Refugia

Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement

Robin Cohen, Nicholas Van Hear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429892547
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis and innovative social theory, the authors address one of the biggest dilemmas of our age – how to solve the problems arising from mass displacement. As early versions of the solution proposed by Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear filtered out, their vision of a new, networked, transnational archipelago, called Refugia, was immediately denounced or met with scepticism by established refugee scholars. Others were more intrigued, more open-minded, or perhaps just holding their fire until this book was finally published. As it at least has the virtue of originality, why not judge the proposal for yourself? Read it and craft your own critique. The authors have initiated an openly pro-refugee vision that all can help to shape. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to scholars, students, practitioners and an informed public ready to engage with this pressing issue.

1

INTRODUCTION

Mass displacement is one of the most pressing global issues of our time. Many more people are being driven from their homes: more than 70 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced by the end of 2018, including nearly 26 million refugees (over half of whom were under 18), 41 million internally displaced people, and 3.5 million asylum seekers (UNHCR 2019). The overall figure has been on an upward trend for most of the last decade or more. A large number of migrants and refugees are dying en route to safety each year – over 5,000 people perished trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2016 alone. Several thousand Rohingya were killed when nearly a million of them fled Myanmar by land or sea. Meanwhile, more than 3.7 million people have fled from Venezuela, the majority of whom are considered to need international protection. Evidence that displaced peoples’ needs are being met is thin on the ground: only 92,400 refugees were resettled in 2018 (UNHCR 2019). The unambiguous message of these figures is testimony in itself to the scale of the problem of mass displacement. In addition to the bald statistical indictment of how poorly the global community is dealing with the issue, we can add three further comments:

•  Few have confidence that the three conventional ‘durable solutions’ (local integration, resettlement, and return) offered by the refugee agencies can address the challenge on the scale needed. There are serious limits and constraints – not least economic, ecological, institutional, and political – that militate against realization of these ‘durable solutions’

•  Those institutions and sections of civil society that support tolerant attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers, respect for humanitarian rights, law and principles, and internationalism are under fierce attack from right-wing and populist forces in many countries

•  While many governments have pulled back from refugee-friendly policies, some have gone a step further in openly abrogating their legal obligations. For example, in January 2018, the European Union referred three of its member states to the European Court of Justice for refusing to process asylum applications. The Czech Republic had accepted only 12 of the 2,000 asylum seekers it had been assigned, while Hungary and Poland had processed none at all. In September 2017, President Trump slashed by over half, the number of planned refugee admissions to the US.

Jeff Crisp (2018) has pointed to another looming crisis – funding. By April 2018, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had received only US$2.3 billion of the US$8.2 billion it estimated it needed for its annual work. Shortly after, Trump’s administration announced massive cuts to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which supports five million Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, describing it as an ‘irredeemably flawed operation’. As the US contribution is 40 per cent of the total, cuts to the main UNRWA budget will have a devastating effect. As Crisp (2018) notes, the funding crisis has thrown the UNHCR at large into the arms of the EU and its member states, who have ‘have shown little hesitation in violating the international refugee laws they have signed in their desperation to seal Europe’s borders’.

In short, it has become increasingly evident that the international institutional architecture set up to address mass displacement and find solutions for it is simply unequal to the task at hand. The refugee and migration summits in the US in September 2016 rounded off no fewer than seven major international meetings convened in that year to provide long-term solutions to the refugee and migrant crisis. Indeed, 2016 was dubbed ‘the Year of Summits’. Perhaps the most ambitious plan emerging from this series of international meetings was the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, adopted in September 2016. This involved an undertaking to work towards ‘Global Compacts’ for refugees and for safe, orderly, and regular migration, eventually agreed at the end of 2018. However, with swingeing UN budget cuts as a result of President Trump’s displeasure with the body, it is difficult to see much practical result emerging from this series of summits and the Global Compacts. The US has formally renounced its commitment to the UN-led Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, while Austria, Australia, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland did not show up to the conference in Morocco finalizing the agreement and most are unlikely to sign it.

The word ‘failure’ is a harsh one and many of those with whom we interact insist that it remains important to defend international law (particularly the 1951 Refugee Convention and associated protocols designed to protect refugees), to press states and international organizations to take their moral and legal obligations seriously and, through the force of popular mobilization, turn the tide of anti-migrant and anti-refugee public opinion. We wholeheartedly concur, but advance two additional, but essential, arguments. The first is a simple entreaty – ‘not only, but also’. Carrying on doing what we (the international community and those who wish to support refugees) have been doing since 1945 is a worthy aim, but not enough. Given the scale of the problem, we need to do more, much more. We need to reach for imaginative, alternative, and supplementary solutions. The second argument is that the ‘we’ has to be extended well beyond the circle of progressive activists, international agencies, humanitarian organizations, and sympathetic officials, to refugees themselves, seeing them as agents and empowering ‘them’ to act on their own behalf, with an emboldened sense of identity and purpose. Although the agentic refugee has now become a frequent evocation in theory and policy, practice lags far behind. The old ‘we’ needs to move beyond mere paternalism and virtue signalling to concrete acts of solidarity.

