SKRAN Refugiados Studies Antes de Refugiados

THE STUDY OF REFUGEES BEFORE “REFUGEE STUDIES”
Claudena Skran and Carla N. Daughtry*,

Lawrence University, United States
Scholarship on refugee studies involves a wide variety of academic disciplines, including

international relations and international law, anthropology and sociology, as well
as economics, demography, geography, psychology, and history. This article traces the
Downloaded from http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, San Francisco on February 26, 2015
emergence of the field of refugee studies over the period 1920 to 1980, exploring its
intellectual roots in some of the most important works about refugees and the pioneering
scholars that produced them. Although coming from diverse professional backgrounds
and academic training, scholars interested in refugees have asked many of the same
questions. The authors address four enduring questions posed by pioneering scholars
of this period: (1) Which refugees should be studied? (2) Who is a refugee? (3)What
causes refugee movements? (4) What are the best solutions to refugee problems? While
answers to these questions have varied over time and across disciplines, they all reflect
the underlying assumption that refugees constitute a complex phenomenon worthy of
attention and analysis.
Keywords: refugees, refugee studies, UNHCR, League of Nations, durable solutions.
INTRODUCTION
A number of key events mark the beginning of refugee studies as a formal field
of academic inquiry, including the founding of the Refugee Studies Programme
at Oxford University in 1982 and the launch of Refugee Abstracts (the precursor
to Refugee Survey Quarterly) which started to summarise the growing volume
of publications in the field, also in 1982. Yet a concentration on refugees as an
important issue worthy of intellectual scrutiny began earlier in the twentieth century,
especially after 1920 when scholars responded to the mass refugee movements
produced in the era of the First World War. In this article, the emergence of the
field of refugee studies over the period 1920 to 1980 will be traced. It is beyond the
scope of this essay to attempt a complete literature survey; instead, our purpose is
to reveal the intellectual roots of contemporary refugee studies by identifying and
discussing some of the most important works about refugees and the pioneering
scholars who produced them, including John Hope Simpson, Louise Holborn,
Jacques Vernant, John Stoessinger, Atle Grahl-Madsen, Egon Kunz, Barry Stein,
* Dr Claudena Skran is associate professor of government at Lawrence University. Her research and writings focus
on the role of international organizations in providing emergency relief and the resettlement of refugees. She is
the author of Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime, published by Oxford University Press.
Dr Carla N. Daughtry is assistant professor of anthropology at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin,
and is affiliated with the Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies programs. She has done research on southern
Sudanese refugee communities in Cairo, Egypt.
Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 26, Issue 3 © UNHCR 2007, all rights reserved
DOI:10.1093/rsq/hdi0240
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16 Articles
Elizabeth Colson, Art Hansen, and Anthony Oliver-Smith. Most of the works
covered here, principally monographs and journal articles, were printed in English,
although they include some works originally published in another language; we
have consciously excluded most government documents, journalistic pieces,
and publications by private organizations from consideration, as they were not
primarily aimed at a scholarly or academic audience.
Refugee Studies is distinctive in that it has roots in a wide variety of academic
disciplines, including international relations and international law, anthropology
and sociology, as well as economics, demography, geography, psychology, and
history. Although coming from diverse professional backgrounds and academic
training, scholars interested in refugees have asked many of the same questions.
Those most frequently posed have concerned scope, definition, and causality
while others addressed the nature of the “refugee problem” and possible solutions
to it. In this essay, we will address four enduring questions: (1) Which refugees
should be studied? (2) Who is a refugee? (3)What causes refugee movements? (4)
What are the best solutions to refugee problems? While answers to these questions
have varied over time and across disciplines, they all reflect the underlying
assumption that refugees constitute a complex phenomenon worthy of attention
and analysis.
A QUESTION OF SCOPE: WHICH REFUGEES SHOULD BE STUDIED?
In refugee studies today, a distinction is often made between “classical” refugees

who have their origins in Europe and “new” refugees from Asia, Africa, the Middle
East, and Latin America. It would be an oversimplification, however, to simply
say that scholars initially focused the scope of their inquiry on European refugees
and then gradually expanded to a more global one; even in the 1920s, not all
scholarship dealt exclusively with refugees in and from Europe, and it wasn’t until
the 1960s that some of the most important works about “classical” European
refugees were produced. Moreover, even as the breadth of scholarship has changed
over time, scholars have always focused with greatest interest on refugee groups
who were the beneficiaries of major international assistance efforts.
An early effort to define the geographic scope of the study of refugees comes
from The Refugee Problem, a massive survey prepared by Sir John Hope Simpson
(1938,1939a, 1939b), under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, in anticipation of the Evian conference. Simpson limits the scope of his
study to “refugee movements originating in European countries, the Ottoman
Empire and the Russian Empire” (1939a:1). He further restricts his focus to only
two groups: (1) those already being assisted in some way by the League of Nations,
such as Russian, Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, and Bulgar refugees as well as those
fleeing Nazi Germany; (2) those under consideration for such assistance, including
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese refugees (see Marrus 1985). Although quite
comprehensive in some respects, Simpson neglects some of the largest European
refugee groups in the interwar years, including the 400,000 Magyar refugees in
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Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 26, Issue 3 © UNHCR 2007, all rights reserved 17
Hungary, a group which never received legal protection or significant support

