By Daniela Paredes Grijalva and Rachael Diniega Environmental Migration: From Threat to Everyday Experience Millions of “climate refugees” fleeing drought on their way to Europe or Pacific islanders left with no sovereign territory as sea level rises. Does this sound familiar? Certainly such imagery representing the “human face of climate change” has been successful in gaining public attention to urge immediate action. At the same time, national security policymakers and think-tanks in the receiving countries tend to perceive such mass migration as a threat. Following this securitization logic, nation-states see the need to protect themselves against it. Migration scholars have countered such “alarmists” by classifying the phenomenon as a routine and integral aspect of a complex web of migration experiences. (Non-)migration decisions range from forced to voluntary, and most movements initiated by environmental changes or disasters will be short-distance, temporary, or within countries. As framings of environmental migration have gained in fluidity and scope, the nuances have been illuminated further through multidisciplinary research spanning the social and natural sciences. We argue that environmental migration demands more refined attention, particularly from the viewpoint of policymaking, in order to move from a logic of protection against migrants to one of protecting them and their human rights. Securitization paints a simplistic picture. We argue that two particular concepts--translocality and (im)mobility--point towards new directions in understanding the fabric of human-environment relations. We have both begun our doctoral projects researching different aspects of this issue in Morocco and Indonesia. In this essay, we set out to illustrate our preliminary findings on how to expand our conceptualization of environmental migration. Only by capturing the everyday yet complex realities of migrants themselves can we lay a foundation for expanding measures geared towards the protection of human rights that accurately address their situation. Fig. 01: Rural town in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco Integrating Translocality into Environmental Migration The existing research on environmental migration has widened the conceptual spectrum beyond such dichotomies and categorizations like forced or voluntary, the number of “climate refugees,” and the singling out of isolated reasons for migration. However, strict divisions persist, two of which can be addressed by the concept of translocality. First, current research on climate change and migration primarily focuses on the question of how climate change will affect human migration and emphasizes the urgency for mitigating climate change. Second, in part due to the concept of a unidirectional flow of environment to migration, studies also assume divisions between origin and destination and prioritize rural-to-urban migration. Broadly defined, the concept of translocality examines the environment and migration as part of the integrated socio-ecological system (Greiner & Sakdapolrak 2013). Rather than looking at migration as a sudden or new phenomenon driven by singular or multiple factors, it assumes that migration (or mobilities) also occurs as a natural part of life trajectories. The existing movements have an impact on the environment, which also in turn affects future migration decisions and perceptions of climate change. They are intricately linked. Thus, translocality integrates the human-environment nexus to examine how environmental factors influence mobility and how mobility itself influences the environment. This directly counters the security narrative that environmental change in place A automatically leads to migration to place B, end of story. Rather, there are ongoing migration pathways and mobilities that occur parallel to or in conjunction with environmental changes and create them. Translocality also upends the strict categorization of origin, transit, and destination by facilitating the study of multi-directional connections and the mutual (re-)shaping of communities. It challenges the assumption that environmental change is only happening in the place of “origin”, often coded as rural or domestic, versus the destination, often connoted as urban or international. A singular place is connected to others translocally through multiple types of simultaneous mobilities. More often than not, people are not only moving from a location; they are also moving to it or passing through. The localities in question may be rural, semi-urban, or urban. And, returning to the earlier point, each of these location’s environments is affected by each type of mobility and has its own environment that factors into mobility decisions and trajectories. Translocality thus is a concept that can illuminate the complexity within the environment-migration web. It offers further insights into the ways in which migration has an impact on the environment and moves away from the boundaries of origin, transit, and destination. Towards an Environment-(Im)Mobility Nexus Looking at the nexus of environment and migration has too often been framed as a matter of international border crossings by people affected by some environmental crisis. While this is certainly a significant part of the issue, we argue that focusing on the physical movement of people per se obscures the numerous other relevant facets. For instance, it does not allow to adequately understand how the populations in question and the environment mutually constitute each other. What is more, it might project a migrant subjectivity on people living translocal lives. Migration studies have established that there are multiple factors driving migration and that it may also take multiple trajectories. The (im)mobilities approach