The authors of this book are not alone in suggesting that a radical rethinking of how to address the problem of mass displacement is now necessary. This book both evaluates current alternative proposals and sets outs our own ideas. Our proposal has been projected into an imagined future in the preface that opens this book. In brief, our plan is to encourage the formation of a new entity, which we designate ‘Refugia’. Refugia is not a state, nor a conventional international organization, but combines elements of both. Refugia is not based in a single territory, rather it comprises hundreds of sites or locales, strung out along a networked archipelago. (These sites can be camps, agricultural settlements, safe zones, hostels, or neighbourhoods – wherever displacees have congregated or been gathered.) Refugia is governed highly democratically. If you have been displaced, you can sign up. You can join freely and leave freely. Through digital means, Refugians will participate in democratic elections and referenda. They will draw up demands, run campaigns, and advance legal claims. Refugians will have the capacity to press for improvements to their lives and gain access to resources they require. Friends of Refugia (‘solidarians’) will be able to offer support and entitlements and engage in shared initiatives with Refugians.

All this is unconventional and difficult to take in at one gulp, so we need to proceed sip by sip. In Chapter 2, we explain how new and reworked political and social theory – about the state, liquidity, identity formation, deterritorialization, homemaking, the commons, and utopianism – can shift our mind-sets away from taken-for-granted assumptions about the global political order and the persistent, but misguided assumption that only nation-states matter.

As mentioned, others have suggested that radical or ‘lateral’ thinking to address the issue of mass displacement needs to be deployed. Some of this new thinking emanates from within the international organizations supporting refugees, some comes from concerned academics, and a few proposals originate from concerned mavens who have drawn on their expertise and experience. In Chapter 3, the most prominent alternative schemes and visions are considered, including those emanating from scholars with long-held expertise, and more unconventional interventions – proposing a ‘refugee nation’, ‘refugee islands’, ‘refugee/sanctuary cities’, or wholly new social formations.

We argue that however radical our own proposal may appear, there are precedents and current examples of self-organization by refugees that prefigure and exemplify the possibility and potential of Refugia (Chapter 4). Some of the experiments in self-organization have been halting and insufficient, but, we argue, there is still something we can learn from prior attempts at homemaking and community building.

Having reviewed other ideas and practices, we move, in Chapter 5, to the level of praxis, seeking to apply, realize, and operationalize our vision of Refugia. We show how ethnic and religious differences can be mitigated, how relationships with surrounding host states can be negotiated, and how political representation and democratic choices can be maximized. We also describe how the economy and security of each refugium can be optimized. Finally, we spell out how the issue of a special smart card/app/chip, designated a Sesame Pass, might work in practice. We include a discussion about the potential and limitations of block chain technology to animate some of the objectives of Refugia.

Our final chapter summarizes the argument, engages with some of our critics, and seeks to persuade readers that our proposal to build a transnational polity, Refugia, is an attainable way forward.

VIGNETTE (2030)

The gong sounds at the Janat Refugium (Registered No. 920/2022), Somewhereland in North Africa

The gong sounded.

‘I declare the weekly agora of Janat open’, said the new presiding officer. ‘As we have decided in earlier meetings the agora will finish when the gong sounds in one and half hours, with all unfinished business to go to the next meeting.’

The agora was held in the old market square, still filled with the impressive cut stones of the Cyrene period. Along the edge, xeric pines had doggedly survived with one tall specimen dominating the centre, where most of the discussion took place.

The agora had adapted an old Swahili proverb to describe their vibrant democracy: ‘Fugians sit under the tree and talk until they agree’.

At first, it was routine business. The wells were fine, but the desalination filters were again clogging up with salt. It was agreed to ask the Janat science cluster to investigate using the older, but more reliable, ceramic models. Meanwhile two more volunteers for filter cleaning were needed – 20 labour points (creds) per day would be added to each worker’s Sesame account.

Two young members shyly put their hands up. ‘We will offer,’ they said. Everyone could see they were in love and no doubt they thought they could find a little privacy at the desalination plant. They’d soon find out it isn’t such great fun – the salt is corrosive and sometimes a flake would get in their eyes.

The next business was more controversial. The refugium’s Capacity Rating (CR) was 1,400 people, including all children. The attendees decided to confirm the CR until such time as fresh water supplies could be significantly boosted.

