25
Apr
Expanding Humanitarian Parole
In January of 2023, the Biden Administration formally announced its new approach to border enforcement and immigration policy. Facing the inevitable end of Title 42, the White House issued both a carrot and a stick: the expansion of legal pathways to enter the United States at its southern border, accompanied by harsher consequences for individuals... Read More
11
Apr
Together, they grow
How an NGO rebuilds the lives of Rohingya refugees in the Indian district of Nuh In 2022, more than 3,500 Rohingya refugees attempted to cross the sea in deadly boats which kept drifting on the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal for several weeks. The UNHCR reports show that this number is a 360%... Read More
7
Apr
The ASB-UNHCR Research Workshop on Refugee Studies and Forced Displacement 2023
The ASB-UNHCR Research Workshop on Refugee Studies and Forced Displacement 2023 will be held at the Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur on the 19th and 20th of June 2023. This third workshop, hosted in conjunction with World Refugee Day 2023, marks the return of the workshop after a three-year hiatus due to the Covid-19... Read More
21
Mar
The Role of the Environment and Objects for Refugees and its Implications for Therapy: A Psychoanalytic Approach
“And as the sun sets in the West, You will shed a tear, Longing to be back in the East. Immigrant.” Nishant Akhtar (Akhtar, 1999, pp.20) This poignant quote delicately articulates the losses that migrants experience when leaving their home country. Being forced to leave one’s homeland entails an immeasurable amount of pain and is... Read More
13
Mar
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... Read More
13
Mar
Why Cultural Contextualization Matters: Books Unbound’s program with Rohingya girls in the world’s largest refugee camp
The Rohingya Crisis The Rohingya are an ethnic minority from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Like many other ethnic groups in Myanmar, they have been victims of religious persecution and genocide by the Burmese military. For years, the diaspora has grown as Rohingya flee to neighboring countries for safety and opportunity. In August 2017, an outbreak of... Read More
21
Feb
The Rohingyas in No Man’s Land have fled to Bangladesh
After the latest genocide in August 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar. However, since then around 6,000 Rohingyas who could not flee or who were not interested to go to Bangladesh have been stranded in no man’s land on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Rohingyas are the ethnic religious minority group who have... Read More
30
Jan
A Call to Action: Pass the Afghan Adjustment Act
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, a humanitarian crisis ensued that was 20 years in the making. We saw the shocking images that came out of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan citizens scrambled to flee the country, gripping onto American Boeing C-17s as they began their withdrawal out of the country.... Read More
28
Dec
Book Review: Visiting Immigration Detention: care and cruelty in Australia’s asylum seeker prisons – Michelle Peterie
Michelle Peterie, Bristol University Press, 2022, 176 pages With the UK and others competing to become the least attractive destination for refugees and asylum seekers who arrive by sea, the Australian approach of indefinite mandatory detention, offshore processing, and third country resettlement has been praised. But for those detained by the Australian government in its... Read More
28
Nov
Book Review: Acts of Cruelty – Aileen Crowe
“Acts of Cruelty: Australia’s Immigration Laws and experiences of people seeking protection after arriving by plane”, Aileen Crowe, Palaver, an imprint of Ethica Projects Pty Ltd, 2022, 228 pages Franciscan nun Aileen Crowe PhD is one of Michelle Peterie’s visitors to Australian onshore detention centres, with her decades of work for marginalised people in Australia... Read More