- Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, and Balsillie School of International Affairs,
Waterloo, Canada
SUZAN ILCAN
University of Waterloo, Sociology and Legal Studies, Faculty Member
- Balsillie School of International Affairs, BSIA, Faculty Memberadd
- Citizenship, Migration Studies, Mobility/Mobilities, Refugee Studies, International Refugee Law, Refugee Camps, and 21 moreHumanitarian Aid, Humanitarian Intervention, Displacement, Social Movements, Global Citizenship, Global Governance, Neoliberalism, Critical Development Studies, Social Justice, Political Sociology, Governmentality, Critical Migration Research, Diaspora Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies, International political sociology, Citizenship And Governance, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Sociology, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, International Relations, and Anthropologyedit
- SUZAN ILCAN is a Professor & University Research Chair in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the Univer... moreSUZAN ILCAN is a Professor & University Research Chair in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA). She received her PhD in Sociology from Carleton University. Before coming to the University of Waterloo, she held a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) from 2002-2011. She is currently the Special Advisor on Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Waterloo.
Suzan Ilcan’s research focuses on migration and borders, refugee policies, citizenship, and social justice. She is the author of Longing in Belonging: The Cultural Politics of Settlement (Praeger), Governing the Poor (McGill-Queen’s University Press [MQUP], with A. Lacey), The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Migration, Citizenship, and Temporary Protection in Turkey (MQUP, with F. Baban and K. Rygiel), and Issues in Social Justice: Citizenship and Transnational Struggles (Oxford University Press, with T. Basok). She is the editor of several special issues of journals and of books, including Mobilities, Knowledge, and Social Justice (MQUP). Her work has also been published in a wide range of journals including Antipode, Canadian Review of Sociology, Citizenship Studies, International Political Sociology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Journal of Refugee Studies.
Suzan has presented many invited lectures nationally and internationally, and received several research grants in her areas of research. Her recent research projects highlight the diverse ways displaced people negotiate borders and borderlands, experience and counter precarious situations, remake “home” away from home, and engage in resettlement and community-building initiatives. These projects focus on the MENA region, Europe, and Canada.
Suzan Ilcan is co-editor of the journal Studies in Social Justice, an editorial board member of the journal Globalizations, and a board member of the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC). She is the recipient of the 2020 Arts Award for Excellence in Research and of the 2023, 2018, and 2014 Outstanding Performance Award in Teaching, Scholarship, and Service (University of Waterloo).
Among her commitments to the University of Waterloo and BSIA, she has served as the elected Director of the MA Program in Global Governance, Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in Sociology, Co-Director of the Migration, Mobilities, and Social Politics (MMSP) Research Cluster, and University of Waterloo’s faculty representative on the BSIA’s Board of Directors. Suzan is the Faculty of Arts representative on the University of Waterloo’s Scholars at Risk (SAR) initiative.
Suzan’s areas of PhD and MA supervision include migration and border studies, citizenship and social justice, political sociology, and critical development and humanitarian aid.edit
This article focuses on displaced peoples’ migratory journeys to the borderlands of Lebanon and Turkey. Building on a selection of ethnographic, interview, policy, and programme materials, it advances the argument that Syrian encounters... more
This article focuses on displaced peoples’ migratory journeys to the borderlands of Lebanon and Turkey. Building on a selection of ethnographic, interview, policy, and programme materials, it advances the argument that Syrian encounters with these borderlands encompass multidirectional movements and context-specific and fluid processes imbricated in relations of power that often stimulate migrant politics, processes that involve, what we term, borderland porosities. Contributing to critical migration and border studies, the analysis emphasizes how displaced people negotiate the permeabilities of borderlands, engage intermediaries to assist in their perilous journeys, and employ their pre- and post-war transnational networks during their movements. This perspective places borderland porosities front and centre. It illuminates how these dynamic and penetrable spaces shape peoples’ movements, foster a diverse web of actors and encounters in migratory journey and resettlement processes,...