from the League of Nations (Macartney 1962).
Walter Adams (1939), writing in a special issue on refugees produced by
the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 1939,
accepts the geographic boundaries set by Simpson, as did most other scholars of
the period. Included among their works were a number about Russians refugees,
the first group to be assisted by the League of Nations and of great concern to
both the British and the French (Mauco 1932; Schafuss 1939). Also receiving
attention from scholars were two Middle Eastern refugee groups, Armenians1, a
priority for the French, and Assyrians, 2 who fled the British mandate of Iraq. After
the 1922 Greco-Turkish war, far more literature was produced on Greek refugees
and the work of the League’s Greek Refugee Settlement Commission than on
Turkish refugees, who only received minor assistance from the League of Nations
(Simpson 1929; Eddy 1931; Mears 1929; Morgenthau 1929).
In addition, Simpson, a former British civil servant who had headed relief
efforts in the wake of the Yangtze River flood of 1931, excludes from consideration
large numbers of refugees in China and South America. Adams acknowledges
that the Chinese were the largest group quantitatively, but he dismisses them,
along with refugees produced by the Chaco War, as “internal migratory and
relief problems more than refugee problems (Adams 1939:6).” A rare exception
to this pattern came from the work of Cyrus H. Peake, professor of Chinese at
Columbia University, who detailed population movements produced in East Asia
from ancient times through the Sino-Japanese war, when an estimated 30 million
people were uprooted, with a resulting amount of “human suffering, death, and
disease…which…is beyond human imagination to encompass (Peake 1939:55).”
Surprisingly, very little scholarly work was written about “Jewish refugees”
during the 1930s, even as thousands desperately sought asylum worldwide. Although
journalists, most notably Dorothy Thompson (1939), and charity organizations
produced articles and pamphlets on Jewish refugees, academic writers discussed
either “German refugees” (see Popper 1938) or more commonly “refugees coming
from Germany,” (see de Mattos Bentwich 1936) a rather cumbersome terminology
borrowed from the League of Nations, which established – but did not support or
fund - a “High Commissioner for Refugees coming from Germany (Skran 1988).”
Among the first scholars to take a more direct approach were Arieh Tartakower
and Kurt R. Grossman (1944), who titled their book simply The Jewish Refugee. It
would not be until the 1960s, when a new generation of historians reviewed the
immigration policies of the major powers with a critical eye, that Jewish refugees
would receive substantial attention. David Wyman’s Paper Walls, as well as works
by Henry Feingold, Gerald Dirks, and others challenge the notion that anti-
Semitism was a unique characteristic of the Nazis; Wyman argues that American
anti-Semitism, along with unemployment and nativism created public opposition
to the admission of refugees in the 1930s (Wyman 1985; Feingold 1970; Dirks
1977; Adams 1968; Falk 1972).
As the events during and shortly after the Second World War forced nearly
60 million people to flee their homes, nearly 10 times as many as uprooted in the
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First World War (Proudfoot 1957:21), refugee researchers broadened their scope
to include different types of migrants but also focused more narrowly on those in
and from Europe. In 1948, Eugene M. Kulisher published Europe on the Move, in
which he chronicles the populations in Europe and the Soviet Union from 1917
through 1947 (see Kulisher 1948).3 The scope of his work includes populations
displaced before and during the Second World War in the Soviet Union and
German Reich, as well as postwar population transfers of ethnic Germans to West
Germany. The writings of Joseph B. Schechtman (1946; 1962; 1949) are notable
as he studied population transfers not only in Europe but also in Asia, while others
limited their focus to West Germany (Bouman et al 1950; Hohn 1955; Zeegers
and Leeuwen 1953). In his book, European Refugees: 1939-52, Malcolm Proudfoot
links wartime movements with those soon afterwards, including the flight of over
10 million to the new, divided Germany and that of Jewish refugees to Israel
(Proudfoot 1957:377-380; 361).
With the advent of the Cold War, the focus of research on refugees shifted to
those fleeing communist countries, especially the Soviet Union, but also eastern
bloc countries, including Hungary after the Soviet intervention of 1956. These
refugees were usually welcomed in the West as symbols of the failure of the
communist systems. Soviet dissidents were not only the objects of study, but were
also used by researchers, such as those at the Russian Research Center of Harvard
University, as a major source of knowledge about the Soviet Union and life in
communist countries (Bauer et al 1956).4 Topics covered ranged widely, from the
attributes of the 60,000 Czechoslovakia refugees dispersed worldwide,5 to mental
health of Eastern European refugees who settled in Australia, to the political
views of Hungarians living in the United States (Kolaja 1952; Krupinski et al
1973; Gleitman and Greenbaum 1961). After the Cuban revolution, literature
on Cuban refugees began to appear; covering both the political factors related
to their migration and their resettlement and assimilation in such diverse places
as Miami and Milwaukee (Thomas 1967; Rogg 1974; Wenk 1968; Percal 1978;
Porter 1969).
Only in the 1960s and 1970s did a large body of scholarship about refugees
begin to concentrate on the many forced migrants that had been created in Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East as a result of decolonization and post-colonial conflicts.
Stephen Keller’s work on Hindu-Sikh refugees forced to resettle after the partition
of India on August 15, 1947 stands out among this literature (Keller 1975).
On African issues, the most important works came from anthropologists, most
prominently Elizabeth Colson (1971), who collaborated with colleagues at the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Livingston, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia),
and Art Hansen (1979a; 1979b), who studied the assimilation of Angolan refugees
in Zambia. Legal and political scholars also turned their attention to African
refugees, which had been here to fore virtually ignored by them6, now that more
than a million had become refugees (Rubin 1974; Gould 1974; Finley 1975).
Louise Holborn’s account of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), which began programs in Africa in 1960, spotlights refugees in at least
15 different African countries (Holborn 1975:823-956; 957-1396).
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Until after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, very little scholarship focused on
Palestinian refugees; Fred Khouri’s article on “Arabs in Exile” was among the first
to highlight the importance of refugees to the Palestinian nationalist movement
(Khouri 1970). The lack of specific case studies on this group is particularly
troublesome because most general works on the UNHCR did not cover Palestinian
refugees; they were assisted by a completely separate organization, UNRWA, which
had been established in 1948 (Forsyth 1971). In the 1970s, the work of Rosemary
Sayigh, a Beiruit-based anthropologist who would later publish a book on the
Palestinian experience in Lebanon (Sayigh 1994), used information gained from
the personal experiences of Palestinian refugees to draw a portrait of Palestinian
refugee identity and of the economic and psychological effects of camp life (Sayigh
1975; 1978; 1977).
After the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the mass exodus of refugees from
Indochina and their subsequent resettlement in Western countries sparked a great
flurry of interest. Barry Stein and others helped to document virtually every aspect
of their experiences, including the reasons for their flight, international attempts
to assist them, their place in the US policy, and their problems of resettlement
and assimilation, their occupational adjustment, the formation of their self-
identity, and their educational and medical needs (Stein 1979a). Scholarship on
the Vietnamese refugees was very much a part of the trend to study the “new”
or Third World refugees, but the intensity with which scholars investigated their
fate exceeded that given to all other refugee groups7. High levels of concern
about Indochinese refugees fit into the larger pattern of studying those fleeing a
communist political system. Moreover, this scholarship further reflected the fact
that, historically, more attention has been paid to refugees that are a foreign policy
priority for a Great Power and aided by an international organization. Indochinese
refugees, similar to the Russian refugees of the 1920s who originally fascinated
scholars, were also refugees from a strategically important country and the subject
of a major international assistance effort.
A QUESTION OF DEFINITION: WHO IS A REFUGEE?
An enduring question posed and answered by those in refugee studies has been
“who is a refugee?” Scholars from a number of disciplines have weighed in on
this debate, with perhaps the narrowest definitions developed by specialists in
international politics and law and the broadest coming from those in anthropology,
sociology, and development studies. While the former have generally considered
refugees to have a special political status, the latter have seen more similarities
between refugees, immigrants, and other types of migrants.
Among the most active contributors to this debate have always been legal
scholars, as legal definitions are meant “to facilitate, and to justify, aid and protection
(Goodwin-Gill 1983:2).” In the interwar years, the dominant view and one put
forward by the Institut de Droit International in 1936, was that refugees were
persons who had lost the diplomatic protection of their home governments without
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acquiring another nationality (Annuaire 1936:294). This definition distinguishes

