Refugee Aid Research Articles

“I Got a Feel for All Sorts of Hungarian Things”: An Interview with Charles Taylor on His Involvement in Hungarian Refugee Aid in 1957

Abstract Charles Taylor was interviewed by Tamás Scheibner (Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest and Research Centre for the Humanities ELKH) in August 2022 about his work helping Hungarian refugees who fled Hungary in 1956. The interview was conducted within the framework of the NKFI-FK-135586 grant project “The Post-1956 Refugee Crisis and Hungarian Émigré Communities during the Cold War.” The transcript was subsequently edited by the interlocutors.

Activism and ‘lived religion’: challenging the anti-refugee attitudes in Poland

ABSTRACT This article addresses the role played by religion in humanitarian aid for refugees and migrants of various faiths in predominantly Catholic Poland. Although the country has accepted small numbers of refugees for years, the discussion about their presence as well as the state of the asylum system has captured the attention of the general public in 2015. The European ‘refugee crisis’ sparked a fierce debate, further aggravated by the parliamentary and presidential elections that took place that year. The Roman Catholic Church was quite vocal in the debate, with representatives’ attitudes ranging from supportive to ambiguous and outright hostile. In this article, we focus on the grassroots initiatives at the margins of the Church that challenged the negative narratives and helped refugees and migrants. Based on empirical research we analyze the proclamations and activities of these actors. We show how the ‘refugee crisis’ became a “moment of ethics” (Zigon 2008) that encouraged people to help others in need. We explore how the diverse support for the refugees established a space to conceive of religion and moral values as they are lived (McGuire 2008) and translated into activism.

Key Experiences of Volunteers in Refugee Aid

To investigate the specific events and processes that contribute to volunteering in refugee aid, we conducted a qualitative study with volunteers in Germany (N = 220). Participants described in their own words critical incidents that motivated them to volunteer. Content analysis revealed contact with refugees (spatial closeness or conversation), contact with non-refugees (volunteers or xenophobic persons), media experiences (reports about refugees or calls for action), and biographical incidents (own migration or major life changes) as key experiences. The results provide valuable insights into experiences that motivate people to volunteer in refugee aid, which supports integration processes of refugees and asylum-seekers.

Humanitarian aid for refugees from Ukraine as a catalyst for new social activity in Poland

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 caused Europe’s largest influx of war refugees to the European Union after World War II. This is unprecedented in many aspects, covering primarily the Central and Eastern Europe, which historically have been countries of emigration rather than migration. Against this background, grassroots initiatives and civic actions taken in Poland, local government bodies, state authorities, as well as the Catholic Church are considered. The key challenges and problems in supporting migrants from Ukraine are interpreted in terms of the theory of resource mobilization and the concept of “new social movements”.

Optimizing Refugee Aid: Integrating Cloud-Based CRM in Multi-Agency Collaborations

Optimizing Refugee Aid: Integrating Cloud-Based CRM in Multi-Agency Collaborations

“I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me”. The Role of Religion and Faith-Based Organizations in Refugee Accommodation

Abstract Support for strangers is deeply anchored in the social ethics of various religious traditions. Based on a qualitative content analysis of interviews with refugees and immigration executives. the article focuses on the role of religion and religious communities in refugee accommodation in Germany between 2011 and 2018. It sheds light on different schemes and measures of support offered by religious communities and explores the significance of religious and cultural differences for processes of accommodation and early integration. The empirical analysis is embedded in conceptual debates on the re-emergence of faith-based service providers in the crisis of the late modern welfare state. The findings suggest that the so called ‘refugee crisis’ has served as an opportunity structure for Christian refugee aid. At the same time, refugee accommodation centres in Germany have responded to an increase of non-Christian refugees (notably: Muslims) by a more restrictive handling of religious freedom.

