How to use this Page

Refugees have become so pervasive in human consciousness that the Oxford Dictionaries for Children identified “refugee” as the 2016 Oxford Children’s Word of the Year, based on findings from the “500 Words” global children’s writing competition sponsored by BBC Radio 2. According to the BBC, “refugee” was selected “due to a significant increase in usage by entrants writing in this year’s competition combined with the sophisticated context that children were using it in and the rise in emotive and descriptive language around it.”

The post The UN Summit for refugees and migrants: A global response includes empowering one refugee at a time appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

The United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants will be held on 19 September 2016 at the UNHQ in New York. The high-level meeting to address large movements of refugees and migrants is expected to endorse an Outcome Document that commits states to negotiating a ‘Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework’ and separately a ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,’ for adoption in 2018.

The post Scaling the UN Refugee Summit: A reading list appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world.

The post Why hasn’t the rise of new media transformed refugee status determination? appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

With this family history behind me, questions of immigration are never far from my mind. I owe my existence to the generosity of the UK in taking in generations of refugees, as well as the kindness shown by one wealthy unmarried Christian woman – who agreed to foster my father for a few months until his parents arrived, but as that never happened, becoming his guardian until adulthood.

The post Generations of asylum seekers appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

Europe is currently scrambling to cope with the arrival of over one million asylum seekers. Responses have ranged from building walls to opening doors. European Union countries have varied widely in their offers to resettle refugees.

The post Time to reform the international refugee regime appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

I have been running workshops with asylum seekers from teens to adults for several years through English Pen who champion literature and human rights. One of the most successful texts I have used is the poem 'Go and Open the Door' by Miroslav Holub,  This poem can help to change lives.




I first used the poem with a group of teenagers in a project based at the Tricycle Theatre. We read the poem and then I literally opened the outside door and said, "What if you opened the door and outside was Africa?"
Ahmad from Kuwait wrote,
Go and open the door..../maybe you will see death and war/ maybe you will see guns, bullets, bombs and terror/ But no matter what, you will see happy, helpful, handsome people/ So go and open the door...
Then he said, "This has been the best day of my life!" His voice had been heard at last.



In this time of uncertainty, after the attacks in France last week and the sense that all our freedoms are under threat, there are voices which we generally don't hear - those of asylum seekers. These are people who have already been through our worst nightmares and are trying to build a new life in a strange country so far from home, where they often feel silenced and misunderstood.
But we can learn so much from them if we are only willing to listen.



I have just completed an 8 week course with asylum seekers at the MRCF in Ladbroke Grove.  The theme of my workshops was 'Writing for Health and Well Being.' My aim was to provide a toolbox to dip into and to experience how writing can help express the whole spectrum of experiences and feelings.  I used simple poetry devices to get started.

I want/ I don't want ( Martha)
I want to start my new life with courage and
passion.
I don't want to be stuck anymore because
life is beautiful.
I want to run and buy what I like.
I don't want to lose time with my life.
I want to go to the sky and see how far it is
I don't want to stop dreaming in the night.

As the weeks progressed the participants began to feel that writing could be a part of the lives as a way of helping to deal with their experiences and how everything had changed for them.

Kanchana wrote, "Writing helps a lot to relax the mind and can express feelings in writing. I hadn't thought of writing like this before."
Florence felt that when she first joined the class she was quite uncertain how writing could help with improving her life. But by the end of the course she was writing longer and longer pieces and declared, "Asking us to answer the question, Who am I? is simple words, a simple question, but it is really very big. Doing this writing for me has been very positive and it has changed everything for me."

Who am I  by Florence 
I am a midwife.nurse
I am not practising.
I am married
I am not a mother.
I am very active
I am not doing anything now.
You can't judge a book by its cover by Florence
I might be short but I am complete,
am black but still human
I can't read and write but I understand
don't judge me by first sight
but after hearing my views.

I brought in a set of objects and the participants chose things to write about. They went on to take photographs in the neighbourhood and wrote texts to go with the pictures. These have now been made into posters and will be exhibited in the local community.  Here is some of the writing and photos I took in the workshop.