refugees from the stateless, those who lack nationality, even though many refugees
were, in fact, stateless. While Simpson and the legal scholar R. Yewdall Jennings,
insist on maintaining this distinction, others stress the similarities between the
two groups (Simpson 1939a:4; Jennings 1939:99; Williams 1927:45-61). J. L
Rubinstein, a noted jurist who was a Russian refugee, argues that “all refugees are
stateless, whether it be de jure…or de facto (Rubinstein 1936:721).” In practice,
international efforts to aid the stateless, including Russians denationalized by the
Soviet Union and Jews stripped of their citizenship by the Nazis, faltered, and no
general system of protection was created for them in the interwar years (Jennings
1939:103).
While legal definitions of the interwar years stress a lack of diplomatic
protection as the defining feature of a refugee, it is important to note that these
definitions were not used by agencies to identify individuals who might qualify
for refugee status but to define the status of groups that had already been termed
refugees, such as Russians8 and Armenians,9 by the League of Nations. Nevertheless,
post-war authors generally attacked this definition as being divorced from the
circumstances that force a person to flee. In his thoughtful assessment of the place
of refugees in the post-war world, Jacques Vernant (1953:6) maintains that:
Before a man can be described as a refugee, the political events which caused
him to leave, or to break with, the State to which he owed allegiance must
be defined. The political events which in the country of origin led to his
departure must be accompanied by persecution or by the threat of persecution
against himself or at least against a section of the population which he
identifies himself. [italics added]
Atle Grahl-Madsen, in his comprehensive treatise on the status of refugees
in international law, criticizes Simpsons’ definition and stresses that, a ‘lack of
protection is not relevant unless it is caused by a deep-rooted controversy between
the authorities and the individual (Grahl-Madsen 1953:6).”10 The arguments of
Vernant and Grahl-Madsen, and the scholarship of Paul Weis (1954), underscore
the validity of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which defines a
refugee as a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or
political opinion and is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or
owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it (United Nations 1951:152).”
Another matter for debate has been the extent to which refugees are similar
to or different from economic migrants. In the interwar years, scholars almost
universally insisted that refugees were different because of the political nature of
their migration; Simpson, for instance, maintains that refugees leave “because of
political events, not because of economic conditions or because of the economic
attractions of another territory (1939a:4).” Oscar Jaszi writes that all modern
refugees are “political refugees, because they are not emigrants…men who
voluntarily left their own country and chose a new one…(1939:83).” In national
law, however, most countries, including the United States, did not distinguish
between refugees and economic migrants. Read Lewis and Marian Schibsby
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(1939:74-82) note that “with the single exception of the literacy test, the refugee
must meet the same requirements as any other immigrant” to the United States.
The problems with this system became painfully evident in the 1930s, when
thousands of Jewish refugees sought asylum but received no special considerations
because of the reasons for their flight.
Writing after the Second World War, Jacques Vernant, offers a somewhat
different approach. While he agrees that political events are key to defining
refugees, he is uncertain that economic and political motives can be easily
separated in a world where “a man’s economic situation is no longer looked on
as a ‘natural’ phenomenon, but as a responsibility of the State (1953:5-6).” A
study of 300 Soviet refugees conducted in the 1950s by Richard Sheldon and
John Dutkowski (1953) would seem to confirm Vernant’s thesis, as the majority
of those interviewed defected because of economic conditions rather than political
factors. Taking a sociological approach, William S. Bernard (1976), compares
immigrants and refugees and finds that they share problems of language, housing,
and both have needs for social services, yet refugees tend to have more and severe
mental problems. Other authors, however, continued to maintain an important
difference between refugees and immigrants, largely because of the involuntary
nature of forced migration.
Another aspect of definitional debates concerns the location of the refugees
concerned. In the late 1930s, Louise Holborn (1938) was one of the first to call
for a general definition for all political refugees. Her wish only partially fulfilled
by the 1951 Convention, which restricts its application to those “outside of their
home country as result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 in Europe. ”
Vernant (1953:8-9) observes that the Convention was contradictory in that
it posited a general definition and then gave geographic restrictions on it. This
limited definition proved inadequate as an administrative tool in dealing with
new refugee groups in Europe, such as the Hungarians of 1956, or with groups
outside of Europe, including those produced by the process of decolonization in
the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.
However, it was in African contexts that the 1951 definition seemed
particularly inadequate. Neville Rubin criticizes the definition of a refugee found
in the UNHCR convention as “too narrow to encompass several of the endemic
African refugee situations” and for over-emphasizing “nationality as the criterion
for classification.” Neville finds the definition of a refugee given in the OAU
convention to be an improvement over both the 1951 Convention and the 1967
Protocol11 as it is better able to deal with refugees from colonial and post-colonial
conflicts. While the UNHCR definition seems to require that refugees be “non-
political,’ according to Rubin, the OAU definition allows for the acceptance of
“freedom fighters” under refugee status (Rubin 1974:295-297).
While those in international law and politics have generally insisted on the
political aspects of refugeehood, scholars in anthropological and sociological
works considered a wider range of refugee categories. In a special volume on
involuntary migration, published in 1982 but based on earlier work, Art Hansen
and Anthony Oliver-Smith (1982) explore refugee issues generated by planned
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change and natural disasters as well as those generated by sociopolitical struggles.

