RIGHTS, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DIVERSITY

Refugees



Refugees

Part One

The concept of a refugee is an inherently geographical one, a barometer of political instability and the embodiment of forced migration. In current usage, the term has two main meanings; one is colloquial and often political, while the other is legal. In the wake of the humanitarian disaster that emerged after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States in August 2005, the media called those Americans huddled on the rooftops of their homes awaiting help and people who had sought shelter in the local sports stadium “refugees.” Many refused the term, saying that they did not want to be racialized as poor, African, or other. Yet others defended the term as appropriate, saying that the Bush administration was neither able nor willing to assist and protect its own citizens in this time of need (Carpenter, 2007, pp. 96-105).

In both cases, the term was politicized for specific reasons, yet in legal terms, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina were not legal refugees but rather internally displaced persons. Likewise, references are made to “environmental refugees” affected by global warming or natural disasters.

Escape from violence is one of the oldest motivations for people to migrate. Within the modern world of sovereign territorial nation-states, various kinds of forced migrants are captured by the category of “refugees.” The standard definition is given in Article 1 of the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted by the United Nations in 1951, according to which a refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion is forced to migrate involuntarily across an international boundary and remain outside his country of nationality (Craig, 2008, pp. 45-65).

While this (legal) categorization of refugees might obscure similarities with involuntary migrants who seek refuge from interstate or civil wars, humanitarian crises, climate catastrophes, or economic shortage, it seems useful to reserve the term for those who, fleeing direct or indirect violence of their own state, seek refuge within another state. Religion is intimately related to the refugees' experiences of flight, migration, and integration. Although largely understudied within the interdisciplinary field of refugee studies, religion is not only a root cause of flight, but as discussed in the following sections, it also shapes social networks and identity formation during flight, resettlement, and repatriation. In addition, religion has played a crucial role within the emerging international refugee protection regime (Dwyer, 2008, pp.36-51).

The legal meaning of refugee is more straightforward; it is rooted in the Westphalian state system in which citizens, or nationals, belong to sovereign states that provide protection to them. Refugees are seen, then, as a kind of aberration to these norms of statehood. The Protestant Huguenots who fled France under the rule of Louis XIV in 1685 are thought to be the first modern refugees. The French king revoked protection for the Huguenots to worship their religion without persecution from the state, which ...