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Authors: ILCAN, S., D. THOMAZ, and M. BUENO 2020. The number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world is estimated to surpass 1.44 million people in 2020 (UNHCR 2019a). Resettlement is a policy that relocates refugees from a... more
Authors: ILCAN, S., D. THOMAZ, and M. BUENO 2020. The number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world is estimated to surpass 1.44 million people in 2020 (UNHCR 2019a). Resettlement is a policy that relocates refugees from a country of asylum where their lives might be at risk or where their basic needs are not met to a safe country that has agreed to receive them. An often life-saving measure, resettlement also promotes the “sharing of responsibility for global crises,” as Philippo Grandi, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, put it (UNHCR 2019b). With around 84% of the world’s refugees being hosted in countries of the global South, resettlement programs can attenuate this imbalance by having countries of the global North voluntarily participate in hosting and supporting refugees. With many governments alleging lack of resources for resettlement programs, and the number of refugees in need of resettlement growing each year, the role that citizens and private actors can play in promoting this policy becomes significant. Canada is held internationally as a pioneer and leading country when it comes to private sponsorship, a kind of resettlement in which individuals, private groups, or organizations provide the financial and social support necessary for the resettlement of refugees. Syrians currently represent 40% of the total number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world (UNHCR 2019a). In late 2015, the recently elected Liberal Government made a commitment to resettle25,000 Syrian refugees in a short period of time, in what became known as Operation Syrian Refugees. Since the launching of this Canadian operation, there has been abundant research analysing the large-scale resettlement process, its successes, limitations, and lessons for future policymaking and host communities (for example, see Drolet et al. 2018; Hamilton et al. forthcoming; Hynie et all. 2019; Kyriakides et al. 2018; Walton-Roberts et al. 2018), although little focused scholarly and policy attention on Syrian refugee resettlement in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. This Policy Points contributes to these analyses by unpacking the particular lessons from one host community in Ontario, the Kitchener-Waterloo region, and highlighting the resettlement experiences of privately sponsored Syrian refugees in this area. It draws on policy, program, and scholarly documents, and on a selection of 55 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with mainly privately sponsored (and some government-assisted) Syrian refugees on their experiences of resettlement in southern Ontario, Canada. The interviews were conducted in either Arabic or English and lasted 90 to 120 minutes. They took place in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, Mississauga, and Toronto in 2017 and 2018. Participants included 26 women and 29 men who lived in Syria both prior to and during the recent civil war. They were aged between 28 and 63 and from diverse social backgrounds. Most participants self-identified as Syrian; the remainder self-identified as Kurdish, Palestinian, and Turkmen. All interview participants had departed from Syria to the nearby host states of Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey during the period of 2012 to 2017. Upon their arrival in Canada, they received formal residency status and some now hold Canadian citizenship.
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Building on the work of critical migration and border studies, particularly the scholarship on the suffering of displaced people through border-related violence, the article focuses on bordering practices and human rights violations... more
Building on the work of critical migration and border studies, particularly the scholarship on the suffering of displaced people through border-related violence, the article focuses on bordering practices and human rights violations relating to the Syrian civil war. It advances the argument that during peoples’ fragmented journeys to seek safety and protection within and outside of Syria, which are often punctuated by stops and starts, they encounter one or more of three kinds of bordering practices—hardening of borders, expansion of borders, and pushbacks—that can injure them and violate international human rights and often the principle of non-refoulement. The article refers to these encounters as the “border harms of human displacement”. The analysis emphasizes the experiences of people on the move and the cruelties and spatial violence they endure. The latter include lengthy periods of walking and running, travel across hazardous lands and seas, family separation, state restrict...
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Contributors include Rob Aitken (Alberta), Tanya Basok (Windsor), Janine Brodie (Alberta), William Coleman (Waterloo), Ronjon Paul Datta (Alberta), Karl Froschauer (Simon Fraser), Daniel Gorman (Waterloo), Amanda Grzyb (Western), Suzan... more
Contributors include Rob Aitken (Alberta), Tanya Basok (Windsor), Janine Brodie (Alberta), William Coleman (Waterloo), Ronjon Paul Datta (Alberta), Karl Froschauer (Simon Fraser), Daniel Gorman (Waterloo), Amanda Grzyb (Western), Suzan Ilcan (Waterloo), Eleonore Kofman (Middlesex), Anita Lacey (Auckland), Theresa McCarthy (Buffalo), Daniel J. Pare (Ottawa), Nicola Piper (Sydney), Parvati Raghuram (Open), Kim Rygiel (Wilfrid Laurier), Leslie Regan Shade (Toronto), Sandra Smeltzer (Western ), Daiva Stasiulis (Carleton), Myra Tawfik (Windsor), and Lloyd Wong (Calgary)
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Gender Studies, Human Rights, Border Studies, and 15 moreRefugee Studies, Sociology of Knowledge, Security, Social Justice, Social Activism, Migration Studies, Ethnicity, International political sociology, Mobilities Studies, Citizenship, Library and Information Studies, Mobilities, International Studies and Politics, Communication and media Studies, and Sociology of Governance
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Published in the journal, Global Social Policy 2016
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ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian... more
ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian refugees who live in government-run refugee camps and urban centres. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration studies literature, the paper emphasises the Turkish government’s central legal and policy frameworks that provide Syrians with some citizenship rights while simultaneously regulating their status and situating them in a position of limbo. Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways. The analysis stresses that Syrian refugees in Turkey continue to be part of the multiple pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights.
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This article analyses the new global aid regime’s championing of tourism as a solution to poverty as a continuum of colonial governmentalities. A key focus is an examination of tourism for development in Namibia, particularly the role of... more
This article analyses the new global aid regime’s championing of tourism as a solution to poverty as a continuum of colonial governmentalities. A key focus is an examination of tourism for development in Namibia, particularly the role of conservancies and the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme in this promotion. We argue that this tourism promotion in Namibia is a vital example of tourism for development and part of an increasingly widespread promotion of tourism as a means of achieving broad advanced liberal development goals. We examine the growth of conservancies and suggest that they are a technology of colonial governmentality in Namibia’s tourism for development. They act to shape the physical environment, wildlife and livelihoods for the communities engaged in the conservancies in the name of tourism and advance liberal ideas of poverty reduction. The article concludes with consideration of the manner in which these conservancy programmes can be con...
