editorial introduction

2 downloads 0 Views 111KB Size Report
Refugee Research Methodologies: Consolidation and Transformation ..... GOODWIN-GILL, G. (1996) The Refugee in International Law, Oxford: OUP (2nd edn).
Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 20, No. 2 ß The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] doi:10.1093/jrs/fem017

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION Refugee Research Methodologies: Consolidation and Transformation of a Field Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, PO Box 1591, 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece [email protected] G I O R G I A D O N A´ Refugee Research Centre, University of East London Docklands Campus, 4–6 University Way, London E16 2RD [email protected]

Introduction It may seem paradoxical that a Special Issue on Refugee Research Methodologies is being published at a time when the very category ‘refugee’ is sidelined in favour of other publicized terms such as asylum seeker, irregular migrant or undocumented migrant, or is subsumed under emerging academic taxonomies such as the asylum–migration nexus (Castles and Loughna 2005). Conceptual clarification is a prerequisite for any methodological approach adopted, while doing research on any subject. For the purposes of this Issue we are choosing the concept ‘refugee’ as the key term to synthesize the varieties of issues relevant to forced migration research. Refugees are becoming an ‘endangered species’, with fewer individuals being officially recognized under the 1951 Refugee Convention (UNHCR n.d.; USCRI n.d.) and permanent protection being replaced by temporary protection. At the same time we observe a trend that fewer doctoral theses are written on refugees specifically or on specific groups of refugees. In spite of the political and administrative devalorization of the term, in our view ‘refugees’ continue to challenge our imagination and represent a ‘categorical anomaly’ (Malkki 1990) that remains irreducible to legal or administrative labels. It is these labels that have declined in currency, while an appreciation of the philosophical, historical, social and cultural connotations of the meaning of the term ‘refugee’ reveals that it continues to have a great deal of currency. ‘Refugee’ is a complex category (albeit with a dwindling constituency), which denotes those who undergo forcible uprooting, who lack protection, are stateless, and it is in this broader social-historical meaning that we have chosen to retain ‘refugee’ as a central concept in this Issue.

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

EFTIHIA VOUTIRA

164

Eftihia Voutira and Giorgia Dona´

The Consolidation Phase: Key Methodological Features We have chosen the phrase ‘consolidation over innovation’ to summarize our task for this Issue, and identify three key methodological features

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

The idea for a Special Issue on Refugee Research Methodologies arose in the context of two specific International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) panels organized by us in response to increasing interest in conceptualizing and addressing questions about the approaches we adopt, the tools we use, and the role we have as researchers in generating knowledge when doing research with refugees. The methodology panel presented in South Africa in 2001 was framed within the wider theme of the relevance of the 1951 Convention 50 years on. The panel addressed methodological aspects in relation to the construction of the ‘refugee’: how inclusive/exclusive a concept it is from the standpoint of official Convention constructions and unofficial local meanings as understood and used by other actors, including refugees themselves. Interest in exploring the boundaries of interdisciplinary research was also evident in the number of panels on methodology-related issues, one of which convened by us (with Fred Ahearn and Dawn Chatty), was presented at the 2005 IASFM conference in Brazil. This interest continues unabated in the forced migration literature (e.g. Ahearn 2000; Bloch 1999; Jacobsen and Landau 2003; Rodgers 2004; Temple and Moran 2006). This Special Issue is a follow-up from those earlier initiatives; here we do not aim to represent all the relevant disciplines that have contributed to the field of Refugee Studies, but rather to create a forum for an ongoing discussion. The rationale for publishing this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive overview of debates in the field, to revisit key terms, to conceptualize the particularities of refugee research as an interdisciplinary field of study, and to identify emerging trends. The timing of the publication is also significant. It coincides with the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Journal of Refugee Studies, and the 25th anniversary of the academic establishment of Refugee Studies at Oxford, ‘an expanding network of individuals around the world who collaborated in developing this new multidisciplinary field of academic pursuit’ (Harrell-Bond 1998, in Black 2001: 60). Like all anniversaries, it involves a ceremony that calls for taking stock in the refugee field. It is a field that, as Van Hear wrote in his introduction to Refugee Studies and the Refugee Regime in Transition, remains partly defined by the dialectic between ‘two interrelated strands: the state of refugee studies and the state of the refugee regime’ (1998: 341). While sharing Van Hear’s view concerning the fundamental coexistence between these two arenas, which have in many ways determined the dynamics of the field as those of advocacy and scholarship, we are opting for a re-assessment of key developments in the field, by offering, in this Issue, a set of ‘methodological reflections’.