Economic impact of giving land to refugees

AbstractThis paper adds to a sparse but growing literature on the economic costs and benefits of hosting refugees, including a unique policy of providing refugees with access to cultivable land. We construct a general equilibrium model from microsurvey data to simulate the spillover effects of giving land to refugees on income and production in the host‐country economy surrounding a refugee settlement in Uganda. Reduced‐form econometric analysis of land allocations at the refugee settlement, robust to several specifications, confirms the simulation finding that providing refugees with agricultural land significantly improves their welfare and self‐reliance. Simulations reveal that refugee aid and land allocations generate positive income spillovers in the local economy out to a 15‐km radius around the refugee settlement. Host‐country households benefit significantly from the income spillovers that refugee assistance creates, and host‐country agriculture is the largest beneficiary among production sectors.

Why is Syria a War but Not Afghanistan? Nationality-based Aid and Protection in Turkey’s Syria Refugee Response

Abstract This article argues that, following the most recent influx of Syrians, refugee reception and aid policies in Turkey has shifted to be differentiated depending on the nationality of refugee groups. This research relies on a case study methodology and assesses changes in reception and aid access policies undertaken in Turkey post the Syrian influx and European Union (EU)–Turkey deal. In doing so it critically analyses differentiated access by refugee nationality, specifically Syrians and Afghans. This begins with an analysis of differences between refugee groups in how protection status is issued, followed by an investigation of differentiated access to programmes and assistance, and the role that EU-led negotiations and aid programmes play in re-enforcing Syrian-focused inclusion. Through a methodology that combines a review of law, policy and relevant literature and semi-structured interviews with key informants, this article makes two conclusions: first, that policies in Turkey unfolded to differentiate and distinguish Syrian refugees, against other refugee groups, as part of the response to the influx. Secondly, as objects of migration diplomacy between the EU and Turkey, aid and assistance programmes for refugees were also distinct by citizenship and re-enforced this differentiation, characterising the response by a condition of nationality-based aid.

The War in Ukraine and History Education of Refugee Pupils in Poland

The article presents the process of developing history teaching material for Ukranian refugee pupils in Poland in the months immediately following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Initiated as a small-scale contribution to the aid for Ukrainian refugees in Poland, thanks to the support of EuroClio – European Association of History Educators, it developed into a project that combined humanitarian aspects with inter- and transnational history education, able to build upon the concepts of multiperspectivity and historical thinking and help teachers and students address the challenges of multilingual and multicultural classrooms. Written from the author’s personal perspective of the project coordinator, it discusses the achievements and difficulties of the work of a group of educators, translators, sponsors and web-publisher with an aim to encourage reflection and discussion on history education of war refugee children in the school system of a receiving country.

Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans by Marilyn Grace Miller

Reviewed by: Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans by Marilyn Grace Miller Daniel Hutchinson Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans. By Marilyn Grace Miller. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. xx, 273. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-7527-9.) Decades of activism and historical research have placed Japanese internment as a central element in the narrative of the American home front during World War II. Less attention has been paid to the incarceration of "enemy aliens" of German and Italian descent under the U.S. government's Enemy Alien Control Program (p. 5). Historians such as Max Paul Friedman and Arnold Krammer have written valuable studies examining this internment experience. Marilyn Grace Miller makes a substantial contribution to this scholarship in Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans. This engaging account explores the history of Camp Algiers, an internment facility in New Orleans and an important transit point in the international history of wartime detention. Miller argues that "New Orleans represented a 'port of no return,' a brink that, once crossed, could not be traversed in reverse" (p. xii). As in the Japanese American experience, presidential executive orders authorized the extrajudicial detention of potential spies and those affiliated with pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist political organizations. Yet fears of Axis infiltration throughout the Western Hemisphere prompted a wider dragnet of detention. At the request of the U.S. State Department, governments in Latin America executed their own preventive arrests. However, this process was marred by shoddy intelligence, scant evidence, racial prejudice, expropriation of property, and bribery. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe were among those detained as potential Axis agents. These refugees were [End Page 801] transported to the United States and interned alongside ardent supporters of National Socialism in a network of detention facilities in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and other states outside the South. Camp Algiers became a place of refuge for some of those Jewish internees. After desperate efforts to communicate their plight, many Jewish internees were transferred to Camp Algiers, which gained a reputation for being friendly to "anti-Nazis" (p. 34). The facility had the capacity to hold up to 250 inmates. Miller skillfully reconstructs the biographies of the camp's internees, utilizing case files held in the National Archives, correspondence with refugee aid agencies, and sources from Europe and Latin America. While the conditions of confinement were generally humane, indefinite (and frequently unjust) detentions left enduring trauma. Suicide and the stress of internment took the lives of some internees. Yet Miller complicates the story of what is sometimes called the "Camp of the Innocents" (p. 34). The U.S. military also detained notorious figures such as exiled Nazi propagandist Kurt Ludecke at Camp Algiers. Miller explores how the shifting rationales of U.S. authorities shaped how they classified the political, religious, and racial identities of internees. Such classifications could change quickly. Ironically, the internment process opened a path for some so-called enemy aliens to claim American citizenship. For others, departure from Camp Algiers represented repatriation and an uncertain future. Port of No Return concludes with an examination of the legacies of wartime detention. While the Japanese internment experience prompted redress and reparation, the first congressional hearings on the Enemy Alien Control Program occurred only in 2009. Yet a full reckoning of this history is overdue. Miller notes that the precedent of internment continues to shape policy and law, particularly for detainees captured during the War on Terror and migrants seeking asylum. "Many aspects of that precedent––indefinite detention without hearings, family separation, the manipulation of detention policy and detainee populations for political purposes and economic gain, repatriation of aliens to hostile environments––are still with us in some form today," Miller notes (p. 207). Camp Algiers itself continued to serve various functions within the federal immigration system until 2018. While the buildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019, gentrification threatens the site's future. Nonetheless, the installation's past is well chronicled in Port of No Return, a fitting tribute to the struggles of those...

Five Years of Voluntary Refugee Aid in Germany

This article examines voluntary refugee aid from 2015 to 2020, investigating the extent to which volunteers and refugee aid recipients have related their perceptions and emotional interpretations to the welcoming discourse and the local organisation of voluntary refugee aid. The analysis was based on contrasting sample of interviews and newspaper articles and includes a comparison of the politicised metropolitan refugee aid in Berlin with traditional charity-based aid in Braunschweig. It becomes evident that the emotional perceptions of volunteers differ depending on their reason for helping and their previous experiences. In addition, the article suggests that the recipients of refugee aid, most notably shortly after their arrival, do not refer to the welcoming discourse but instead to their own experiences or those of their acquaintances.
 Combining the concepts of governmentality and performativity, I use a critical perspective on power and add an affect-theoretical level in the sense of immersive power. This theoretical view raises awareness of the significance of affects and emotions in voluntary refugee aid.
 Overall, the stance of the article shifts. It sees refugees not only as persons in need of help but contrasts this image with the potential they offer. It takes a critical look at the last five years of voluntary refugee aid and considers the implications for voluntary refugee aid if, indeed, emotions are as significant as they appear in the article.
 * This article belongs to a special issue on "Refugee Migration to Europe – Challenges and Potentials for Cities and Regions".

