The thesis begins by exploring state-centric conceptualisation of refugees in international relations and the incapacity of territorialised notions of identity and responsibility to give a properly historical account of and response to displacement in the modern world. The onus is rather on defining refugees as a 'lack' or 'aberration' before the citizen. I suggest that this renders refugees effectively invisible and 'voiceless' 'others' whose personalities and experiences are appropriated to bolster the fundamental 'territorial' grounds of IR thinking on identity, ethics and responsibility. I explore this perception of refugees in an 'international refugee regime', focusing specifically on international refugee law and on humanitarian discourses on refugees. Two case studies are involved. One the marginalisation of child refugees by the terms of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and, two, a study of Oxfam's Listening to the Displaced project in Sri Lanka. I argue that a consideration of refugees as subjects marginalised in international relations theory and practice opens up new theoretical spaces, throwing into stark relief the violence and Euro-centrism of prevalent 'territorialised' notions of identity, security, 'home' and 'culture' and, consequently, ethics and politics. Such a consideration of refugees questions the ascendancy of territorialised ethics and politics. The thesis critiques post-modern or post-structural attempts to widen the parameters of ethics and politics by noting that their methodology tends to fail to problematise the position of the critic, essentially making the geographical and historical 'locatedness' of the critic unimportant (thereby calling the non-western 'other' to definition in terms of yet another vein of the European canon). The thesis then argues that Theodor Adorno's aesthetic understanding with its emphasis on contingency, unceasing critique and the instability of all rational summations of the meaning of an object, both calls into question the subjective desire of the critic that influences what one sees and what one does not and provides a means for beginning with the marginalised experience of the other (rather than with the European canon).

Analysing the processes and relationships of political territoriality and collective identity in the American borderlands, this thesis examines the narrative and material dimensions of policies increasingly favouring securitised border 'control'. This 'reterritorialisation' contrasts markedly with concurrent moves to increase economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement and with long patterns of transnational socio-cultural interaction, emblematic of larger relational, transnational 'mobilities' fostered by globalisation. Through a historical and transdisciplinary survey, borders are examined as representations and socio-political constructs: a unique, contingent, political cartography connected to a precise, early modern notion of space and identity. Borders are in a continual process of being reproduced through both material means and supportive state-produced 'texts' or narratives. The analysis is part of a larger project in International Relations: the development of the 'identities/borders/orders' heuristic triad, designed to narrow and produce new theoretical and empirical insights by coupling three key concepts and exploring the co-constitutive relationships. Focussing on the identity-border link within the triad, the first case study analyses 'Operation Hold the Line' and related events in the securitisation of the southern borderlands against undocumented migration. The second case study provides an account of major official documentation and public debate framing current developments on the northern border, including a reading of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Border policy is understood as an example of reflexive territoriality, suggesting continual, ever speedier revision, monitoring, and reproduction of a state's constructed strategy responding to control defined 'risks', such as migration. These regulations are fed and actualised by new information flows and technologies, as the state's attempt to 'control' its borders by making them political realities of difference with particular material and normative outcomes. Here, the politics of representation involves an image of border 'security' which effects the socio-spatialisation of collective identity, specifically the reinforcement of difference and a secure nationalism narrative. The securitisation also reflects a modern understanding of knowledge as regulation and order.

Although the United Kingdom is committed to the protection of refugees and the integration of migrants into society, many aspects of the asylum system actually prevent access to refuge or create barriers to integration. Extant research on this topic has often paid little attention to the role of discourse in legitimising particular asylum policies and notions of integration or has otherwise neglected the social functions of asylum seeker and refugee discourse. This thesis addressed these gaps by exploring the discourse of majority group members and asylum seekers / refugees, paying attention to the relationship between place and identity and the ways that notions of intercultural contact were constructed. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with seventeen people who work to support asylum seekers and refugees, fifteen asylum seekers / refugees and thirteen Scottish locals who reside in the areas where asylum seekers are housed. The data were analysed using discourse analysis, focusing on the ways that particular narratives and descriptions function to justify or criticise certain policies or sets of social relations. The analysis illustrated that the presence of asylum seekers could be justified through portraying their countries of origin as dangerous and the host society as problem-free, whereas the presence of asylum seekers was resisted through portraying the host society as ‘full’. When discussing antagonism towards asylum seekers, interviewees constructed this as stemming from ‘ignorance’, which functioned to portray the behaviour as unwarranted while emphasising the potential for positive social change. Similarly, asylum seekers’ and refugees’ accounts of violence tended to deny or downplay racial motivation, or produce accusations of racism in a tentative or reluctant manner, implying that a ‘taboo’ on racial accusations exists even in cases of violence. The analysis also illustrated how constructions of ‘integration’ perform social actions, such as highlighting the responsibility of asylum seekers or the host society. The analysis showed how the refugee status determination process could be criticised through references to a ‘culture of disbelief’, claims that it was racist or portrayals of cultural differences that undermine the process. The right of asylum seekers to work was advocated through portraying it as consistent with the national interest. Aspects of the asylum system related to destitution, detention and deportation were criticised through portraying them as ‘tools’ that treated asylum seekers inhumanely and by constructing asylum seekers in humane ways such as ‘families’ or as ‘human’. Overall the results illustrated that, in the context of asylum seekers, notions of identity and place are linked so that constructions of place constitute identity, in the sense of portraying people as legitimately in need of refuge, and these constructions can work to justify or criticise asylum policies. Results also illustrated that victims of seemingly racist violence may construct their accounts in ways that deny or downplay racial motivations, making racist behaviour difficult to identify and challenge. The analyses suggested that ‘two-way’ constructions of integration may function to overcome the view that asylum seekers have ‘special privileges’ over other members of the community and emphasise the responsibilities of the host society. Portraying punitive asylum policies as ‘inhumane’, and constructing asylum seekers in humane ways, provides a potential strategy for reforming aspects of the asylum system.