builds on these findings and expands the scope of study to include the circulation of ideas, things, and people in everyday life. It further attempts to problematize the notions of forced and voluntary migration by applying anthropology’s holistic view of lived experience. Using mobilities as a concept, ethnographic research has revealed how people, places, things and ideas become connected across time and space. While notions of mobility are abundant in anthropological inquiry, sociologists and geographers have led the way for a mobilities turn in the social sciences. Anthropologists have in turn pointed out that the very same processes shaping mobility also produce immobility and exclusion (Cunningham & Heyman 2004). Critical anthropological approaches questioning notions of boundedness and sedentary biases—which privilege non-migration--have expanded our perception of human movements. The analysis through the perspective of regimes of mobility on a global scale can illuminate the forces at play (Glick Schiller & Salazar 2013). The regimes are embedded in particular environments and in social structures and articulations of power at different levels. Thinking of environmental migration in these terms could help us frame the movement of people in the context of environmental change in relation to power asymmetries from the start. What is more, this framework could help us understand how ideas of environmental change and ideas of migration circulate across translocal networks. Moving Away from Securitization to Human Rights We feel that it is paramount to gain a holistic understanding of the social and the environmental questions involved in migration. Ultimately, however, the issue of environmental migration is about people, as SarahLouise Nash (2018) reminds us. While it has been important to gain public attention, there is the apprehension that high-profile discussions may instrumentalize statistical projections to inspire fear. Will a translocal and mobilities lens on environmental migration enable us to understand the ways in which people exercise their human rights? Will such a conceptualization shift the debate away from hardline positions advocating securitization and restrictive migration policies? The human rights community has connected the impact of climate change on human rights and human migration since the advocacy of Small Island Developing States to the Human Rights Council in the 2000s. Human rights narratives on environmental migration often focus on the gap within international protection instruments. They refer to the fact that the Geneva Convention of 1951 does not include environmental factors as grounds for refugee status. In short, there are no legal “climate refugees.” Some actors like the International Organization for Migration, the UN Human Rights Council Special Procedures, and specialized organizations on internal and disaster displacement have raised awareness on the need to consider existing guiding principles and regulations for internal displacement. The acknowledgement of environmental migration in the landmark Paris Climate Agreement COP21 and the Global Compact for Migration reveals an evolving consensus among international actors in the highest levels of climate negotiations and international migration governance respectively. What exactly a human rights-based approach means for environmental migration, however, remains an ongoing task. Fig. 02: On the move in Eastern Indonesia Our Projects The relationship between everyday translocal (im)mobilities, climate change, and human rights is understudied. Both migration and environmental studies show us that the underlying reasons are complex and difficult to pinpoint. At the same time, against this backdrop, it is important to consider that there are ongoing debates at a conceptual and a practical level on the rights of this diverse group of people in international law. By adopting the lens of translocal mobilities, our projects will contribute to identifying which rights are exercised or restricted. For the case of the Central Sulawesi populations displaced during the triple disaster of September 2018 (earthquake, soil liquefaction, and tsunami), a security-based analysis would focus on how to regulate the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people to keep order in the relocation sites. Our proposed framework, by contrast, suggests the necessity of investigating how mobilities are shaped by at times long-lasting translocal networks across our field sites. In terms of human rights, the most pressing issues are access to health, housing, and decent work in a sphere not governed by sedentarist rights-granting schemes. To understand the effect of migration on the environment in Morocco, a securitization approach would emphasize the importance of regulating migration to minimize harm to the environment (and thus prevent further environmental migration). The approach highlighting translocal mobilities, by contrast, would reveal how migration and environmental change interact in non-linear mechanisms and thus which environment- and migration-related human rights are of key concern. This would build a foundation for the inclusion of human rights and local environmental changes in the study of translocal mobilities, allowing us to gain an understanding of which human rights advocacy paths best fit the realities on-the-ground. Final Remarks To tackle the urgent and multidimensional issue of environmental migration both for policy and academia, collaboration across disciplines is essential to do justice to affected peoples. We wish to move beyond a migration management or securitization view towards a path that listens to people’s stories and asks questions about the realization of human rights. We suggest that cross-disciplinary inclusion of these framings of translocality and mobilities into each of our research projects will add much-needed perspectives for an ethically grounded representation of the people we meet and the realities of their everyday lives. Whether tackling displacement in Indonesia or the effects of migration on the Moroccan environment, translocal mobilities provide a useful framework of analysis and synthesis disentangling the underlying complexity of our dissertation projects. These representational descriptions could then contribute as a lens for developing a human rights-based approach for environmental migration. References Cunningham, Hilary, & Heyman, Josiah (2004). Introduction: Mobilities and Enclosures at Borders, 11:3, 289-302, DOI: 10.1080/10702890490493509. Glick Schiller, Nina, & Salazar, Noel B. (2013). Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe. In Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (2), pp. 183–200. Greiner, Clemens & Sakdapolrak, Patrick. (2013). Translocality: Concepts, Applications, and Emerging Research Perspectives. Geography Compass 7(5), 373-384. Nash, Sarah Louise. (2018). Between rights and resilience: Struggles over understanding climate change and human mobility. In: Labonte, M; Mills, K (Eds), Human Rights and Justice. Philosophical, Economic, and Social Perspectives; Routledge, London. ISBN 9781138036789. Daniela Paredes Grijalva is a researcher and DOC Fellow at the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. For her PhD project in anthropology at University of Vienna she will investigate how (im)mobilities relate to environmental change in Indonesia. In the past she has worked on social protection, migration, human rights and gender. Read more about her work here. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8217-9803 Rachael Diniega is studying for her PhD in Geography as a project assistant at the Research Platform Mobile Cultures and Societies, University of Vienna. She will be conducting multi-sited research in Morocco on the effect of translocal social remittances on the environment. Her interests build from an international background in sustainable development and human rights. Read more about her work here. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7324-4749
0 Comments
by Leonardo Schiocchet, Mirian Alves de Souza, and Helena Manfrinato Recent data from the World Health Organization (WHO) (WHO n/a) shows Brazil as second in the ranking of the world most affected countries by the covid-19 pandemic, having surpassed 100.000 deaths in August 2020. This number is especially astonishing when considering that it is already larger than the number of immediate deaths caused by the Nagasaki atomic bomb explosion, and close to that of the highest estimates for the Hiroshima atomic bomb (Hiroshima Day Committee. n/a.). There is a consensus among health specialists and humanitarian representatives that in the case of Brazil, governmental responses are largely to be held accountable for the spread of the pandemic (OHHCR April 29, 2020). The Bolsonaro presidency has consistently downplayed social distancing measures calling them “scorched-earth” tactics, promoting instead the use of Hydroxychloroquine, which in turn has been scientifically considered inefficient and even dangerous as treatment for Covid-19 (Cavalcanti et al. July 23, 2020). In 2018, Brazil became the world’s sixth largest recipient of request for asylum, with Venezuelans accounting for more than three quarters of all claims (61.600) (UNHCR, 2019). This new role as global refugee host has not yet been sufficient acknowledged by the literature on forced migration world-wide, and may appear contradictory to Bolsonaro’s strong and overt anti-minorities stance. As Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli (2020) notes, the Brazilian legislation towards migration and asylum is “progressive”, since the asylum law (Law 9474/1997)
It is first and foremost important to understand that these laws are reminiscent of the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and of those of the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) (2003-2016). Moreover, the Bolsonaro presidency justifies the presence of Venezuelan refugees in the country as a marker of what it brands “Bolivarianism,”[1] a conservative push in Latin America. As Martuscelli (2020) explains, uncertainty, fear, and xenophobia are the refugees’ main concerns in their experience of the pandemic in Brazil and government responses to it. As non-citizens, they are more vulnerable to the Brazilian government responses to Covid-19 especially due to the closure of the countries’ borders and of important sectors of the Federal Police, and to the lack of access to emergency benefits. On March 11, 2020 the government halted all asylum deadlines and, on March 16, all immigration deadlines and the meetings of the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE) (Portaria Nº 2). In addition, since March 26, the government has published a series of decrees prohibiting the entrance of non-nationals in Brazil (such as Portaria Nº 47 and Portaria nº 255). Aimed at containing the Covid-19 pandemic, these decrees violate Human Rights and interfere with the Brazilian refugee and migration laws, denying the right to apply for asylum and suspending non-discrimination laws that safeguard the right for equal access to public services, including health and social assistance. Such decrees deny the protection against repatriation of refugee family members (guaranteed by the migration law) and the right to documentation, which was suspended by the partial closure of the Federal Police. After the opposition majority votes, and against its will, the government did issue a humble emergency benefit for vulnerable populations affected by the