YorkSpace

YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.

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Recent Submissions

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    The Weight of What We Carry: Shame as Survival in Two Histories of Oppression
    (2025-03-21) Akbari, Donna
    This essay argues that in Daya Pawar’s Baluta and Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman, shame is not just a residue of oppression but an inherited survival technology. Across caste and indenture, it organizes speech, desire, kinship, and mobility while acting as strategic quiet that protects the vulnerable. Through close readings, it pairs Pawar’s internalized caste shame with Bahadur’s reclamation of “silence” as intentional protection. Narrating shame—via autobiography and archival recovery—converts stigma into testimony, proposing “learned shame” as a transhistorical tool repurposed into resistance.
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    Hope From Within: Exploring Indigenous Resilience in Patti LaBoucane-Beson’s The Outside Circle and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves
    (2025-03-04) De Castro, David
    "The aim of this essay is to compare Patti LaBoucane-Benson's The Outside Circle (2015) and Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (2017) in the context of Indigenous resilience to showcase how the rediscovery of an interconnected Indigenous identity and the revival of spiritual traditions can become active modes of resistance and transformation. By observing the recurring symbolism of a web and the repetition of smudging that occur within both novels, I examine how the practice of traditional Indigenous ways of knowing and being can become a powerful means of hope for Indigenous peoples to heal integrational wounds and resist colonial erasure."
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    Refugee Review: Re-conceptualizing Refugees and Forced Migration in the 21st Century
    (Emerging Scholars and Practitioners on Migration Issues (ESPMI) Network, 2015-06) Molnar, Petra; Wheeler, Brittany Lauren
    Human beings have been migrating for millennia; “migration is in..[our] DNA,” as Francois Crepeau eloquently stated. However, with persistent migration flows come new and troubling responses that lack flexibility and awareness of contemporary reality. The sealing of borders, tightening of security measures, and perhaps most troublingly, the perpetuation of rigid categories of refugee protection, exacerbate the many abuses perpetrated against migrants today, and lend little to solutions that might bring forward resolution for all parties. Rigid categories of asylum obfuscate the nuanced experiences and motivations of migrants and static categories—refugee, economic migrant, asylum seeker, smuggler, and irregular migrant—cloud the diversification of push and pull factors of migration. The needs for protection continue to be complex, and they often fall outside of established categories in international instruments and jurisprudence used to determine who can and cannot access rights inherent to being designated a refugee. In an era of increasing environmental migration, extraterritorialization, and the ever pressing need for durable solutions all across the globe, categories and policies that concretize migrants into problematic hierarchies of protection and exclusion must be re-conceptualized. For these reasons and many others, we have chosen to focus this edition of Refugee Review on the worthy topic of the re-conceptualization of forced migration and refugees in the 21st century. The journal encompasses many themes that can contribute to the places we can look in order to re-conceptualize forced migration and refugeehood: environmental displacement, citizenship and integration, international law conventions accessions and exceptions, protracted situations of displacement or lack of access to services once settled, statelessness, seaborne migration and state response, domestic and international policy, the recognition of agency, the importance of education, and ignorance of state, regional and ethnic histories. The policies of the nation state emerge in a number of papers, whether in Miriam Aced and Anwesha Ghosh’s piece concerning de jure and de facto statelessness as they exist for communities in Jordan and India, or Sreya Sen’s related depiction of the reasons India is unlikely to accede to the 1951 Refugee Convention in the future. The theme of non-traditional receiving countries or countries with counter-narratives to their own long-term host status can be found in both Kelsey P. Norman’s close look at Egypt’s engagement with migrants and refugees as well as in Sabine Lehr’s exploration of long-term anti-immigration discourse in Germany. Challenges within the Canadian state in particular are reflected on in Lucia Frecha’s analysis of the potential for citizenship transformation as it may or may not occur in relation to health-based claims, in Michelle Ball’s case study of safe country of origin policies, and in Sule Tomkinson’s discussion of the challenges involved in accessing the refugee hearing room of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). The lack of clarity regarding environmental displacement emerges in a number of texts, most notably in Mainé Astonitas, Jacqueline Fa’amatuainu and Ahmed Inaz’s discussion of the alternative and broadened protection that should be offered to Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Nicole Marshall’s call for definitional clarity regarding environmentally displaced persons, for which she offers a four-category approach. The important role of education is expressed not only in Theogene Baravura’s encapsulation of a higher education project within the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malwai, but in the work of William Jacob’s educational and aspirational dance work in Ghana and Liberia, and in the underpinning of Garretson Sherman’s work with youth in Staten Island, as interviewed by Laura Berlinger, who was mentored by both. Taking action to support the mental and psychological well-being of migrants is explored in both Christa Charbonneau Kuntzelman’s rumination on her work reuniting separated families through the Red Cross/Red Crescent and Elsa Oliveira’s assistance in aiding sex workers in Johannesburg to use visual and narrative methodologies to capture their lives. The calamitous situations surrounding seaborne migrants are taken