- International Organisations, Forced Migration, Humanitarianism, Development Studies, International Relations, International Refugee Law, and 11 moreStatelessness, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, UNHCR, Citizenship, Race and Racism, anti-Muslim racism, Intersectionality, Social Inequality, and Social Justiceedit
- Miriam Aced is Assistant Director of the Center for Intersectional Justice, an independent nonprofit organisation bas... moreMiriam Aced is Assistant Director of the Center for Intersectional Justice, an independent nonprofit organisation based in Berlin dedicated to advancing equality and justice for all by combating intersecting forms of structural inequality and discrimination in Europe. She holds an LLM in International Law with International Relations from the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies and an MA in International Business with French from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is co-founder of MigrationVoter.com, an organisation that analyses how migration and asylum affect elections (and vice-versa). She was Sub-Managing Editor of the open source, peer-reviewed journal Refugee Review. Her research on voting rights for migrants, access to justice for Palestinian refugees, racism in academia and other topics have been published in print and online media, and was an editor of a German-speaking volume on migration and asylum in 2014. Her work in the past few years has focused on the intersection of race, religion and class, economic opportunity and access to education and work for youth of color. She has been and continues to be an activist for immigrant rights and against racism, having been active in the Wahlrecht für Alle (Voting Rights for All) campaign as well as being a member of NaRI! (No to anti-muslim racism), for which she carries out political education.edit
Die Medienberichterstattung zu den Geschehnissen der Silvesternacht 2015 am Kölner Hauptbahnhof befeuerte mehrere Debatten, die uns über das ganze Jahr 2016 begleitet haben und den Grundstein für die Ereignisse in der Silvesternacht 2016... more
Die Medienberichterstattung zu den Geschehnissen der Silvesternacht 2015 am Kölner Hauptbahnhof befeuerte mehrere Debatten, die uns über das ganze Jahr 2016 begleitet haben und den Grundstein für die Ereignisse in der Silvesternacht 2016 legten. Doch was war Silvester 2015 geschehen? Sämtliche Medien berichteten von vermehrtem Diebstahl. Auslöser für deutschlandweite Empörung waren jedoch die Angaben, dass organisierte Banden von Männern, die ›nordafrikanisch‹ aussahen, Frauen sexuell belästigten, sie begrabschten. Manche Angaben sprachen sogar von tausenden von geflüchteten Männern. Das genaue Täterprofil blieb gleichwohl unklar: Waren es ›Nordafrikaner‹, Männer ›nordafrikanischer Herkunft‹, Geflüchtete, Muslime? Eine Unterscheidung dieser Personengruppen schien offenbar nicht von Interesse.
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This intervention aims at stimulating a collective discussion on everyday racism in and beyond (Critical) Migration Studies. From a reflexive perspective, we scrutinise the intricate ways racism – and the norm of whiteness as one of its... more
This intervention aims at stimulating a collective discussion on everyday racism in and beyond (Critical) Migration Studies. From a reflexive perspective, we scrutinise the intricate ways racism – and the norm of whiteness as one of its most immediate manifestations – affect our everyday lives whilst navigating the myriad spaces of Migration Studies and anti-racist activism. Against the background of a theoretical framework that allows thinking through everyday racism in activist/academic spaces, we explore the lifecycle of academic migration in the white neoliberal academy, as well as problematic divisions of labour between different spaces and subjects of knowledge production, activism, and care. Based on this, we discuss some ways to move beyond the white status quo. The world over has been and is experiencing Students (of Colour) rebelling against white academia, or as we like to call it, academia. They are unhappy with the canon they are being forced to read, with the demographic make-up of their staff and fellow students, and with their surroundings (statues, buildings, etc.) named after and mythologizing racist and colonial projects. The Black Justice League protests calling for a name change of the university's (in)famous Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs due to the former president's racist legacy is just one example of this. We are two activist researchers working on borders and migration who first met at a conference on critical migration studies hosted by MobLab, a loose network of movements | Jg. 2, Heft 1/2016 | www.movements-journal.org
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Six million individuals residing in Germany, both European Union citizens and third-country nationals, are excluded from institutionalised political participation each election period, including the recent federal elections in September... more
Six million individuals residing in Germany, both European Union citizens and third-country nationals, are excluded from institutionalised political participation each election period, including the recent federal elections in September 2013. This article argues that this lack of rights is corrosive to German democracy because people are kept from weighing in on important issues that affect their everyday lives. It critiques historical understandings of citizenship linked to the nation-state as unfit for the current reality in Germany and presents an alternate framework for voting rights – “urban citizenship” – based on residence.
