Class, Contention, and a World in Motion
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Class, Contention, and a World in Motion

Winnie Lem, Pauline Gardiner Barber, Winnie Lem, Pauline Gardiner Barber

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Class, Contention, and a World in Motion

Winnie Lem, Pauline Gardiner Barber, Winnie Lem, Pauline Gardiner Barber

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Prevailing scholarship on migration tends to present migrants as the objects of history, subjected to abstract global forces or to concrete forms of regulation imposed by state and supra state organizations. In this volume, by contrast, the focus is on migrants as the subjects of history who not only react but also act to engage with and transform their worlds. Using ethnographic examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, contributors question how and why particular forms of political struggle and collective action may, or indeed may not, be carried forward in the context of geographic and social border crossings. In doing so, they bring the dynamic relationship between class, gender, and culture to the forefront in each distinctive migration setting.

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Year
2010
ISBN
9781845458409

Part I

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Configurations of Class

— Chapter 1 —

LIVELIHOOD AND AFGHAN REFUGEE WORKERS IN IRAN

Wenona Giles
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In many parts of the world today, refugees work illegally in vulnerable types of jobs that pay low wages. Tied to specific locations for extended periods, they are among the most precarious workers globally. It is difficult to say which group—those within refugee camps or without—is worse off. Both groups of refugees confront continuing processes of imperialism and “empirism” manifest in the geopolitics of their home and “host” countries. However, the geopolitical and spatial separation that exists in the world today conceals the fact that many refugees are also workers. The relationship between forced exile and the international organization of labor relations reveals itself more clearly, when we link so-called refugee issues to globalization. This approach also allows for an exploration of class inflexions on global geopolitical arrangements, specifically those related to industrial militarism and international corporate capital. It is important to state herein my agreement with Inderpal Grewal (2005: 169), Liisa Malkki (1995), and others concerning the ways in which a “refugee crisis” cloaks or mystifies the more fundamental crises generated by global forms of industrial militarism.
Globalization is described in a variety of ways.1 Cindi Katz's definition is among the most relevant for this essay. She includes several phenomena in her definition that are important to my focus on class and livelihood: labor, uneven development, and spatial scales. Katz writes: “Globalization has been the signature dish of capitalism—a system of social relations of production and reproduction nourished by uneven development across a range of spatial scales from the local or regional to the national or supranational” (2001: 1213). Globalization and its associated politico-economic wars have affected some groups of people more negatively than others. Those who have been in long-term exile situations, inside and outside of camps, in poor regions of the world are among the more seriously affected by these militarized conflicts. And, as Henk Overbeek points out, the political and the economic coincide in the refugee (1995: 27): “Political violence is often triggered by worsening economic conditions, and economic hardship often results from the exercise of repressive political power, thus relegating the distinction between the political and economic migrant, or between the forced and the voluntary migrant to the realm of ideology and manipulation.” Zygmunt Bauman's “far-away locals” (1998: 76) are those who are deprived, degraded, and feared in a globalized world in which “mobility is the main stratifying factor” (2). He argues that the denial of mobility—of mass migration—to the poor majority of the world, to places where food and livelihood may be more plentiful, is an essential part of globalization. Paradoxically, corporate globalizers must deny freedom of movement to the majority of the world's population, while eulogizing mobility “as the topmost achievement of the globalizing world” (76). In chapter 3 of this volume Josiah Heyman argues that while “the pattern of perils in mobility affects a wider range of crucial resources and relationships,” mobility poses great risk for the undocumented workers' lives that he explores. The travel of immigrants and refugees is described by Bauman as surreptitious, dangerous, and often “illegal” travel, through “the walls built of immigration controls, of residence laws,” etc. (1998: 89). The spatial and bureaucratic alienation of refugees is one side of Janus-faced globalization; the other side is the way the global resonates with the local.
Forced migrations generate complex social relations. For example, in many countries those defined as refugees have formerly been migrant or temporary workers from neighboring regions and these earlier migrations were marked by class, gender, and ethnic relations that may or may not spill over to periods of forced migration. A series of wars marks some countries (e.g. Afghanistan, Lebanon, the region of the former Yugoslavia), each conflict expelling different ethnic and class groups from their homes. Thus definitions and descriptions of forced migrants defy the substitution of a homogeneous refugee victim discourse with that of a unitary definition of class. For example, educated, middle-class refugees often find their lives (and class relationships) further downgraded because of shifts in policy and attitudes toward refugees in the country of exile.
Until recently the principal focus of forced migration research has mainly pertained to issues concerning recognition and representation, particularly as these relate to legal status and cultural identity. Not enough attention has been paid to redistribution and thus also to class. This chapter focuses on class, work, and livelihood among refugees, cognizant that the other two realms of research (i.e. recognition and representation) are also important. The case of long-term refugee situations constitutes the main focus of this essay; in particular, the situation of Afghan refugees in Iran provides an anchor for my theoretical approach. Afghans in Iran present a challenging circumstance, due not only to the diverse nature of their migrations, which include seasonal work-related migrants, religious exiles, and forced migrants. In addition, government policies concerning these several migrant groups overlap, as do their everyday livelihood strategies. Thus Overbeek's argument above, regarding political and economic migration, applies equally to the case of Afghan refugees in Iran, wherein the situation of “refugees” is often indistinguishable from other types of migrants who also lack rights.