Since the 1970s, Oliver-Smith has done anthropological research on disasters-
induced refugee experience and resettlement in Peru, Honduras, India, Brazil,
Jamaica, Mexico, Japan, and most recently post-Katrina United States. In his early
contributions on post-disaster Peru, featured in the above discussed volume and in
American Ethnologist, Oliver-Smith (1982; 1977) and others working on disaster-
induced displacement integrate the causal agent of disasters into migration theory’s
discussion of voluntary and involuntary migrants. By attending to a broad range of
involuntary movement and in using a more inclusive terminology, anthropological
and sociological researchers conveyed a sense of justice and advocacy for the benefit
of refugees more so than nation-state interests.
QUESTIONS OF CAUSALITY: WHAT CREATES REFUGEES

AND REFUGEE MOVEMENTS?
If questions of definition always have been important in scholarship about refugees,

it is striking that the same is not true for questions of causality. For scholars of the
interwar years, the causes of refugee movements were easily understood. According
to Simpson, “the cause of every refugee movement is tyranny of one kind of
another, but the forms of tyranny differ (1939a:5-6).” He identifies new forms
of nationalism, which aim at racial unity, are the latest form to generate refugees.
Simpson does not fully explore the reasons for the persecution of minority groups,
although he recognizes that the problem is not only related to Jewish minorities
(1939a:522-524). Other works, including those by Oscar Janowsky and Melvin
Fagen (1937) and Tartakower and Grossman (1944), document and analyze
the unique nature of Nazi anti-Semitism but do not put forth a more general
explanation of the causes of refugee movements. Sociologist Joseph Roucek (1939)
was one of the first scholars to make a more explicit link between refugees and
minority groups. For him, refugee problems were a direct result of the unwillingness
of non-democratic governments to accept those who were in the “out group;” he
further predicts that refugees would continue to be a problem until this changed.
It was with the publication of John Stoessinger’s Refugee and the World
Community that a tighter connection was made between refugees and human
rights. Stoessinger argues that refugees are created by the desire of nation-states
to create homogenous units, the same impetus that lead to the expulsion of
minorities or, in certain circumstances, to an extermination policy. To Stoessinger
(1956:3-9; 205), the root cause of refugee movements is the fundamental abuse of
human rights. Political theorist, Hannah Arendt, utilizes a similar them in Origins
of Totalitarianism (1951) in which she highlights the links between refugees,
totalitarian movements, and persecution of stateless minorities, especially Jews.
Artistide Zolberg (1983) would later develop this theme in his argument that
massive refugee flows are most often the result of the process of nation-state
formation when, in an attempt to create a homogeneous nation-state, minority
groups are persecuted or expelled.
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The politics of the Cold War created an environment where closer scrutiny
was paid to the specific circumstances under which communist governments,
especially that of the Soviet Union, produced refugees. Most of the literature of
the 1950s produced by the Harvard project on the Soviet Union classifies refugees
as part of a system of terror that deprived people of civil and political rights and
made opposition possible only in flight. Specific case studies of other refugee from
groups, including Koreans, Chinese, Cubans and Indochinese, would show how
the transition to communist rule led to a refugee exodus (Hambro 1957; Thomas
1967; Osborne 1980). The quality of this research, however, varies considerably. In
one study of refugees produced in the Korean War, a self-described “psychological
warfare” team misrepresented themselves as conducting a survey on food and
shelter for the UN, and then asked refugees about their anti-communist beliefs;
the survey, not surprisingly, concludes that the vast majority, seventy-five percent,
left North Korea because of the communist system (Riley el al 1951). Milton
Osborne (1980), in contrast, produced a more nuanced study that shows that
“the desire to escape from unacceptable conditions” was the main reason for a
mass exodus from Vietnam, but that motives “varied according to ethnic and class
background” and to according to the region in Vietnam in which the refugees
lived. In another study, an American anthropologist and a Vietnamese social
psychologist examine the reasons that refugees fled Vietnam in 1975, and find that
“fear of Communist reprisals and unwillingness to live under their control” was
the most important reason refugees left the country (Le-Thi-Que et al 1976:861).
Although the case studies produced have some interest, one is struck by the lack
of comparative studies of an overarching explanation covering regime changes in
different countries.
While a whole strand of explanations focus on political causes at the
macro-level, another strand sees the causes of refugee movements in population
demographics and migration more broadly. Eugene Kulisher’s work, drawing
on geography and demography, links all migratory movements, including those
by refugees, to war, which he saw as “a powerful agent in forming migratory
streams (1948:21).” Warfare in turn is the consequence of population pressures
and unstable economic conditions. His approach leads him to consider a much
broader ranger of migratory patterns, including expulsions, and deportations, and
the population transfers to Germany in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
Austria, to what became West Germany.
In 1958, William Peterson published in the American Sociological Review his
much cited “general typology of migration,” in which he places refugees within a
broader category of migration. In his article, Peterson (1958) distinguishes between:
primitive migration, marked by “man’s inability to cope with natural forces,” free
migration, “in which the will of the migrants is the decisive element,” and forced
migration, where “the state or some functionally equivalent social institution,”
either impels or forces migrants to leave. Peterson maintains that the difference
between “impelled migration, when the migrants retain some power to decide
whether or not to leave, and forced migration, when they do have this power” is an
important one to be made. A Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi policies would be placed
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in the former category while Jews transported to camps by the Nazis would go in
the latter. Although the categories of Peterson’s typology can be both overlapping
and confusing, his insistence that flight and displacement should be seen as forms
of migration, has been of critical importance to the field of refugee studies.
Almost 15 years later, Egon Kunz, would both build on and criticize
Peterson’s work in his quest of a general theory of refugee movement. In a 1973
article, Kunz, a Hungarian émigré, sharply criticizes the existing literature on
refugees as being too case specific and too focused on legal definitions, operational
concerns, and finding long-term solutions. Kunz seeks a general framework that
can “compare the well integrated 1938 Viennese professional settled in New
York with the Hindu refugees of the Bangladesh war of 1971 (see Kunz 1973).”
Kunz emphasizes the kinetic rather than decisive nature of refugee flight; to him
what, in part, distinguishes a refugee from a migrant is in part “the reluctance to
uproot.” Kunz describes the forced migration of refugees by saying that “an inner
self-propelling force…is singularly absent from the movement of refugees. Their
progress more often than not resembles the movement of the billiard ball: devoid
of inner direction their path is governed by the kinetic factors of inertia, friction
and the vectors of outside forces applied on them (1973:131-132).” Kunz further
distinguishes between anticipatory refugee movements where the refugee “leaves
his home country before the deterioration of the military or political situation
prevents his orderly departure” and pull factors dominate. In an acute refugee
movement, which “arise from great political changes or movements of armies,”
push factors dominate.
Subsequent scholars, including Barry Stein, discussed below, have built upon
Kunz’ understanding of the refugees experience, while others have faulted Kunz’
work for being too abstract and for treating refugees as if they were powerless. Art
Hansen (1982), using anthropological field work techniques,12 produces a study
of refugee decision-making that offers an alternative to the “billiard ball” model
developed by Kunz. By studying how self-settled refugees empower themselves
when they draw upon familiar cultural processes, Hansen argues that refugees
are not powerless; refugee flight, in turn, is not a wholly kinetic process but one
determined in part by refugee decision-making.
Although Kunz’ contribution added to a general understanding of the causes
of flight, by the end of the 1970s there were still many unanswered questions
about causality. The literature reflects an overwhelming tendency to focus the
cause of refugee movements within the nation-state rather than at a more systemic
level, and, even at this level, very few comparative studies about refugee flows were
completed. Moreover, one is struck by the paucity of study of the causes of refugee
movements in the developing world. These points were made most strongly by
Aristide Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo who, in their preface to their
1989 work, Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing
World, declare the purpose of the book to be to give the first “comprehensive,
theoretically grounded explanation of refugee flows (see Zolberg el al 1989).”
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A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE: WHAT ARE THE BEST SOLUTIONS