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Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. The poor are presented as a heterogeneous group and globalized solutions are suggested to... more
Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. The poor are presented as a heterogeneous group and globalized solutions are suggested to the problem of poverty. Governing the Poor exposes the ways in which such generalized descriptions and quantifications marginalize the poor and their experiences. Drawing on field research in Namibia and the Solomon Islands and case studies of international organizations such as USAID and Oxfam, Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey argue that aid programs have forged new understandings of poverty that are more about governing the poor through neo-liberal reforms than providing just solutions to poverty. By analyzing these programs they reveal that concepts of privatization, empowerment, and partnership are tools that treat the poor as a governed entity within a system of actors - governments, international organizations, and private businesses - that make up t...
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The past several decades have witnessed diverse techniques of border control and migrant experiences and negotiations of border controls. This article focusses on the spatio-temporal dimensions of border control that underscore the... more
The past several decades have witnessed diverse techniques of border control and migrant experiences and negotiations of border controls. This article focusses on the spatio-temporal dimensions of border control that underscore the deceleration of migration movements and stimulate certain kinds of agency, processes that bring attention to what is referred to as the borderization of waiting. Drawing on and contributing to critical migration and border studies, the analysis first draws attention to city street protests in Syria that demanded political change, which in turn created powerful responses including the expansion of protests against the state, the circulation of fear by the state, and the movements of people out of Syria. It then demonstrates how the borderization of waiting during the 2011 Syrian civil conflict occurs at many different points along migrant journeys and encompasses not only precarity but also fear, insecurity, invisibility, and presence. This form of waiting...
ABSTRACT Drawing on and contributing to critical citizenship and migration studies literature, this paper focuses on humanitarian aid and citizenship training in self-reliance schemes, and pays particular attention to Uganda’s... more
ABSTRACT Drawing on and contributing to critical citizenship and migration studies literature, this paper focuses on humanitarian aid and citizenship training in self-reliance schemes, and pays particular attention to Uganda’s self-reliance strategy and the case of Nakivale Refugee Settlement (hereafter Nakivale) in South West Uganda. I argue that citizenship training through self-reliance schemes is incompletely forged in Nakivale, and is indicative of the tensions brought about by the relations between humanitarian aid and citizenship practices, what I term the ‘humanitarian-citizenship nexus’. My argument is developed in three main parts. The first part provides a framework for understanding the role of citizenship training, humanitarian aid, and self-reliance in the refugee context. The second part emphasizes that humanitarian aid organizations and their partners play a prominent role in fostering neoliberal citizenship training, and provides an empirical focus on Uganda’s self-reliance strategies and the case of Nakivale. In response to the restraints of citizenship training and refugees’ limited status, the third part concentrates on refugees, as political subjects, and their counterresponses to the humanitarian-citizenship nexus. The conclusion calls for greater attention to sustainable, collective projects of social, legal, and political justice.
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As the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger, and primary expositor of food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) activities offer a unique opportunity to examine the contemporary... more
As the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger, and primary expositor of food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) activities offer a unique opportunity to examine the contemporary food-security nexus. In this article, we examine the ‘turn’ toward resilience in the practices and policies of the WFP. Our analysis emphasizes that resilience is one of a family of security strategies through which the WFP seeks to govern food security. As such, it is impossible to claim, as some have, that resilience is displacing security as the dominant logic for governing insecurity. Nevertheless, resilience is a cornerstone of the WFPs’ current activities. Whereas more familiar strategies of security attempt to pre-empt or contain disruptive events – in the context of food crises – resilience is a style of thinking that assumes the inevitability of unpredictable, high-impact events and aims to foster the capability for systems and people to adapt, abso...
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Within the context of globalization and governmentality studies, this essay analyses Oxfam's global reform and trade campaigns as a form of governance. These campaigns are... more
Within the context of globalization and governmentality studies, this essay analyses Oxfam's global reform and trade campaigns as a form of governance. These campaigns are based on advanced liberal programmes of empowerment which aim to shape poverty relations and the conduct of the poor in the ‘developing’ world. Oxfam's campaign to ‘Make Trade Fair’ and its influential report on ‘Rigged
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Building on the work of critical migration and border studies, particularly the scholarship on the suffering of displaced people through border-related violence, the article focuses on bordering practices and human rights violations... more
Building on the work of critical migration and border studies, particularly the scholarship on the suffering of displaced people through border-related violence, the article focuses on bordering practices and human rights violations relating to the Syrian civil war. It advances the argument that during peoples’ fragmented journeys to seek safety and protection within and outside of Syria, which are often punctuated by stops and starts, they encounter one or more of three kinds of bordering practices—hardening of borders, expansion of borders, and pushbacks—that can injure them and violate international human rights and often the principle of non-refoulement. The article refers to these encounters as the “border harms of human displacement”. The analysis emphasizes the experiences of people on the move and the cruelties and spatial violence they endure. The latter include lengthy periods of walking and running, travel across hazardous lands and seas, family separation, state restrictions, and mistreatment by border authorities. Yet, in response to such difficulties, they continue to assert their agency by negotiating bordering practices and harsh landscapes.
