Pluralism - Conference Programme Session 3

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

Session 3: Migrants and Refugees
Chair: Jeremy Moses

Migrant Workers: The Excluded 'Others' in a Globalising World
Cecile T. Lowe
Faculty of Professional Studies, Thames Valley University, United Kingdom

This paper examines the systematic processes of exclusions – social, cultural and political – migrant workers have to contend with in their countries of destination. Specifically, the paper draws its data from a doctoral research done by the author on the Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong but also includes current data on the subject publicly available.
The major themes revolve around the parallel experiences of migrant workers the world over, whose numbers are variously estimated at over 100 million. These themes include among others: notions of social identity, strategies for survival, issues of integration and adaptation, the practical and sociological effects of living in the margins of society, the challenges and strains posed by onerous legal and governmental restrictions on migrant workers and not the least, having to confront increasingly hostile receiving communities who see them as freeloaders of social services and benefits.
To date, the Filipino migrant workers comprise the biggest population of foreign workers in Hong Kong. Although there are Filipinos working in the various employment sectors in Hong Kong, the vast majority of them work as domestic helpers. They are the focus of this research. The main characteristics defining this group of migrant workers – mostly women working in what is generally known in the trade as the 3-D work: dirty, demeaning and dangerous and considered low-skilled, with low status and low rates of pay also define their social roles and identities in their host community. The blurring of boundaries between the characteristics of the work that these migrant workers do and their ascribed social identities creates precarious consequences for them, intended or otherwise. Among these is the denial of any opportunity for them of any meaningful social membership in their host community. However, this very oppressive situation ironically creates the conditions for their solidarity to celebrate their difference and enable them to surmount the challenges of the migrant workers’ life.

Download Conference Paper -

Reclaiming Guatemala: The Impact of Refugees' Collective Return on Ideas of National Citizenship
Katy Long
History Faculty, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Voluntary repatriation is the international community’s preferred solution to mass displacement. (1) This paper argues that the term is often inappropriately applied to refugees returning to weak post-conflict states. Studying Guatemalan returnees, the paper examines the impact of refugees’ returns on understandings of identity and nationality.
As Guatemala’s 36-year civil war ended in 1996, over twenty thousand indigenous refugees directly negotiated an unprecedented ‘collective and organised’(2) return from exile in Mexico. These Guatemalan refugees had earlier rejected government-sponsored programmes for individual repatriation.
Based on new fieldwork conducted in June-July 2007, the paper demonstrates that voluntary return has fundamentally altered the Guatemalans’ relationship to local, national and global political structures, although “repatriation” has not taken place. Their socio-economic and infrastructural needs are still largely met by international donors. Politically, continued contact with global civil society is seen as a bulwark against state intrusion: the state remains distant, even hostile. These communities thus exist in not post-national but pre-nation-state space: their continued development now depends on forging local-global connections.
However, evidence indicates that the drive for national space has not been abandoned. Return has created multi-ethnic communities, which have fostered the growth of a new indigenous identity and an alternative national narrative. Furthermore, global instruments such as international human rights law are now employed within national fora in protecting local resources (from “foreign” economic exploitation). The aim is to construct new state-citizen relations rather than tolerate the state’s continued reluctance to engage with returnees.
This paper concludes that in assuming refugees’ historical inclusion in a functioning nation-state complex, the idea of “repatriation” over-simplifies refugees’ complex negotiations of multiple identities and political spaces whilst presupposing state interest in reintegration. More neutral “return”, as chosen by these Guatemalan refugees, provides a better foundation for the genuine national reconstruction required for any durable solution to displacement.

Download Conference Paper -

United States-Haitian Relations: 1960-2002 - Competing Discourses on Immigration
Esra Pakin
İstanbul Bilgi University, Turkey

This article is a historical-comparative analysis of the rhetorical forms and frames that have shaped United States-Haitian relations with regards to immigration between 1960-2002. The study displays how the official metaphors associated with the United States and Haiti were contested in the public and political domain. The study aspires to arrive at a better understanding of the room for maneuver that the official position enjoys by analyzing the “argumentative space” in which U.S. immigration policy on Haitian migrants is shaped. The research contends that the rationales for Haitians’ inclusion within the U.S. borders changed according to the threat perceptions of the country in respective times. It not only offers the pro-establishment portrait of the issue, but also provides a variety of hidden or marginalized stories that denounced the United States’ handling of the Haitian immigrants.
While it was mainly the non-communist character of Haiti that posed a disadvantage to the fleeing inhibitants from entering the United States in the Cold War period (i.e. vis-a-vis the Cuban immigrants), it was the post-Cold War threats of refugee influx, AIDS and drug trafficking that further hindered their admission into the U.S. In all periods, negative stereotypes associated with the Haitians’ skin color, culture and traditions were abound in official accounts. However, many critical voices from both the U.S. Congress and the press attacked the metaphors attributed to Haiti, and the character of the immigration. These counterdiscourses based their arguments on the basic tenets of Americanism which welcomed immigrants regardless of race or reason of flight, field reports and witness accounts of the abuses in the U.S immigration practice, regional and international treaties to which the United States was a party to, and by portraying the high qualities of the Haitians.
Conceptual analysis of policy discourse and counterdiscourses reveals the vulnerability and flexibility of the decisionmaking process. Focusing only upon official statements to understand foreign policy making would yield a less proficient work. The present study also contributes to the literature by exposing how the blacks in the United States responded to the official view of immigration affairs. It is an attempt to provide a multidimensional perspective to an underrated issue.