TO REFUGEE PROBLEMS?
It has become axiomatic in the field of refugee studies that there are three long-
term solutions to refugee problems. Louise Holborn, for instance, writes: “The
classical methods for achieving a solution to the refugee problem have been
repatriation, resettlement, and local integration; all three have been pursued as a
means toward a solution since the programs under the LoN (1975:325).” These
three solutions reflect what Egon Kunz calls “the refugee administrator’s views”
as they have often been used to set the parameters for policy options by United
Nations officials dealing with refugee issues (see footnote # 10 in Kunz 1973:128).
An overview of the proposals made by scholars since the 1920s, however, reveals
a much greater variety in thinking about solutions; each solution, in turn,
reflects a different assessment of the true nature of the refugee problem and an
understanding of the policy implications of their conclusions. While specialists in
international relations and law have emphasized the importance of international
solutions through the activities of formal, international organizations and national
governments, sociologists and anthropologists have stressed the necessity of
involving communities and refugees at the local level in policy decisions.
Minority protection and population transfers

For those who locate the causes of refugee movements to be in the persecution
of ethnic and religious minorities, the solution to refugee problems rested with
improved conditions for these groups. “Prevention is better than cure, and
international action must be directed to prevent the emergence of new refugee
movements” are the bold words with which Simpson begins his discussion of
solutions in The Refugee Problem; he argues that an effective system of minority
protection is crucial because “any ill-treated minority consists of a danger-point
which may become the source of a new refugee movement (1939a:522-524).”
But Simpson does not take the next step, stating “intervention to compel
observance is obviously difficult, because it involves interference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign state (1939a:524).” In rejecting the possibility of what is
now called humanitarian intervention; Simpson follows the parameters set by the
political actors at the League of Nations. Despite the dramatic appeal of James
G. McDonald (1935), the High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany, to
intervene on behalf of both existing and potential refugees, the League of Nations
refused to directly act against Nazi Germany on this issue. The founders of the
UNHCR also accepted the same limit when they created the organization as a
humanitarian, non-political agency.
If intervention was off the agenda for the interwar and Cold War years,
other radical methods of preventing refugee flows were considered. One of the
most controversial of these was the population transfer, the removal of an ethnic
minority in one state to another in an attempt to increase the homogeneity of both
states. Such a transfer is based on the explicit belief that homogeneous nation-
states will be more prosperous and peaceful, and on the notion that intergroup
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26 Articles
co-operation can not be achieved in a multiethnic state. In his discussion of

solutions, Simpson accepts the premise that a population transfers can be an
effective way of dealing with minority groups that might become refugees, but
that this would only be possible in certain circumstances, as “the ‘unmixing’ of
these populations [in Europe] is a practical impossibility.” Stephen Ladas, in this
detailed text on the exchange of populations after the Greco-Turkish war, examines
the results of one of the largest of these exchanges. In a population exchange
agreement signed in January 1923, Greece and Turkey agreed to the compulsory
exchange of 1.1 million Christians in Turkey, most of who were already in Greece
as refugees, and 200,000 Muslims in Greece, who were forcibly uprooted after the
agreement (Ladas 1932). The work of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission
in aiding Greek refugees is discussed by favorably by Ladas and lauded by writers
such as Henry Morgenthau and others, many of whom had administrative roles in
the Commission. Little was ever written, however, about the fate of the uprooted
Muslims and their return to Turkey, a country in which they had never lived and
whose language most did not speak.
After the Second World War, scholars such as Kulischer, Schechtman, and
Chauncy Harris, examined the impact of the postwar population transfers,
sanctioned by the Potsdam Conference, which brought ethnic Germans from
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary to Germany. These transfers, designed to
prevent future minority and refugee problems, created over 12 million forced
migrants. In his evaluation, Schechtman approves of a population transfer as a
means of solving ethnic conflicts, saying that it has “proved its viability (1962:370).”
Kulisher’s analysis is more mixed in that he sees both economic benefits for the
expelling states and some economic burdens for receiving ones, such as Germany,
where many arrived with little baggage and money (1948:282-294). Harris,
however, is much clearer that this expulsion, the largest in European history “was
another expression of the excessive and cruel nationalism which caused widespread
suffering and loss of life during the war (Harris and Wulker 1953).” It is the
attitude of Harris that came to dominate later in an era with greater respect for
individual human rights; population transfers came to be seen as an unacceptable
solution to refugee problems because of their compulsory nature.
Finding places of asylum