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Millions of Syrians are currently displaced, living without adequate protection and struggling to access residency, rights and citizenship in the broader context of migration governance. Our understanding of migration governance through a... more
Millions of Syrians are currently displaced, living without adequate protection and struggling to access residency, rights and citizenship in the broader context of migration governance. Our understanding of migration governance through a focus on Syrian refugees in urban Turkey is telling for what it reveals about international and national commitments to refugee protection and the relations among precarity, refugee everyday living and migrant journeys. Drawing on and contributing to the critical migration and precarity scholarship, we focus on what we call the ambiguous architecture of precarity, where the objectives of providing protection to refugees simultaneously produce forms of precarity and ambiguities for them. We argue that three forms of precarity underscore the experiences of Syrian refugees in Turkey: precarity of status as revealed through the granting of temporary protection rather than legal refugee status; precarity of space as demonstrated through the challenges refugees experience in accessing services and with restricted mobility and; precarity of movement as developed through new border cooperation arrangements and through migrant journeys that are undertaken in search of greater protection and security.
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Authors: ILCAN, S., D. THOMAZ, and M. BUENO 2020. The number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world is estimated to surpass 1.44 million people in 2020 (UNHCR 2019a). Resettlement is a policy that relocates refugees from a... more
Authors: ILCAN, S., D. THOMAZ, and M. BUENO 2020.
The number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world is estimated to surpass 1.44 million people in 2020 (UNHCR 2019a). Resettlement is a policy that relocates refugees from a country of asylum where their lives might be at risk or where their basic needs are not met to a safe country that has agreed to receive them. An often life-saving measure, resettlement also promotes the “sharing of responsibility for global crises,” as Philippo Grandi, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, put it (UNHCR 2019b). With around 84% of the world’s refugees being hosted in countries of the global South, resettlement programs can attenuate this imbalance by having countries of the global North voluntarily participate in hosting and supporting refugees. With many governments alleging lack of resources for resettlement programs, and the number of refugees in need of resettlement growing each year, the role that citizens and private actors can play in promoting this policy becomes significant. Canada is held internationally as a pioneer and leading country when it comes to private sponsorship, a kind of resettlement in which individuals, private groups, or organizations provide the financial and social support necessary for the resettlement of refugees.
Syrians currently represent 40% of the total number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world (UNHCR 2019a). In late 2015, the recently elected Liberal Government made a commitment to resettle25,000 Syrian refugees in a short period of time, in what became known as Operation Syrian Refugees. Since the launching of this Canadian operation, there has been abundant research analysing the large-scale resettlement process, its successes, limitations, and lessons for future policymaking and host communities (for example, see Drolet et al. 2018; Hamilton et al. forthcoming; Hynie et all. 2019; Kyriakides et al. 2018; Walton-Roberts et al. 2018), although little focused scholarly and policy attention on Syrian refugee resettlement in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
This Policy Points contributes to these analyses by unpacking the particular lessons from one host community in Ontario, the Kitchener-Waterloo region, and highlighting the resettlement experiences of privately sponsored Syrian refugees in this area. It draws on policy, program, and scholarly documents, and on a selection of 55 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with mainly privately sponsored (and some government-assisted) Syrian refugees on their experiences of resettlement in southern Ontario, Canada. The interviews were conducted in either Arabic or English and lasted 90 to 120 minutes. They took place in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, Mississauga, and Toronto in 2017 and 2018. Participants included 26 women and 29 men who lived in Syria both prior to and during the recent civil war. They were aged between 28 and 63 and from diverse social backgrounds. Most participants self-identified as Syrian; the remainder self-identified as Kurdish, Palestinian, and Turkmen. All interview participants had departed from Syria to the nearby host states of Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey during the period of 2012 to 2017. Upon their arrival in Canada, they received formal residency status and some now hold Canadian citizenship.
The number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world is estimated to surpass 1.44 million people in 2020 (UNHCR 2019a). Resettlement is a policy that relocates refugees from a country of asylum where their lives might be at risk or where their basic needs are not met to a safe country that has agreed to receive them. An often life-saving measure, resettlement also promotes the “sharing of responsibility for global crises,” as Philippo Grandi, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, put it (UNHCR 2019b). With around 84% of the world’s refugees being hosted in countries of the global South, resettlement programs can attenuate this imbalance by having countries of the global North voluntarily participate in hosting and supporting refugees. With many governments alleging lack of resources for resettlement programs, and the number of refugees in need of resettlement growing each year, the role that citizens and private actors can play in promoting this policy becomes significant. Canada is held internationally as a pioneer and leading country when it comes to private sponsorship, a kind of resettlement in which individuals, private groups, or organizations provide the financial and social support necessary for the resettlement of refugees.
Syrians currently represent 40% of the total number of refugees in need of resettlement in the world (UNHCR 2019a). In late 2015, the recently elected Liberal Government made a commitment to resettle25,000 Syrian refugees in a short period of time, in what became known as Operation Syrian Refugees. Since the launching of this Canadian operation, there has been abundant research analysing the large-scale resettlement process, its successes, limitations, and lessons for future policymaking and host communities (for example, see Drolet et al. 2018; Hamilton et al. forthcoming; Hynie et all. 2019; Kyriakides et al. 2018; Walton-Roberts et al. 2018), although little focused scholarly and policy attention on Syrian refugee resettlement in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
This Policy Points contributes to these analyses by unpacking the particular lessons from one host community in Ontario, the Kitchener-Waterloo region, and highlighting the resettlement experiences of privately sponsored Syrian refugees in this area. It draws on policy, program, and scholarly documents, and on a selection of 55 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with mainly privately sponsored (and some government-assisted) Syrian refugees on their experiences of resettlement in southern Ontario, Canada. The interviews were conducted in either Arabic or English and lasted 90 to 120 minutes. They took place in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, Mississauga, and Toronto in 2017 and 2018. Participants included 26 women and 29 men who lived in Syria both prior to and during the recent civil war. They were aged between 28 and 63 and from diverse social backgrounds. Most participants self-identified as Syrian; the remainder self-identified as Kurdish, Palestinian, and Turkmen. All interview participants had departed from Syria to the nearby host states of Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey during the period of 2012 to 2017. Upon their arrival in Canada, they received formal residency status and some now hold Canadian citizenship.
