Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram

World Refugee Day

refugee studies

 

The United Nations’ (UN) World Refugee Day is observed on June 20 each year. This event draws public’s attention to the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and persecution.

 

“Refugees are people like anyone else, like you and me. They led ordinary lives before becoming displaced, and their biggest dream is to be able to live normally again. On this World Refugee Day, let us recall our common humanity, celebrate tolerance and diversity and open our hearts to refugees everywhere.” – Ban Ki-moon

 

________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

In marking this year’s observance, Berghahn is pleased to feature a selection of books of related interest and offer a 25% discount on all Refugee and Migration Studies titles. For the next 30 days use discount code REF16 at checkout.

 

 

 

MIGRATION BY BOAT
Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival
Edited by Lynda Mannik

Volume 35, Forced Migration

 

“This book is highly original in its emphasis on representations of enforced sea journeys and their memorialisations. Many, including myself, would like it on their shelf for teaching and reference.” · Michael Pugh, University of Bradford

At a time when thousands of refugees risk their lives undertaking perilous journeys by boat across the Mediterranean, this multidisciplinary volume could not be more pertinent. It offers various contemporary case studies of boat migrations undertaken by asylum seekers and refugees around the globe and shows that boats not only move people and cultural capital between places, but also fuel cultural fantasies, dreams of adventure and hope, along with fears of invasion and terrorism. The ambiguous nature of memories, media representations and popular culture productions are highlighted throughout in order to address negative stereotypes and conversely, humanize the individuals involved.

Read Introduction

 

New in Paperback: 

BEING HUMAN, BEING MIGRANT
Senses of Self and Well-Being
Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth
Epilogue by Nigel Rapport

Volume 23, EASA Series

 

“The authors of this volume remind us how important it is to see migrants as humans, because human nature within them is not lost despite the economic, cultural or social limitations that they are experiencing. It is a book for scholars who are dealing with various migration issues either in quantitative or qualitative manner, which emphasises that behind numbers or labels there are individual stories, experiences and hopes.“ · Anthropological Notebooks

Migrant experiences accentuate general aspects of the human condition. Therefore, this volume explores migrant’s movements not only as geographical movements from here to there but also as movements that constitute an embodied, cognitive, and existential experience of living “in between” or on the “borderlands” between differently figured life-worlds. Focusing on memories, nostalgia, the here-and-now social experiences of daily living, and the hopes and dreams for the future, the volume demonstrates how all interact in migrants’ and refugees’ experience of identity and quest for well-being.

Read Introduction: Being Human, Being Migrant: Senses of Self and Well-Being

 

 

ENDURING UNCERTAINTY
Deportation, Punishment and Everyday Life
Ines Hasselberg

Volume 17, Dislocations

This title is available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and published in partnership with Knowledge Unlatched.

 

“An impressively informative and exceptionally presented study that includes a ten page bibliography of References and an eighty-five page Index, “Enduring Uncertainty” is a compelling work of original scholarship that is very highly recommended for academic library Contemporary Social Issues reference collections in general, and Deportation Policy supplemental studies reading lists in particular.” · Midwest Book Review

Focusing on the lived experience of immigration policy and processes, this volume provides fascinating insights into the deportation process as it is felt and understood by those subjected to it. The author presents a rich and innovative ethnography of deportation and deportability experienced by migrants convicted of criminal offenses in England and Wales. The unique perspectives developed here – on due process in immigration appeals, migrant surveillance and control, social relations and sense of self, and compliance and resistance – are important for broader understandings of border control policy and human rights.

 

Forthcoming! 

STAYING AT HOME
Identities, Memories and Social Networks of Kazakhstani Germans
Rita Sanders

Volume 13, Integration and Conflict Studies

 

“Ethnographically rich, the study is based on a fertile mix of quantitative and qualitative methods such as pile sorting, free listing, network analysis, genealogy, participant observation and interviewing of all sorts. The author convincingly demonstrates that not leaving is nonetheless a dynamic lifestyle which demands efforts of fine-tuning and readjustment to a changing social environment.” · Florian Mühlfried, University Jena, Germany

Despite economic growth in Kazakhstan, more than 80 per cent of Kazakhstan’s ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany to date. Disappointing experiences of the migrants, along with other aspects of life in Germany, have been transmitted through transnational networks to ethnic Germans still living in Kazakhstan. Consequently, Germans in Kazakhstan today feel more alienated than ever from their ‘historic homeland’. This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies, which play a role in the ‘construction’ of a Kazakhstani German identity.

