation across the world. Donald Trump was elected President of the United States while promising to build a wall on the Mexico border, and in Europe, the international movements of migrants and refugees have sparked fierce discussion about whether and how countries should restrict access to their territory by erecting physical barriers. Virtual walls are also built and crushed at increasing speed. In the post-9/11 era there is a greater danger from so-called "transnational non-state actors", and computer hacking and cyberterrorism threaten to overwhelm our technological barriers. In this timely and original book, Said Saddiki scrutinises the physical and virtual walls located in four continents, including Israel, India, the southern EU border, Morocco, and the proposed border wall between Mexico and the US. Saddiki's detailed analysis explores the tensions between the rise of globalisation, which some have argued will lead to a "borderless world" and "the end of the nation-state", and the rapid development in recent decades of border control systems. Saddiki examines both regular and irregular cross-border activities, including the flow of people, goods, ideas, drugs, weapons, capital, and information, and explores the disparities that are reflected by barriers to such activities. He considers the consequences of the construction of physical and virtual walls, including their impact on international relations and the rise of the multi-billion dollar security market. World of Walls: The Structure, Roles and Effectiveness of Separation Barriers is important reading for all those interested in the topics of immigration, border security, international relations, and policy. --Publisher's website.

Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States

Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States is the first book to provide a comprehensive and lively analysis of the contributions of artists from America's newest immigrant communities--Africa, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Mexico. Adding significantly to our understanding of both the arts and immigration, multidisciplinary scholars explore tensions that artists face in forging careers in a new world and navigating between their home communities and the larger society. They address the art forms that these modern settlers bring with them; show how poets, musicians, playwrights, and visual artists adapt traditional forms to new environments; and consider the ways in which the communities' young people integrate their own traditions and concerns into contemporary expression.

Flight to Freedom

"They had been massacred, assassinated. [The death squad] had pulled off their nails. They had been burned with acid ... shot in the head." In a provoking, first-person account of the horrors of war and political persecution, Salvadoran refugee and community leader Carlos Vaquerano remembers the day that his brother Marcial and seven others were brutally murdered by the death squads supported by his country's violent right-wing government.When a sister in the United States offers to help him emigrate, Carlos and his family agree that he has no other options. So, like the more than one million Central American refugees fleeing the atrocities of war, Carlos makes the difficult journey through Mexico and into the U.S. Once here, though, he cannot forget his brother's admonishment: "Never forget that you have to fight so that justice exists in our country." Fulfilling his brother's plea, Carlos Vaquerano would go on to establish the Salvadoran-American Leadership and Educational Fund, one of the nation's leading Central American organizations.Each of the eight people interviewed for this landmark collection--Carmen Alegr#65533;a, Isabel Beltr#65533;n, Juan Ram#65533;n Cardona, Eduardo Gonz#65533;lez, Javier Huete, Alicia Mendoza, Rossana P#65533;rez, and Carlos Vaquerano--is a leader in the Salvadoran / Central American refugee movement. Consequently, this book offers insight into the early philosophy and framework of the movement as revealed by some of its pioneers

Seeking Refuge

The political upheaval in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala had a devastating human toll at the end of the twentieth century. A quarter of a million people died during the period 1974-1996. Many of those who survived the wars chose temporary refuge in neighboring countries such as Honduras and Costa Rica. Others traveled far north, to Mexico, the United States, and Canada in search of safety. Over two million of those who fled Central America during this period settled in these three countries. In this incisive book, María Cristina García tells the story of that migration and how domestic and foreign policy interests shaped the asylum policies of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. She describes the experiences of the individuals and non-governmental organizations--primarily church groups and human rights organizations--that responded to the refugee crisis, and worked within and across borders to shape refugee policy. These transnational advocacy networks collected testimonies, documented the abuses of states, re-framed national debates about immigration, pressed for changes in policy, and ultimately provided a voice for the displaced. García concludes by addressing the legacies of the Central American refugee crisis, especially recent attempts to coordinate a regional response to the unique problems presented by immigrants and refugees--and the challenges of coordinating such a regional response in the post-9/11 era.