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Scholarly interest in the camp has grown over recent years, inspired in part by Giorgio Agamben's (1995; Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life) work. Scholarship in this area has built on Agamben's view of the camp as an abject space... more
Scholarly interest in the camp has grown over recent years, inspired in part by Giorgio Agamben's (1995; Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life) work. Scholarship in this area has built on Agamben's view of the camp as an abject space of exception and bare life but also, in reaction to this view, has theorized the camp as a political and social space which constitutes refugees and displaced persons as political subjects, active in demanding rights and social justice. Building on existing scholarship, this article draws attention to another important trend in the camp which has emerged alongside the growing activism of refugee populations, dissatisfied with their lack of rights and abject conditions. This is the trend of engaging refugees to become self-governing in the management of the camp, to think of the camp in terms of community development, with camp life providing the experiences through which refugees are to refashion themselves as resilient, entrepreneurial subjects. Our analysis examines this trend through the issue of humanitarian emergency governance of refugees and IDPs and within the context of reforms undertaken by the United Nations—specifically, through what we term “resiliency humanitarianism.” We use this term to suggest a particular rationale of care, camp coordination, and management which emerges within neoliberal government and which focuses on assisting refugees and IDPs to adapt to, and survive, crisis with the aim of responsibilizing them.
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AUTHORS: SUZAN ILCAN, MARCIA OLIVER, and LAURA CONNOY Increasingly, refugees residing in refugee camps are living in protracted situations for which there are no quick remedies. Existing attempts to address protracted situations for... more
AUTHORS: SUZAN ILCAN, MARCIA OLIVER, and LAURA CONNOY
Increasingly, refugees residing in refugee camps are living in protracted situations for which there are no quick remedies. Existing attempts to address protracted situations for refugees engage with the concept and practices of the Self-reliance Strategy (SRS). This paper focuses on the SRS in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement. It draws attention to its disconnection from the social and economic relations within which refugees live in settlements, and the strategy’s inability to provide refugees with sufficient access to social support and protection. In this context, the analysis highlights the failures of the SRS in terms both of shaping the conditions under which refugees experience restricted movement, social divisions and inadequate protection, and of placing greater responsibility on refugees for meeting their own needs with little or no humanitarian and state support. It also reveals how humanitarian and state actors, and their forms of assistance, manage the lives of refugees and are implicated in the creation of new challenges for refugees in Nakivale. In light of these issues, the paper emphasizes the gaps in the SRS orientation and calls for alternative approaches to humanitarian and refugee management that enable and support refugees to self-settle, access legal and social support, and participate in and contribute to their social and economic environment in meaningful and sustainable ways. The analysis for the paper is based on extensive refugee policy and legal documents, and on interviews with refugees in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, officials from the Ugandan government and representatives from international and national organizations that provide assistance to refugees.
Increasingly, refugees residing in refugee camps are living in protracted situations for which there are no quick remedies. Existing attempts to address protracted situations for refugees engage with the concept and practices of the Self-reliance Strategy (SRS). This paper focuses on the SRS in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement. It draws attention to its disconnection from the social and economic relations within which refugees live in settlements, and the strategy’s inability to provide refugees with sufficient access to social support and protection. In this context, the analysis highlights the failures of the SRS in terms both of shaping the conditions under which refugees experience restricted movement, social divisions and inadequate protection, and of placing greater responsibility on refugees for meeting their own needs with little or no humanitarian and state support. It also reveals how humanitarian and state actors, and their forms of assistance, manage the lives of refugees and are implicated in the creation of new challenges for refugees in Nakivale. In light of these issues, the paper emphasizes the gaps in the SRS orientation and calls for alternative approaches to humanitarian and refugee management that enable and support refugees to self-settle, access legal and social support, and participate in and contribute to their social and economic environment in meaningful and sustainable ways. The analysis for the paper is based on extensive refugee policy and legal documents, and on interviews with refugees in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, officials from the Ugandan government and representatives from international and national organizations that provide assistance to refugees.
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This paper analyses practices for monitoring, tracking and assessing the international aid and reconstruction efforts in Haiti in an attempt to ‘build back better’ from the devastation of the January 2010 earthquake. We suggest that aid... more
This paper analyses practices for monitoring, tracking and assessing the international aid and reconstruction efforts in Haiti in an attempt to ‘build back better’ from the devastation of the January 2010 earthquake. We suggest that aid and reconstruction efforts filter through an international network of development organisations. This network also acts as a governing auspice, overseeing the transformation of Haiti from a ‘failed state’ to a strong democratic state. The central governing mechanism in this reconstruction effort involves the embedding of the ideas and practices of audit within Haitian political and civic culture. We reveal how, in Haiti, this culture of audit monitors aid and reconstruction through biopolitical technologies such as benchmarks and performance indicators, and through the constitution of calculable and accountable entities. More than a means of implementing disaster recovery, audit culture is a technique of biopolitical governance that aims to transform Haiti's state, civic institutions and citizens into entities accountable to an international development agenda.