 

Forthcoming in Paperback!

THE STATE AND THE GRASSROOTS
Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents
Edited by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Fernández-Kelly

 

“This is an outstanding volume that offers a unique look at the role of immigrant organizations in the United States and Europe. By focusing on organizations of immigrants, it shows their central role in the transnational field and moves the migration-development debate to a new, much more sophisticated level.”  ·  Ariel Armony, University of Miami

Whereas most of the literature on migration focuses on individuals and their families, this book studies the organizations created by immigrants to protect themselves in their receiving states. Comparing eighteen of these grassroots organizations formed across the world, from India to Colombia to Vietnam to the Congo, researchers from the United States, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Spain focus their studies on the internal structure and activities of these organizations as they relate to developmental initiatives. The book outlines the principal positions in the migration and development debate and discusses the concept of transnationalism as a means of resolving these controversies.

 

 

New in Paperback

MIGRATION, SETTLEMENT AND BELONGING IN EUROPE, 1500-1930S
Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Steven King and Anne Winter

Volume 23, International Studies in Social History

 

The issues around settlement, belonging, and poor relief have for too long been understood largely from the perspective of England and Wales. This volume offers a pan-European survey that encompasses Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. It explores how the conception of belonging changed over time and space from the 1500s onwards, how communities dealt with the welfare expectations of an increasingly mobile population that migrated both within and between states, the welfare rights that were attached to those who “belonged,” and how ordinary people secured access to welfare resources. What emerged was a sophisticated European settlement system, which on the one hand structured itself to limit the claims of the poor, and yet on the other was peculiarly sensitive to their demands and negotiations.

Read Introduction: Settlement and Belonging in Europe, 1600-1950: Structures, Negotiations and Experiences

 

 

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BORDER DRAWING
Arranging Legality in European Labor Migration Policies
Regine Paul

 

The conditions for non-EU migrant workers to gain legal entry to Britain, France, and Germany are at the same time similar and quite different. To explain this variation this book compares the fine-grained legal categories for migrant workers in each country, and examines the interaction of economic, social, and cultural rationales in determining migrant legality. Rather than investigating the failure of borders to keep unauthorized migrants out, the author highlights the different policies of each country as “border-drawing” actions. Policymakers draw lines between different migrant groups, and between migrants and citizens, through considerations of both their economic utility and skills, but also their places of origin and prospects for social integration. Overall, migrant worker legality is arranged against the backdrop of the specific vision each country has of itself in an economically competitive, globalized world with rapidly changing welfare and citizenship models.

Read Introduction: Labor Migration Management: A Case for Interdisciplinary and Interpretive Policy Studies

 

 

 

BUSH BOUND
Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa
Paolo Gaibazzi

 

“A very interesting and significant study of young men in The Gambia illustrates the mutual dependence of those who migrate and those who ‘sit’ in the village and farm, arguing that both are valid forms of ‘looking for money’ in the modern world and that the village helps maintain social solidarity while inculcating values and skills that are as appropriate for migration as for village life.” · Anthropology Review Database

Whereas most studies of migration focus on movement, this book examines the experience of staying put. It looks at young men living in a Soninke-speaking village in Gambia who, although eager to travel abroad for money and experience, settle as farmers, heads of families, businessmen, civic activists, or, alternatively, as unemployed, demoted youth. Those who stay do so not only because of financial and legal limitations, but also because of pressures to maintain family and social bases in the Gambia valley. ‘Stayers’ thus enable migrants to migrate, while ensuring the activities and values attached to rural life are passed on to the future generations.

Read Introduction 

 

 

New in Paperback! 