pandemic (Auxílio Emergencial do Governo Federal, popularly known as “corona voucher”)[2]. However, refugees were uncertain if they qualify for the benefit given their lack of access to documents and information. Besides the latest groups of refugees, mostly of Venezuelan origin, there are significant groups of refugees from the Syrian conflict that arrived in Brazil during the PT years, including 3.326 registered Syrians, and 350 registered Palestinians, along with smaller numbers of Lebanese and Iraqis (Governo Federal 2019), although these numbers may be higher in practice. In addition, Brazil has around 3 to 4 million citizens of Syrian origin (alongside millions of Lebanese and Palestinians) that migrated to Brazil especially in the second half the Nineteenth Century and first half of the Twentieth Century (Lesser 2000; Karam 2009; Pinto 2010). Refugees of the Syrian conflict in Brazil tend to be embedded in support networks led by the established Arab diaspora in Brazil and other Brazilian grassroots initiatives, as stated by the Brazilian specialists on refugees of the Syrian conflict, Mirian Alves de Souza and Helena Manfrinato, interviewed by Leonardo Schiocchet on August 14, 2020. There is no reliable data on how many refugees of the Syrian conflict actually contracted covid-19, with few cases reported among the community. Both Souza and Manfrinato agree that the most immediate consequence of the pandemic among refugees has been a devastating economic downfall. Souza noted that Brazil applies different standards for the different nationalities among the refugees from the Syrian conflict, including Palestinians. The approval rate of Syrians is close to 100% and that of Palestinians is also very high. Yet Lebanese have a very small approval rate. According to Souza, the situation of refuges of the Syrian conflict in Brazil is “frightening”, given that they depend mostly on jobs in the food service industry, which came to almost a total halt in early 2020 owing to social distancing measures enforced by the government or observed by citizens on their own. Souza points out that in Rio de Janeiro, this business was overwhelmingly in the street food sector. This food is sold at very low prices, and the main consumers are members of the working class, who in general cannot afford to observe social distancing practices. Now that Brazilians are slowly returning to the streets in spite of the covid-19 pandemic the refugees’ situation is recovering slightly. Manfrinato stated that in São Paulo, too, refugees of the Syrian conflict depend on the food service industry for a living. Yet most food used to be sold in restaurants owned by the refugees themselves. After the covid-19 outbreak, all their restaurants closed due to the lack of clients. A Syrian refugee, who sold food in the streets, created a delivery system in neighbourhoods where few people observed social distancing measures, especially quarantine. But his relative success stands out as rare. Besides, refugees were overwhelmingly unsuccessful in negotiating lowered rents for their shops and residences, and many of them now depend almost exclusively on emergency aid. What is more, racism and xenophobia associated with covid-19 have affected migrants at large. Few refugees reported that they had access to federal emergency aid. Most of them are benefiting from grassroots efforts by the established Arab community or other Brazilian social movements. According to Manfrinato, one of the largest mosques in São Paulo launched a large operation to distribute food (cestas básicas), blankets and clothes to those in need, including, but not limited to, the refugees of the Syrian conflict. According to Souza, even the refugees themselves, being among the most affected population, started their own initiatives to distribute food to those in need in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. These initiatives (re)approximated the refugees’ grassroots social movement. In Rio, Simsim Culinária (led by a Syrian refugee) participated in Cozinha Solidária, a partnership between Junta Local (a network of small producers and local cooks, including refugees from various countries) and other collectives to distribute food (quentinha) to a favela. Solidarity among these refugees and Brazilian social movements is not new, but as Manfrinato contends, the covid-19 outbreak led to a reorganization of solidarity, which was based at least as much on ideology and identity as on contextual approximations. For example, one of Manfrinato’s Palestinian interlocutors created an NGO called Refúgio Brasil. The NGO had started with a group of Palestinians helping Palestinian refugees from the Iraqi conflict. With the onset of the war in Syria, it quickly gained momentum and widened its scope, while still being fundamentally funded by the Palestinian community in Brazil. This NGO, as others, used a three-phase approach to their actions: Socorro (help, emergency), integração (integration) and consolidação (consolidation). The first phase is marked by emergency aid, especially food distribution and rent support. The second is focused on generating income and autonomy by offering intercultural courses geared towards the job market. The third and final phase is accomplished by finding jobs for the refugees and maintaining professional psychological support. This NGO was very successful in creating partnerships with other Brazilian social movements and local business. However, the covid-19 outbreak caused most refugees to lose their jobs and residences. It had a devastating effect on these established networks, as it forced all social actions back to the first, emergency phase. According to Manfrinato, this example illustrates well what happened to all other grassroot initiatives in which the refugees and the