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This article analyses the new global aid regime’s championing of tourism as a solution to poverty as a continuum of colonial governmentalities. A key focus is an examination of tourism for development in Namibia, particularly the role of... more
This article analyses the new global aid regime’s championing of tourism as a solution to poverty as a continuum of colonial governmentalities. A key focus is an examination of tourism for development in Namibia, particularly the role of conservancies and the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme in this promotion. We argue that this tourism promotion in Namibia is a vital example of tourism for development and part of an increasingly widespread promotion of tourism as a means of achieving broad advanced liberal development goals. We examine the growth of conservancies and suggest that they are a technology of colonial governmentality in Namibia’s tourism for development. They act to shape the physical environment, wildlife and livelihoods for the communities engaged in the conservancies in the name of tourism and advance liberal ideas of poverty reduction. The article concludes with consideration of the manner in which these conservancy programmes can be considered as extensions of colonial rule in the name of tourism for development.
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SUZAN ILCAN and TANYA BASOK This paper analyzes the ways in which the Canadian voluntary sector has beencreated as a ‘community of service providers’. Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, we illustrate how governmental... more
SUZAN ILCAN and TANYA BASOK
This paper analyzes the ways in which the Canadian voluntary sector has beencreated as a ‘community of service providers’. Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, we illustrate how governmental interventions have been largely successful in carrying out the voluntary agencies’ responsibilization efforts within the sector. We trace this responsibilization project through fiscal policies and programmatic schemes, characteristic of advanced liberalism. Once invested with the task of governing, we argue that voluntary agencies take it upon themselves to train their volunteers to become responsible citizens. As a form of, what we call, community government, these voluntary agencies have therefore become doubly responsible: they provide social services to disadvantaged individuals and simultaneously train community members to assume their moral duties. Overall, this paper contributes to the growing literature on governmentality and citizenship studies by producing new insights into the links between the voluntary sector and ‘responsible citizenship’ under advanced liberalism.
This paper analyzes the ways in which the Canadian voluntary sector has beencreated as a ‘community of service providers’. Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, we illustrate how governmental interventions have been largely successful in carrying out the voluntary agencies’ responsibilization efforts within the sector. We trace this responsibilization project through fiscal policies and programmatic schemes, characteristic of advanced liberalism. Once invested with the task of governing, we argue that voluntary agencies take it upon themselves to train their volunteers to become responsible citizens. As a form of, what we call, community government, these voluntary agencies have therefore become doubly responsible: they provide social services to disadvantaged individuals and simultaneously train community members to assume their moral duties. Overall, this paper contributes to the growing literature on governmentality and citizenship studies by producing new insights into the links between the voluntary sector and ‘responsible citizenship’ under advanced liberalism.
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This article moves beyond the ‘network society’ thesis to provide an analysis of select global organizations and their global knowledge networks in the field of development. Drawing on the work of contemporary theorists of... more
This article moves beyond the ‘network society’ thesis to provide an analysis of select global organizations and their global knowledge networks in the field of development. Drawing on the work of contemporary theorists of governmentality, the authors argue that global knowledge networks facilitate the movement of knowledge across space and time, and adjoin particular principles as ameans of governing. These networks operate as mobile technologies of govern-ment, and seek to manage the objects of development, prescribe proper conduct and cultivate active agents and citizens through participatory development activities. The authors’ claims are based on extensive policy documents, reports, network-based development programmes affiliated with specific globalorganizations and interviews conducted with United Nations policy and research personnel.
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Abstract: This paper focuses on wide-ranging governmental discourses that enable new ways of shaping social and economic affairs in the field of development. Directing particular attention to the Millennium Development Goals, we refer to... more
Abstract: This paper focuses on wide-ranging governmental discourses that enable new ways of shaping social and economic affairs in the field of development. Directing particular attention to the Millennium Development Goals, we refer to these discourses as developmentalities. As a form of governmentality produced through these Goals, developmentalities draw on the turn of the century to recast certain development problems and offer reformulated solutions to these problems. We argue that they rely on three forms of neoliberal rationalities of government—information profiling, responsibilization, and knowledge networks, and their calculative practices, to shape global spaces and new capacities for individuals and social groups. Our analysis is based on extensive policy documents, reports, and development initiatives affiliated with the United Nations and other organizations, as well as insights derived from in-depth interviews and conversations with United Nations policy and research personnel from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
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This paper advances that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) act as a governmentality that brings with them assemblages of international and national policies and practices of poverty reduction. These assemblages are characterized by... more
This paper advances that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) act as a governmentality that brings with them assemblages of international and national policies and practices of poverty reduction. These assemblages are characterized by neoliberal rationalities that shape relationships and practices with and of the poor themselves by repositioning and deploying the values and norms of the market as the principal means for the establishment of development aid partnerships. Such rationalities, we argue, are exercised through political technologies that make visible and operable certain governings schemes such as calculative practices. Drawing on extensive interview, policy, programme, and
archival documents, the paper advances the argument that the MDGs and the national development plan for Namibia, Vision 2030, shape ideas of poverty reduction through political technologies of calculation and via multi-scale partnership arrangements. These technologies emerge from diverse elements, subsume the shaping of social and political spaces, and have diverse effects on the lives of the poor. Our analysis also highlights an approach to poverty reduction in Namibia, that of BIG, a Basic Income Grant scheme. We view BIG as a potential counter-calculation of poverty, and counter-partnership to poverty
reduction efforts, which can develop into a more socially just and sustainable means to reduce poverty and lead to an overturn of contemporary neoliberal assemblages of poverty reduction.
