Thesis (Ph. D.)--Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-199).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-199).

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the factors affecting the repatriation of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, by using data collected in these refugee camps, during the Fall of 1988.

In recent decades the ongoing rise of refugee populations around the world has provided a unique opportunity to study the impact of forced migrations on the identities of individuals and collectivities. The simultaneous emergence of the novel social phenomenon of 'refugee societies' has captured anthropological interest in the way in which 'refugee identity' is currently imagined and represented. A useful entry point for exploring representations of 'refugee' identity within a new culture of refugees is found in the recurrent notion of suffering. 'Suffering' is conceptualized here as an ideological grammar that characterizes a variety of language games contained in a broader 'language of suffering'. Focus is directed towards the 'medical dialect of suffering' and its role in articulating the identities of refugees and representing their experiences of suffering. Medical discourse, practices, and technologies can drive the transformation of the categorical 'refugee' identity into a 'medicalized' and 'traumatized' identity: revealing how medicine not only reflects cultural meanings of suffering, but can also project new cultural meanings of suffering. The relevant case of Afghan refugees illustrates how cultural identities can be conceptualized as shifting, strategic, and multiplicitous---realities that can be a blend of both coherency and contradiction.

No description available.

Both practitioners and academics have recently begun referring to humanitarian agencies operating within an active 'aid marketplace' in which limited funding pits actors against each other in pursuance of their own projects and wider aims. This thesis seeks to explore how the pressures of a competitive environment impact on the motivations and actions of aid actors at an individual and organizational level. Based on the common saying that aid workers are 'mercenaries, missionaries and misfits', I construct a typology of pressures (interest-based, altruistic, and bureaucratic), which, it is argued, can be used to explain and understand much of this competitive and collaborative behaviour. A particular focus of the thesis is the impact of these various influences on the process and politics of information transfer and discourse creation regarding the process of needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation. I explore all of these issues through the medium of a case study of UNHCR's interventions in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2015, and seek to provide a detailed history of the agency's activities, politics and challenges during this period. In particular I am interested in the motivations driving the agency's actions; the strategies it has employed to achieve its aims; the calculated narratives that it has crafted to justify its interventions and attract greater support; and the very different ways in which it has approached the needs of different categories of displaced people.