Editorial Introduction

165

When we started the RSP, we had no ambition to create a new discipline. This is why Elizabeth Colson and I designed the master’s course to be a conversion course: you come from your discipline, get exposed to concepts and theories and methods from other disciplines, but you return (hopefully much better prepared) to your own discipline for advanced research on refugees (ibid.).

Multi-disciplinarity is frequently used interchangeably with the term interdisciplinarity. Reflecting on the current state of the Anglo-American academic community and its knowledge management practices, Strathern distinguishes the two concepts as follows: The practice of cross-disciplinary engagement, canonically taken as ‘interdisciplinarity’ is the case I take up. By contrast with multi-disciplinary encounters, which align different voices and provide simultaneous translation, there is with interdisciplinarity a promise of a pidgin, an epistemic transfer, affecting the very knowledge base on which one works (Mansilla and Gardner 2003; Rhoten 2003). I refer to interdisciplinarity in the abstract because its most powerful grip lies in the very idea of it. It combines in itself two sets of values that Euro-Americans, and especially those of the British sort, find compelling. On the one hand is all the creativity of crossing boundaries with innovative possibilities of making connections. On the other hand are the ‘shirtsleeves’, the logic of marshalling of experts to talk with one another to solve problems, and the practical sense of addressing issues that cannot be handled by one approach alone. It is an unbeatable combination (2006: 196).

Borrowing from Strathern’s insights into the dynamics of contemporary academic research in general, we want to suggest that refugee studies is

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

intrinsic to the development of the field of refugee studies: multi- and interdisciplinarity, bottom-up approaches, and the relation between advocacy and scholarship. We recognize the distinctive and innovative character of the field of refugee studies in its multi-disciplinarity, the creation of a space where academics trained in distinct disciplines could communicate with each other across disciplinary ‘boundaries’. In 1982–1983, with the creation of the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University, multi-disciplinarity became the methodological agenda of the field, and represented a qualitative shift in the way in which refugee research was to be conducted. Over the last two decades, multi-disciplinarity has consolidated and contributed to the increased scholarly recognition of the field of refugee studies. In her interview with Doreen Indra, Harrell-Bond articulates her view of how refugee studies is a multidisciplinary field: ‘As I always saw it, the main theoretical contribution of multidisciplinary research among populations in crisis was to inform, correct, expand, and develop the theories of each discipline’ (Indra 1999: 51). Recounting the emergence of refugee studies as an academic taught course at Oxford, she offers a modest account:

166

Eftihia Voutira and Giorgia Dona´

‘Can one possibly develop the distance, the techniques and methods to describe and analyse issues impregnated with need, with fear, irrationality and emotion? In other words, is there a hopeless and irredeemable conflict between scholarship on the one hand and advocacy on the other?’ (1998, in Van Hear 1998: 343).

Jacobsen and Landau (2003) refer to their reciprocal relation in terms of ‘a dual imperative’, and Black (2001) discusses the marginal position of theoretically driven research versus policy driven research. The implicit