archival documents, the paper advances the argument that the MDGs and the national development plan for Namibia, Vision 2030, shape ideas of poverty reduction through political technologies of calculation and via multi-scale partnership arrangements. These technologies emerge from diverse elements, subsume the shaping of social and political spaces, and have diverse effects on the lives of the poor. Our analysis also highlights an approach to poverty reduction in Namibia, that of BIG, a Basic Income Grant scheme. We view BIG as a potential counter-calculation of poverty, and counter-partnership to poverty
reduction efforts, which can develop into a more socially just and sustainable means to reduce poverty and lead to an overturn of contemporary neoliberal assemblages of poverty reduction.
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In building on the scholarship that recognizes the complexity of world order, we emphasize that emerging notions of world order were connected to postwar planning effortsthat involved liberal conceptions of reconstruction and the... more
In building on the scholarship that recognizes the complexity of world order, we emphasize that emerging notions of world order were connected to postwar planning effortsthat involved liberal conceptions of reconstruction and the management of vulnerable populations, such as displaced persons. We argue that one way in which world order was constituted was through a biopolitical orientation, one that takes ‘life’ and ‘population’ as key objects of intervention. This orientation, key to the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), stimulated diverse practices in the expansion of an array of expertise, in the initiation of health, shelter, and food procedures for targeted populations, and in the development of the biopolitical management of these populations. Our analysis shows that postwar world order was a matter of intervention and of taking seriously how certain experts, populations, and calculated information entered into its fields, activities, and projects of reconstruction.
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The mobility of people, objects, information, ideas, services, and capital has reached levels unprecedented in human history. Such forms of mobility are manifested in continued advances in communication and transportation capacities, in... more
The mobility of people, objects, information, ideas, services, and capital has reached levels unprecedented in human history. Such forms of mobility are manifested in continued advances in communication and transportation capacities, in the growing use of digital and biometric technologies, in the movements of Indigenous, migrant, and women's groups, and in the expansion of global capitalism into remote parts of the world.
Mobilities, Knowledge, and Social Justice demonstrates how knowledge is mobilized and how people shape, and are shaped by, matters of mobility. Richly detailed and illuminating essays reveal the ways in which issues of mobility are at the centre of debates, ranging from practices of belonging to war and border security measures, from gender, race, and class matters to governance and international trade, and from citizenship and immigration policies to human rights. Contributors analyze how particular forms of mobility generate specific types of knowledge and give rise to claims for social justice.
This collection reconsiders mobility as a key term in the social sciences and humanities by delineating new ways of understanding how mobility informs and shapes lives as well as social, cultural, and political relations within, across, and beyond states.
Contributors include Rob Aitken (Alberta), Tanya Basok (Windsor), Janine Brodie (Alberta), William Coleman (Waterloo), Ronjon Paul Datta (Alberta), Karl Froschauer (Simon Fraser), Daniel Gorman (Waterloo), Amanda Grzyb (Western), Suzan Ilcan (Waterloo), Eleonore Kofman (Middlesex), Anita Lacey (Auckland), Theresa McCarthy (Buffalo), Daniel J. Paré (Ottawa), Nicola Piper (Sydney), Parvati Raghuram (Open), Kim Rygiel (Wilfrid Laurier), Leslie Regan Shade (Toronto), Sandra Smeltzer (Western ), Daiva Stasiulis (Carleton), Myra Tawfik (Windsor), and Lloyd Wong (Calgary).
Mobilities, Knowledge, and Social Justice demonstrates how knowledge is mobilized and how people shape, and are shaped by, matters of mobility. Richly detailed and illuminating essays reveal the ways in which issues of mobility are at the centre of debates, ranging from practices of belonging to war and border security measures, from gender, race, and class matters to governance and international trade, and from citizenship and immigration policies to human rights. Contributors analyze how particular forms of mobility generate specific types of knowledge and give rise to claims for social justice.
This collection reconsiders mobility as a key term in the social sciences and humanities by delineating new ways of understanding how mobility informs and shapes lives as well as social, cultural, and political relations within, across, and beyond states.