This thesis explores native resistance to settler colonialism through its focus on the ’48 Palestinians (also known as the Palestinian citizens of Israel). It innovatively brings together postcolonial theory and settler colonial studies to explore the racialised, ethnicised, gendered and sexualised dimensions of settler colonial violence, how these shape native modalities of resistance and subordination, and the ways in which the transnational is imbricated within these processes. The thesis undertakes two case studies – on the Palestinian Bedouin struggle for land rights and on the Palestinian queer movement – drawing upon archival research, other primary texts and ethnographic exploration. The case studies are interrogated in relation to the liberal-nationalist framework that dominates ’48 Palestinian discourse and resistance. The thesis radically critiques the frameworks of ethnocracy, ethnonationalism and minority studies that have been most prevalent in earlier research on ’48 Palestinians. Instead, this study builds on an understanding of resistance as diagnostic of power (Abu-Lughod 1990). It argues that the resistance of Palestinians in Israel is diagnostic of the structure of Israel as a liberal settler state, and unfolds in relation to the liminal positionality of ’48 Palestinians between (semi)liberal citizenship and colonial subjecthood. It further argues that the subjectivities and modalities of resistance of ’48 Palestinians are shaped through the racialising logics of settler colonialism, and the intersectionalities of these logics with ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Through the focus in the two case studies on indigeneity (and the fetishisation of the indigenous subject as premodern) and LGBT rights (and the folding of queer subjects into modernity), the thesis further suggests that the resistance of ’48 Palestinians is also shaped in complex and ambivalent ways by their ongoing encounters with the liberal frameworks of multiculturalism and human rights. The case studies illuminate that while these frameworks can serve as vehicles for empowerment, they can also reproduce the racialising logics of settler colonialism and further its entrenchment. This means that ’48 Palestinians constantly (re)negotiate their identities, their struggles and their political agendas within multiple circuits of power. The ambivalence of the encounter with the liberal settler state, as inclusionary and exclusionary, and human rights, as empowering and oppressive, produces native resistance to settler colonialism to be shaped and reshaped by competing political projects and hybrid modalities of resistance that include practices of self-essentialising, Bhabian notions of resistance as subversion, and a Fanonian politics of rejection as both pedagogy and a political imperative. The thesis concludes that the mobilisation of a more radical vision of decolonisation requires transcendence of both liberal settler colonialism and the liberal politics of human rights.

The settler colonial framework provides Palestine Studies with a useful tool; opening new lines of inquiry and leading to new fields of study. This thesis examines the impact of the Zionist settlement policy on rural Palestine during the Mandatory period. Through a demographic analysis the thesis argues that the displacement of these peasants was the result of an intentional transfer policy by the Jewish community. Transfer, as Nur Masalha has already shown, constituted an important part of the overall Zionist ideology and attitude towards the local population. This thesis argues that the displacements and removal of the indigenous population started before the Nakba, including the British Mandate period inside the settler colonial need of becoming a demographic majority in the land under dispute. Zionist historiography argues that Zionists did not interfere in the daily life of the Palestinians and stresses the profitable aspects of Jewish immigration. This thesis, using settler colonial theories, challenges this historiography and proposes new tools to deal with other settler colonial cases around the world. This thesis is based on four demographic sources used during the British Mandate to determine the consequences of land purchases and immigration in the Haifa, Nazareth, Jenin and Nablus sub-districts during that period: the 1922 Census, the 1931 Census, the Village Statistics 1938 and the Village Statistics 1945. The analysis of the growth rates of all the communities and villages will illustrate the consequences of the Zionist settler colonial project. This thesis discusses the replacement of population and the importance of population, access to land and immigration trends for the Zionist settler colonial enterprise on their way to becoming the demographic majority on the land of the Historical Palestine.

by John Ruark. / "March 1998."

No description available.

