Richard Black

Climate change: Migration as adaptation

Mobility can bring opportunities for coping with environmental change, say Richard Black, Stephen R. G. Bennett, Sandy M. Thomas and John R. Beddington.

The limits to 'transnationalism': Bosnian and Eritrean refugees in Europe as emerging transnational communities

This article explores limitations on the concept of transnationalism, through examination of two empirical case studies of communities characterized by emerging transnational practices. Mirroring recent shifts of attention in studies of transnational migration away from US-based examples of established migrant workers, the article focuses on Bosnian refugees in the UK and The Netherlands, and Eritrean refugees in the UK and Germany. It stresses the importance of historical context, and the interconnection of social, political and institutional factors in producing highly uneven patterns of transnational activities both within and between these two groups.

Fifty years of refugee studies : From theory to policy

This article reviews the growth of the field of refugee studies, focusing on its links with, and impact on, refugee policy. The last fifty years, and especially the last two decades, have witnessed both a dramatic increase in academic work on refugees and significant institutional development in the field. It is argued that these institutions have developed strong links with policymakers, although this has often failed to translate into significant policy impacts. Areas in which future policy-orientated work might be developed are considered.

Migration and climate change: towards an integrated assessment of sensitivity

This paper sets out a new approach to understanding the relationship between migration and climate change. Based on the understanding that migration is a significant, growing, but also complex phenomenon, this approach seeks to address the sensitivity of existing migration drivers in specific contexts to climate change. In contrast to existing approaches which have sought to generate global-level estimates of the numbers of ‘climate migrants’, this integrated assessment approach seeks instead to understand how and why existing flows from and to specific locations may change in the future, and provide a practical tool for climate adaptation planning. Examples of the application of this approach are provided for Ghana and Bangladesh.

A Continent Moving West? : EU Enlargement and Labour Migration from Central and Eastern Europe

A Continent Moving West? argues that the conceptualization of migration as a one-way or long-term process is becoming increasingly wide of the mark. Rather, east-west labor migration in Europe, in common perhaps with other flows in and from other parts of the world, is diverse, fluid, and influenced by the dynamics of local and sector-specific labor markets and migration-related political regulations.

Conceptions of ‘home’ and the political geography of refugee repatriation: between assumption and contested reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Recent years have seen growing recognition of the dynamic and negotiated nature of cultural identity, and the globalization of political and economic processes. However, assumptions about the rootedness of people in particular places retain a powerful hold over public policy. This paper considers some of the consequences of this paradox by examining policies to promote the repatriation of refugees from European Union states to their ‘homes’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1995. The question of when, and on what basis, different actors consider it safe or appropriate for refugees’ exile to end is rooted both in different conceptions of ‘home’, and in varying assessments of individual, national and state interests. These lead in turn to different evaluations of ‘success’ of refugee return, and of policies to promote it.

Breaking the convention: researching the 'illegal' migration of refugees to Europe

The study of refugees by geographers and other social scientists is, almost by definition, framed around a series of legal categories, which provide us with more or less neat categories of types of involuntary migrants. Yet the process of migration emerges in relation to legal categories and is not simply dictated by them. Thus, as legislation on migration in general and the interpretation of the 1951 Geneva Convention in particular have become more restrictive, patterns of migration have increasingly emerged that manipulate, circumvent or simply break existing legislation.

Forced migration, environmental change and woodfuel issues in the Senegal River Valley

Summary There is increasing international concern about the environmental impacts of refugees on host areas, with governments calling for compensation for environmental damage, particularly concerning the loss of woodland resources as a result of demand for wood for fuel. In addition to an obvious increase in the population of host areas, concern about refugees’ woodfueluse centres on the notion that they are ‘exceptional resource degraders’. Since they view their stay as temporary, it is argued, they therefore do not have any incentive to use resources in a way that is sustainable in the long-term. This study examined refugee migration to the middle valley of the Senegal River, and com

Ethical Codes in Humanitarian Emergencies: From Practice to Research?

Notable strides have been made in recent years to develop codes of conduct for humanitarian intervention in conflicts on the part of international NGOs and UN organisations. Yet engagement by the academic and broader research communities with humanitarian crises and ongoing complex political emergencies remains relatively ad hoc and unregulated beyond the basic ethical guidelines and norms developed within universities for research in general, and within the governing and representative bodies of particular academic disciplines. This paper draws on a case study of research on humanitarian assistance to Liberia during that countrys civil war from 1989 to 1996. The difficulties faced by humanitarian agencies in Liberia led to the development of two key sets of ethical guidelines for humanitarian intervention: the Joint Policy of Operations (JPO) and Principles and Policies of Humanitarian Operations (PPHO). This paper seeks to address what lessons, if any, these ethical guidelines, together with different experiences of conducting research in war-torn Liberia, can provide in terms of the role of academic researchers--and research itself--in humanitarian crises.

Focus on environmental risks and migration: Causes and consequences

Environmental change poses risks to societies, including disrupting social and economic systems such as migration. At the same time, migration is an effective adaptation to environmental and other risks. We review novel science on interactions between migration, environmental risks and climate change. We highlight emergent findings, including how dominant flows of rural to urban migration mean that populations are exposed to new risks within destination areas and the requirement for urban sustainability. We highlight the issue of lack of mobility as a major issue limiting the effectiveness of migration as an adaptation strategy and leading to potentially trapped populations. The paper presents scenarios of future migration that show both displacement and trapped populations over the incoming decades. Papers in the special issue bring new insights from demography, human geography, political science and environmental science to this emerging field.