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Research Interests:
Migration and asylum have taken on a new character and more communities are finding themselves legally in limbo. Taking the examples of Gazans in Jordan and Hindu and Sikh Afghans in India, the authors demonstrate that expanding the UN... more
Migration and asylum have taken on a new character and more communities are finding themselves legally in limbo. Taking the examples of Gazans in Jordan and Hindu and Sikh Afghans in India, the authors demonstrate that expanding the UN statelessness regime to cover not only de jure statelessness but also de facto statelessness (when one possesses a nationality, but lacks an effective nationality) would serve as a solution to the plight of communities who have been residing in host states for a generation or more. Further, they argue that the exclusionary exceptions found in the Stateless Convention (as well as the 1951 Refugee Convention) severely compromise the goal of the Stateless Convention’s drafters. The authors assert that human rights principles and established international norms on protection should override these protection exceptions.
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Reforms to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are discussed in the essay of Tjitske de Jong and Miriam Aced. The authors highlight the different approaches to reform adopted by the... more
Reforms to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are discussed in the essay of Tjitske de Jong and Miriam Aced. The authors highlight the different approaches to reform adopted by the different programmes: a comprehensive overhaul of almost every aspect of the education programme, a more pointed and modest restructuring of delivery of primary health care through the introduction of the so-called family health team approach, and efforts towards better targeting of the poor and a move away from food to cash transfers that is meeting significant resistance from beneficiaries and, to a lesser extent, host authorities.
One may argue, as de Jong and Aced suggest, that UNRWA’s funding structure – primary reliance on voluntary contributions – may not be appropriate to the Agency’s mandate of delivering public services, requiring a budget that is able to grow as a function of population growth and inflation. Exacerbated by the global financial crisis, the funding outlook is extremely bleak and the Agency and its key stakeholders face stark choices as they commence reflections on the next MTS.
One may argue, as de Jong and Aced suggest, that UNRWA’s funding structure – primary reliance on voluntary contributions – may not be appropriate to the Agency’s mandate of delivering public services, requiring a budget that is able to grow as a function of population growth and inflation. Exacerbated by the global financial crisis, the funding outlook is extremely bleak and the Agency and its key stakeholders face stark choices as they commence reflections on the next MTS.
Research Interests:
Migration als gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozess wird oft als Problem betrachtet. Dabei wird nicht differenziert, welche strukturellen Komponenten der institutionellen Ausgrenzung und des alltäglichen Rassismus eine Rolle bei der... more
Migration als gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozess wird oft als Problem betrachtet. Dabei wird nicht differenziert, welche strukturellen Komponenten der institutionellen Ausgrenzung und des alltäglichen Rassismus eine Rolle bei der Konstruktion des "Problemfeldes Migration" spielen. Der vorliegende Sammelband arbeitet mit einem thematischen Dreiklang von Migration, Asyl und Postmigration, um den Ist-Stand zu erfassen, Diskussionslinien der migrationspolitischen Praktiken zu beleuchten und weitere Perspektiven auf (post-)migrantische Lebenswelten aufzuzeigen.
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Welcome to the third edition of Refugee Review, an open-source, peer-reviewed journal that aims to showcase unique perspectives and emerging voices in refugee studies. In this edition, we are pleased to present 18 academic articles,... more
Welcome to the third edition of Refugee Review, an open-source, peer-reviewed journal that aims to showcase unique perspectives and emerging voices in refugee studies. In this edition, we are pleased to present 18 academic articles, practitioner reports and multimedia pieces that cover a range of issues impacting refugees and migrants. In a moment in time where the number of forcibly displaced persons is at the highest on record, and the question of accepting refugees has become a central topic in political discourse in many regions of the world, we consider it more important than ever to offer nuanced, critical perspectives on refugees and the challenges they face.
In this edition we have a special focus, comprising eight articles, on the topic of labour and refugees. Given the controversial status of refugees in the labour markets of many countries, we felt this topic is extremely timely. As can be seen in e.g., Gündüz’s piece on Turkey, refugees are often viewed or portrayed as a “burden” on the economy and as job competition for the locals, while at the same time have their access to the labour market restricted by regulations and discrimination. In the meantime, many states seem to have lost sight of the original obligations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which asserts that refugees have a right to work or a “dignified standard of living” in the state offering protection, a disconnect explored by Arapiles & Madziva in their article focussing on the UK. And as Sager & Öberg point out in their article on Sweden, the spectre of “deportability” not only puts refugees in a vulnerable position vis-àvis employers, it also regulates the worker’s rights of regular migrants and can become an opportunity to erode workers’ rights more generally. Clearly, the labour rights of refugees (and lack thereof) has the potential to become a topic of increasing importance for economies worldwide as they struggle with integration of newcomers and with challenges to the financial status quo in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The intersection between refugee issues and more general concerns of identity and social justice occupy numerous other of our authors in this edition. For instance, several pieces illuminate the ways in which feminist philosophy can inform our view of refugees. Taha seeks to highlight how post- colonial feminist discourse can take refugee studies to new heights by allowing for a more complex view of victimhood and agency that discards with some of the stereotypical, orientalist assumptions of the past. Burnett & Villegas call for greater consideration of gender development in conflict situations, fruitfully comparing the examples of Colombia and Palestine to consider the failures in security caused by disregarding gender. And in their multimedia piece, Ratkovic & Sethi use poetry and visual arts to explore migration and transnational feminism through the eyes of the displaced.