Targets of Anguish

The size of the group broadly defined as refugees has increased rapidly as anguish over personal safety and security has intensified, leading up to and following 9/11. Bauman argues, “Refugees have become
the epitome of that extraterritoriality in which the roots of the present-day precariousness of the human condition—first on the list of present-day human fears and anxieties—are sunk” (2002: 85). The continuing expansion of this extraterritorial group is related to the production of social fear. As it becomes increasingly difficult for those fleeing violence and other disasters to access asylum in the West, and in the continued absence of a political strategy (84)—short of all-out invasion and war—to assist these “foreigners,” refugees have become a ready target of Western fear.
There are now significant numbers of refugees (as defined by the United Nations) and internally displaced populations living in long-term refugee situations and eking out bare livelihoods in the world today. At the end of 2008, 8.5 million worldwide had been sequestered for ten years or more in long-term refugee situations (i.e., in refugee camps or beyond; USCRI 2009a). This is 63 percent of the 2008 global refugee population of 13.5 million (USCRI 2009b). These refugees fall under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention definition. In addition, there are now 25 million people who are defined as internally displaced (IDPs), who have been ousted from their homes and local communities due to civil wars, but who remain within their home country borders.2 These refugees and IDPs are among the most insecure people in the world today. There are now thirty-three so-called protracted refugee situations3 in the world (exile of five or more years) according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR; Campbell 2006) and these are “growing in number and lasting longer without being resolved” (Loescher and Milner 2005: 154).
The location of the majority of refugees in poorer regions of the world demonstrates the linkage between the global economics of wealth and a Western culture of fear. This global space of wealth and fear is reflected in the dialectical relationship between uneven development and the locality of refugee-like situations. Uneven development on a global scale is a result of imperial and neo-imperial relations of power, combined with the more recent expansion of “international trade in goods and services based on the concept of ‘comparative advantage’” (Ellwood 2002: 14–15). Ensuing inequalities have left some regions and peoples of the world exposed to impoverishment. Poverty exacerbates conditions of forced migration and exile, no matter which economic class, ethnic group, or gender is involved.
This is not a new argument but the depth and persistence of this relationship bears revisiting. Even the UN has pointed out that less-developed countries are both the major source and destination of refugees: 86 percent of refugees originated in these areas and 72 percent of the world's refugees are provided with asylum in these regions (UNHCR 2002: 24–25). Countries in the West admit a minority of the world's refugees and would like to keep it that way. For example, in 2008 Canada accepted 10,804 people who were defined as “bona fide” refugees from abroad and these were among the almost 14 million defined as “in need of protection” at that time, worldwide (this latter figure does not include internally displaced populations; USCRI 2009c, USCRI 2009b). The care of refugees in developing regions “implies a significant additional cost to an already fragile economy” in most cases (UNHCR 2002: 65). The economic effects of hosting refugees (numbers of refugees in relation to economic resources) “are mostly felt in Africa”—in particular, Sierra Leone, DR Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Eritrea. Pakistan, Syria, and Iran are among the principal countries outside Africa where “the economic impact of refugees on the local economy is significant” (UNHCR 2002: 65; USCRI 2008: 29). This separation—both geographical and bureaucratic—between wealthy, industrialized countries and those pushed into exile by war, development-induced displacement,4 and environmental disasters may increase into the future with the establishment of new “zones of protection” (Isin and Rygiel 2007; Hyndman and Giles forthcoming 2010). Two types of zones have been promoted by the European Commission, Denmark, the Netherlands (Betts and Milner 2006), and Australia (Hyndman and Mountz 2008): third country processing centers (e.g., Eastern Europe) and regional protection areas, normally close to countries of refugees' origins (e.g., the Great Lakes region of Africa; Hyndman and Giles forthcoming).
I will address the matter of Afghans in Iran below—suffice it to say here that Iran has its own serious problems related to high unemployment and poverty,5 as well as other well-known geopolitical struggles with the West. Despite this socioeconomic situation, Iran accepted the third largest number of refugees in the world in 2006 and 20076—mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq (USCRI 2007; USCRI 2008: 29). In 2004 Iran was described as the main asylum country in the world by the World Food Program (WFP)—accounting for 11 percent of all those under the UNHCR's mandate. By far, the largest group of exiles in Iran is Afghans. In 2007 there were 915,000 registered Afghans and an estimated 1 million unregistered Afghans living in Iran (Ashrafi 2007: 1).
The large number of stateless people living in exile outside their countries of origin for long periods of time and the fact of their location in poor regions of the world are interrelated global phenomena that are evocative of Bauman's description of prisons as sites of “forcible perpetuation of estrangement” (1998: 106). Today, solitary confinement in prisons—and he gives the example of Pelican Bay Prison in the US—means that it doesn't matter what inmates do in their cells (because they do little beyond eating and defecating; 108). “What does matter is that they stay there” (113; emphasis in original). Many long-term refugee situations are extreme sites of spatial confinement that immobilize and estrange the other, isolating them from productive, mobile lives. What is important to wealthier regions of the world is that the great majority of refugees stay where they are.

