The Influence of the Global Refugee Regime in Africa: Still “Akin to a Distant Weather Pattern”?
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: We are honoured to present this special issue of the Refugee Survey Quarterly on the contemporary role of the global refugee regime in Africa. The five articles offer diverse and distinctive perspectives on the impact of the global regime on the lives of forced migrants on the African continent. We are particularly thrilled to have collaborated with authors working in and on Africa to publish these new analytical contributions. The origins of this special issue lie in multiple workshops and panel discussions over the past 5 years between the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at the University of Witwatersrand, the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the University of London, the editorial team, and our two invited experts, Jeff Crisp and Lucy Hovil. Yet the roots of the special issue (and part of its title) can be traced to long before this, with the work of Loren Landau and Roni Amit who in 2014 suggested that the global refugee regime is “something akin to a distant weather pattern with only indirect (and rarely determinative) effects on local actions” in southern Africa.1 The special issue engages with these ideas almost a decade on, with each author asked to critically reflect on this assertion within their work on the continent. Certainly, the relevance of the global refugee regime in Africa requires renewed investigation. At a time when Africa continues to host a considerable proportion of the world’s refugee population, when global responsibility sharing continues to stall, and when international initiatives remain focused on Western conceptualisations of protection, there is an urgent need to unpack the global regime’s contemporary role in the day-to-day lives of refugees and other forced migrants on the continent.
Source: Refugee Survey Quarterly
DOI: 10.1093/rsq/hdad010
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: G3351280718, G428669267
OpenAlex ID: W4386528065