Arab community were involved. Both Souza and Manfrinato emphasize that it is equally important to note other effects of the covid-19 outbreak, which are likely to have long-lasting repercussions. The Brazilian scholars corroborate Martuscelli’s point that access to public health care (SUS) poses a problem for refugees. While this access is in theory universal and independent of citizenship, in practice racism and xenophobia occur among the staff of hospitals and health centers. Souza and Manfrinato concur that anxiety and anguish in the face of incertitude have deeply marked the refugee community in question. In conclusion, the covid-19 outbreak precipitated and strengthened serious economic difficulties, difficult access to basic services such as official records and health care, racism and xenophobia, and the reinforcement of the community’s isolation vis-à-vis others in Brazil and their own families abroad. This, in turn, has a negative impact on the psychosocial outlook of this refugee population. Refugees in general are affected by enforced immobility. The refugees in Brazil are confronted with this problem to an aggravated degree. And while the pandemic led to the emergence and restructuring of important forms of solidarity among refugees of the Syrian conflict, it also significantly restricted others. Apart from Martuscelli’s recent publication (2020) and the ongoing work by Souza and Manfrinato, very few other studies of the refugees’ experiences during the pandemic in Brazil have been conducted (see for example, Caramuru 2020; Baeninger et al 2020). The facts presented in this blog suggest that the psychosocial and structural effects of the covid-19 pandemic are likely to be long-lasting. While it is necessary to study the current situation of medical emergency, quarantine and social distancing, studies tracking the long-term effects of the so-called “new normality” on social organization are equally pressing. Notes [1] Venezuela’s official name is República Bolivariana de Venezuela. [2] In September 2020, the government announced that the emergency benefit will be cut in half, despite the increasingly deteriorating economic situation of the country. References: Baeninger, Rosana; Vedovato, Luís Renato; Nandy, Shailen (eds). 2020. Migrações Internacionais e a Pandemia da Covid-19. Universidade de Campinas. Caramuru. Bárbara. 2020. Palestinos migrantes e refugiados e as políticas de "fechamento de fronteiras" na Pandemia da Covid-19. Cadernos de Campo, Vol 19, pp. 278-288. Cavalcanti, Alexandre B. et al. July 23, 2020. Hydroxychloroquine with or without Azithromycin in Mild-to-Moderate Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2019014. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Governo Federal: Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública. 2019. Refúgio em Númros, Quarta Edição. Official Report. https://www.justica.gov.br/seus-direitos/refugio/refugio-em-numeros. Accessed on August 16, 2020. Hiroshima Day Committee. n/a. Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing: Facts about the Atomic Bomb. http://www.hiroshimacommittee.org/Facts_NagasakiAndHiroshimaBombing.htm. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Karam, John Tofik. 2009. Um Outro Arabesco: Etnicidade Sírio-libanesa no Brasil Neoliberal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Lei Nº 9.474, De 22 De Julho De 1997. 1997. Define mecanismos para a implementação do Estatuto dos Refugiados de 1951, e determina outras providências. Brasília, DF. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l9474.htm. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Lei Nº 13.445, De 24 De Maio De 2017. 2017. Institui a Lei de Migração. Brasília, DF. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2017/lei/l13445.html. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Lesser, Jeffrey. 2000. A Negociação da Identidade Nacional. São Paulo: Editora da UNESP. Martuscelli, Patrícia Nabuco. 2020. Como refugiados são afetados pelas respostas brasileiras ao COVID-19?. Revista de Administração Pública, Rio de Janeiro. http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/rap/article/view/81773/77971. Accessed on August 15, 2020. OHHCR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights). April 29, 2020. COVID-19: Brazil's irresponsible economic and social policies put millions of lives at risk, UN experts say. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25842&LangID=E. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Pinto, Paulo G.H. 2010. Árabes No Rio De Janeiro: Uma Identidade Plural. Ruo de Janeiro: Editora Cidade Viva. Portaria Nº 2, De 20 De Março De 2020. 2020. Dispõe sobre a suspensão dos atendimentos presenciais, dos prazos processuais e das reuniões do Comitê Nacional para os Refugiados, de que trata a Lei nº 9.474, de 22 de julho de 1997. Brasília, DF. http://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/portaria-n-2-de-20-de-marco-de-2020-249674366. Accessed on August 15, 2020. Portaria Nº 255, De 22 De Maio De 2020. 2020. Dispõe sobre a restrição excepcional e temporária de entrada no País de estrangeiros, de qualquer nacionalidade, conforme recomendação da Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária - Anvisa. Brasília, DF. http://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/portaria-n-255-de-22-de-maio-de-2020-258114133. Accessed on August 15, 2020. UNHCR. 2019. Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018. https://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/5d08d7ee7/unhcr-global-trends-2018.html. Accessed on August 15, 2020. WHO. August 15, 2020. WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/?gclid=CjwKCAjwj975BRBUEiwA4whRB7-Dv1CprVOZBN_Jj-DxS3_YH613XmlBTv_HpYFS3-Pjw0UPB8V-hxoCnkYQAvD_BwE. Accessed on August 15, 2020.