One of the strongest points made by scholars of both the interwar and Cold War
periods was that the most important element of refugee problems was the refugee’s
difficulty in finding a country of asylum. John Stoessinger, for instance, argues
that what characterizes the 20th century refugee is the “the immense difficulty, and
often impossibility, of finding a new home (1956:6).” From this perspective, the
solution to refugee problems must be, first and foremost, finding places of asylum.
Some scholars, such as Bernhard Ostrolenk (1939), an agricultural economist,
argue for change at the national level by the removal of immigration restrictions
and adoption of welcoming measures for refugees. Other scholars point to the
necessity of international solutions. Holborn, Stoessinger, and Vernant are all in
agreement that immigration should be dealt with at the international level so that
RSQ26-3.indd 26 5.9.2007 11:01:21

sending and receiving countries could be brought together to negotiate. Simpson’s

refugee survey, which itself was prepared for the Evian conference in 1939, is itself
an example of this kind of thinking.
Although the Evian conference produced only limited changes in the
immigration policies of nation-states toward Nazi refugees (see Estorick 1939),
its failure did not discourage scholarly interest in the prospects for international
organizations in promoting resettlement. Perhaps John Stoessinger’s work on the
International Refugee Organization (IRO) best typifies the idea that international
organizations themselves provide solutions to refugee problems. Rather than
being a purely non-political organization, Stoessinger sees the IRO as strongly
influenced by the United States, which provided the bulk of the organization’s
funding. In his view, humanitarianism and political concerns are separate entities
that sometime converge, sometimes conflict, but more commonly must be
compromised. Stoessinger (1956:198-204) values the IRO as the one true effective
international organization because it succeeded in balancing humanitarian
concerns and political interests in carrying out its mandate for Europe’s displaced
as a resettlement agency. Barry Stein’s account of the Geneva conference, held in
1979 on the Indochinese refugee crisis, gives a more recent example of scholarship
that highlights the importance of international organizations, both governmental
and non-governmental, in confronting barriers to migration. Stein (1979b) argues
that it was the refusal of Thailand and Malaysia to grant asylum to the Vietnamese
boat people that prompted the conference; he concludes that the conference was
a success in that it resulted in additional funding and pledges for the resettlement
of nearly 260,000 refugees.
Repatriation – the preferred solution of governments

Repatriation, or the return of refugees to their country of origin, has long been
the preferred solution of government officials for refugees; repatriation as a
solution, however, has not figured prominently in scholarship on refugees, possibly
because very few European refugees ever returned to their home countries. In the
interwar years, despite high hopes that Russian refugees would return to the Soviet
Union, very few ever returned. Following the Second World, the Soviet Union
demanded repatriation of its nationals, but what amounted to forced repatriation
was eventually stopped because of the cooling in relations between East and West
(Ginsburgs 1957). As few Hungarian and other Cold War refugees returned to
their home countries, repatriation was more a theoretical than actual solution for
European refugees. Repatriation would figure more prominently in post-colonial
refugee movements, but little specifically on repatriation, particularly spontaneous
repatriation, was written on this topic prior to 1980.
Legal protection as the answer

Largely because repatriation was not a viable solution for most refugees and
refugees could not quickly become fully integrated into new societies, the need for
temporary legal protection emerged. It is in this area that scholars of international
relations and law placed greatest emphasis. Louise Holborn, drawing on the work
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28 Articles
of Paul Weis, argues that refugees are an anomaly in the nation-state system, and
that, because of this, they need special protection and security. Other legal writers
would echo her claims, including Rubenstein, who graphically documents the
legal disabilities facing refugees in the interwar years, and Grahl-Madsen and Weis
who outline the rights protected in both the 1951 Refugee Convention and in
customary international law.
Louise Holborn, whose writing spans over thirty years and covers the activities
of the League of Nations, IRO, and UNHCR, sees the legal protection of refugees
by international organization as a key action on the part of the international
community for the protection of refugees who would otherwise live in a “no-
man’s land.” Holborn’s view of the UNHCR is that it is ideally suited to this
role because it fits the functional ideal of a non-political, humanitarian agency.
Her understanding of the importance of humanitarian norms to the work of
the UNHCR provided a foundation for future scholarship on the organization,
particularly by those, most prominently Gil Loescher (1993), who use regime
theory to describe an international refugee regime.
Integration in developed countries

If scholars of international relations and law emphasized the important role that
international organizations play in finding asylum for refugees and providing legal
protection, they took less interest in the fate of refugees once they had found a
permanent place of refuge. Kunz, for instance, is critical of the viewpoint that “the
re-settled refugee ceases to be a problem demanding international solution. For the
refugee administrator he becomes a closed case (Kunz 1973:128).” Kunz rightly
points out that scholarship on refugees has been limited in its discussion of policy
options, in part because works were sometimes produced for, or in conjunction
with an international refugee agency.13 This criticism is not entirely fair, however,
in so far as many writers have recognized the complexity of integrating refugees
into new societies.
In this regard, the ideas of Jacques Vernant stand out as particularly
important, because they bridge legal, rights-based approaches to the study of
refugees and more economic and sociological ones. For Vernant (1953:16-21),
all refugees need more than just asylum, they need the right to work and the
opportunity to earn a living; he is particularly concerned about the controls on
the labor market that European governments set up in 1929-30 and had not
dismantled in the post-war period. In the 1950s and 1960s, a large literature on
the economic aspects of resettlement was completed, with many studies focusing
on the occupational adaptation of professional refugees. One of the most well-
know studies was the survey conducted by Maurice Davie (1947), based at
Yale University, in which refugees, primarily Jews, were interviewed about their
experiences in the United States. Utilizing survey data and interview techniques,
the study attempts to answer a number of questions, including “how have they
adjusted to themselves to American life” and “have they been an asset or a liability”
to the United States. The study concludes, that rather than being a “destructive
RSQ26-3.indd 28 5.9.2007 11:01:22

and subversive element” in society, as critics maintained, these refugees were

making many positive contributions to American life.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a large body of literature emerged on the
resettlement of “new” refugees, especially those in the United States. Within
this literature, Barry Stein’s comparative study on the occupational adjustment
of Vietnamese refugees is particularly noteworthy (see Stein 1979a). Using new
techniques popularized by political scientists, Stein bases his research on a large
survey of over 120,000 in-camp refugees as well as telephone surveys of ones who
had already been resettled in order to compare the occupational adjustment of
Vietnamese refugees to that of refugees from the Nazi period, Hungarians, and
Cubans. Beyond this, Stein completes a model of occupational adjustment that
could be used in the analysis of other refugee groups. In doing so, Stein follows
in the footsteps of Kunz, who also sought to create models that could assist both
refugee administrators and scholars to understand multiple refugee groups. Stein
would later expand his ideas, and in 1981, publish “The Refugee Experience,”
which seeks to define the parameters of Refugee Studies as a new field.
Local integration and development

