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"The Greatest and Most Important Human Right": Citizenship and Bureaucratic Indifference in Refugee-UNHCR Correspondence
by Lamis Abdelaaty
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Lamis Abdelaaty |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/eg73h (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2023-09-19 14:41 |
| Submitted by: | Abdelaaty, Lamis |
| Submitted to: | Migration Politics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Political Science |
| Specialties: |
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Abstract
This article examines how refugees advocate for themselves with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and what responses their communications engender. It analyzes letters sent by refugees in Kenya to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva between 1983 and 1994. The findings underline a disjuncture between refugees’ efforts to constitute themselves as political agents, and UNHCR’s insistence on viewing them as depoliticized subjects. The refugees perform citizenship vis-à-vis UNHCR, using their shared identity as a basis for collective claims-making and trying to renegotiate their unequal relationship with the international organization. To empower themselves, they adopt the international organization’s own refugee rights vocabulary and play off different organizations and layers of UNHCR against each other. UNHCR’s responses (or lack thereof) demonstrate the consequences of its insulation and bureaucratization. These insights are especially noteworthy in light of recent progress on meaningful refugee participation in the refugee regime.
Current status:
Reports on this Submission
Report #3 by Anonymous (Referee 3) on 2023-12-20 (Invited Report)
- Cite as: Anonymous, Report on arXiv:socarxiv_eg73h, delivered 2023-12-20, doi: 10.21468/SciPost.Report.8317
Report
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, it is novel, compelling, and already quite polished and ready for publication. I have only two minor comments :
1) The paragraph in the intro that describes the contributions to literatures was a bit convoluted (and in passive voice), it would be good to state the three literatures up front because I read it several times and couldn’t quite segment them out (ex. “This article puts three bodies of literature into conversation: citizenship studies, international organizations, and ?). A few citations in this par to preview the lit review would also be helpful. As I read through the article, I thought this speaks to different aspects of citizenship studies lit rather than three different lits (but it’s the author’s determination). It just needs to be made a bit clearer and more explicit from the get go.
2) I thought the discussion of enacting citizenship as part of the UNHCR as an entity that replaces the state was fascinating (pg 3). It’s not mentioned here, but the fact that the UNHCR has its own Olympic team only adds to the argument.
Report #2 by Anne Irfan (Referee 2) on 2023-11-15 (Invited Report)
Report
This is a well-written, well-argued and carefully considered article that makes an important contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on refugee agency, internationalism, and the politics of humanitarianism in displacement contexts. It easily meets the journal criteria for publication.
Requested changes
1) In the opening section the author states that the article "puts into conversation three bodies of literature." I recommend enumerating these three bodies more explicitly, as it is a little unclear at present.
2) I would suggest bringing in some of Ilana Feldman's work on refugee bureaucracy in the Gaza context, which seems highly relevant here.
3) The article could engage slightly more with conceptualising citizenship and the relevant literature on this.