Contributors include Rob Aitken (Alberta), Tanya Basok (Windsor), Janine Brodie (Alberta), William Coleman (Waterloo), Ronjon Paul Datta (Alberta), Karl Froschauer (Simon Fraser), Daniel Gorman (Waterloo), Amanda Grzyb (Western), Suzan Ilcan (Waterloo), Eleonore Kofman (Middlesex), Anita Lacey (Auckland), Theresa McCarthy (Buffalo), Daniel J. Paré (Ottawa), Nicola Piper (Sydney), Parvati Raghuram (Open), Kim Rygiel (Wilfrid Laurier), Leslie Regan Shade (Toronto), Sandra Smeltzer (Western ), Daiva Stasiulis (Carleton), Myra Tawfik (Windsor), and Lloyd Wong (Calgary).
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Mobility/Mobilities, Human Rights, Border Studies, and 13 moreRefugee Studies, Sociology of Knowledge, Security, Migration, Social Justice, Social Activism, Migration Studies, Ethnicity, International political sociology, Mobilities Studies, Citizenship, International Studies and Politics, and Sociology of Governance
The book focuses on theory, current trends, and the future of social justice movements in Canada and around the world. It offers a valuable contribution to the growing debates on what social justice means in our increasingly globalized... more
The book focuses on theory, current trends, and the future of social justice movements in Canada and around the world. It offers a valuable contribution to the growing debates on what social justice means in our increasingly globalized world. Examining such key topics as modern citizenship, human rights, transformations of the welfare state under neoliberalism, and transnational activism, the book shows that attaining social justice is a complex process of change, one that links local and global struggles for redistribution, recognition, and representation.
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Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. Global generations present the poor as a heterogeneous group and stress globalized solutions... more
Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. Global generations present the poor as a heterogeneous group and stress globalized solutions to the problem of poverty. Governing the Poor exposes the ways in which such generalized descriptions and quantifications marginalize the poor and their experiences.
Drawing on field research in Namibia and the Solomon Islands and case studies of international organizations such as USAID and Oxfam, Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey argue that aid programs have forged new understandings of poverty that are more about governing the poor through neo-liberal reforms than providing just solutions to poverty. By analyzing these programs they reveal that concepts of privatization, empowerment, and partnership are tools that treat the poor as a governed entity within a system of actors - governments, international organizations, and private businesses - that make up the global aid regime.
An illuminating work of critiques and solutions for the current global aid regime, Governing the Poor shows the consequences of championing market-based solutions to poverty while neglecting to provide social infrastructure.
Drawing on field research in Namibia and the Solomon Islands and case studies of international organizations such as USAID and Oxfam, Suzan Ilcan and Anita Lacey argue that aid programs have forged new understandings of poverty that are more about governing the poor through neo-liberal reforms than providing just solutions to poverty. By analyzing these programs they reveal that concepts of privatization, empowerment, and partnership are tools that treat the poor as a governed entity within a system of actors - governments, international organizations, and private businesses - that make up the global aid regime.
An illuminating work of critiques and solutions for the current global aid regime, Governing the Poor shows the consequences of championing market-based solutions to poverty while neglecting to provide social infrastructure.
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By Suzan Ilcan. Paper presented before the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Denver, Colorado. November 18-22, 2015. Several declared emergencies have generated debates about the role of humanitarian interventions in... more
By Suzan Ilcan. Paper presented before the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Denver, Colorado. November 18-22, 2015.
Several declared emergencies have generated debates about the role of humanitarian interventions in governing the lives of refugee and displaced populations. With restrictive refugee legislation and the shift in migration policies to prevention and containment, humanitarian intervention in the form of aid has brought with it diverse ways to govern 'non-citizen' migrants living in refugee camps. Current forms of ‘humanitarian government’ comprise technologies of camp border control, the regulation of the movements of refugees, and the denial of certain rights to refugees. Yet, migrants are countering these governing effects which in turn make possible new forms of political engagement. In contributing to the scholarship on critical migration and citizenship studies, the analysis of a selection of refugee camps in sub-Saharan Africa draws on ethnographic, policy, and archival research. It reveals how refugees living in camps are transforming themselves from subjects of humanitarian government to activist citizens who demand social and legal rights, protest against aid shortages and child deaths, challenge border policing, and engender new expressions of citizenship.
Several declared emergencies have generated debates about the role of humanitarian interventions in governing the lives of refugee and displaced populations. With restrictive refugee legislation and the shift in migration policies to prevention and containment, humanitarian intervention in the form of aid has brought with it diverse ways to govern 'non-citizen' migrants living in refugee camps. Current forms of ‘humanitarian government’ comprise technologies of camp border control, the regulation of the movements of refugees, and the denial of certain rights to refugees. Yet, migrants are countering these governing effects which in turn make possible new forms of political engagement. In contributing to the scholarship on critical migration and citizenship studies, the analysis of a selection of refugee camps in sub-Saharan Africa draws on ethnographic, policy, and archival research. It reveals how refugees living in camps are transforming themselves from subjects of humanitarian government to activist citizens who demand social and legal rights, protest against aid shortages and child deaths, challenge border policing, and engender new expressions of citizenship.
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Paper Presented at the 2014 International Studies Association. Toronto. March 28-30.
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Paper Presented at the 2014 Canadian Sociology Association. St. Catharines, Ontario: Brock University. May.
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Paper presented at the 2013 International Studies Association. San Francisco, CA. April 1-5.
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Paper presented at the 2013 Conference Workshop on 'Calculative Regimes and Global Governance'. Balsillie School of International Affairs. Waterloo. September 19 and 20.