Toward a History of Interwar Sino-Hungarian Cultural Relations: Three Advocates of Kuomintang Soft Power, Hungarian Irredentism and Pan-Danubianism

This paper aims to achieve two goals: the first is to bring a fresh perspective to the Atlanto-centric history of Chinese propaganda while tracing the roots of Sino-Hungarian bilateral approaches and Hungarian Sinology to a time dating some fifteen years earlier than the mutual recognition of the two People’s Republics. This analysis also introduces three actors of different political agendas who applied a similar PR tool of cultural diplomacy to elicit international sympathy for their homeland. After briefly surveying the primary stimuli of cultural diplomacy in interwar Hungary and Republican-Era China, I turn to pre-1949 Sino-Hungarian cultural approaches in the era of no formal diplomatic relations. Such initiatives offer valuable insights into the history of cultural diplomacy while also highlighting significant parallels with the present. Specifically, I introduce the political and cultural agenda of three individuals acting as cultural ambassadors to their homelands. The Shanghai Jewish refugee aid organizer, Paul Komor, and the women’s association president, Theresia Moll, were members of the Hungarian diaspora in China. They introduced the post-Habsburg Central European region to a cosmopolitan community while exhibiting two different foci: Hungarian irredentism and pan-Danubianism. Meanwhile, Zhenya He, a Kuomintang propagandist and the University of Budapest’s first Chinese language instructor during the 1930s, synthesized Hungarian pan-Asian Turanism with Sun Yat-sen’s Tridemism to further Sino-Hungarian exchanges.

Everyday Justice: Legal Aid for Jewish Displaced Persons, Germany, 1945–1950

Abstract Welfare workers volunteering with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a Jewish welfare organization, delivered crucial legal assistance to Holocaust survivors gathered in displaced persons (DP) camps in the American Zone of occupied Germany; however, today their story is largely forgotten. Their legal aid program embodied a unique relationship between social work and law. JDC relief workers developed a legal consciousness in response to the many injustices they witnessed in the DP camps, which allowed them to identify the gap between the basic support provided by relief programs, and the actual needs of the DPs. From this awareness they gradually developed a program of legal welfare, assisted Jews in their daily interactions with Americans and Germans, provided them with legal instruction and education, and protected them when conflicts arose. These JDC volunteers were fueled by a sense of moral responsibility and compassion for the Jewish DPs, who were forced to live in a foreign and often hostile environment. Remarkably, this story has largely been neglected in Holocaust scholarship, though the archives have yielded hundreds of reports by JDC welfare workers, as well as the papers of Oskar Mintzer, a key figure in the creation of the JDC’s legal aid program. The JDC was at the forefront of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and this aspect of its work represents a forgotten milestone in the development of a more holistic approach to refugee assistance and support. This study offers a starting point for further research in order to better understand humanitarian aid for asylum seekers, DPs, and refugees in the twenty-first century.

International Refugee Aid in Postwar Germany as Evaluated by Emigrants and Displaced Persons from Russia and the Soviet Union

This article is devoted to international assistance to refugees who stayed in German camps in the second half of the 1940s. The authors of the article focus on ego-documents coming from Soviet “displaced persons” and emigrants from Russia. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the authors carry out a comparative analysis of the information found in these historical sources and the official documents of the UN structures involved in helping refugees, which has not been done previously. The authors refer to materials from the archives of the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace (Stanford, USA), the Bakhmetev Archive of Russian and East European Culture of Columbia University (New York, USA), the Manuscript Department of the Library of Congress (Washington), the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library (Moscow, Russia), and the UN archive. Also, they rely on the conceptual developments of specialists in the field of ego-document analysis as a historical source. As a result, it is proved that many statements in the memoirs of Soviet “displaced persons” and emigrants are emotional in nature and not supported by information found in other sources. The analysis demonstrates that international organisations created to help refugees after the Second World War faced objective difficulties. The activities of these structures were peculiar in that they developed on the territory of Germany, which was divided into occupation zones. The authors identify the main parameters of the activities of international organisations to help refugees and show the sources and scale of funding provided for the camp system in Germany in the second half of the 1940s. Considerable attention is paid to the evolution of the system of international assistance to refugees associated with the transition from the UNRRA to the IRO. The authors prove that in the first postwar years, there was a search for ways to provide assistance to refugees and “displaced persons” and the development of international mechanisms in this area, which would be improved in the subsequent period.