WIND OVER WATER
Migration in an East Asian Context
Edited by David W. Haines, Keiko Yamanaka, and Shinji Yamashita

 

“…this book is a worthy addition to migration research and Asian studies. It is warmly recommended to scholars, advanced graduate students, and anyone else interested in people on the move in Asia and beyond.” · Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute

Providing a comprehensive treatment of a full range of migrant destinies in East Asia by scholars from both Asia and North America, this volume captures the way migrants are changing the face of Asia, especially in cities, such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Hamamatsu, Osaka, Tokyo, and Singapore. It investigates how the crossing of geographical boundaries should also be recognized as a crossing of cultural and social categories that reveals the extraordinary variation in the migrants’ origins and trajectories. These migrants span the spectrum: from Korean bar hostesses in Osaka to African entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, from Vietnamese women seeking husbands across the Chinese border to Pakistani Muslim men marrying women in Japan, from short-term business travelers in China to long-term tourists from Japan who ultimately decide to retire overseas. Illuminating the ways in which an Asian-based analysis of migration can yield new data on global migration patterns, the contributors provide important new theoretical insights for a broader understanding of global migration, and innovative methodological approaches to the spatial and temporal complexity of human migration.

Read Introduction

 

MAKING UBUMWE
Power, State and Camps in Rwanda’s Unity-Building Project
Andrea Purdeková

Volume 34, Forced Migration

 

Since the end of the Rwandan genocide, the new political elite has been challenged with building a unified nation. Reaching beyond the better-studied topics of post-conflict justice and memory, the book investigates the project of civic education, the upsurge of state-led neo-traditional institutions and activities, and the use of camps and retreats shape the “ideal” Rwandan citizen. Rwanda’s ingando camps offer unique insights into the uses of dislocation and liminality in an attempt to anchor identities and desired political roles, to practically orient and symbolically place individuals in the new Rwandan order, and, ultimately, to create additional platforms for the reproduction of political power itself.

Read PART I: INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

THE AGENDAS OF TIBETAN REFUGEES
Survival Strategies of a Government-in-Exile in a World of Transnational Organizations
Thomas Kauffmann

Volume 33, Forced Migration

 

“The way in which Tibetan religion has been essentialized, commodified, and instrumentalized [in this book] is really very good indeed . . . The description and discussion of the Tibet movement . . . is first-rate.”  ·  David N. Gellner, Oxford University

Since the arrival of the first Tibetans in exile in 1959, a vast and continuous wave of international – especially Western – support has permitted these refugees to survive and even to flourish in their temporary places of residence. Today, these Tibetan refugees continue to attract assistance from Western governments, organizations and individuals, while other refugee populations are largely forgotten in the international agenda. This book shows and discusses how Tibetan refugees continue to attract resources, due, notably, to the dissemination of their political and religious agendas, as well as how a movement of Western supporters, born in very different conditions, guaranteed a unique relationship with these refugees.

Read Introduction 

 

 

THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION
Migration, Health and Family Making
Edited by Maya Unnithan-Kumar and Sunil K. Khanna

 

“This is a welcome addition to the literature on both migration and reproduction, bringing together in interesting ways the causes and consequences of forcible or agentive movement upon birth practices, plans, and outcomes…Overall, the chapters complement each other… providing a nice mix of ethnographic breadth and detailed analysis.”  ·  Perveez Mody, King’s College, Cambridge

Charting the experiences of internally or externally migrant communities, the volume examines social transformation through the dynamic relationship between movement, reproduction, and health. The chapters examine how healthcare experiences of migrants are not only embedded in their own unique health worldviews, but also influenced by the history, policy, and politics of the wider state systems. The research among migrant communities an understanding of how ideas of reproduction and “cultures of health” travel, how healing, birth and care practices become a result of movement, and how health-related perceptions and reproductive experiences can define migrant belonging and identity.

 

 

 

In Paperback!

