Cathrine Brun

‘Unpacking’ the narrative of a national housing policy in Sri Lanka

The article ‘unpacks’ the major policy narrative on housing in Sri Lanka, namely that there is One National Housing Policy (ONHP). Housing schemes have been part of poverty alleviation strategies designed to solve problems of internal displacement due to war, and more recently as part of the major recovery initiatives after the Indian Ocean tsunami event in 2004. The housing policy narrative is explored in a resettlement programme (1970s to date), in a case of war-induced internal displacement (1990s – early 2000), and in post-tsunami recovery (from 2005). The authors ask whether successful practices from the past have been incorporated into the post-tsunami recovery efforts. Although similar in structure and implementation processes – all highly centralised, technocratic, bureaucratic, and top-down – each scheme has its own policy narrative which is based on different local contexts and experiences. Housing plans are never neutral, but embedded in existing situations of tension and are highly politicised. New to the post-tsunami situation is that the housing policy has not sufficiently embedded the reconstruction practices in local realities and peoples own preferences and contributions. Ignorance among international organisations about previous housing policies and power relations has led to a silent acceptance of the ONHP.

BIRDS OF FREEDOM

The article explores how the dominant discourses of identity politics in the Sri Lankan conflict have silenced people in northern Sri Lanka and closed spaces for political participation. In order to understand the discursive processes and their material outcomes, the article addresses in particular the role of young people in northern Sri Lanka and explores their relationship to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author examines the LTTEs discourse on gender, young people, nationalism, and governance through the lens of two books written separately by Anthon Balasingham and by Adele Balasingham. Birds of Freedom, the LTTEs womens wing, is shown to be an example of how the warring parties have monopolized liberation discourse through the uncompromised nationalism of a militant movement. The article discusses how this dominant discourse informs young peoples lived experiences, material realities, and life opportunities for participation as social actors in their communities in the Jaffna peninsula. A particular feature of peoples everyday lives in northern Sri Lanka is described as a complex citizenship characterized by the presence of several governing and uncompromising actors to whom people must relate. The latter part of the article analyzes the way young people in the north of Sri Lanka relate to this context of complex citizenship, with particular reference to the LTTE.

Dwelling in The Temporary: The involuntary mobility of displaced Georgians in rented accommodation

ABSTRACT This article responds to the call from forced migration studies for increased engagement with the mobilities paradigm, as well as to criticism of the mobilities paradigm for not engaging sufficiently with immobility and power relations. The article analyses the experiences and strategies of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in rented dwellings in Tbilisi, in the South Caucasus state of Georgia, who are among the most mobile groups of IDPs in that country. To understand the relationship between mobility and immobility, the article applies Heideggers notion of ‘dwelling’ and more recent developments of that notion, together with the discussion between Honneth and Fraser on ‘recognition’. First, the article introduces internal displacement in Georgia. Second, it discusses the housing situation for the IDPs. Third, the theoretical concepts of ‘dwelling’ and ‘recognition’ are developed to enable analysis of experiences and practices of mobility and immobility. Fourth, the various trajectories through which IDPs have come into their rented dwellings are discussed, and processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization and the experience of recognition through the dwelling are analysed. The conclusion addresses the role of dwelling and recognition for efforts to understand the relationship between mobility and immobility.

Real-time research: decolonising research practices – or just another spectacle of researcher–practitioner collaboration?

This article examines the experiences and outcomes from collaboration between a group of researchers and a Northern NGO to improve recovery work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. A Real-Time Research methodology was established to follow and intervene in the recovery practices as they took place on the ground. What was learned and achieved through this collaboration is assessed, with particular reference to the relationships between various stakeholders in the collaboration.

Women in the Local/Global Fields of War and Displacement in Sri Lanka

Abstract War and displacement create specific local/global relationships. This article explores how globalization is not a universal, but a highly contested and contingent experience by analyzing local/global fields of war and displacement in the Sri Lankan civil war. The different involvement with globalization of two different groups of women—the women cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and internally displaced Muslim women working as migrant laborers in the oil-rich Gulf States—is explored. Intersecting spaces of gender, ethnicity and class are analyzed in order to show how specific actors with different social locations make use of their symbolic capital to deal with war and displacement and how these intersections in the local/global fields of war and displacement consolidate and contest social divisions and inequalities.