Most of the literature discussed above, produced primarily by political scientists
and sociologists, focuses on refugees who are either from or resettling in an already
economically developed country; it tended to neglect those in developing countries.
“It is in the arena of refugees and development that anthropology has been
particularly visible,” according to Liisa H. Malkki (1995:506), a scholar of refugee,
diaspora and transnational studies. Scholars such as Robert Chambers, Art Hansen,
and Anthony Oliver-Smith, whose works are discussed below, have advanced two
main arguments: (1) that agencies should establish programs that create long-term
socio-economic opportunities for both refugee and host populations in “Third
World” countries; (2) and that the so called “durable solutions” to refugee crises
should reflect solutions derived from long-term fieldwork.
Conducting anthropological fieldwork in the post-war period, Robert
Chambers (1979) stands out as pioneering scholar on refugees and development.
In his seminal article on rural refugees in developing African economies, Chambers,
a specialist in development studies, faults the top-down, observer-oriented
approaches of critical academics and misguided practitioners; he further argues that
knowledge of rural areas, often based on impersonal, large-scale questionnaires and
limited visits, would be greatly enhanced through local, actor-oriented knowledge
derived informant-based, long-term participatory research. Chambers sentiments
are similar to those of Hansen and Oliver-Smith (1982:5) who note that “the local
human dimension is often overlooked by planners and policy makers who deal
with the “big picture” or handle the logistics of relief.”
This micro-analytical, social dimensions approach departs from macro-
analytical models of Kunz (1981)14 and of Stephen Keller (1975). Keller’s model,
later referred to as “the refugee syndrome,” states that refugees pass through
several stages; much like models by Kunz and Stein, it purports to predict refugee
thought and behaviour for assistance and development programs working on
RSQ26-3.indd 29 5.9.2007 11:01:22

30 Articles
behalf of refugees. In contrast, Oliver-Smith and Hansen insist upon the first-
hand, longitudinal aspects of anthropological fieldwork that yield microanalyses of
refugee thought, behavior, and action. Rather than just the observer point-of-view
and scientific models, their volume provides an in- depth analysis informant point-
of- view sets them apart from journalists, laypersons, and refugee relief personnel.
And, it is through lessons expressed in the “human meaning of forced migration
expressed in social action” that governments and agencies can best aid refugees and
work towards long-term solutions Hansen and Oliver-Smith 1982:6).15
The “bottom up” approach to the study of refugees developed by
anthropologists has policy implications as well; Hansen faults governments and
agencies for not taking into account the value of self-determination, self-control
and power to the well-being and social structure of refugees. “As a consequence,” he
writes, “assistance programs often undercut even more the already weakened power
of the people (Hansen 1982:14).” According to Hansen, this happens because,
even as people survive one disaster, brought about by war or natural upheaval, they
then face a secondary disaster, this one brought about by the very aid designed to
help them. Overall, scholars such as Hansen assert the value of informant-based
research to both the generation of theory and the successful application of refugee
assistance programs.
CONCLUSION
In closing we would like to draw attention to a few points that underscore the
complexity of refugee studies as an emerging field. It is evident from this review
that a number of the scholars who concerned themselves with refugees came from
groups that are often marginalized in society. In particular female writers, such
as Louise Holborn and Elizabeth Colson, produced major pioneering works at a
time when there were few roles for women in academia. Other authors, including
Rubenstein, Stoessinger, and Kunz, who had themselves undergone the experience
of flight also greatly contributed to the emergence of the field.
Over the sixty years from 1920 through 1980, a large case study literature
on the experiences of different refugee groups had been created, making the field
global in scope. A substantial literature on the legal dimensions of refugeehood had
developed, the topic of resettlement in developed countries had been extensively
discussed, and a growing literature on integration in developing countries existed.
The activities of international organizations on behalf of refugees had been
explored, as had the foreign policies of particular countries toward major groups
of refugees. Less systematic attention had been paid to the causes of refugee
flight, and relatively little had been written about repatriation of refugees or their
experiences in refugee camps. Beyond this, very few comparative studies had
been conducted, and even fewer general models existed. The literature, though
growing, still left many important topics without answers and the fate of smaller
and lesser well known refugee groups unrecorded. It is these unanswered questions
and undiscovered stories that, as much as anything, generated the need for refugee
studies as a formal field of inquiry.
RSQ26-3.indd 30 5.9.2007 11:01:22

