{"id":35766,"date":"2018-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ready-for-feedback3.com\/shape-history\/fmr\/bardelli\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T08:03:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T13:03:29","slug":"bardelli","status":"publish","type":"fmr_content","link":"https:\/\/www.fmreview.org\/fr\/economies\/bardelli\/","title":{"rendered":"The shortcomings of employment as a durable solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour and capital investment are increasingly seen as the solution to protracted refugee situations. Aid agencies expect forced migrants to be good entrepreneurs and to become self-reliant by finding jobs and\/or starting businesses. This puts the responsibility of \u2018succeeding\u2019 firmly on the refugees\u2019 shoulders. While this is not an official durable solution (yet), local integration (which is) is increasingly understood to mean being able to participate in economic activity.  <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I am not questioning the desires and aspirations of refugees to become self-sufficient, nor the need to support refugees to access job opportunities, but I am concerned by the deeper implications of this change in attitude. The \u201cneed for individuals to help themselves rather than relying on the State\u201d[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> is promoted by two principal tendencies in contemporary humanitarianism: first, by the increasing emphasis that the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and other agencies put on economic livelihoods programmes and economic self-reliance and, second, by the growth of public-private partnerships in refugee assistance programmes. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This imposes on refugees the responsibility to create their own durable solution through employment. Within this framework, the official durable solutions \u2013 which are all based on the idea of re-creating someone\u2019s link with the State and the possibility of citizenship \u2013 become out-dated. The solution to displacement is now re-defined in developmental terms and made into an economic issue rather than a political and social one. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This approach to refugee assistance and protection also ends up homogenising people and excluding those who cannot fulfil the \u2018entry requirements\u2019. Of course, cash-based interventions and support to enter the job market (although most jobs in the informal market are not classified as employment by international agencies) seem more dignifying ways of providing aid than delivering purely material assistance in that they give refugees a choice, but this only helps some of the many. A wide variety of reasons \u2013 whether linked to personal situations and experiences or structural unemployment \u2013 can prevent a person from working. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Depoliticising refugee protection<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The shift of responsibility in \u2018succeeding\u2019 in one\u2019s refugeehood is already perceptible in Burkina Faso, where I have conducted ethnographic research with Malian urban refugees in Bobo-Dioulasso. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Aminata, a Malian refugee of around 80 years of age, who had physical disabilities and was in frail health, shared her house with her granddaughter. Aminata was categorised as a vulnerable refugee by UNHCR, as was her granddaughter, being a minor living with an old and ill grandmother. They received food and cash assistance nearly every month for three and half years but in January 2016 the assistance stopped. UNHCR and WFP Burkina Faso, who provided this assistance, cited lack of funding and the fact that assistance does not need<\/b> to be provided for urban refugees but can<\/b> be provided if there is sufficient funding and willingness. When the decision to stop the assistance was taken, agency representatives promised that it would still be provided to those refugees categorised as vulnerable. Despite this promise, Aminata and her granddaughter did not receive any further support. At her age and with her caring responsibilities, how was she supposed to take advantage of \u201call the opportunities refugees have in cities\u201d (a widely held view, repeated to me by various humanitarian actors when discussing the help that never came)? It is generally thought that urban refugees, even those qualified as vulnerable, are surrounded by job opportunities \u2013 especially in a place like Burkina Faso where Malians have the right to work \u2013 or that they have someone in their close network who will have a job and thus be able to support them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Many studies exist that discuss why an idea of development as economic growth, in all its forms, cannot work, particularly in the long term, serving rather to favour some and exclude and marginalise others.[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> The \u2018refugee problem\u2019 has become a matter of access to the job market rather than a political question about inequalities, exclusion, conflict, exploitation, asymmetrical power relations, and so on. The human, social and political issues are replaced by market solutions. This depoliticised vision constructs refugees\u2019 hardships as being due to a lack of access to jobs and does not in any way address how and why people have become refugees in the first place. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For well over two decades, forced migration and refugee studies have questioned the \u2018refugee\u2019 category and how those thus labelled are represented and portrayed, in order to highlight the impact on refugees\u2019 lives of labels, representations and language \u2013 and the practices and policies that derive from such discourses. Today, there is a tendency for many researchers to focus on showing how refugees have economic agency, or on providing data on how to support them in their economic livelihoods. What seems to be seen as less important now \u2013 and yet what is surely still vital \u2013 is what this means in terms of protection and what impact such neoliberal discourses and practices have on refugees\u2019 lives.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nora Bardelli nora.bardelli@qeh.ox.ac.uk<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span>
\nDPhil candidate,[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford www.qeh.ox.ac.uk<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span> <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Scott-Smith T (2016) \u2018Humanitarian neophilia: the \u2018innovation turn\u2019 and its implications\u2019, Third World Quarterly<\/i> 37(12), p2238 http:\/\/tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/01436597.2016.1176856<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> See for example Rist G (2014) The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith <\/i><\/span>https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books\/about\/The_History_of_Development.html?id=LnBjDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&sou%20%C2%BBrce=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Doc.Mobility fellow, Swiss National Science Foundation.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Labour and capital investment are increasingly seen as the solution to protracted refugee situations. Aid agencies expect forced migrants to be good entrepreneurs and to become self-reliant by finding jobs and\/or starting businesses. This puts the responsibility of \u2018succeeding\u2019 firmly on the refugees\u2019 shoulders. While this is not an official durable solution (yet), local integration…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":38945,"menu_order":0,"template":"","fmr_themes":[],"fmr_region":[],"fmr_issue":[106],"fmr_year":[],"fmr_content_type":[27],"fmr_languages":[36],"fmr_list_years":[567],"class_list":["post-35766","fmr_content","type-fmr_content","status-publish","hentry","fmr_issue-106","fmr_content_type-article","fmr_languages-english","fmr_list_years-567","entry","no-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe shortcomings of employment as a durable solution - Forced Migration Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fmreview.org\/economies\/bardelli\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The shortcomings of employment as a durable solution - Forced Migration Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Labour and capital investment are increasingly seen as the solution to protracted refugee situations. 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