Add a Comment

By Matthew Flinders

We all know that the sea is a dangerous place and should be treated with respect but it seems that Australian politicians have taken things a step (possibly even a leap) further. From sharks to asylum seekers the political response appears way out of line with the scale of the risk.

In the United Kingdom the name Matthew Flinders will rarely generate even a glint of recognition, whereas in Australia Captain Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) is (almost) a household name. My namesake was not only the intrepid explorer who first circumnavigated and mapped the continent of Australia but he is also a distant relative whose name I carry with great pride. But having spent the past month acquainting myself with Australian politics I can’t help wonder how my ancestor would have felt about what has become of the country he did so much to put on the map.

The media feeding frenzy and the political response surrounding shark attacks in Western Australia provides a case in point. You are more likely to be killed by a bee sting than to be killed by a shark attack while swimming in the sea off Perth or any of Western Australia’s wonderful beaches. Hundreds of thousands of people enjoy the sea and coastline every weekend but what the media defined as ‘a spate’ of fatal shark attacks (seven to be exact) in between 2010-2013 led the state government to implement no less than 72 baited drum lines along the coast. Australia’s Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, granted the Western Australian Government a temporary exemption from national environment laws protecting great white sharks, to allow the otherwise illegal acts of harming or killing the species. The result of the media feeding frenzy has been the slow death of a large number of sharks. The problem is that of the 173 sharks caught in the first four months none were Great Whites and the vast majority were Tiger Sharks – a species that has not been responsible for a fatal shark attack for decades.

The public continues to surf and swim, huge protests have been held against the shark cull and yet the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, insists that it is the public reaction against the cull that is ‘ludicrous and extreme’ and that it will remain in place for two years.

If the political approach to sharks appears somewhat harsh then the approach to asylum seekers appears equally unforgiving. At one level the Abbott government’s ‘Stop the Boats’ policy has been a success. The end of July witnessed the first group of asylum seekers to reach the Australian mainland for seven months. In the same period last year over 17,000 people in around 200 boats made the treacherous journey across the ocean in order to claim asylum in Australia. ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ has therefore ‘solved’ a political problem that many people believe simply never existed. The solution – as far as one exists – is actually a policy of ‘offshore processing’ that uses naval intervention to direct boats to bureaucratic processing plants on Manus, Nauru, or Christmas Island. Like modern day Robinson Crusoe, thousands of asylum seekers find themselves marooned on the most remote outposts of civilization. But then again – out of sight is out of mind.

The 157 people (including around fifty children) who made it to the mainland last week exemplify the harsh treatment that forms the cornerstone of the current approach. After spending nearly a month at sea on an Australian customs vessel they were briefly flown to the remote Curtin Detention Centre but when the asylum seekers refused to be interviewed by Indian officials they were promptly dispatched to the island of Nauru and its troubled detention centre (riots, suicides, self-mutilation, etc.). Those granted asylum will be resettled permanently on Nauru while those refused will be sent back to Sri Lanka (the country that most of the asylum seekers were originally fleeing via India). Why does the government insist on this approach? Could it be the media rather than the public that are driving political decision-making? A recent report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that the vast majority of refugees feel welcomed by the Australian public but rejected by the Australian political institutions. How can this mismatch be explained? The economy is booming and urgently requires flexible labor, the asylum seekers want to work and embed themselves in communities; the country is vast and can hardly highlight over-population as the root of the problem.

There is an almost palpable fear of a certain type of ‘foreigner’ within the Australian political culture. Under this worldview the ocean is a human playground that foreign species (i.e. sharks) should not be allowed to visit. The world is changing as human flows become more fluid and fast-paced – no borders are really sovereign any more. And yet in Australia the political system remains wedded to ‘keeping the migration floodgates closed’, apparently unaware of just how cruel and unforgiving this makes Australia look to the rest of the world. What would Captain Matthew Flinders think about this state of affairs almost exactly 200 years after his death?

From sharks to asylum seekers Australian politics seems ‘all at sea’.

The post Sharks, asylum seekers, and Australian politics appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment