Almost one quarter of a million Belgians fled to England after the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. The largest contingent of refugees ever to come to England, their absorption into the host society was bound to be a complex process. The growth of anti-alien sentiment in Britain in the twentieth century has often been remarked, yet the Belgians were assimilated smoothly into the English community. They benefited at first from overwhelming public sympathy, and trade-unionist fears that they would provide a pool of cheap labour dissipated as the war economy created conditions of full employment. There was some anti-Belgian sentiment, but it never became organised or vociferous. The growth of antialienism during the Great War must be traced to hysteria about enemy aliens, spies and Bolsheviks. However, the needs of the Belgian government, British relief agencies and various branches of the British government led to a sophisticated system of regulations governing the refugees' movements. The Belgians were important in the development of the primitive system of aliens control established in 1905. Refugee relief was primarily the work of private charity. The government faced too many other tasks, the Poor Law was unpopular, and relief work provided an outlet for patriotic enthusiasm. Directed by one central body, the War Refugees Committee, several thousand local committees carried out the vast work of finding shelter, food, clothing and employment for the refugees and providing for many other needs. However, enthusiasm waned and the WRC's funds were never large. Accordingly, the government and the Committee were pushed into reluctant partnership, the WRC surrendering some of its independence in return for financial assistance. The government was slow to extend its control openly, fearing that voluntary effort would collapse. Until August 1916 the fiction was maintained that the WRC was autonomous, and even then the government made only a half-hearted attempt at direct control. The vigour of the relief movement demonstrates the strength of the philanthropic community in the early twentieth century. Philanthropy was the preserve of the upper and middle classes, a badge of rank, an assertion of social superiority, a form of self-imposed taxation. The WRC drew on the Charity Organisation Society's case work practices, maintained a healthy contempt for government officials, and prid~d itself on saving the nation vast amounts of money. However, the growing political importance of the working classes before and during the war, rising taxation and the war's economic effects on the upper classes affected the philanthropic public's morale. Wartime charity also suffered from chronic problems of overlapping effort, extravagance, inefficiency and fraud, and Belgian relief organisations led the way in demanding stricter control of war charities. Their efforts resulted in the War Charities Act of 1916. Gradually, many relief workers came to accept the need for direct government control as the only way of fairly distributing the burdens of relief. As a result of many pressures, the WRC, which had begun as a purely voluntary agency, ended as something like a government department: the philanthropists had become social workers. The story of the refugee relief movement suggests how the philanthropic community became part of the new system of social welfare in the twentieth century. This study is based on the Ministry of Health files in the Public Record Office, the Women's Work and War Refugees Collection in the Imperial War Museum, and the Herbert Gladstone Papers in the British Museum. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, an estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes. The conflict within Syria dramatically increased population flows to neighboring countries, especially Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. Of these, Lebanon hosts the largest per capita number of Syrian refugees with over 1 million Syrians living in Lebanon as refugees as of June 2017. This thesis asks why Syrian refugee children in Lebanon have limited access to education. Given that over half of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are school-aged children, the main question behind this research is: what factors explain the low enrollment rate of Syrian refugees in schools in Lebanon? Though the Lebanese Ministry of Education issued a memorandum instructing all public schools to allow Syrians to enroll, approximately 250,000 school-age Syrian refugees were out of school during the 2015-2016 school year. Why is this? Based on a local case study of dynamics impacting refugees within the Bekaa governorate of Lebanon, I find that Syrian refugees do not suffer from a lack of international attention or even an overall lack of aid. Instead, actors at the local level, particularly an unofficial authority known as the Shawish, most heavily influence Syrian refugees, their access to aid, and their access to education. / Master of Arts / Since the beginning of Syria’s civil war, an estimated 11 million Syrian people have fled their homes as refugees. Many of these people went to neighboring countries, including Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. Of these, Lebanon hosts the largest per capita number of Syrian refugees, where at least one in every four people was a Syrian refugee as of June 2017. Furthermore, over half of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are school-aged children and many children have limited access to education. This thesis explores the factors that contribute to the low school enrollment rate of Syrian refugees in Lebenon. By focusing on the dynamics impacting refugees in one area of Lebanon, I find that the biggest obstacle for Syrian refugees’ access to education is not a lack of international attention or even an overall lack of aid. Instead, I find that authorities at the local level, specificially an unoffoicial authority known at the Shawish, most heavily influence Syrian refugees, their access to aid, and their access to education.

This research asks the question of how three young adults construct identity while living in diaspora. The subjects of the research came to the United States as a part of the Somali Bantu resettlement in 2004. The study begins with a trajectory analysis of the people now known as Somali Bantu, beginning with their forced migration to Somalia and the various factors shaping their status in the country. The analysis continues through the period of displacement, flight, and human warehousing in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps of Kenya and includes an examination of how bureaucratic labeling as refugees, and the public rhetoric of mainstream media further shaped the story of the Somali Bantu. Each of these moments through the refugee trajectory are foundational to the self-representations emerging in diaspora. Using autoethnographic and portraiture methodologies, the author analyzes the subjects' discursive practices associated with cultural sustainability, as well as deployment of social media in rejecting and resisting social and cultural influences that threaten the integrity of Somali Bantu identity in the United States. The dissertation also situates the subjects within the broader Somali Bantu diaspora in the United States and Europe as they create home through a Somali Bantu aesthetic, form community through mutual assistance associations, construct mediascapes that circulates information globally, and build a transnational movement that aims to end the suffering of Wagosha people in Somalia. Overall, the research demonstrates the discursivity of identity, showing how a particular group reconstitutes itself through engagements with multiple and often disparate cultures, traditions, languages, and histories. / Ph. D. / This research asks the question of how three young adults construct identity while living in diaspora. The subjects of the research came to the United States as a part of the Somali Bantu resettlement in 2004. The research begins with an historical overview of the people now known as Somali Bantu that includes their forced migration to Somalia and their status as second class citizens in the country through their flight to Kenyan refugee camps in the 1990’s and eventual resettlement to the United States as people of humanitarian concern. The author analyzes the subjects’ cultural practices and their use of social media to understand how they are creating Somali Bantu identity while living in the United States. The author also analyzes the broader Somali Bantu diaspora to understand how they are creating home, forming community, communicating across distances, and connecting to the emerging Wagosha movement in Somalia. Overall, the research shows how group identity is influenced by engagements with multiple and often disparate cultures, traditions, languages, and histories.