Vicious Circles: Politics, Economics, and Status

By way of providing a theoretical context, I refer to research by Nancy Fraser regarding globalization and justice. Her work is helpful in thinking through a methodology for the study of the refugee situation in the world today. Fraser argues that there are three intertwined dimensions that are of concern in social justice claims: redistribution, recognition, and representation. She writes: “Efforts to overcome injustice cannot, except in rare cases, address themselves to just one dimension. Rather struggles against maldistribution and misrecognition cannot succeed unless they are joined with struggles against misrepresentation—and vice versa. Where one puts the emphasis, of course, is both a tactical and a strategic decision” (2005: 79). Following Fraser, I am arguing for a methodology in which all three—recognition, representation, and redistribution—inform one another in research and policy on refugees. What is missing in refugee research and policy perspectives, in any significant way today, is attention to redistribution, which includes, for example, mobile access to productive, protected, and so-called legal forms of work, wages, and self-support. Let me first define what I mean by these three areas as they pertain to refugees and forced migrants and thus their importance to my study of refugees as a workers.
To date, legal and cultural recognition has played a major role in research and policy analysis, as well as in the development of remedies to misrecognition or status subordination (Fraser 2000: 113). Fraser refers to a “status model” of recognition whereby injustice is redressed via “a politics aimed at overcoming subordination” toward full membership in the society in which one lives (113). Refugees easily fit Fraser's definition of a misrecognized group, i.e., those who have been “denied the status of a full partner in social interaction, as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute one as comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem” (113–114). The rectification of the subordinate status of refugees has been a principal goal of national and international humanitarian and human rights instruments, interventions, and policies. Exclusion, stigmatization, and violent policing practices as these pertain to a particular group are examples of the denial of recognition (114). Sequestration to refugee camps, lack of access to education or livelihood, and control of mobility and travel are some examples of misrecognition that pertain to many stateless extraterritorial groups. The goal of the status model of recognition is always “reciprocal recognition and status equality” (114). The extent to which these are achievable goals is dependent on possibilities and developments around refugee representation and economic redistribution. A focus solely on recognition tends to treat refugees as passive recipients of remedies and is often linked to homogenous definitions of refugees as victims.
The nature of the refugee situation in which people lose access to their original citizenship and experience exclusion from any political community has led to questions and research about representation. Fraser describes this as the political dimension of justice, which concerns the existence of space to express “their claims and adjudicate their disputes” (2005: 75). For refugees this space is extremely delimited, particularly so if they are located in refugee camps, but also when they are living outside of camps as part of a precarious workforce. The issue of the “voice” of refugees has been raised in research and policy on refugees; i.e., where can refugees safely air their concerns; who represents refugees; are some groups of refugees completely denied the possibility of expressing their rights? In her discussion of representation, Fraser refers to the extreme case of those who are “excluded from membership in any political community
. Deprived of the possibility of authoring first-order claims, they become non-persons with respect to justice” (77). This definition certainly seems to “fit” the situation of most long-term refugees. However, even in totalitarian situations, some refugees manage to find spaces of political protest, whether covert and therefore important, but less effective, or on more public terrain. Despite ever-diminishing margins of freedom, is it expectations of a better future that encourage resistance to exploitation among some refugees (as per Susana Narotzky's discussion of Bourdieu's habitus in chapter 6). Narotzky argues that the more uncertainty in people's lives, the less likely they will be able to orient themselves toward future expectations, as in the cases of women migratory workers in Spain that she explores. In the case of refugees who resist, are their expectations linked to hopeful lingering memories from past lives or to the dire sequestered certainty of their present lives?
Consider, for example, the plight of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. Sudanese refugees have been relocating to Egypt for almost two decades (during the nineteen-year civil war in Sudan). Media reports describe large numbers of Sudanese refugees who have been living in exile in Cairo and demonstrating for the right to resettle elsewhere than Egypt and Sudan. Egypt opposes any integration of refugees into Egypt and considers Sudanese and other refugees to be temporarily located within its borders. On 30 December 2005, hundreds of Sudanese were attacked by Egyptian police after protesting for months that the UNHCR had refused to hear their cases for third country resettlement. They do not want to return to Sudan where they believe that they will face violence, poverty, or both. Sudanese make up the largest refugee group in Egypt. The UNHCR regards Suda...

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