The authors presented in this volume are also interested in looking beyond the surface to the unseen challenges refugees face. In a piece on the double marginalisation encountered by disabled refugees in the EU, Oyaro considers how governments can better comply with UN guidelines on persons with disability when applying refugee law. Boeynik explores the topic of vulnerability as it pertains to people under suspicion of terror, by looking at the example of Somali refugees in Kenya in the wake of the Garissa attacks, and Forin argues for a closer examination of the divide between “forced” and “voluntary” migration, to see how this paradigm is being used as a containment strategy that often denies individual rights.
Although the subject matter presented in this volume is broad, what the authors above and others presented have in common is a desire to shed light on the aspects of the refugee experience that negate a simplistic approach to the topic. In the face of a political climate where refugees are increasingly cast as a homogenous group that threatens security, economy, and culture, it is more important than ever to emphasise discourse that highlights that refugees, like all people, navigate complex intersections of identity and social life at work and at home, and have different challenges and motivations that define their experiences. We offer these accounts of refugees to problematise the dominant discourse of refugees as scapegoats for society’s many problems and offer a glimpse at a kaleidoscopic reality that is necessarily more complex, and closer to the truth.
In this edition we have a special focus, comprising eight articles, on the topic of labour and refugees. Given the controversial status of refugees in the labour markets of many countries, we felt this topic is extremely timely. As can be seen in e.g., Gündüz’s piece on Turkey, refugees are often viewed or portrayed as a “burden” on the economy and as job competition for the locals, while at the same time have their access to the labour market restricted by regulations and discrimination. In the meantime, many states seem to have lost sight of the original obligations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which asserts that refugees have a right to work or a “dignified standard of living” in the state offering protection, a disconnect explored by Arapiles & Madziva in their article focussing on the UK. And as Sager & Öberg point out in their article on Sweden, the spectre of “deportability” not only puts refugees in a vulnerable position vis-àvis employers, it also regulates the worker’s rights of regular migrants and can become an opportunity to erode workers’ rights more generally. Clearly, the labour rights of refugees (and lack thereof) has the potential to become a topic of increasing importance for economies worldwide as they struggle with integration of newcomers and with challenges to the financial status quo in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The intersection between refugee issues and more general concerns of identity and social justice occupy numerous other of our authors in this edition. For instance, several pieces illuminate the ways in which feminist philosophy can inform our view of refugees. Taha seeks to highlight how post- colonial feminist discourse can take refugee studies to new heights by allowing for a more complex view of victimhood and agency that discards with some of the stereotypical, orientalist assumptions of the past. Burnett & Villegas call for greater consideration of gender development in conflict situations, fruitfully comparing the examples of Colombia and Palestine to consider the failures in security caused by disregarding gender. And in their multimedia piece, Ratkovic & Sethi use poetry and visual arts to explore migration and transnational feminism through the eyes of the displaced.
The authors presented in this volume are also interested in looking beyond the surface to the unseen challenges refugees face. In a piece on the double marginalisation encountered by disabled refugees in the EU, Oyaro considers how governments can better comply with UN guidelines on persons with disability when applying refugee law. Boeynik explores the topic of vulnerability as it pertains to people under suspicion of terror, by looking at the example of Somali refugees in Kenya in the wake of the Garissa attacks, and Forin argues for a closer examination of the divide between “forced” and “voluntary” migration, to see how this paradigm is being used as a containment strategy that often denies individual rights.
Although the subject matter presented in this volume is broad, what the authors above and others presented have in common is a desire to shed light on the aspects of the refugee experience that negate a simplistic approach to the topic. In the face of a political climate where refugees are increasingly cast as a homogenous group that threatens security, economy, and culture, it is more important than ever to emphasise discourse that highlights that refugees, like all people, navigate complex intersections of identity and social life at work and at home, and have different challenges and motivations that define their experiences. We offer these accounts of refugees to problematise the dominant discourse of refugees as scapegoats for society’s many problems and offer a glimpse at a kaleidoscopic reality that is necessarily more complex, and closer to the truth.