Book review: The Refugee System: a Sociological Approach – Rawan Arar and David Scott Fitzgerald

The Refugee System: a Sociological Approach, Rawan Arar and David Scott Fitzgerald, Polity Press, 2023, 316 pages

US researchers Arar and Fitzgerald are promoting a sociological “systems approach” to refugee research as an alternative to what they call the prevailing “siloed” approach by lawyers, legal and other academics, and government/organisational professionals. They believe the mitigation imperative to respond within institutional and legal frameworks has come at the expense of better knowledge of how displaced people understand and respond to their situation: “categories of practice” have overwhelmed “categories of analysis”. The dominant paradigm is said to have major limitations: it tends to be ahistorical, focuses largely on legal definitions, aims for “durable solutions” with unrealistic goals of ending further movement, and focuses on the current stage of displacement, in isolation from the causes and drivers of further movement. Scholarly efforts by non-practitioners are handicapped by what is published in official and statistical reports, with its categories and aggregations designed for “practice” decisions.

Hidden by diplomatic language, or ignored, are power disparities— so NGOs might better influence officialdom — which infect the knowledge production and distribution process. The authors say that, despite reproaches to states or powerful actors about what they should do according to law, studies usually ignore why they don’t. The power of decision-makers allows them to infringe, which needs to be recognised and called out, to enable a countervailing response from experts and advocates.

The alternative perspective from the authors is that a deficit in context has occurred because the sovereign nation-state is accepted by the mainstream as the natural unit of analysis, with remedies centred on putting displaced people inside a state’s border and have them remain there. The movement of people across a border is seen as the trigger for concern, and elevates control as the objective (reflecting the priorities of authorities), with lesser attention to the immobilized others and IDPs (Internally Displaced People) who haven’t (yet) crossed. Displaced people will respond strategically to the various types of military/government/official power they face, both immediate and contingent, sometimes with decisions outside the expectations or advice of observers or official supporters. The lack of nuance inherent in UN reports of a “population of concern” does not explain why some people move in response to a threat, and some stay.

A large part of the answer, the authors say, is the influence of the household — rather than the individual — in the management of multiple risks and goals, including the identification of pathways to protective resettlement. The case study provided of the Syrian Asfour family illustrates group decision-making which links economic and refugee migration and shows refugees as capable of agency as well as victimhood. (Iranian writer Dina Nayeri also does this well in her 2019 memoir “The Ungrateful Refugee”). Also relevant to refugee decision-making are policies outside the refugee locality, and their interdependence between states; more official awareness of this might result in better policies. Their takeaway is that we understand better by knowing the history and reasoning which has played out over time between individuals, international influences and institutional interactions, which the “siloed” method does not incorporate.

The larger picture influences local outcomes: “global” Southern states house the vast majority of UN-recognised refugees, 40% of whom live in non-signatory countries to the Refugee Convention. This provides space for Northern refugee resettlement selection (not via the fictitious “queue” but often as a hard-nosed search for “talent”), and push-back against unofficial movements from the South to the North —”Northern deterrence and Southern containment.” It was the story of Alan Kurdi, the young boy found drowned on a beach in 2015, which roused the world to the Syrian agony, but there were many state policies (of Canada, Turkey, Syria) which determined his family’s options over the previous four years of displacement (decades for others) but rarely appreciated by outsiders.

For assessment policy at the sharp end, it is not clear to me what operational changes are being proposed. The authors are agnostic on whether the legal definition should be expanded, but for analytical reasons define refugees as those who’ve entered another country or are afraid to return to it because of violence, or the threat of it. Their sociological refugees can include students, defectors, freedom fighters, and settlers. They reject the “refugees are not migrants” view which is “rooted in legally consequential distinctions, not always sociological realities.” An example of this definitional issue is that Saudi Arabia is absent from the 2019 UNHCR listing of major refugee-hosting countries because it does not want to provide Refugee Convention rights. However, it does give “asylum policy by proxy” with 670,000 Syrian “visitors” and workers in 2018, a similar number to Jordan’s UN-recognised refugees. Migration decisions include economic considerations as well as the avoidance of physical harm, and perhaps the authors’ focus on the household as the decision-making venue informs this.

The Syrian exodus continued over time, as physical threats were supplemented by lack of work, education and healthcare, and peace seemed further away. The case study in Chapter 1 of Salvadoran migration to the US over the decades from 1979 also supports their systems analysis understanding of sequencing in work and family reunification decisions, with feedback loops, interactivity between states (including Mexico as a transit state), and criminal influence at home and in the US (with returns by deportation), being relevant to understanding the dynamics of household decision-making.

A global change over the last thirty years is the greater indeterminacy of return to the original location, due to fewer political settlements in intractable civil wars — some with millenarian theological leaders not inclined to negotiate, matched up against foreign power intervention, which leads to more conflict. We are reminded that knowing when it is safe for refugees to return is fraught: of 53,000 Jews who left Germany in 1933 after Hitler took power, 16,000 returned after anti-Semitic persecutions eased, with deadly results. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar fled from violence in the 1970s, 1990s, 2010s, and most of the 742,000 who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 did so within a three-month period.

For this lay reader, the authors’ argument may still be a work in progress. They say the eclectic origin of the systems approach comes from demographic sociological studies of rural-urban migration systems from the end of the Cold War, late 1980s period, and more recent studies of refugee decision-making around immobility, movement, and settlement. Although “a systems approach does not require writing a history of the world to understand a given situation”, their detailed knowledge of many situations over centuries gives weight to their perspective that the 1951 Convention was not the start of refugee protection, and pre-modern Africa and modern Latin America have had different and better ways to deal with “refugeedom.”

Hannah Arendt said “Persuasion is not possible without appeal to either experiences or desires, in other words to immediate political needs.”  To this Australian reader, there are consequential issues which emerge from their systems view of the world, three of which have the potential to develop a deeper understanding and expand refugee support. There is a local imperative to challenge the widespread attachment to “national sovereignty” as sufficient reason to “turn back the boats”, and their rejection of methodological nationalism begins this. They say that “nationalist reactions against refugees are a modern phenomenon”, but unless we find better ways to combat them, dark forces threaten refugees’ future and ours too.

The second issue is whether Australian advocates can widen their support by transcending the usual moral and legal dichotomy between refugees and migrants. It’s discussed deeply in this book,  but reputable polling shows only about half the population are confident these distinctions are strongly meaningful. Educating sceptical Australians about the many forces which cause “mixed migration” (and how some are coerced not to move) could result in more weight given to the decision-making by claimants in refugee status determinations. Perhaps it can increase sympathy for those trapped in longterm precarity in transit countries like Indonesia. Can media news presented as the sudden appearance of refugees (from who knows where), with simplistic push and pull explanations, ever usefully address “why here? why now?”

Thirdly, the discussion above about Myanmar and Germany in the 1930s questions the idea that, after the shooting has died down, a safe environment for returnees is back, a conclusion of doubtful credibility which suits the destination countries. Australia apparently now does support the return of Tamils to Sri Lanka, against the UN Special Rapporteur’s advice.

Much history of the development of the Constructivist and Realist categorisation schools is presented, but a detailed Table of Contents, listing the many chapter subheadings, would have been helpful. This promises to be a book whose substantial content and challenging views will provoke discussion on how adoption of a different approach can improve existing institutions, knowledge and refugee outcomes. The frequency of policy reversals over many decades, at country and leadership level, means the opportunities for debate will continue to be there.

Kevin Bain’s refugee reading guide is at Bayside Refugee Support. It has short summaries of about 100 books published over the last 20 years.