Thesis (B.A.)--Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

Citizens of El Salvador and Guatemala have experienced life-threatening situations in their native lands that have forced them to make choices in order to survive. Those choices include coming to the United States in search of political asylum. Travelling through Mexico and arriving and settling in the United States require the use of a variety of adaptive strategies. By employing kinship and friendship networks, using community services, organizing voluntary associations, learning English, and compartmentalizing their own culture while being absorbed into the larger Mexican and Anglo cultures, they are able to meet their needs. Of those who come to Tucson, many leave due to difficulties in finding jobs and the lack of affordable legal aid. Those who stay do so because they are awaiting court dates, desire to remain close to their families or have been successful in finding work.

<p>This paper sought to discuss the questions whether refugees have the right to return to their country of origin and whether their participation in the political life of that country may be used as a means to realise their right to return.</p>

This dissertation examines the case of 250-300,000 largely Orthodox Christian refugees who fled Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina for the Habsburg Empire during the uprisings of 1875-1878. The violence during this period started out as a peasant uprising, but over the course of three years cascaded into revolts and violence across the Ottoman Balkans and led to a major European diplomatic crisis. The Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which ended the violence, reconfigured the political geography of the Balkans, making the former Ottoman provinces of Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia independent; giving a sweeping autonomy to Bulgaria, and handing over to Austria-Hungary the administration of a nominally Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina. Refugees played an under-appreciated role in the international and domestic politics of the period, and this dissertation argues that forced migration was in fact one of the key considerations of Great Power diplomacy. Forced migration offered a means to measure degree of violence, and control over population movement offered a way for empires to lay claims to legitimacy. In a similar manner, philanthropists and international humanitarians used forced migration to build and advocate for their own civic spheres. The dissertation argues that during this period, the modern category of "refugee" was defined as states developed processes to manage refugees domestically and to create international policies for refugee aid and return.

This thesis seeks to better conceptualise how and why there is an absence of international protection for ???environmental refugees???, and to place these findings in the critical geopolitics literature. A poststructuralist framework, drawing on Foucault???s ideas of discourse, subjectivity, power and governance, was deemed most appropriate for this thesis, and provided a means of differentiation from previous literature on ???environmental refugees???. This thesis develops a genealogy of the subject category of ???environmental refugees??? since the 1970s, to better understand how the United Nations, Inter-Governmental Organisations (IGOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the media have constructed environmental issues and refugees in texts. Fieldwork undertaken in 2004 enabled me to conduct 45 semistructured interviews with United Nations diplomats and representatives from IGOs and NGOs. Critical scrutiny of these interview texts revealed the constructions of ???environmental refugees??? as various subject identities, particularly in relation to climate change. Pacific ambassadors to the United Nations were also interviewed in 2004 to explore how they negotiated discourses on climate change and ???environmental refugees???, and attempted to articulate their concerns at the United Nations. This thesis contends that an absence of policy at the United Nations to protect ???environmental refugees??? has been produced by a combination of discursive and institutional politics. Unequal power structures at the United Nations have limited the capacity of small island states to lobby and articulate concerns, while subject categories of ???environmental refugees??? have been constructed in ways that alter the terms of debate, evade legal response, or deflect blame away from the perpetrators of environmental damage. Reasons for this policy absence have been the shifting attitudes towards environmental issues and the role of multilateral political institutions. The overall contribution of this thesis is to critical geopolitics, through its examination of the role of multilateralism, representations of environmental issues causing population displacement, and how and why policy absences are created within multilateral institutions such as the United Nations.

Every year thousands of families experience a major life-changing event when they are torn from their homeland and become refugees. Little is known about how the refugee experience impacts the family and how members perceive it affects their sense of family identity. The construct of family identity as proposed by Bennett, Wolin, & McAvity (1988) includes: (a) family membership, (b) quality of day to day life, and (c) an elusive historical dynamic that includes recollections and beliefs about a family's past. The purpose of this study was to explore the third component, that is, how family history affects family identity. This was done by asking family members how they perceive that their experience, the discrete event of being refugees, shaped, and continues to shape, their sense of family identity. Seventeen members from ten refugee families who fled Cambodia and Vietnam and who subsequently resettled in the United States between 1975 and 1990, were interviewed. Transcripts were qualitatively analyzed. Findings support the two primary components of the family identity construct as well as the existence of a third component. The experience of being a refugee influences (in both expected and unexpected ways) how members perceive their family identity. / Graduation date: 1997

<p>There has been an influx of refugees from African countries into South Africa as a result of having been displaced by war. Starting in 1994, the genocide in the Great Lakes region exacerbated existing ethnic and political tensions. Of the 25,000 recognized refugees in South Africa, nearly 8,000 are from Congo- Kinshasa, comprising the highest number. LIterature indicates that refugees suffer from a high incidence of traumatic symptoms and posttraumatic stress syndrome. This study explored the traumatic aspects of refugee status in a sample of Congolese refugees relocated to Cape Town.</p>