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

multidisciplinary as a field and interdisciplinary in its approach. It contains and represents different disciplines that lend and refine their theoretical tools to the study of refugees, yet individual researchers within the field develop a pidgin language to speak creatively among themselves and with other actors. From the standpoint of the evolution and consolidation of the field, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity functioned as a methodological framework, which brought together scholars from different disciplines under a common roof by introducing the complexity of the subject matter involving ‘refugees’. It was indeed the acknowledgement of the complexity and interrelationships of the ‘scholarly subject’ that prompted refugee studies to become a ‘field’. Independently of one’s disciplinary background, another defining feature of refugee studies during its consolidation period was the adoption of a refugeecentred, bottom up approach that saw refugees as actors and agents. To speak of an approach is not to refer to a particular set of tools or methods like fieldwork, survey or experiments. It is rather to define the focus and perspective taken. Within the field, a bottom up or top down approach was usually conceptualized in terms of refugee-centric or state-centred perspectives. Historically, certain disciplines appeared to be more susceptible to the first approach: anthropologists adopting the native point of view or the ‘view from below’; psychologists focusing on individual experiences; geographers examining refugees’ uses of space; sociologists and other social scientists looking at migrancy from below (Boyle et al. 1998; Kleinman et al. 1997; White 2002). On the other hand, other disciplines like international relations, law and economics have traditionally focused on regimes and state perspectives (Goodwin-Gill 1996; Hathaway and Neve 1997; Vibeke Eggli 2002; Kuhlman 1991, 2004). Yet, the disciplinary bias is not sufficient to identify the approach adopted. While maintaining a state-centred perspective, individual researchers have either been critical of particular state policies (Loescher 2001; van Selm 2000, 2002) or adopted a refugee centred and advocacy perspective (Chimni 1998, Tuitt 1996; Verdirame 1999). The third inherent characteristic of the field of refugee studies mentioned by most scholars is the consideration of the reciprocal position and inherent relation between scholarship and advocacy, which come together when one engages with the field. Cohen explicitly refers to the competing demands of scholarship and advocacy:

Editorial Introduction

167

The Transition Phase: Social Transformations and Refugee Research In recent years, a transformation in the social worlds of refugees is noticeable (e.g. Global Commission on International Migration 2005), which in turn impacts on the way in which we do research with refugees. We identify three important changes. First, there is an increased preoccupation with state security at the expense of refugee protection, a phenomenon also described as the ‘securitization’ of migration (Ibrahim 2005). This phenomenon includes, among other things, a reconfiguration of so-called ‘bogus’ asylum seekers as potential ‘terrorist’ threat. Second, there is a global progressive shift from permanent to temporary protection, which includes the resurgence and experimentation of different models of ‘safe havens’ (Yamashita 2004), the continuing prevalence of camps (Smith 2004), the increased use of detention as a migration management technology (Silove et al. 2001), and the introduction of temporary protection (Brekke 2001), all of which point to a ‘re-temporalization’ of protection (Dona´ 2006). Third, there is a proliferation of supra-national actors. These include human rights and non-governmental

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

logic behind these positions is an ‘either/or’ choice, a binary construction that is common among many of us who engage with the field. Moving away from such competitive classification, Harrell-Bond and Voutira (1992) highlight the reciprocal benefit of research and advocacy when they answer the questions: ‘what can refugees do for anthropology? and what can anthropologists do for refugees?’ Davis (1992) has elegantly reformulated the tension by using the discipline of anthropology as a case in point, and showing how the apparent opposition between what he calls the ‘anthropology of maintenance’ and the ‘anthropology of repair’ is overcome by its re-conceptualization as a unified field: the ‘anthropology of suffering’. Critical legal theory has also challenged some of its own assumptions about the relationship between legal theory and practice (Tuitt 1996; Douzinas 2000) and Kleinman et al.’s (1997) concept of ‘social suffering’ (though not explicitly about refugees) offers another example of similar preoccupations in clinical theory and practice. Could it be that the apparent tension between scholarly activity and advocacy work is due to an understanding of advocacy that is limited, practically oriented, and insufficiently problematized theoretically? An example of the integration of advocacy and scholarship has been the conceptualization of refugees as a resource rather than as a problem or liability (Harrell-Bond 1996), which has functioned as a research cum advocacy agenda. To view and treat refugees as resources is not an independent advocacy requirement distinct from theory: it is theory. In this sense, in refugee studies, scholarship is embedded in advocacy and advocacy in scholarship. The papers included in this Special Issue exemplify different variants of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity; they mainly adopt a bottom up approach, and some of them address the relationship between scholarship and advocacy.

