Matthew Gibney and I are convening the RSC‘s forthcoming seminar series on the theme of forced migration and citizenship. The talks are scheduled on Wednesdays at 5pm at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID), 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford. They are open to the public. Speakers include: Kieran Oberman, Irial Glynn, Katy Long, Bridget Anderson, and Lydia Morris. The first talk on deportation and the changing character of membership in the UK by Matthew Gibney is on Wednesday 10th October. The full programme is available here: http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/public-seminar-series/public-seminars-michaelmas-2012.pdf
Tag Archives: refugee
A missed opportunity: the EU’s response to the Arab Spring
In 2011, the EU missed a historic opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to the foundations it is built on. It is as if we’d said to them “It is wonderful that you make a revolution and want to embrace democracy but, by all means, stay where you are because we have an economic crisis to deal with here” (Cecilia Malmstrom, EU Home Affairs Commissioner)
The quote comes from a lecture EU Commissioner Malstrom gave today at the Center for European Studies on the EU’s and EU member states’ responses to the Arab Spring, addressing in particular the challanges of building a EU migration and asylum policy. To read the full text of the lecture is available here. The words of the Commissioner echoe some of the concerns I had pointed to in a recent blog post. I am currently working with Hein de Haas to a joint commentary piece to be published on the forthcoming issue of Forced Migration Review on North Africa and Displacement 2011-2012 in which we further develop our understanding of the complex relationship between human mobility, forced displacement and political uprisings in the MENA region.
Filed under migration and mobility, politics
The Arab Spring and Human Mobility: International Symposyum, University of Oxford, 20 March 2012
Migration in its various forms has been a key part of the popular uprisings that spread across North Africa and the Levant in 2011. The columns of vehicles escaping from cities and villages under siege in Libya, the boats crammed with Tunisians crossing the Mediterranean Sea and landing on the island of Lampedusa, and the numerous Egyptian émigrés and university students returning to Cairo to join the protests in Tahrir Square are a few examples of the ways in which human mobility intersects current events in North Africa and the Levant.
The ‘North Africa in Transition: Mobility, Forced Migration and Humanitarian Crises’ workshop organised by the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford on 6 May 2011 offered a platform to begin exploring how these events have impacted existing patterns of mobility in the region and generated new ‘mixed’ migration flows. Panelists observed that the regional crises had prompted some economic migrants to become forced migrants; pushed forced migrants into irregular migration channels; and made multiple migrant groups, including seasonal and long established migrants, ‘involuntarily immobile’. Panelists also observed that apart from large-scale displacement within and from Libya, migration patterns from most other countries, such as Tunisia and Egypt, seemed to have remained remarkably unaffected by the political turmoil, in stark contrast with predictions made by some politicians, journalists and researchers about mass displacement.
To build on this event and take stock of further political and economic developments in the region, the RSC and IMI are organising a second international symposium on migration and forced migration in North Africa and the Levant on 20 March 2012 with the participation of international scholars, practitioners and policy makers. This second workshop will examine the extent to which the Arab Spring has shifted migration dynamics and migration and
refugee governance.
The workshop will address the following questions:
- How have varying processes of political, economic, and social contestation in North Africa and the Levant affected human mobility?
- To what extent have events transformed or impacted the institutional behaviour and responses of international organisations and civil society groups working in the field of migration and refugee protection?
- How have publics and governments in North Africa and the Levant positioned or repositioned themselves in relation to issues of asylum and migration?
Filed under migration and mobility
EU asylum policy: new direction?
European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs is holding a hearing tomorrow on ‘A Common European Asylum System by 2012? Asylum and Resettlement’, below a link to the key background documents.
Filed under migration and mobility