by Leonardo Schiocchet In Lebanon today, the livelihoods of Palestine refugees and refugees of the Syrian conflict are largely intertwined. Palestinian forced migration is one of the largest, oldest and most protracted cases in the world. Especially for those living in one of the dozens of refugee camps in the Near East today, forced mobility (having to leave one’s land) became quickly enforced immobility (as they have been kept in refugee camps for around 70 years), as Anne Irfan suggests (May 12, 2020). The protracted situation of Palestinian refugees means that they have been immersed in regional contexts for decades. The Syrian war greatly affected more than half a million Palestinian refugees in Syria (UNRWA n/d a), many of whom managed to move especially to Lebanon or Jordan. The current Lebanese political and financial crisis has therefore equally affected Lebanon’s displaced from the Syrian war. Access to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon varies. While some have been largely closed to non-Palestinian refugees, others have been quite open. This can be attributed to various degrees of external control. The physical boundaries of some camps (like ‘Ayn el-Helweh) are controlled by Lebanese army checkpoints, in others these boundaries are self-managed by Palestinian factions (like Wavel [Al-Jalil]), while access to others is largely uncontrolled, as it is most notably the case with Shatila. Shatila is located in the south of Beirut, where most of the internally displaced from the south of Lebanon moved during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) - a majoritarian Shi’a population today much aligned with Hizbollah. Since the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, the Palestinians de facto lost control of the camp and its boundaries became increasingly porous. The camp was largely absorbed by the urbs of Beirut, and while it is symbolic territory for most Palestinian (Schiocchet 2016), it presently harbours a very diverse population composed of around 10.000 registered Palestinian refugees (UNRWA n/d a); poor Lebanese citizens of all confessions; a myriad of illegalized workers (Filipino who arrived as maids, Sri Lankans who arrived to work as garbage collectors, etc.); and refugees, most notably from the Syrian conflict. Around 120.000 Palestine refugees left Syria for its neighbouring countries (UNRWA n/d b) as part of the 884,266 registered refugees1 from the Syrian conflict that are living today in Lebanon, a significant number of them (Palestinian or not) ending up in Shatila (UNHCR, June 30, 2020) or in the Beka’ Valley2 . In October 2019, Lebanon was hit by a political crisis that turned the country into turmoil. Protesters blocked the most important roads in the country in a bid to force the government to resign, which caused economic life to grind to a halt, affecting the most vulnerable populations, including refugees. The global Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020 affected Lebanon relatively less than many other countries in the region. However, there are no reliable numbers, especially when it comes to such densely populated and loosely controlled refugee camps as Shatila. The response to the Covid-19 outbreak, however, deepened the economic crisis, which quickly escalated to become the worst since the country’s independence in 1943. As a study by the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission (EuroMeSCo) suggests (June 2020), it is expected that poverty will rise to 45% or more of the population by the end of 2020, with extreme (food) poverty more than doubling to 22% of the population. The GPD is expected to fall by 15% and unemployment rates should hit 50%. Many external observers praised the Lebanese government policies to curb the spread of Covid-19 through curfews and movement restrictions. In reality, however, the Lebanese government used this opportunity to remove the protesters’ bases in the largest cities. Government actions, coupled with some of the protesters’ fear of the pandemic led to the temporary demobilization of the Hirak (Arabic, “mobility”) social movement. Meanwhile, established elites linked to the government filled the gap left by the protesters and by the insufficient state health policies, often offering aid and thus strengthening clientelism and the grip of the status quo. In Shatila, the efforts of the United Nations Refugee Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the UNHCR were severely hampered by lack of funds. While Hirak has regained some momentum in the last few months, the explosion in the port of Beirut (August 4, 2020) brought a vast number of protesters back to the streets, with a high increase in the numbers of those willing to resort to more confrontational actions such as erecting burning street barricades in response to