Katy Long

The point of no return : refugees, rights, and repatriation

Introduction: Refugees and Citizens 1. Repatriation, Refugees, and Returning Home 2. Patria, Protection and the Social Contract 3. Repatriation: a Historical Perspective 4. Repatriation after 1955: New Settings, Same Questions 5. Voluntary Repatriation after 1992: Continuing Crises 6. Repatriation in the Twenty-First Century: Learning Historys Lessons? 7. The Ethics of Voluntary Repatriation 8. Repatriation as Reconciliation: the Community Dynamics of Return 9. Repatriation without Return? 10. Refugees, Rights and Repatriation

Push-pull plus: reconsidering the drivers of migration

ABSTRACT Drivers can be understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement. This article considers key drivers of migration and explores different ways that they may be configured. We modify existing explanations of migration to generate a framework which we call push-pull plus. To understand migration flows better, analysts could usefully distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers. Combinations of such drivers shape the conditions, circumstances and environment within which people choose to move or stay put, or have that decision thrust upon them. In any one migration flow, several driver complexes may interconnect to shape the eventual direction and nature of movement. The challenge is to establish when and why some drivers are more important than others, which combinations are more potent than others, and which are more susceptible to change through external intervention. Drawing on Afghan and Somali movements featuring ‘mixed migration’, the article concludes that proximate and mediating drivers, rather than those in the structural and precipitating spheres, appear to offer greater potential for intervention. To be effective, though, migration policy should be understood not simply as a stand-alone lever, but within the wider political economy.

Statebuilding Through Refugee Repatriation

Abstract Repatriation has long been the international communitys preferred solution to refugee crises. This article argues that repatriation must be understood not in terms of physical return but as a process of political rapprochement between citizen, community and state. In particular, this work takes account of the need to accommodate community-based political identities. Repatriation should be conceived of as the deliberate remaking of a social compact between not only refugee-citizen and state but also refugee-nation and state. This offers a means for resolving the inherent contradiction between the notion of universal human rights and contemporary political organization which determines meaningful access to these rights on the basis of group or national identities. This is particularly important given the role of group-based conflict in causing mass refugee flight.