No abstract

The relationships between insecurity, environmental change and population displacement are discussed in this paper. It argues that environmental change and concomitant population displacement are the consequences of war and insecurity rather than triggers for it-as postulated in so much of the recent literature. Additionally, the paper critically reviews the state of knowledge concerning the impact of refugees on the environment of host countries. The aim here is not to document the negative or positive impacts as such, but rather to de-mythologise some aspects of the state of knowledge which through repetition have become accepted as 'scientific truth'.

Using fieldwork data collected in Eritrea, Rome, Milan and Stockholm, and supplemented by human rights organisation reports and discussions with key informants in four cities in the UK, this article examines the extent to which the Eritrean national service and its concomitant Warsai-Yikaalo Development Campaign qualify as forced or compulsory labour as defined by the relevant international conventions.

This article examines the relationship between access to or lack of access to citizenship rights in countries of asylum and the propensity of refugees to return. It hypothesizes that in situations where refugees enjoy civil, social and economic citizenship rights in the context of favorable structural factors ‐ relatively secure employment, self‐employment, social services such as housing, schools, health care and social security ‐ the importance of repatriation may diminish as a viable option. In North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where refugees are able to enjoy rights of citizenship with definite prospects for becoming citizens (through naturalization) or denizens through acquisition of permanent status, and where favorable structural factors provide for the enjoyment of a decent standard of living, they tend to remain regardless of whether the conditions that prompted displacement are eliminated. The policy environments and the structural factors for refugees sheltering in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) are the antithesis of those refugees in Developed Countries (DCs). As a result, millions of refugees in the South have been ‘voting with their feet’ homewards to recoup citizenship rights which they lost in connection with displacement and which they have been unable to achieve in exile.

A decade and a half ago Chambers (1979) referred to African rural refugees as “What the Eye Does not See.” This was, inter alia, due to the remoteness of their inhabited areas and the urban bias which then characterized the responses of the international assistance regime. If rural refugees were, in the 1970s, “what the eye did not see,” today refugees in many of the African urban centers are what the eye “refuses to see.” One of the most dramatic and far-reaching impacts of war, drought and economic hardship in the 1980s in many sub-Saharan African countries has been the immense population shift from rural areas to the cities. This population shift is taking place in the absence of any structural transformation in the economies concerned. Structural transformation here refers to increases in labor productivity, a declining share of agriculture in total output, technological progress and industrialization. African host-governments see the situation in their urban centers being exacerbated by the presence of refugees who are said to compete with nationals for scarce employment opportunities and social services such as health, education, housing, water and transportation. In many African host countries where the public sector is the main employer, refugees are excluded from employment in this sector; in other countries such as Egypt and Djibouti, refugees are not allowed to take any paid employment (Wallace 1985). The policies of many African governments toward skilled urban refugees are succinctly described by Brydon and Gould (1984,4): [E]xperience has shown that skilled refugees face particular difficulties for employment and assimilation into the host society. Employment policies in most African countries have been vigorously nationalistic…and particularly for skilled workers.