Refugee Review: Special Focus Labour

Abstract

In this edition we have a special focus, comprising eight articles, on the topic of labour and refugees. Given the controversial status of refugees in the labour markets of many countries, we felt this topic is extremely timely. As can be seen in e.g., Gündüz’s piece on Turkey, refugees are often viewed or portrayed as a “burden” on the economy and as job competition for the locals, while at the same time have their access to the labour market restricted by regulations and discrimination. In the meantime, many states seem to have lost sight of the original obligations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which asserts that refugees have a right to work or a “dignified standard of living” in the state offering protection, a disconnect explored by Arapiles & Madziva in their article focussing on the UK. And as Sager & Öberg point out in their article on Sweden, the spectre of “deportability” not only puts refugees in a vulnerable position vis-àvis employers, it also regulates the worker’s rights of regular migrants and can become an opportunity to erode workers’ rights more generally. Clearly, the labour rights of refugees (and lack thereof) has the potential to become a topic of increasing importance for economies worldwide as they struggle with integration of newcomers and with challenges to the financial status quo in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The intersection between refugee issues and more general concerns of identity and social justice occupy numerous other of our authors in this edition. For instance, several pieces illuminate the ways in which feminist philosophy can inform our view of refugees. Taha seeks to highlight how postcolonial feminist discourse can take refugee studies to new heights by allowing for a more complex view of victimhood and agency that discards with some of the stereotypical, orientalist assumptions of the past. Burnett & Villegas call for greater consideration of gender development in conflict situations, fruitfully comparing the examples of Colombia and Palestine to consider the failures in security caused by disregarding gender. And in their multimedia piece, Ratkovic & Sethi use poetry and visual arts to explore migration and transnational feminism through the eyes of the displaced.

The authors presented in this volume are also interested in looking beyond the surface to the unseen challenges refugees face. In a piece on the double marginalisation encountered by disabled refugees in the EU, Oyaro considers how governments can better comply with UN guidelines on persons with disability when applying refugee law. Boeynik explores the topic of vulnerability as it pertains to people under suspicion of terror, by looking at the example of Somali refugees in Kenya in the wake of the Garissa attacks, and Forin argues for a closer examination of the divide between “forced” and “voluntary” migration, to see how this paradigm is being used as a containment strategy that often denies individual rights.

Although the subject matter presented in this volume is broad, what the authors above and others presented have in common is a desire to shed light on the aspects of the refugee experience that negate a simplistic approach to the topic. In the face of a political climate where refugees are increasingly cast as a homogenous group that threatens security, economy, and culture, it is more important than ever to emphasise discourse that highlights that refugees, like all people, navigate complex intersections of identity and social life at work and at home, and have different challenges and motivations that define their experiences. We offer these accounts of refugees to problematise the dominant discourse of refugees as scapegoats for society’s many problems and offer a glimpse at a kaleidoscopic reality that is necessarily more complex, and closer to the truth.