Roger Zetter

The minority within the minority: Refugee community-based organisations in the UK and the impact of restrictionism on asylum-seekers

Since the mid-1990s, policies and legislation for refugees and asylum-seekers have become increasingly restrictionist in the UK. Disentitlement to housing and welfare benefits and fragmented service delivery have caused widespread social exclusion and destitution amongst asylum-seekers. The article examines some of the consequences of these policy shifts for refugee community-based organisations (RCOs). The article shows how, on the margins, RCOs have articulated the needs and expanded their activities for their client groups in an increasingly constrained policy arena. However, the vital resources that RCOs could provide are often as neglected and marginalised as the groups they serve. Financial and legal constraints to RCO action have resulted in pragmatic responses, a generally poor quality of service provision, very limited access to public resources, lack of co-ordination and networking, and limited professional capacity. These shortcomings are underpinned by institutional and structural determinants which the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act reinforces. These flaws in the current framework of provision are explored. Some ways in which practice can be improved are outlined. Pessimistically the article concludes that, despite the rapid increase of demand for RCO services, the scope for major repositioning of RCOs away from the margins is unlikely.

Structural adjustment, urban systems, and disaster vulnerability in developing countries

Abstract Structural adjustment (SA) — or macroeconomic reform — has become a dominant characteristic especially in developing countries, where national economies are being reshaped to a common discipline regardless of local circumstances. Within this context, the paper examines the impact of structural adjustment on disaster vulnerability in the urban sector, through examining some structural considerations which underpin forms of technical guidance to mitigate disasters. The paper argues that urban areas are not disaster prone by nature; rather that the structural processes which accelerate rapid urbanisation, population movement and population concentrations substantially increase the disaster vulnerability of the mass of low-income urban dwellers. Migrants settle on areas either originally unsafe (flood plains, land slides, etc), or create the potential of man made disaster (environmental degradation, slum fires, health hazards). This problem derives from three interrelated factors. First, structural adjustment policies are the driving force generating new coalitions of urban interests responsible for decision making at the national and on the city levels. A potential implication is the trade-off between production, competition and efficiency and adverse environmental consequences in terms of potentially disaster-vulnerable settlements. Such trade-offs, it is argued, cannot be afforded by most developing countries. Second, reinforcing this, is the shift in viewing the city economy in an international context. The future of the city, in a globalising economy, depends on economic imperatives and a new division of labour in which Third World cities provide highly competitive labour markets. This questions whether technical and environmental safety concerns, which land use planning might try to address, have been overtaken by the political, and economic forces in a global context. Third, the transformation in urban systems has led to review of planning processes and methodologies, ie the form and nature of urban planning. This questions how the new tools and mechanisms of planning intervention and urban management can respond to issues such as disaster mitigation. In other words, who will be responsible? The effect of these structural factors influencing urbanisation processes, the paper argues, exacerbates disaster vulnerability in Third World cities. The paper concludes with guidelines as to how negative impacts of SA policies vis-a-vis disaster vulnerability could be minimised.

Planning in Cities: Sustainability and Growth in the Developing World

Introduction Roger Zetter and Rodney White Part I Issues and discourses: development, urbanization and sustainability 1. Sustainable development: between environment and development agendas Al-Moataz Hassan and Roger Zetter 2. Market enablement or sustainable development? The conflicting paradigms of urbanization Roger Zetter 3. Environmental health or ecological sustainability? Reconciling the brown and green agendas in urban development Gordon McGranahan and David Satterthwaite 4. African cities and climate change: the global context for sustainable development Rodney White Part II Planning for sustainability growth 5. Urban planning and the rationale of the market: the elimination of the intermediate urban level in Bogota Andres Ortiz-Gomez 6. Public sector capacity-building and urban policy changes in the Kingdom of Lesotho: implications for international development assistance Cormac Davey 7. Property taxation, public finance and sustainable development: the case of Belem, Brazil Jose Julio Lima 8. Urban livelihoods, shocks and stresses David Sanderson 9. International agency shelter policy of the 1990s: experiences from Mozambique and Costa Rica Harry Smith and Paul Jenkins 10. Authoritarianism and sustainability in Cairo: what failed urban development projects tell us about Egyptian politics Bill Dorman 11. The sustainability of community development in El Mezquital, Guatemala City Emma Grant 12. From apartheid city to sustainable city: the compact city approach as a regulative ideal Koyi Mchunu 13. Structural adjustment and water supply in Bolivia: managing diversity, reproducing inequality Carlos Crespo-Flores 14. Linking theory and practice in development processes - the case of urban sanitation Kevin Tayler List of contributors Notes References Index

The Greek-Cypriot refugees: perceptions of return under conditions of protracted exile

Constituting a crucial element in the search for a permanent solution to the Cyprus problem, the needs and aspirations of the 180,000 refugees are examined in this article. Of the three durable solutions to refugee crises, repatriation has consistently been advocated as the only option for the Cypriot situation. Contrasting the images of temporariness and permanency of exile, the article examines the extent to which the refugees, in the light of the dramatic social and economic changes that have taken place in the refugee community since the exodus of 1974, might perceive of return as their sole feasible or potential objective. The article argues that the ambiguous identity of the refugees, as both insiders and outsiders, and the protracted political uncertainty of their status give contradictory messages about the likely scale, processes, and success of their return.