168

Eftihia Voutira and Giorgia Dona´

Overview of Papers The papers in this Issue provide a critical overview of and re-assess important concepts of the consolidation phase of refugee studies, explore assumptions surrounding key ideas, and examine specific challenges and issues surrounding research with refugees. Zetter situates the refugee label in a globalized world, identifies the complex political processes of bureaucratic labelling, and thus elucidates the way in which we conceptualize our subjects, i.e. ‘who’ we do research with. Loizos problematizes the concept of generations and warns against its indiscriminate, careless and inconsistent use in refugee research. His paper offers a ‘revisionist

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

organizations (Turton 2002), transnational refugee communities (Al-Ali et al. 2001) or supra-national state actors such as the European Union, which aim to harmonize asylum and migration policies (Joly 1996). How do these changes affect the way in which we conduct research with refugees? Increased security concerns, mobility and temporality mean that researchers need to find more reliable tools for mapping and monitoring diffuse and ‘difficult to grasp’ population movements that are characterized by increasingly rapid flows. Accessibility is obstructed because people are constantly moving both geographically across multiple borders, and administratively across formal and informal ‘bureaucratic’ regimes. Research site selection is also affected since people remain in a state of limbo for longer periods of time without themselves knowing where the final destination is or if there is one. Regionalism and the reconstruction of space is one such change; for instance, the introduction of the dispersal policy in the UK has meant that researchers have had to move from London to the regions where the government relocated asylum seekers in order to document their experiences. Another change involves the multi- rather than uni-directionality of forced migrants’ displacement patterns. Traditional transit countries of the European East and South are becoming countries of destination. More and more research is or will be taking place in ‘temporary places’ such as in the now closed Sangatte centre in northern France, hostels for new arrivals, deportation centres, detention centres, informal places of sanctuary, or urban centres. A further change in which refugee research is affected by diffuse mobility and transnationalism is through the integration of ‘virtual reality’ into our methodologies (Horst 2005; see also Bloch in this issue). In this medium, conventional methodological issues around access, trust, selection of field sites, data reliability and validity, position of the researcher in the virtual environment, ethics and informed consent need to be reconceptualized dramatically. At present, refugee researchers encounter these challenges only sporadically, but were virtual research to become generalized practice it would involve a ‘paradigm shift’ in social science research in general and by extension forced migration research.

Editorial Introduction

169

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

account’ in re-assessing the relevance of old sociological ‘classics’, and takes a fresh look at the requirement of intellectual consistency and avoidance of equivocation. Dona´ addresses the varied meanings of the concept of ‘participation’ in refugee research, and examines power relations in refugee research among many kinds of official and unofficial participants. Other papers in this Issue examine the specificities of refugee research and articulate methodological issues for social science researchers who engage with refugees. Bloch reviews survey methodology and shows the challenges that arise when this is applied to refugee situations, including access, translations, sampling, and representativeness. Eastmond engages in a similar endeavour with life histories as a narrative genre and shows the significance of the relationship between narrative construction and lived experience. She illuminates the complex dynamic between reality and story in the manner in which forced migrants’ life histories represent attempts at constructing a new reality that produces both ‘narrative data and the representation of stories as data’. Chatty’s contribution addresses the relevance of comparative research in refugee studies, an area that needs further development, by focusing on youth in distinct settings. Her research challenges Palestinian exceptionalism and brings together insights from three distinct refugee youth groups. HarrellBond and Voutira explore general issues of access to refugees, the invisible actors, and access to information concerning refugee research to wider audiences, normally understood under the rubric ‘who speaks on behalf of whom?’ They emphasize the barriers, political/administrative and physical, of accessing refugees as persons, personae and the perceptions about them. McDowell, Mackenzie and Pittaway focus on the ethical challenges for researchers working in refugee settings, and specifically analyse the practice of informed consent. They critique the current ‘do no harm’ precept as a standard for ethical research and suggest a novel way of obtaining genuinely informed consent that incorporates reciprocal benefits for refugee participants and/or communities. Finally, Colson uses her own contribution to ethnographic research to show the significance of linkages as a useful methodology in forced migration research. This approach, which she introduced with Kottak in 1996, is revisited in this Issue and its relevance for the field of refugee studies is reaffirmed. As such, her paper functions as a link and a connecting thread among the different contributions of the Special Issue. Her subtitle, borrowed from John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, is a call to realize that there is more than one link that weaves humanity (and refugee studies) together:

170

Eftihia Voutira and Giorgia Dona´

This poetic call for reconnecting people and places reminds us of the ongoing requirement to rethink and reconceptualize our practices while engaging with refugees.

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

AHEARN, F. L. JR. (ed.) (2000) Psychological Wellness of Refugees: Issues in Qualitative and Quantitative Research, Oxford: Berghahn Books. AL-ALI, N., BLACK, R. and KOSER, K. (2001) ‘The Limits to ‘‘Transnationalism’’: Bosnian and Eritrean Refugees in Europe as Emerging Transnational Communities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 578–600. BLACK, R. (2001) ‘Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Politics’, International Migration Review 35(1): 57–78. BLOCH, A. (1999) ‘Carrying out a Survey with Refugees: Some Methodological Considerations and Guidelines’, Journal of Refugee Studies 12(4): 367–383. BOYLE, P., HALFACREE, K. and ROBINSON, V. (1998) Exploring Contemporary Migration, Harlow: Longman. BREKKE, J.-P. (2001) ‘The Dilemmas of Temporary Protection: the Norwegian Experience’, Policy Studies 22(1): 5–18. CASTLES, S. and LOUGHNA, S. (2005) ‘Trends in Asylum Migration to Industrialized Countries, 1990–2001’, in Borjas, G. J. and Crisp, J. (eds) Poverty, International Migration and Asylum, London: Palgrave in association with the UN University. CHIMNI, B. S. (1998) ‘The Geopolitics of Refugee Studies: A View from the South’, Journal of Refugee Studies 11(4): 350–374. COHEN, R. (1998) ‘Refugee Studies and the Social Sciences: Resolving an Identity Crisis’, paper presented at the conference ‘The Growth of Forced Migration: New Directions in Research, Policy and Practice’, Wadham College, University of Oxford, 25–27 March. DAVIS, J. (1992) ‘The Anthropology of Suffering’, Journal of Refugee Studies 5(2): 149–161. DONA´, G. (2006) ‘ ‘‘Limbo’’ in Space and Time: Formalizing Global Patterns of Social Exclusion’, Paper presented at the 10th IASFM Conference, Canada, July. DOUZINAS, C. (2000) The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century, Oxford: Hart. GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION (2005) Migration in an Interconnected World: Directions for Action, Switzerland: Global Commission on International Migration, www.gcim.org. GOODWIN-GILL, G. (1996) The Refugee in International Law, Oxford: OUP (2nd edn). HARRELL-BOND, B. (1996) ‘Refugees and the Reformulation of International Aid Policies: What Donor Governments Can Do’, in Schmid, A. P. (ed.) Whither Refugee? The Refugee Crisis: Problems and Solutions, Leiden: PIOOM. HARRELL-BOND, B. (1998) ‘Refugee Studies at Oxford: ‘‘Some history’’ ’, Paper presented at the conference ‘The Growth of Forced Migration: New Directions in Research, Policy and Practice’, Wadham College, University of Oxford, 25–27 March. HARRELL-BOND, B. and VOUTIRA, E. (1992) ‘Anthropology and the Study of Refugees’, Anthropology Today 8(6): 6–10. HATHAWAY, J. and NEVE, R. A. (1997) ‘Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal for Collectivized and Solution-Oriented Protection’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 10: 115–211. HORST, C. (2005) ‘In ‘‘Virtual Dialogue’’ with the Somali Community. The Value of Electronic Media for Research amongst Refugee Diasporas’, Paper presented at the 9th IASFM, Brasil, January. IBRAHIM, M. (2005) ‘The Securitization of Migration: A Racial Discourse’, International Migration 43(5): 163–188. INDRA, D. (1999) ‘Interview with Barbara Harrell-Bond’, in Indra, D. (ed.) Engendering Forced Migration, Oxford: Berghahn.