Children from the Other America

Necessity is the mother of invention and this all began with a plea on a listserv: "We have a sixteen year old Mayan Quiche young man who won't stop crying in our school". How desperate must a parent be to say goodbye to their child/children to perhaps never see them again because of wars in Syria or gang violence in Central America making citizens so desperate? Will the children make it alive to the next border with so many more to cross? Will they really eventually meet up with family? Or is this pure folly? Will these children be able to go to school for an equitable education and have a much better life than their parents could ever imagine? More important are the implications for U. S. schools: how are they managing the sudden influx of children refugees who are road weary and expected to participate in school structures seamlessly? Many are not aware that, linguistically, these children may not be Spanish-speaking, but only communicate in their own indigenous language.

America's Arab Refugees

America's Arab Refugees is a timely examination of the world's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Tracing the history of Middle Eastern wars--especially the U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan--to the current refugee crisis, Marcia C. Inhorn examines how refugees fare once resettled in America. In the U.S., Arabs are challenged by discrimination, poverty, and various forms of vulnerability. Inhorn shines a spotlight on the plight of resettled Arab refugees in the ethnic enclave community of "Arab Detroit," Michigan. Sharing in the poverty of Detroit's Black communities, Arab refugees struggle to find employment and to rebuild their lives. Iraqi and Lebanese refugees who have fled from war zones also face several serious health challenges. Uncovering the depths of these challenges, Inhorn's ethnography follows refugees in Detroit suffering reproductive health problems requiring in vitro fertilization (IVF). Without money to afford costly IVF services, Arab refugee couples are caught in a state of "reproductive exile"--unable to return to war-torn countries with shattered healthcare systems, but unable to access affordable IVF services in America. America's Arab Refugees questions America's responsibility for, and commitment to, Arab refugees, mounting a powerful call to end the violence in the Middle East, assist war orphans and uprooted families, take better care of Arab refugees in this country, and provide them with equitable and affordable healthcare services.

Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement (Open Access)

This book is a philosophical analysis of the ethical treatment of refugees and stateless people, a group of people who, though extremely important politically, have been greatly under theorized philosophically. The limited philosophical discussion of refugees by philosophers focuses narrowly on the question of whether or not we, as members of Western states, have moral obligations to admit refugees into our countries. This book reframes this debate and shows why it is important to think ethically about people who will never be resettled and who live for prolonged periods outside of all political communities. Parekh shows why philosophers ought to be concerned with ethical norms that will help stateless people mitigate the harms of statelessness even while they remain formally excluded from states. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315883854, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Refugees in America

It is not an easy road--but hope is the oxygen of my life.  These insightful words of Meron Semedar, a refugee from Eritrea, reflect the feelings of the eleven men and women featured in this book.  These refugees  share their extraordinary experiences  of fleeing oppression, violence and war in their home countries in search of a better life in the United States.   Each chapter of Refugees in America focuses on an individual from a different country, from a 93-year-old Polish grandmother who came to the United States after surviving the horrors of Auschwitz to a young undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who became an American college graduate, despite being born impoverished and blind. Some have found it easy to reinvent themselves in the United States, while others have struggled to adjust to America, with its new culture, language, prejudices, and norms.   Each of them speaks candidly about their experiences to author Lee T. Bycel, who provides illuminating background information on the refugee crises in their native countries. Their stories help reveal the real people at the center of political debates about US immigration.   Giving a voice to refugees from such far-flung locations as South Sudan, Guatemala, Syria, and Vietnam, this book weaves together a rich tapestry of human resilience, suffering, and determination. Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to two organizations that are doing excellent refugee resettlement work and offer many opportunities to support refugees: HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) hias.org International Rescue Committee (IRC) rescue.org    

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