Why is International Relations (IR) silent on the issue of belonging? Conventional IR appears to be prevented from engaging with the concept of belonging by the inside-outside ontology on which it draws and its assumption of a foundational difference between inside and outside, which are understood to be neatly separated and mutually exclusive. Since belonging describes the relationship between individuals and the community and community is restricted to the inside sphere, it is beyond conventional IR’s remit. In its silence and relegation of belonging to the inside, however, we see the traces of what amounts to an implicit discourse of belonging. The concept of autochthony appears to offer a mirror-image reflection of conventional IR’s assumptions about belonging. Autochthony discourse also sees belonging as strictly limited to the community located on the inside of the binary, and here too the demarcation of inside from outside is considered to be foundational. As such, autochthony seems to provide a credible approximation of what IR’s implicit discourse of belonging might look like, if made explicit. The migrant represents a dislocatory figure for both of these accounts of belonging and the inside-outside ontology on which they are grounded. Where does she belong in an inside-outside configuration of the social? Moreover, as a marker of the outside but located on the inside, she contradicts the idea that the two spheres are separate and exclusive. Using British housing discourse as an example of an active discourse of autochthony, this thesis explores the puzzle of how migrants and the questions which they raise about the location of belonging are dealt with in an inside-outside discourse. The thesis generates three key findings which have relevance for conventional IR theorising. Firstly, the account of belonging which autochthony discourse produces is partial, impoverished and highly exclusionary. In this account, migrants represent the ultimate outsider. Secondly, the analysis demonstrates the impossibility of finalising the separation of inside from outside. Attempts to differentiate between the two require ongoing political interventions, which refutes the notion of foundational difference. Finally, in the absence of a foundational difference between inside and outside, IR needs to engage with the concept of belonging, since its continued silence seems to endorse an autochthonous discourse and the exclusionary politics of belonging which that entails.

Zehn Argumente sind in der aktuellen Flüchtlingsdebatte zur Begründung der Immigrationsnotwendigkeit häufig anzutreffen. Der Beitrag setzt sich aus ökonomischem Blickwinkel damit auseinander und zeigt die Gegenargumente auf. Insbesondere setzt sich der Beitrag damit auseinander, was nachhaltige Lösungen sind. Er untersucht das Argument des Fachkräftemangels, betrachtet die Forderungen, Renten durch Immigranten zu finanzieren und behandelt die Sozialleistungsinanspruchnahme von Einwanderern. Weiter wird die Frage untersucht, ob Immigranten zum Stopp der Entvölkerung des ländlichen Raumes beitragen oder eher die Raumknappheit der Großstädte verstärken. Dann wird betrachtet, ob die Infrastruktur durch Immigranten ausgelastet werden sollte und ob Unternehmen fehlende Lehrlinge zwingend durch Einwanderer ersetzen müssen oder andere Lösungen haben. Es wird der Gastarbeiterimport der 60er Jahre als Vorbild beleuchtet. Schließlich wird betrachtet wie flexibel oder unflexibel die Regierung hemmende Regulierungen beseitigt, was nötig ist, um Einwanderer in Arbeit zu bringen. Die Schlussfolgerung lautet: Gegen alle 10 Argumente, die derzeit zur Notwendigkeit von Immigration aufgerufen werden, gibt es gewichtige Gegenargumente. Es sollte zu einer begründeten Abwägung aller Aspekte kommen.

The thesis analyses the Finnish immigration apparatus through a Foucaultian governmentality framework and critiques the way immigration has been problematized. The immigration apparatus, ranging from discourses to various administrative regulations and their rationalities, is examined through the Finnish Aliens Act, Schengen visa regulations, and Finnish Immigration Services implementation documentation as well as through the related governmental bills and reports and parliamentary discussions and committee statements between 1999 and 2010. The thesis argues that the governmentality of immigration is a socio-evolutionary governmentality that relies on largely taken-for-granted conceptualisations of how society needs to be governed. The thesis shows that immigration control cannot be understood solely through the discourses of nationalism, liberalism and multiculturalism, but that these discourses themselves need to be understood in the light of a state racist socio-evolutionary constellation of power/knowledge at the heart of liberal governmentality and its naturalism. In the first instance, this claim is supported by a discourse theoretical analysis of the functioning of power/knowledge in immigration-related discourses. Additionally, the claim is supported by contrasting the analysis of discourses and rationalities of governing with an analysis of technologies of governing, i.e. rules and regulations of immigration control. The thesis then questions the governmentality of the immigration apparatus through various epistemological tools of decentring. These tools highlight how a commonsensical truth about immigration and its governing is produced through methods, such as utilising explanations relying on psychologism, historicism, naturalisation, market veridiction and universalism/particularism, which enable a silence and scarcity of meaning around the taken-for-granted modes of knowing immigration and its governing. Finally, this claim about state racist governmentality of immigration is evidenced by a comparison of the contemporary way of problematizing immigration with the way immigration was problematized by early American race hygienic immigration policies. This comparison insists that eugenics and social Darwinism should not be exceptionalised, but that their rationalities of governing should be evaluated in terms of the logic of making live and letting die that they propose. The thesis concludes that unacknowledged and taken-for-granted modes of knowing the world in socio-evolutionary terms and specifically in social Darwinist terms emphasizing social position as a measure of fitness and human worth and entailing an all-inclusive logic of racialisation have an impact on contemporary liberal ways of governing immigration both in general and in Finland in, at the point at which we think how immigration should be governed so that it promotes the health and wealth of the population and defends it from degeneration.