This literature that would form the basis of Refugee Studies as an academic
discipline lacked a common methodology, but instead utilized a variety of
techniques, including legal and political analysis, historical archival work, and
economic studies. While political scientists and sociologists used interview and
survey methods to gain a macro-view of refugee issues, ethnographic researchers
were keen to conduct first-hand fieldwork, documenting refugee perspectives
and behavior via, for example, the collection of displacement stories, household
and community census, standardized interviews, and participant-observation in
daily activities. While scholars interested in refugees did not agree on one precise
methodology, most shared a larger purpose – that their work should somehow
have relevance and contribute to improving the lives of refugees.
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Percal, R. M. 1978. ‘The Golden Cage – Cubans in Miami.’ International Migration 16(3-4):160-173.
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Porter, A. 1969. ‘Dilemmas of a Golden Exile: Integration of Cuban Refugee Families in Milwaukee,’ American
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34 Articles
Riley, Jr. J.R., W. Schramm and F. Williams. 1951. ‘Flight From Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees.’ The
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Rogg, E. M. 1974. Assimilation of Cuban exiles: the role of community and class. New York: Aberdeen Press.
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Rubin, N. 1974. ‘Africa and Refugee.’ African Affairs 73(292): 290-311.
Rubinstein, J.L. 1936. ‘The Refugee Problem.’ International Affairs 15(5):721.
Sayigh, R. 1975, ‘Palestinian refugee camp life in Lebanon.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 4(2): 91-107.
Sayigh, R. 1977. ‘The Palestinian identity among camp residents.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 6(3): 3-22.
Sayigh, R. 1978. ‘The struggle for survival: the economic conditions of Palestinian camp residents in Lebanon.’
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Sayigh, R. 1979, Palestinians: from peasants to revolutionaries. London: Zed.
Schechtman, J. B. 1946, European population transfers, Oxford University Press, New York.
Schechtman, J. B. 1949. Population transfers in Asia. New York: Hallsby Press.
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Schaufuss, T. 1939. ‘The white Russian refugees.’ The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social
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Schibsby L. and M. 1939. ‘Status of the Refugee Under American Immigration Laws.’ The Annals of The American
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Woodbridge, G. 1950. UNRRA, 3 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wyman, D. 1985. Paper walls: America and the refugee crisis, 1938-41. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts
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Zeegers, G.W.L. and B. van Leeuwen. 1953. ‘A Design for an Action-Plan for Church Provisions in Northern
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Zolberg, A. 1983. ‘The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process.’ Annals 467:24-38.
Zolberg, A., A. Suhrke and S. Aguayo 1989. Escape From Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing
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Notes
1
Armenians refugees originated in Ottoman and then sought refuge in Greece (45,000) and France (40,000);
the largest group (65,000) fled to Syria and Lebanon. Simpson, The Refugee Problem, p. 558.
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2
The Assyrians were a Christian ethnic group within the Ottoman Empire that allied with the British; with the
termination of the British mandate over Iraq, some 9000 were pushed into Syria. Adams, p. 30.
3
Alexander Kulischer, the author’s brother, also assisted in the preparation of the work before his death in a
concentration camp.
4
An example of the use of Soviet dissidents to develop a picture of life in the Soviet Union, can be found Alex
Inkeles survey of 2719 former Soviet citizens about their attitudes to party officials and people in other classes.
Alex Inkeles (1956) and Sheldon and Dutkowski (1953).
5
The typical Czechoslovakia refugee was a young, adult male, who had been politically active in his home
country.
6
Simpson specifically excludes refugees from “Abyssinia.” A rare article on Ethiopian refugees comes from
James H. Sequeira, “The Ethiopian Refugees in Kenya,” Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 38, No. 152
(July 1939), pp. 329-33. See also David Wilkin, “Refugees and British Administrative Policy in Northern
Kenya, 1936-1938,” African Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 317 (Oct. 1980), pp. 510-530.
7
For instance, according to CSA Sociological Abstracts and Anthropological Index Online, during the 1960s
and 1970s, only 9 anthropological articles and 7 sociological articles covered Africa refugee issues, compared
to 31 anthropological articles and 20 sociological articles for those in Asia.
8
Arrangement of 5 July 1922 Relating to Russian Refugees.
9
Arrangement of 31 May 1924 Relating to Armenian Refugees.
10
Goodwin Gill (1983: 4) as well finds Simpson’s definition to an “an abstraction.”
11
The 1967 Protocol, among other things, omits the time constraints and removes geographic limitations.
United Nations, Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, HCR/INF/29/Rev.4.
12
Hansen uses a number of fieldwork techniques, including sets of surveys, a 1971 and 1972 census of 117
villages that identifies villagers and newcomers and, collections of personal stories, five of which were featured
in the article. See Hansen (1982: 19-23).
13
Holborn’s The Refugee Problem was a UNHCR project, as was Edvard Hambro’s “Chinese Refugees in Hong
Kong,” The Phylon Quarterly, Vol 18, No. 1 (1st Qtr, 1957), pp. 69-81.
14
Ergon Kunz, 1981, “ The Analytical Framework: Exile and Resettlement Refugee Theory”, International
Migration Review 15 (1): 42- 51. Kunz constructs a refugee typology derived from home related factors
(identification / marginality, attitude to flight and homeland, ideological-national orientation abroad),
displacement related factors (divided between anticipatory and acute movements), and host related factors
(cultural compatibility, population policies, social attitudes). Not based directly on fieldwork, this is a synthesis
of past and, then, current refugee movements, with which Kunz argues it is possible to use the typology to
predict outcomes of refugee experience and behavior.
15
Oliver-Smith and Hansen writes, “This volume addresses the human meaning of forced migration as
expressed in social action (flight, resistance, reorganization, and so on) After the cameras and reporters have
departed, and the attention of the mass audiences everywhere has turned to other e vents and arenas in this
world of instant but fleeting imagery, the uprooted and resettling people remain to cope with the old and new
problems of their lives. We hope that lessons from their lives will remain with us (1982:6).
RSQ26-3.indd 35 5.9.2007 11:01:25

SKRAN Refugiados Studies Antes de Refugiados

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THE STUDY OF REFUGEES BEFORE “REFUGEE STUDIES”

Claudena Skran and Carla N. Daughtry*,

Scholarship on refugee studies involves a wide variety of academic disciplines, including

Keywords: refugees, refugee studies, UNHCR, League of Nations, durable solutions.

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A QUESTION OF SCOPE: WHICH REFUGEES SHOULD BE STUDIED?

In refugee studies today, a distinction is often made between “classical” refugees

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Hungary, a group which never received legal protection or significant support

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A QUESTION OF DEFINITION: WHO IS A REFUGEE?

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acquiring another nationality (Annuaire 1936:294). This definition distinguishes

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change and natural disasters as well as those generated by sociopolitical struggles.

QUESTIONS OF CAUSALITY: WHAT CREATES REFUGEES

If questions of definition always have been important in scholarship about refugees,

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A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE: WHAT ARE THE BEST SOLUTIONS

Minority protection and population transfers

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co-operation can not be achieved in a multiethnic state. In his discussion of

Finding places of asylum

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sending and receiving countries could be brought together to negotiate. Simpson’s

Repatriation – the preferred solution of governments

Legal protection as the answer

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Integration in developed countries

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and subversive element” in society, as critics maintained, these refugees were

Local integration and development

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