There is no Future in Humanitarianism: Emergency, Temporality and Protracted Displacement

The humanitarian system and people living with and in long-term refugee situations envisage the future differently. This article explores different notions of the future that may be found in humanitarian policies and among humanitarian workers. Understandings of emergency, crisis and ethics in humanitarianism have particular impacts on how situations of protracted displacement are understood. The policy context for Syrian refugees in Jordan is analysed with particular reference to the ‘humanitarian reason’ which tends to separate between biological and biographical lives. Here, the future and past are separated from the present in a process that decontextualizes forced migrants both temporally and spatially. Through focusing on what humanitarian workers do, practices that challenge currently accepted humanitarian ethics are identified. By way of conclusion, and supported by feminist discussions of temporality and the ethics of care, the article suggests some possible ways of integrating a concept of the future in humanitarianism.

Home in Temporary Dwellings

A temporary dwelling is the material form and the physical structure of the dwelling in which one resides temporarily, owing to circumstances that are out of the ordinary. This article concentrates on temporary dwellings formed because of various forms of protracted forced migration. While they are considered global issues, most such instances of temporary dwellings have occurred in the Global South. This article introduces these three aspects: (i) the time dimension of temporary dwellings framed as ‘permanent impermanence’; (ii) homemaking in and around the temporary dwelling; and (iii) how home in temporary dwellings may be understood in the context of the wider community in which they are located. The article concludes by presenting solutions to the challenges posed by temporary dwellings.

Homeland Orientation of War-torn Diasporas: Remittances and Cultural Practices of Tamils and Somalis in Norway

could have given it a more prominent position. The determination was a milestone that marked the end of the interstate water-allocation process and the beginning of the planning process studied in the thesis. The significance of the determination goes much further than the interstate allocations of water, and it legitimated the claims of both proand anti-dam camps. The determination is also a rich source of primary data on the core theme of the thesis that ideas matter. At the tribunal, ideas from various standpoints, including those of the technocrats, were systematically developed and argued. The positions adopted by the different actors at the tribunal could have provided interesting insights into the thinking of the actors she interviewed for the thesis. Nevertheless, the thesis makes a valuable contribution to studies of development within human geography. It advances our understanding of both the Narmada project and India’s developmental regimes. In particular, it adds to our understanding of the changing ideas of development. Aandahl’s work also opens up possibilities for theoretically and methodologically informed inquiries in the future. The spatialtemporal tension that underpins development research is one such possibility. Another possibility is an exploration of politicians’ and planners’ unsettled attitudes towards democracy in developing countries. Finally, the thesis also adds new primary data to the literature on dams and development, which will be valuable for researchers in the future. References

Spatial practices of integration and segregation among internally displaced persons and their hosts in Sri Lanka

This article recounts how a group of Muslim internally displaced persons from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka arrived and settled in the North-Western Province of the island. The account is placed in the context of local integration, as one of the so-called durable solutions for refugees and displaced people. It is argued that it is useful to study integration and segregation as related processes. The main focus of the article concerns the development of resettlement villages for displaced people and how this has made it necessary for local people to reconstruct and redefine their places. One particular confrontation that took place between local Sinhalese people and displaced Muslims is discussed, to show how the negotiation of place may become violent. The article concludes by arguing that, in order for the process of local integration to succeed, active participation by all groups involved in the local integration process is a prerequisite.

Displaced citizens and abject living: The categorical discomfort with subjects out of place

ABSTRACT The authors argue that the political exclusion of displaced people living within states under a variety of humanitarian and policy categories is simultaneously constitutive of mainstream political belonging and social belonging for those excluded. Based on long-term research engagement with displacement in Georgia, Jordan and Sudan, they analyse situations in which an initial crisis-based humanitarian status has become protracted, and in which people have been labelled both forced migrants and citizens, giving rise to tensions with the mainstream but also creating social identities that foster belonging from experiences of exclusion. By analysing these processes as abjection – forms of state control and boundary-making that exclude members from what requires their inclusion – they show that a type of ambiguous citizenship emerges from protracted situations of displacement. People ‘out of place’ but within a state exclude themselves from full citizenship rights by nurturing an alternative status derived from their experiences with displacement regimes. When established and enduring for a lengthy period, such displacement statuses become social categories and identities through processes of abjection. The authors conclude that citizenship itself becomes ambiguous through norms of belonging, the formation of new social categories, and because forced migrants help to constitute the political.