THE POLITICS OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP
Deepening Contradictions in Social Rights and Migration Policy
Peo Hansen and Sandy Brian Hager

 

Academics and policy makers alike who have an interest in exploring the complex interrelations between economic and migration policy and popular legitimacy as they play out both in historical and contemporary European politics will find this book a provocative source of both empirical information and critique.  ·  CEU Political Science Journal

As the European Union faces the ongoing challenges of legitimacy, identity, and social cohesion, an understanding of the social purpose and direction of EU citizenship becomes increasingly vital. This book is the first of its kind to map the development of EU citizenship and its relation to various localities of EU governance. From a critical political economy perspective, the authors argue for an integrated analysis of EU citizenship, one that considers the interrelated processes of migration, economic transformation, and social change and the challenges they present.

 

 

 

________________________________________________________________

Berghahn Journals: 

 

 

Anthropology in Action
Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice

Anthropology in Action is a peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology. Contributions reflect the use of anthropological training in policy- or practice-oriented work and foster the broader application of these approaches to practical problems.

Featured Article:
Immigrant and Refugee Women: Recreating Meaning in Transnational Context
Denise L. Spitzer

 

 

 

Anthropology of the Middle East

This peer-reviewed journal provides a forum for scholarly exchange between anthropologists and other social scientists working in and on the Middle East. The journal’s aim is to disseminate, on the basis of informed analysis and insight, a better understanding of Middle Eastern cultures and thereby to achieve a greater appreciation of Middle Eastern contributions to our culturally diverse world.

Featured Article:
Paying the Price of War: Narratives of Trauma of Iraqi Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Jordan
Laure Bjawi-Levine

 

 

 

 

Conflict and Society
Advances in Research

Publishing peer-reviewed articles by international scholars, Conflict and Society expands the field of conflict studies by using ethnographic inquiry to establish new fields of research and interdisciplinary collaboration. An opening special section presents general articles devoted to a topic or region followed by a section featuring conceptual debates on key problems in the study of organized violence.

Featured Article:
Managing Danger in Fieldwork with Perpetrators of Political Violence and State Terror
Jeffrey A. Sluka

 

 

 

 

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing leading scholarship in contemporary anthropology. Geographically diverse articles provide a range of theoretical or ethical perspectives, from the traditional to the mischievous or subversive, and aim to offer new insights into the worlds in which we live.

Featured Article:
Suspicion and the Economy of Trust among Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
Leonardo Schiocchet

 

 

 

 

 

Focaal
Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology

Focaal is a peer-reviewed journal advocating an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision. It is at the heart of debates on the ongoing conjunction of anthropology and history as well as the incorporation of local research settings in the wider spatial networks of coercion, imagination, and exchange that are often glossed as “globalization” or “empire.”

Featured Article:
From individual grief to a shared history of the Bosnian war: Voice, audience, and the political in psychotherapeutic practices with refugees
Laura Huttunen

Focaalblog
FocaalBlog is associated with Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. It aims to accelerate and intensify anthropological conversations beyond what a regular academic journal can do, and to make them more widely, globally, and swiftly available. Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

 

Regions and Cohesion

Regions and Cohesion is a needed platform for academics and practitioners alike to disseminate both empirical research and normative analysis of topics related to human and environmental security, social cohesion, and governance. It covers themes, such as the management of strategic resources, environment and society, social risk and marginalization, disasters and policy responses, violence, war and urban security, the quality of democracy, development, public health, immigration, human rights, organized crime, and cross-border human security.

Featured Article:
Migración, inseguridad y vulnerabilidad en el corredor del Golfo de México
Rosío Córdova and Hipólito Rodríguez

 

 

 

 

Social Analysis
The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice

Social Analysis has long been at the forefront of anthropology’s engagement with the humanities and other social sciences. In forming a critical, concerned, and empirical perspective, it encourages contributions that break away from the disciplinary bounds of anthropology and suggest innovative ways of challenging hegemonic paradigms through “grounded theory,” analysis based in original empirical research.

Featured Article:
Living an Uncertain Future: Temporality, Uncertainty, and Well-Being among Iraqi Refugees in Egypt
Nadia El-Shaarawi