3 March 2007
The third in the series of online consultations focuses on complex refugee responsibilities. While understanding that particular social and cultural contexts impact on different refugees’ responsibilities, it can be argued that forced migrants are faced with a more complex set of responsibilities than others. Transnational links, through diaspora, political involvement and funding, remittances and family ties, mean that the interests of refugees are torn in several directions.
The consultation is launched by two commentaries by academics engaged in research in this area:
To comment on the issues raised by these commentaries or the project more generally, use the comment box below. Alternatively, you can email your thoughts and ideas to Gareth Morrell and they will be published on this site.
The arrival in the UK of substantial numbers of asylum seekers and refugees in the 1990s and early 2000s has transformed much of London and other major British cities. In the last two decades, Britain’s population of migrant background has grown ever more diverse as Sri Lankans, Somalis, Nigerians, Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, Palestinians, Eritreans, Zimbabweans, Ghanaians, Congolese, Colombians and many others have joined the large, well-established communities drawn from former British colonies in the Caribbean and South Asia who were already settled in Britain’s inner cities. Some of the asylum migrants also joined small populations of co-nationals who arrived earlier. Typically the diasporas that have formed as a result include successive waves of migrants -- professionals and elite political exiles who arrived from the 1950s; students and sometimes workers who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s; asylum seekers who arrived from the later 1980s, and in large numbers in the1990s; and people associated with these primary migrants who later joined them for family reunion or marriage.
As well as being differentiated by their wave of arrival, there are cleavages among the new diasporas according to their immigration status (see Peter Dwyer’s previous piece in this series), their economic resources, their education and skills, and sometimes their religion and ethnicity. In addition, there is a growing second generation born and raised in the UK often with an outlook rather different from their parents born abroad. These differences affect the inclination and capacity of people in these communities to respond to their different responsibilities in the UK and further afield.
Those responsibilities pull at least three or four ways:
First, refugees have a responsibility to their own families with them in the UK, for whom they must provide support -- and not least see to their children’s upbringing and education. They may also feel some responsibility to their wider communities – through participation in welfare associations, Saturday schools, churches, mosques and temples, sports and cultural activities. They may also have some responsibilities to other extended family members dispersed in other parts of Europe or further afield.
Second, refugees have some responsibility to the host society in which they live – the local community and the national polity in the UK. The depth, breadth and degree of allegiance are of course matters of debate – a hot subject just now given the current controversy over the tension between diversity and social coherence. The need to learn English and to accept British law is generally (though not universally) accepted, but what of the obligation to subscribe to wider and often vaguely defined British values?
Third, refugees have responsibilities to those they may have left behind in the homeland, sometimes in conflict zones, and sometimes in neighbouring countries of first asylum. Here the call is often for support, commonly through money sent to pay for basic needs to help such people to survive and cope, or sometimes to pay for the migration of family members out of conflict zones and on to safer and more prosperous destinations -- this often involves hefty fees paid to migration agents. Paying for the marriage of relatives in the homeland – sometimes to facilitate migration – is another demanding responsibility.
Fourth – a darker side of responsibility – pressure may come from opposition or insurgent groups to support struggles in the homeland, financially or otherwise. Such demands can be very burdensome and present serious dilemmas. Against the background of anxiety about terrorism and security, refugees may find themselves caught between sympathy for the cause back home and the people languishing there on one hand and on the other hand conformity with the law and expectations of the host society.
These obligations – to family members they live with, to the wider host community, to those they have left in the homeland or in neighbouring countries, and sometimes to insurgent groups – can pull in different directions and lead to severe strain. If conditions in the homeland become unbearable, does the obligation to provide help override the need to support the educational progress of refugees’ children in the UK? Are there limits to the support for those abroad that can reasonably be demanded? What are the effects of the obligation to send money home out of often meagre incomes in the UK?
It is clearly a big challenge to balance these competing responsibilities. They are arguably more demanding than those pulling for the attention of so-called ‘economic migrants’ (let alone native British), because of the often more parlous circumstances of people back home or in conflict-ridden regions of origin. In trying to meet their responsibilities, refugees cannot help but to become economic actors, for they not only have to address their own livelihood needs, but also the needs of those they have left behind in the homeland or in countries of first asylum – there may be demands for assistance from all of these quarters. Refugees therefore cannot help being economic migrants – a charge laid by many critics of immigration.
Some are better placed than others to meet the challenge of these competing demands. Immigration status -- which as shown in Peter Dwyer’s previous piece in this series confers entitlement to work, social security and other rights -- is one of the most influential markers of difference in these communities affecting capacity to meet responsibilities. Most if not all of those who arrived in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s now have some kind of secure status: British citizenship or at least the right to reside in the UK. Many if not most of the arrivals in the first half of the1990s also have some kind of secure status: refugee status, humanitarian status, the right of residence or British citizenship. But the picture is much more mixed for those who arrived from the later 1990s onwards. The cases of many thousands of these are pending, and the asylum claims of an unknown number – estimates for 2005 varied between 150,000 and 280,000 – have been rejected. For these, access to legal employment is restricted or prohibited, and their capacity to meet their responsibilities is correspondingly limited.