Editorial Introduction

171

Downloaded from http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Macedonia on September 3, 2015

JACOBSEN, K. and LANDAU, L. (2003) Researching Refugees: Some Methodological and Ethical Considerations in Social Science and Forced Migration, Working Paper 90. Geneva: UNHCR. JOLY, D. (1996) Haven or Hell? Asylum Policies and Refugees in Europe, Basingstoke: Macmillan. KLEINMAN, D., DAS, V. and LOCK, M. (1997) Social Suffering, Berkeley: University of California Press. KUHLMAN, T. (1991) ‘The Economic Integration of Refugees in Developing Countries: A Research Model’, Journal of Refugee Studies 4(1): 1–20. KUHLMAN, T. (2004) Forced Migration: An Economist’s Perspective, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. LOESCHER, G. (2001) UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path, Oxford: OUP. MALKKI, L. (1990) ‘Context and Consciousness: Local Conditions for the Production of Historical and National Thought among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania’, in Fox, R. (ed.) Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures. American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, No. 2. RODGERS, G. (2004) ‘ ‘‘Hanging out’’ with Forced Migrants: Methodological and Ethical Challenges’, Forced Migration Review 21: 48–49. SILOVE, D., STEEL, Z. and MOLLICA, R. F. (2001) ‘Detention of Asylum Seekers: Assault on Health, Human Rights, and Social Development’, Lancet 357: 1436–1437. SMITH, M. (2004) ‘ ‘‘Warehousing’’ Refugees: A Denial of Rights, a Waste of Humanity’, World Refugee Survey: 38–56, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. STRATHERN, M. (2006) ‘A Community of Critics? Thoughts on New Knowledge’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12(1): 191–209. TEMPLE, B. and MORAN, R. (eds) (2006) Doing Research with Refugees: Issues and Guidelines, London: Policy Press. TUITT, P. (1996) False Images: The Law’s Construction of the Refugee, London: Pluto Press. TURTON, D. (2002) ‘Forced Displacement and the Nation-state’, in Robinson, J. (ed.) Development and Displacement, Oxford: Oxford University Press. USCRI (n.d.) Statistical Yearbook 1995–2005, www.unhcr.org/statistics.html. USCRI (n.d.) ‘Refugees and Asylum Seekers Worldwide from 1997 to 2005’, available at www.refugees.org/article.aspx?id=1614. VAN HEAR, N. (1998) ‘Introduction’, Special Issue on Refugee Studies and the Refugee Regime in Transition, Journal of Refugee Studies 11(4): 341–349. VAN SELM, J. (eds) (2000) Kosovo’s Refugees in the European Union, London: Pinter. VAN SELM, J. (2002) ‘Immigration and Asylum or Foreign Policy: The EU’s Approach to Migrants and their Countries of Origin’, in Lavenex, S. and Ucarer, E. M. (eds) Migration and the Externalities of European Integration, Lanham, MD: Lexington. VERDIRAME, G. (1991) ‘Human Rights and Refugees: the Case of Kenya’, Journal of Refugee Studies 12(1): 54–77. VIBEKE EGGLI, A. (2002) Mass Refugee Influx and the Limits of Public International Law, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. WHITE, A. (2002) ‘Organic Functionalism, ‘‘Community’’ and Place: Refugee Studies and the Geographical Constitution of Refugee Identities’, Geoforum 33: 73–83. YAMASHITA, H. (2004) Humanitarian Space and International Politics: The Creation of Safe Areas, Aldershot: Ashgate.