the violent state response. As Irfan suggests, “Imposing immobility” has been a basic tenet of many national governments in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. But the “twin pillars of social distancing” - keep people indoors and keep them apart – can be mutually exclusive, for in most refugee camps staying put means staying in an overcrowded, often unsanitary, environment (May 12, 2020). My own fieldwork (intermittently, from 2006 to the present) corroborates the impossibility of social distancing policies. In Shatila, refugee aid is not nearly sufficient to keep people indoors, so they have to scrap a living day-by-day through informal work such as vegetable vendor (inside the camp) or day labour construction worker (outside the camp). If imposing immobility in Shatila is not an effective answer to combat Covid-19 in Shatila, we have to look elsewhere. When I asked one refugee if the Covid-19 crisis had hit Shatila hard he answered: “I think so, but not officially” (…) “people are not caring about it. Shatila and Sabra always were crazy. They never cared. Actually, I have been in quarantine now for 14 days. My sister has it” . To put the conversation in context, the situation in Shatila is so dire that curbing the spread of Covid-19 in the camp is not necessarily a priority from the point of view of many residents, much contrary to the perspective of many in the Global North. The pandemic hit Lebanon during the recent political and economic turmoil, and for many Shatila residents, putting food on the table, or dealing with quotidian symbolic and physical violence take precedence. There are pockets of grassroots actions against the pandemic. As Irfan contends (May 12, 2020), some refugees themselves are pioneering new initiatives to combat the virus through organizing the distribution of information and resources and donations of essential items to keep the community safe, and refugees must be seen as potential assets in the global combat against Covid-19. Yet, general instability and the lack of policies dedicated to refugee camps greatly curb such actions. The muted reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic in Shatila is significantly due to the government’s lack of support for their non-citizen population (one of the largest in the world) and further subdued by the current political and economic situation. This situation is similar in Lebanon at large, and hot spots of Covid-19 may spread fast in the near future. Looking at the situation of the most vulnerable populations may shed light on how to deal with what the EuroMeSCo (June 2020) called, in the case of Lebanon, a “crisis within a crisis”. Within this context, it is also logical that the scant responses (both by the Lebanese government and by grassroot initiatives) may be even more pronounced in Shatila among refugees from the Syrian conflict who, having moved to the camp only in the last few years, lack the necessary social and economic support, including networks of clientelism (epitomized by the figure of the wasta) that are vital for survival especially among vulnerable populations in Lebanon. Notes 1. These numbers have been largely stable since 2016. However, it is estimated that the actual number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon is around 1.5 million (EuroMeSCo, June 2020). 2. There are no reliable references as to how many refugees of the Syrian conflict inhabit Shatila. Based on his intermittent ethnographic fieldwork between 2011 and 2020, and constant contact with residents, Schiocchet estimates that 3.000 refugees would be conservative numbers. Bibliography EuroMeSCo (the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission). June 2020. The Socioeconomic Impact of COVID-19 on Lebanon: A Crisis Within Crises. https://www.euromesco.net/publication/the-socioeconomic-impact-of-covid-19-on-lebanon-a-crisis-within-crises/. Accessed on August 14, 2020. Irfan, Anne. May 12, 2020. Covid-19 in the Palestinian Refugee Camps. Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Https://Www.Rsc.Ox.Ac.Uk/Covid-19-Resources/Covid-19-Blog/Covid-19-In-The-Palestinian-Refugee-Camps?Fbclid=Iwar2pqcmmkk8ccm3hp3qvngzfvbg0_X0qfybuyvln4dz7lyy9swd_Oqsipws. Accessed on August 14, 2020. UNHCR. June 30, 2020. Syria Regional Refugee Response: Lebanon. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/71. Accessed on August 14, 2020. UNRWA. n/d a. Where we work: Syria. https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/syria. Accessed on August 14, 2020. UNRWA. n/d b. Where we work: Lebanon: Shatila. https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/lebanon/shatila-camp Schiocchet, Leonardo. 2016. On the Brink of a State of Exception? Austria, Europe, and the Refugee Crisis. Critique and Humanism. Vol. 46, no. 2 (2016): 211-248.
|
Archives
June 2022
|