Competing responsibilities and obligations clearly pull refugees in the UK in several sometimes conflicting directions. But living transnationally may also have its benefits, for there can be reciprocity across borders – help given is often later requited. Diaspora communities may then in the long run find themselves better placed in today’s world than those without such extensive transnational connections.
* Nicholas Van Hear is a Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, where he heads the research programme 'The Migration-Asylum Nexus'. He has worked on forced migration, conflict and related issues for more many years, with field experience in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. His books include New Diasporas (London: Routledge, 1998), The Migration-Development Nexus (Geneva: International Organisation for Migration, 2003), and Catching Fire (with Christopher McDowell, Lexington 2006), and he has been a consultant for, among others, UNHCR, the European Commission, and the British and Danish governments.
A great deal of political discourse in Britain today rests on an assumption that migrants—whether refugees, labour migrants, post-colonial migrants—lack a sense of responsibility toward Britain. More specifically, there is a growing sense that migrants’ persistent identification with countries of birth and with transnational religio-political movements (i.e. ‘Islamism’) inhibits identification with and integration in British society. This perception underlies recent government moves toward a social cohesion agenda, which emphasizes migrants’ obligations (rather than rights), and which attempts to re-establish the link between citizenship and Britishness.
It seems clear, as Nicholas Van Hear indicates in his discussion paper, that contemporary migrants, and perhaps refugees most of all, are pulled in a multitude of directions, including the direction of ‘home’. But the question needs to be asked whether enduring connections with homelands or with diasporic communities, in fact, preclude engagement with or a sense of responsibility toward host societies. In other words, are citizenship, social membership, and integration ‘zero-sum’ concepts?
For the past decade I have been conducting research in Britain’s diverse Arabic-origin communities, exploring questions of citizenship, identity, and notions of ‘home’. My most recent research (in conjunction with Lynn Staeheli from the University of Edinburgh) has focused on British Arab activists and their motivations for becoming active in community affairs. Our aim has been to uncover how their activism relates to ideas about citizenship, identity, and integration. The individuals interviewed for this study, by their own admission, are not ‘representative’ of all British Arabs, let alone all migrant or minority communities. They are highly educated, generally well-off, and have had, in most cases, easy access to British citizenship. With that said, their migration stories reflect the complexity of migration to Britain today, especially in the fact that many of then, though not formal refugees, have experienced displacement, exile, and even statelessness. Their views give pause to consider how different migrant groups, whether refugees, skilled professional migrants, post-colonial migrants, or some combination therein, might think about integration and their responsibilities to British society.
British Arab activists, whether first or second generation, identify strongly with the Arab world and, in some instances, with the wider Islamic world. They feel passionately about the political upheavals in their countries and towns of origin and in the Arab world as a whole. A sense of responsibility toward the ‘Arab people’ manifests itself in a variety of ways. Some activists are involved in philanthropic organizations to assist directly communities who have suffered from civil war and political instability; some sponsor cultural events and exhibits that bring Arab culture to Britain itself; and others have set out to assist other Arab migrants who have settled in Britain with few resources. Through these activities, activists remain deeply engaged with the Arab world—an engagement that is fostered by easy access to Arabic language publications and satellite television broadcasts.
Yet, at the same time, most of our respondents describe feeling ‘at home’ in Britain, and they are eager that other community members feel the same. Respondents frequently complain of the insularity of British Arabs, and they are intent on promoting greater engagement with British society through official channels (e.g. by organizing within political parties or participating in multicultural forums) or through informal channels (e.g by sharing Arab culture with co-workers). When asked what ‘integration’ means to them, they speak of being knowledgeable about the wider communities in which they live and being willing to participate in local institutions and affairs. Crucially, they distinguish between this vision of integration and a deeper, cultural assimilation. For our interviewees, responsibility to Britain derives from the fact that ‘here’ is where they live, work, and raise their families; it does not derive from any inherent duty to conform to a particular culture, to embrace a specific identity, or to subscribe to a particular set of values (though many assert that Arab and Islamic values are fully compatible with British ones).
Many of our respondents also suggest that their communities’ engagement with British society requires more willingness among the British mainstream to accept Arabs and Muslims and to see them as legitimate part of the polity. A repeated theme in the interviews is that integration is a two-way relationship that involves responsibilities on both sides to accept change. For these activists, asserting Arab identities, promoting a strong Arab consciousness in the community, and above all, challenging negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, serves not to separate Arab communities but to promote their equal participation in British society.
These views indicate the multilayered nature of migrants’ political identities and commitments and the complex ways that migrants and their children might conceptualize integration and their responsibilities toward British society. In doing so, they point to the limitations of current political discourses, which tend to regard migrants’ multiple affiliations and responsibilities as compromising integration. By treating migrants, refugees, and minorities mainly as problems that need to be managed, many political leaders and social commentators today have lost sight of migrants’ everyday efforts—often in the face of major political, economic, and social obstacles—to engage with, contribute to, and participate in British society. The current government should not be faulted for promoting ideals of active citizenship and social cohesion. But political leaders should re-evaluate the assumption that migrants and minorities are wilfully acting against these ideals. The politics of integration today centre on the promotion of ‘British values’ and British identity; a more fruitful approach might begin by acknowledging and facilitating migrants’ commitments and sense of responsibility to the neighbourhoods and cities where they live.
