Paper short abstract:

To what extent are attempts to support the economic survival of displaced people informed by 'thick' understandings of local political economies, the values and priorities of involved social actors, and the competing and often contradictory requirements of perverse political and policy environments?

Paper long abstract:

An increasingly important arena of humanitarian activity in the developing world and elsewhere are interventions designed to support the livelihoods/economic activity of refugees and other displaced people (Betts 2017, Omata 2019). Such efforts are framed by the complex and dynamic contexts in which displaced lives are lived. Not only are over 50% of displaced populations now urban dwellers, but the majority of displacements are also protracted. To what extent are attempts to support the economic survival of refugees and displaced people conducted by actors and in ways informed by 'thick' understandings of local political economies, the values and priorities of involved social actors, and the competing and often contradictory requirements of perverse political and policy environments?

Evidence from classic anthropological work with those affected by displacement suggests that a great deal is to be gained empirically, analytically and practically from deploying anthropological insights and understandings (Hirschon 1989, Loizos 1982). This contribution seeks to reflect on the epistemological possibilities associated with "livelihoods research" and asks whether the policy frameworks of host governments in refugee settings may be regarded as reliant on functional ignorance about the projects and aspirations of refugees as much as on a clear evidence base?

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the individuals not previously involved in humanitarian work responding to the refugee situation in Finland 2015 – 2017 outside the state response mechanism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will look into the emergence of new civil society actors in Finland within the context of the European refugee crisis 2015 – 2017 and examine the motivating factors for individuals not previously involved in humanitarian work to intervene. In this paper I map out the different groups which emerged during the crisis and look more closely to one of these groups, Startup Refugees.

More specifically, my interest lies on to what extent the actions of these new actors were driven by a reaction to a perceived crisis and assumed or actual inefficiencies in the existing, traditional response mechanisms and the agencies that deliver them, and how this attitude changed over time. This paper will not only concentrate on individual motivational factors but also takes into consideration other contributing factors for the individuals to intervene – be they social, political, lifestyle and livelihood factors, social networks, or cultural and institutional dispositions. Finally, this paper will discuss how these new actors can be seen as challenging the state’s role in responding to the situation and thus reconfiguring the state-civil society relationship.

It can be argued that the appearance of these new actors represents a redefining of civil society and its relationship with the state. As civil society will arguably have an increasingly important role in responding to future refugee situations, this subject should be further studied. By resourcing these actors sufficiently and integrating them to a broader response where possible the government as well as the NGO actors can ensure the response is inclusive and efficient and takes into account the voices of both refugees and the host community members. To support this process, it is important to understand the motivating factors and self-understandings of these individuals and groups assisting the refugees.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores politically complex location of the Indian borderlands.It attempts to explore the lived realities of Pak-Hindu refugees. Their exact status is debatable given the shared history of India and Pakistan, of being unified pre 1947 and of conflict that followed(1965,1971 Indo-Pak war)

Paper long abstract:

The paper will present the ethnography conducted at the borderlands as transition zones and subsequently as social spaces to understand them better as lived and locally imagined areas. This is done from the perspective of the conflict and subsequent partition of India that led to the biggest displacement in human history in 1947. While understanding this crisis where almost 14 million people got displaced, an anthropological entry point into its contemporary relevance and implication is highlighted. The paper contains the critical case of my ethnographic study conducted in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, to understand the implications of this forced displacement which affects the socio-political fabric and policies till date. It is significant that the overarching presence of state and its agencies present a securitised border without highlighting people's everyday realities and challenges. Discussing the porosity of the borders and its historical context has been given importance to keep the position of the refugee central in the humanitarian crisis argument. This enables us to understand the cultural commonalities and variations that are vital to learn about the immigrant or refugee experience owing to their border location. Pak-Hindus and their idea of homeland then presents a complex and layered socio-cultural topography that once was part of undivided India and in contemporary times has immense geopolitical implications. The paper thus tries to contest the dominant discourse and present a people's history along with questioning policies of the government related to people's flow across South Asian borders as migrants, refugees or simply as displaced persons

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the relationship between sexuality and genocide, arguing that normative understandings of the former govern the form of the latter. This is something which has been un-noticed as of yet, with sexuality only seen to be relevant where homosexuals have been directly targeted.

Paper long abstract:

The study of genocide is often technocratic, definitional and based upon the ranking of death tolls in different murderous events. Furthermore, even when sexuality and gender are considered to be relevant to the study of genocide, this analysis is often restricted to the study of individuals who are targeted due to the identity category that they are perceived to belong to (e.g. women/men/homosexuals). Drawing implicitly upon feminist genocide scholarship which sees gender as a broad system of logic, and explicitly upon queer theories of international relations, this paper makes the case that all instances of genocide are (hetero)sexual. Inspired by Foucault's writings on the discursive construction of sexuality (1978) and Butler's notion of the heterosexual matrix (1990), it is argued that the proliferation of genocidal conduct in the Rohingya Genocide was premised upon the existence of heteronormative subject positions. These subject positions were deployed within the popular imaginary, rendering the genocide intelligible and agreeable within the broader Burmese body-politic. Not only did these subject positions enable the proliferation of genocidal conduct; they were themselves reinforced by the performance of this conduct, highlighting the inherently heteronormative character of genocide. As such, this paper seeks to broadly demonstrate the necessity of studying the relationship between sexuality and genocide, and specifically to show how the Rohingya Genocide constituted an epistemic context in which discourses of sexuality and genocidal conduct are co-constitutive. The source text for this paper's analysis is the Human Rights Council's Report of the independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar (2018).

Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper, based on ethnographic analysis of the aid sector in post-earthquake Haiti between 2011 and 2018, will take international humanitarians at the heart of the analysis and unravel their intimate relationalities to anthropologists.

Paper long abstract:

In 2016, more than 663,000 people worked for the United Nations, the International Red Cross, and major international non-governmental organizations on an international assignment in countries of humanitarian and development intervention. Those "mobile professionals" (Fechter/Walsh 2010) inhabiting "aidland" (Apthorpe 2011), constituting a transnational network of privileged work migrants, are often driven by a common set of values, a particular perspective on modernity (Stirrat 2000) and share similar backgrounds, education and trajectories (Goetze 2017).

Studies on the aid system in Haiti - a case in point considering the use of Haiti as a laboratory for intervention (Müller/Steinke 2018) - rarely focus on the ones steering the interventions as significant factors of analysis. Especially anthropologists often share time, space, background and a certain historicity with them. The paper, based on ethnographic analysis of the aid sector in post-earthquake Haiti between 2011 and 2018, argues that the anthropological neglect of the role of the "personal" (Fechter 2012) in those interventions is rooted in an incomplete reflexive turn in anthropology. Rather than solely inquiring the "otherness" of humanitarian beneficiaries, anthropologists should consider including the roots of "sameness" to humanitarian practitioners into their analysis, as the discipline as a whole is intimately related to colonial, developmentalist and humanitarian encounters. However, little ethnographic attention is given to the interveners, in terms of a "community of practice" (Autesserre 2014) as much as on their individual characteristics (Sending 2017) and how both factors influence the "assemblages of intervention" (Doucet 2106) affecting the fate of Haiti.