up in earnest by seven scholars and practitioners in our Discussion Series, as introduced by Hillary Mellinger. Melissa Phillips considers the Horn of Africa and Yemen and the need to re-conceptualize the rigid distinctions between refugee, migrant and asylum seeker. Chiara Denaro calls for a re-conceptualization of the right to asylum during a time of restriction and lessening of political, civil and social rights that she refers to as the “emptying process.” Sophie Hinger discusses the Mediterranean and the way in which migrants are treated as security concerns that require military response, deterring “irregular migration” at any cost. Keegan Williams also confronts the Mediterranean, laying out the profound externalization of European Union borders with statistics that cannot be ignored. Bayan Edis discusses the serious gaps between Australia’s domestic policy and international obligations, and Olivia Tran asks whether we are likely to see another instance of complicated collaboration on resettlement such as that which took place during the Indochinese refugee crisis. Lastly, several publications ask us to question the very bedrock of understanding that supports how human rights and humanitarian purposes unfold around us, whether in Amar Wala’s interview that showcases the horrific and damaging nature of the security certificate's regime in Canada's refugee policy, or within Ben Mills’s rumination on the realignment of humanitarian purpose and Western reality.
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    Refugee Review: Social Movement
    (Emerging Scholars and Practitioners on Migration Issues (ESPMI) Network, 2013-09) Wheeler, Brittany Lauren; Molnar, Petra; Petrica, Oana
    We welcome readers to the e-publication of the New Scholars Network's inaugural issue of the Refugee Review journal. This open-source, peer-reviewed journal—based at no particular institution and tied to no particular location—is the product of collaboration between a growing and global group of new scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and activists in the field of forced migration and refugee studies. We are proud not only to introduce practice and theory being undertaken and considered in this field, but to do so in a way that is fully supportive of shared knowledge production. The creation of this journal was a labor of love—not because there is pleasure to be taken in a field of work and study that exists in part due to the many injustices found within the human experience, but because the work surrounding forced migration is in large part being performed by persons like the contributors found here, who seek to understand how to proceed with ethical, equitable, and appropriate actions. And they seek to know others who are doing the same. This journal is a publication that is important to us, but its power and purpose is not to be found in the mere fact that it has been published online. It was published because migrants need improved methods for caring for and interring their dead (see Sarenac), because better theory and practice is needed as nation states make decisions that weigh national security and the provision of a safe haven of asylum (see Every and Augoustinos, Mellinger), and because durable solutions need to address the populations they actually seek to—and acknowledge the way these populations engage in activism (see Banki). It was published because legal aid is expanding to be more than legal aid (see Pangilinan), because activists are sometimes neighbors who witness asylum seekers being removed from their homes in the early morning (see Bates and Kirkwood) and because there are wide-ranging and systematic global structures that affect migration and migration politics (see Williams). It was published because language (see Sivalingam, Bates and Kirkwood), economics (see Ghráinne), the interpretation of statistics (see Ando), and access to higher education (see Magpayo) are important to refugees and all those that work with them. Social activism, and the thinking behind it, is present in each of the following contributions to this journal. Our inaugural journal is about ‘social movements’ because people move, and their agency moves with them. Our journal is committed to representing various types of writing, and we believe this varied work helps us in carrying out our mission to foster the professional development of new scholars and advance research in the field of forced migration. It can be difficult for new scholars to find a place for their ideas, or to feel the confidence to share them. Likewise, it can be difficult to engage with more established scholars, some of whom have also contributed to the publication of this journal. For these reasons, we hope this multidisciplinary compilation will resonate widely with new scholars and we look forward to you telling us what is next as we continue these discussions.
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    Communicating Social Cohesion in Forced Displacement: A Framework for Protracted Situations of Encampment
    (MDPI, 2024-10-12) Baú, Valentina
    This paper addresses the role that communication and media interventions can play in fostering social cohesion among displaced populations in camp settings through a review of both practical and theoretical notions in this area. The multiple definitions available in the literature on social cohesion do not come to a consensus on what this concept means. Yet, despite this lack of substance, reflecting on social cohesion in contexts of displacement has been a prevalent topic. Horizontal social cohesion, which is critical in protracted situations of encampment, is defined by UNHCR as the bond that ‘hold(s) people together within a community’. While a number of studies have focused on the social connection between host and displaced people, scarce attention has been paid to the dynamics and social fractures among displaced communities themselves. Yet, tensions both within and between groups of displaced people may be equally, if not more important to social cohesion than relationships with other groups. In order to begin to address this gap, a communication-based framework for humanitarian and development work on social cohesion in refugee camps is presented. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to offer a starting point for humanitarian agencies working in refugee camps to articulate the adoption of a communication-driven approach in their social cohesion programming.