Based on ethnographic research with asylum seekers living in a ‘direct provision’ centre in Ireland, and comprising participatory visual methods, this work offers a unique examination of the ‘direct provision’ system that analyses the tensions between exclusion and marginalization, and involvement and engagement with local communities. It gives voice to the perspectives of residents themselves through an analysis of photographic images and texts created by the participants of the project, providing fresh insight into the everyday experiences of living in these liminal zones between borders, and the various forms of attachment, engagement and belonging that they create. While the book’s empirical focus is on the Irish context, the analysis sheds light on broader policies and experiences of exclusion and the increasing number of liminal spaces between and within borders in which people seeking protection wait. Situated at the intersection of social anthropology, human geography and participatory arts and visual culture, it will appeal to scholars and students focusing on migration and asylum, ethnicity and integration, as well as those with an interest in participatory and visual research methods.

Refuge in a Moving World draws together more than thirty contributions from multiple disciplines and fields of research and practice to discuss different ways of engaging with, and responding to, migration and displacement. The volume combines critical reflections on the complexities of conceptualizing processes and experiences of (forced) migration, with detailed analyses of these experiences in contemporary and historical settings from around the world. Through interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies – including participatory research, poetic and spatial interventions, ethnography, theatre, discourse analysis and visual methods – the volume documents the complexities of refugees’ and migrants’ journeys. This includes a particular focus on how people inhabit and negotiate everyday life in cities, towns, camps and informal settlements across the Middle East and North Africa, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Europe.

This book explores the impact of transnational migration on the views, feelings, and practices of home among migrants. Home is usually perceived as what placidly lies in the background of everyday life, yet migrants’ experience tells a different story: what happens to the notion of home, once migrants move far away from their “natural” bases and search for new ones, often under marginalized living conditions? The author analyzes in how far migrants’ sense of home relies on a dwelling place, intimate relationships, memories of the past, and aspirations for the future–and what difference these factors make in practice. Analyzing their claims, conflicts, and dilemmas, this book showcases how in the migrants’ case, the sense of home turns from an apparently intimate and domestic concern into a major public question.

Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant “reception center” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights. Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.

This open access book describes how the numerous arrivals of asylum seekers since 2015 shaped reception and integration processes in Europe. It addresses the structuration of asylum and reception systems, and spaces and places of reception on European, national, regional and local level. It also analyses perceptions and discourses on asylum and refugees, their evolvement and the consequences for policy development. Furthermore, it examines practices and policy developments in the field of refugee reception and integration. The volume shows and explains a variety of refugee reception and integration strategies and practices as specific outcome of multilevel governance processes in Europe. By addressing and contextualizing those multiple experiences of asylum seeker reception, the book is a valuable contribution to the literature on migration and integration, societal development and political culture in Europe.

"This book investigates the issue of local mobilization against asylum seekers in urban areas, which are often disproportionally affected by complex issues related to immigration and integration, as well as socio-economic development and growing inequalities. Based on ethnographic research in the city of Rotterdam, it explores the conditions under which mobilization against the establishment of an asylum seeker centre emerged, offering a combined analysis of interviews, social media and mainstream media to demonstrate the key role played by story-telling in the development of opposition to the arrival of asylum seekers. Presenting a novel theoretical model of anti-immigration mobilization that connects the social importance of storytelling to broader socio-political developments and conditions, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and politics with interests in migration, social movements and mobilization around contentious issues"--

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different. To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.