This left places for just 25 people and suddenly the meeting became heated. Ten places were quickly assigned to pregnant women already in Janat, but ‘sponsors’ then passionately argued for their nominees.

Patrice spoke first: ‘My cousin has been tortured in her country.’ He tapped the Sesame chip in his arm and the gruesome photos appeared as holograms. Five more, with her family. Other deserving cases followed, and some in the agora had tears in their eyes, remembering the sufferings they had endured.

Finally, they considered the cases of two solidarians, Ebba and Lars. They had been there in the bad old days pulling displaced people from the sea when the people smugglers had cut them adrift. Now they offered legal and social work services in Arabic and English. Their applications to join Janat as full members were greeted enthusiastically. This was both a popular and well-timed decision, as a few seconds later the gong sounded.

Everyone dispersed, talking softly, the turpentine smell of the pine lingering.

2

THINKING DIFFERENTLY

Political and social theory

It is hard to think beyond our taken-for-granted assumptions. For many people, states, or more elusively, ‘nation-states’ define the political order of the world. However, we submit that it is important to focus on the other structures in which power is organized. Again, it is often thought that social identities inhere in national identities. Certainly, we may be Malians, Italians, Australians, or Sri Lankans. However, is that all we are? Or are identities also now formed in more complex, ‘liquid’ ways, not predicated on national affinities? Do polities and other social formations have to be bounded by definite territorial frontiers? Alternatively, in a digital age, can we imagine a new kind of polis, a set of communities located in multiple spaces linked through electronic means? The imagined world of nation-states privileges sedentary norms and territories, but the world is increasingly on the move. Should we be thinking of more loosely defined spaces like archipelagos or a ‘mobile commons’? Should homemaking, often involving shifts in gender relations, be understood not as permanent settlement, but as a contingent, iterative process undertaken many times over as people move from pillar to post? Again, given the extent and increase of mass displacement, should we be seeking fresh solutions and new ways of understanding how to organize societies? For this to happen, we need ‘utopian thinking’, an expression which, we argue below, needs to be liberated from derogatory common-sense understandings and used in a much more analytical and methodological way. We address these questions in turn below.

Beyond the nation-state

In mid-2019, the United Nations (UN) recognized 193 states. This bare statement needs immediate qualification. Two states, the Holy See and the State of Palestine, only have observer-state status at the UN. Some member states do not recognize all members of the UN; certain states not recognized by the UN are recognized by some states; and two non-UN-states are only recognized by other non-UN-recognized states. And Somaliland is recognized by no one but itself. Such complications are easily dismissed as mere idiosyncrasies. However, we can begin to intuit that perhaps states are not quite as intrinsic to the natural order as is commonly supposed. For a start, they are quite recent inventions. Historians date the formal creation of states to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia marking the end of European wars of religion, but nearly three-quarters of the UN members came into existence after the Second World War. They are grossly uneven in wealth and power, and the Gross National Products (GNPs) of many states are lower than the valuations of the top band of global corporations.

When it comes to ‘nation-states’, the picture gets murkier. Are all states made up of only one nation? Clearly not, as (to confine ourselves for the moment to Europe) the Bretons, Catalans, Scots, and Corsicans forcibly remind us of from time to time. The proliferation of studies on multiculturalism, diversity, ethnicity, and nationalism is a clear indicator that the congruence or conjunction of state, nation, social identity, and territory is highly problematic. Despite this, many social scientists stumble into the trap of what Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) call ‘methodological nationalism’, a naïve assumption that only nation-states matter as units of analysis. To understand our idea of Refugia, methodological nationalism has to be rejected tout court. The nation-state is merely an ideological and political project, never fully realized and always contested.

A richer starting point is to assume that nation-states are but one ‘power container’ among many, what Giddens (1985: 13) termed ‘circumscribed arenas for the generation of administrative power’. But there are other containers, other arenas, and other forms of power. To take three obvious examples, outside and often above the state are global corporations, global religions, and even multiply located wealthy individuals:

• The turn of the year 2009/2010 marked the moment when, of the 120 most important economic units in the world, fewer were nation-states (59) than global corporations (61) (Cohen and Kennedy 2013: 181–4). Is it any wonder that many powerful corporations evade tax, suborn politicians, and mock the sovereignty of nation-states by legal manoeuvres and accounting tricks?

• Global religions compete for spiritual adherents, but they have massive political influence too, and, not incidentally, are also substantial economic units. The Catholic Church alone owns 177 million acres worldwide (Cahill 2006), a clutch of non-contiguous territories that easily exceeds the size of mainland France.

• Oxfam calculated that by 2018, the world’s 42 richest people commanded the same wealth as ...