Traditionally, refugees have been represented as passive, silent, and abject. While such representations are often used to elicit sympathy and support, they do so at the risk of dehumanizing their subjects. By rendering refugees as apolitical and decontextualized, such representations encourage ways of imagining refugees that justify exclusionary practices; because they lack the rights and political voice of a citizen, refugees are not owed anything, and so their claims can be accepted or rejected at the will of the host country. This thesis explores the ways in which Rawi Hage, by representing refugees who are active and politically engaged, challenges these representations of the abject and passive refugee. Contextualizing the experiences of migrants and refugees within the history of colonialism and the neo-colonial present, Hage questions the ideas of nationalism and sovereignty that underlie exclusionary practices and suggests that we consider refugees as deserving justice as well as aid.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-396). Also available on microfiche.

Includes bibliography. / This thesis probes three texts to explore pathways between narration and refugee voices. In Dave Eggers’ text What is the What (2008), the words ‘novel’ and ‘autobiography’ on the title page set a framework for an exploration of the displacement of both genres. As Achak Deng, the Sudanese refugee-exile claims to have “gone out in search of a writer,” so this thesis has sought textual manifestations of the voices of those labeled “refugees”. In Eggers’text a temporarily-gagged narrator presents the question as to how the writer-refugee collaboration allows the voice of a refugee to be heard. In Little Liberia: an African Odyssey in New York (2011), Jonny Steinberg’s placement of himself inside the text demonstrates a different narrative approach to this question as he opts to share subject-space with refugee-exiles, Rufus Arkoi and Jacob Massaquoi. Unsettling the idea of ‘protagonist’, the text challenges borders between story and history, telling and writing. Through a narrative relationship Steinberg probes acts of recounting, listening, reviewing in the routes he takes to the text eventually written. By contrast, Luxurious Hearses, a novella by Uwem Akpan, places the extreme fate of the refugee-protagonist in the hands of a third-person narrator to wrestle with the distinctions between voice, mediation and representation. Through Jubril and his co-commuters, the text investigates forms of “rupture” (Bakhtin, 2000) that occur when identities are opportunistically exposed to social labeling. Writer, reader and displaced person emerge as subjects of an economic framework which positions them within the powerful confines of terms such as citizen, refugee, exile. Said’s affirming insight thus presents a challenge to all on this continuum to “cross borders, (to) break barriers of thought and experience” (Said, 2000:185). Reading the text then becomes associated with interpreting events through the collaborative work of relating, and through reviewing the frames of reference. This thesis examines narrative approaches to refugee voices with the question ‘How do voice and narration inflect the transitions in these texts involving refugees?" Rather than the easy transference this may seem to involve, acts of entrusting the timbre of such stories to texts require political vigilance and a sensibility cognizant that a globalized environment implicates all in the crises creating refugees.

This thesis is concerned with a 'problem' in a humanitarian context: an identified gap between the rhetoric and 'reality' of refugee children's participation in their protection and a refugee protection process that is thought not particularly participatory for the child. Through directly engaging with refugee children and humanitarian practitioners - in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement, Uganda - it seeks to explore empirically the extent to which this is the case and whether refugee children's increased participation in refugee protection procedures might produce a better, safer alternative for children. From a theoretical perspective, this thesis engages critically with a significant body of academic literature on the theory and practice of children's participation as well as related literature on the conceptualisation of 'childhood' and 'the child'. It explores the ambiguity and tensions in children's participation, particularly in relation to their protection, and responds to debates surrounding participation, agency and power. It engages with the literature on forced migration, refugee camps and the construction of the refugee (child). Linking these to the debate on children's participation in protection, it explores notions of 'vulnerability' and 'agency' and the transformative potential of participation for a reconstruction of refugee children with consequences for their everyday spaces and lives.

Thesis of (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on September 8th, 2009). "Fall, 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduates Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis of (Ph.D)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on October 6th, 2009). "Fall, 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduates Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Psych.Ed.) - University of Queensland, 2003. / Includes bibliography.

During 2015 – 2016, thousands of Syrian refugees arrived in Canadian cities, many of them hoping to find permanent settlement and new life opportunities. In the coming years, these refugees will form communities as they settle in Canada, and develop their own understandings of citizenship and belonging. Using an acculturation framework that views schooling as a primary shaper of resettlement experiences, this qualitative study draws on narrative methodology to explore the overarching question: What are the schooling experiences of recently arrived Syrian refugee within the Ottawa public school system? Refugee narratives describe hopes and concerns for the future, and provide insights for school administrators, educators, and policy makers into the previous experiences of refugees, and current challenges. Findings suggest Syrians arrive to Canada with a determination to succeed, and have positive initial schooling experiences, but often face challenges such as: lack of information, change in family roles, and language barriers.

This thesis aims to construct a conceptual framework for characterising the relationship between duties to refugees and duties to fellow nationals. The need for such a framework is generated by the current impasse on the policy debate about the nature and scope of refugee rights. The thesis examines a range of liberal political theories to see if they can provide an adequate account, evaluating them on three criteria: normative desirability; practical feasibility; and internal coherence. The discussion criticises liberal theories on two levels. Firstly, it shows how liberal universalist theories raise a problem of moral motivation: they impose overly stringent ethical demands, and risk being counter-productive. Attempts to incorporate some notion of the significance of national ties or to justify a national social contract simply produce an incoherent amalgam of universalist and particularist premises. Secondly, the thesis argues that these problems reflect a more profound weakness in liberal theories of moral agency and motivation. Liberal theory relies on an assumed dichotomy between a personal and an impartial perspective. The moral agent is assumed to abstract from her personal characteristics to adopt an "ethical" view-point. This notion of impartiality is descriptively implausible, and produces a highly problematic rationalist theory of motivation. The thesis argues instead for an account that sees the agent as motivated by her personal disposition and community values to respect refugee rights. On this account there is no necessary conflict between particularism and duties to non-nationals. I develop this non-rationalist account by providing (1) a philosophical theory of motivation; substantiated by (2) a theory of the psychology of moral development. The thesis shows how this non-rationalist account is consistent with a substantive commitment to universal duties. Moreover, it fulfils the two additional criteria of internal coherence and feasibility, thus providing a superior conception of the relationship between duties to compatriots and to refugees.

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