The Syria Crisis - New Refugee Politics?
©UNHCR - I.Prickett
The Syrian crisis is transforming refugee politics. In neighbouring countries, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, several million Syrians have found temporary refuge. Many seek a secure status elsewhere, seeking friendship, as Merkel puts it, against Europe's border police and fences. New allies have emerged, from the German Chancellor to Pope Francis, to waves of people welcoming arrivals, and still more offering their homes. The new mood of outrage and hospitality renders Hungary a pariah. Australia, still setting the pace in denying refugee rights, is suddenly rudderless. A deep fracture seemed to have opened-up, creating a new flux in the politics of refugee rights. Yet is this a passing disruption, or new dispensation? The exodus of refugees from Hungary to Germany in 1989 played a key role in bringing down the Iron Curtain: is this history repeating itself, or its inverse?
Contributors:
Rafael Rodríguez Prieto (University Pablo de Olavide, Seville): Refugee politics in Spain
Tim O’Connor (Refugee Council): Responses in Australia
Lan Snell (Charles Sturt University): A refugee experience
Tom Morton (UTS): Germany’s ‘Friendship’
Lan Snell: ‘Every refugee has a story. The year was 1975. Saigon was falling and a decision was made to flee. Everything was sold and the necessary paperwork was purchased. We boarded a Qantas flight bound for Australia. Dad had to go back with the army to Seoul. It was the last time I saw him. We arrived in Sydney and were immediately pulled aside by customs. Of course the paperwork was false. We were thrown into Villawood detention centre. We grew up desperately poor. My mother had to leave me at home alone while she worked in a factory sweatshop and my siblings were at school. This experience gave me a head start in life. I fell in love with books. This changed the course of my life’. Lan Snell was awarded a PhD in Marketing from the University of Sydney in 2011. She has worked at Macquarie University, UTS, and the University of Sydney, and is currently the Course Director for the Faculty of Business at Charles Sturt University.
Rafael Rodríguez Prieto: scholar and political activist, is an Associate Professor in Legal and Political Philosophy at the University Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. He was a visiting scholar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, and he is the coordinador and a member of the RCC James B. Conant Research Group at Harvard University on Media, Democracy and Public Service. He has written several books on social movement politics and is a frequent contributor to Spanish media and social media.