Integrative Paradigms, Marginal Reality: Refugee Community Organisations and Dispersal in Britain

In Britain, the dispersal system for asylum-seekers, introduced in April 2000, has been widely criticised for its negative impacts, upon both asylum-seekers and the regions to which they were dispersed. This article addresses the effects of dispersal on refugee community organisations (RCOs) through two principal aims, the first of which is to outline the effects of dispersal upon RCOs in selected fieldwork locations. Three themes are examined: the growth in refugee communities outside London, the constraints of funding regimes and the politics of community representation in the local policy environment. The second aim, developed through the presentation of our fieldwork material, is to establish a critical perspective on the role and function of RCOs. We question the assumed integrative role of RCOs as interpreted in the policy and academic literature, and we underline the importance to the integration process of informal networks in refugee communities. A central strand of our argument is that the analysis of RCOs needs to be firmly anchored within the broader context of migrant incorporation operating in Britain. We conclude that the dispersal arrangements serve as a model of inclusion and representation for RCOs which is heavily conditioned by the broader race relations and multicultural framework. Far from promoting the integration of refugees, this framework may rather perpetuate a condition of institutionalised marginality for refugee groups.

Refugee Community Organisations and Dispersal: Networks, Resources and Social Capital

Introduction Refugee community organisation: paradigms and perspectives The dispersal framework RCOs in the West Midlands: emerging organisational forms The North West: fragmentation and unity in refugee communities RCOs in London: competition and consolidation Comparative issues: RCOs and the impacts of dispersal Conclusions.

Egypt: The state, foreign aid and community participation in urban shelter projects

Abstract The interplay between international policies and the interests and internal pressures of the state is examined in the context of project‐based community participation in urban shelter provision in Egypt. Three contrasting upgrading projects are used. Using the concept of interest mediation, the paper argues that, whilst the state may be receptive to external pressure for community participation, this reciprocity is constrained by the extent to which external agendas fit domestic needs and the social contract between the state and various class interests. The paper shows how the well‐recognized malleability of the concept and the limitations to effective implementation, cannot be explained by conventional project evaluation methodology and technical or bureaucratic factors. Instead, a method is used which links macro‐level international interests (such as aid agendas, geostrategic objectives) to micro‐level grass‐roots variables. Despite the growing centrality of the urban sector and modes of comm...

The impact of foreign technical assistance on urban development projects in Egypt

Abstract Linking macro level political economy perspectives with micro level project-based analysis, the paper examines the impact of foreign technical assistance on urban sector projects in Egypt. The paper demonstrates how large aid flows into this sector, following Egypts Western orientation after 1973, failed to achieve intended results. Three case studies, focusing on community development and participation objectives, reveal limitations in the following areas: project formulation; the ambiguous political rationale for participation; the difficulties in comprehending new concepts; the desire for short-term project visibility; conceptualisation of models of participation; institution building. The paper argues that the failure of the pragmatic managerialist approach adopted in Egypt, and the conflicts in programme design and delivery can only be understood using the macro-micro methodology. The lessons learned for future urban sector projects and programmes are highlighted.

Urban economy or environmental policy? The case of Egypt

This paper shows how prevailing economic development paradigms over the last five decades have favoured an urban-based model of economic development at the expense of environmental considerations in developing countries. How the disjuncture between these competing agendas has been experienced in Egypt forms the focus of the paper. Tension between environmental and development/urbanization policies reflects their political encoding aimed at maintaining regime stability. The state has attempted to mediate between the domestic interests of an urban-based elite and the urban poor, international donor dominance of Egypts economic and urban development strategies, and the countrys limited institutional capacity to manage its developmental aspirations. In a policy configuration that buttresses macro-economic policy with urban development priorities, the unfettered role of market processes has produced vast but unregulated urban expansion with, now, increasingly severe environmental consequences. Despite attempts to reconcile the two agendas in the last decade, the paper concludes that the main issues endemic to the public policy domain in Egypt, and in many developing countries, remain: poor line ministry coordination, weak enforcement of environment law, resistance to participation, limited implementation capacity, conflicts between sectoral and cross-sectoral policy formulation, and dependency on external donors. Copyright

Incorporation and exclusion: The life cycle of Malawi's Refugee assistance program

Abstract The dynamics of institutional relationships in assistance provision to 1.2 million Mozambican refugees in Malawi are examined. Three phases are identified. An innovative model of assistance delivery, integrating refugees and hosts in a development-orientated program, was established in the early phases. This avoided the “parallel” structures of orthodox relief operations. Within the context of its political economy, the Government of Malawi successfully mediated competing interests. Incrementally, the host government lost autonomy; this is explained in terms of pressures to internationalize and diversify the program and the adoption of a conventional relief model focusing only on refugees and emergency assistance. With extensive repatriation the program is winding down. The lessons learned are discussed.