Forms of Aid Provided to Refugees of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War: The Case of Poland.

The Twenty-Fourth of February 2022 marked the beginning one of the greatest humanitarian crisis in Europe. Within the first six days of the war, the number of Ukrainian refugees exceeded 4 million, which is more than twice the total number of incomers who arrived in Europe during the Syrian migration throughout 2015. Most of them found themselves in Poland; thus, an urgent need for ad hoc humanitarian and systemic aid arose. To cope with the situation, a number of changes to the Polish law were introduced so as to provide help to the refugees (mainly women and children) from Ukraine. To systematise the changes, the authors of the study analysed the legal acts that had been created or amended for the purposes of providing aid to the refugees staying in Poland. The research study has shown that, in the first days following the war’s outbreak, the measures of key importance were the grassroot initiatives taken by Polish citizens, but as days went by, systemic aid became indispensable. Moreover, non-standard needs had to be handled due to the fact that the refugees were mainly women and children rather than entire families. In conclusion, the war in Ukraine has shown how important it is to have refugee aid procedures at hand and to have a detailed guidance prepared beforehand.

Linguistic framing effects in business and refugee aid contexts: A replication and extension of Cooley et al. (2017).

Cooley et al. (2017) found that subtle shifts in linguistic framing can enhance the amount of "mind" perceived in a target, and in turn increase feelings of sympathy toward that target. The four studies reported here evaluated whether these findings generalize to different populations and contexts. The first two studies served as conceptual replications in a different participant population (university students, instead of mTurk workers), and found results largely consistent with Cooley et al.'s (2017): the group composition frame ("15 individuals who work for a small accounting company") evoked greater perceptions of experience and agency, and more sympathy for the target, than the group frame ("a small accounting company comprising 15 people"). Studies 3 and 4 tested whether the group composition technique would lead to similar persuasive outcomes (increased mind perception, helping, and donations) in a refugee aid context and found only limited evidence that it might. These inconclusive findings were likely complicated by both the liberal skew of the sample and the strong impact of political identity on responses to the politically charged topic of refugees. For the purposes of practical application, an expanded understanding of boundary effects can help provide a better sense of when, why, and on whom the use of adjusted linguistic frames is most likely to be effective. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Global Standards, Cultural Islam: Syrian‐led Muslim Humanitarianism in Turkey

AbstractThis article focuses on Syrian‐led Muslim humanitarianism, and asks what types of discourses and practices emerged in the context of the Syrian Muslim diaspora's increased involvement in global refugee management as humanitarian actors. Through a case study of a major Syrian‐led humanitarian organization in Turkey founded by wealthy Syrian diasporan businessmen, the article examines how class differences, market discourses, and nationalist visions shape the contemporary politics of Muslim humanitarianism. I argue that Syrian Muslim humanitarian politics has featured complex struggles for legitimacy and recognition, which have led to new constellations of religious, neoliberal, and nationalist imaginations. Syrian Muslim humanitarians have claimed their legitimacy through negotiation of the Turkish state's neo‐Ottoman policies that render them invisible, and of Western organizations' and donors' Islamophobic biases that suspect them of supporting terrorism. Through strategies such as culturalizing Islam and enacting market discourses of professionalism and flexibility, Syrian Muslim humanitarians have claimed to embody global standards of humanitarianism, and have carved out a space in which their Syrian and Muslim identities are recognized. This article is among the first studies that highlight Syrian actors' growing influence in shaping the global field of humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees. Looking at the intersections of religion, class, and ethnicity, the article also expands our understanding of Muslim humanitarianism by emphasizing the often‐ignored themes of social class and nationalist imaginations.

Coordination in practice or performance? The political economy of refugee aid coordination in Jordan

Abstract Political economy literature on the incentives of international actors during humanitarian crises has cast international aid coordination inefficiencies during humanitarian crises as a product of vertical principal–agent problems with informational asymmetries, divergent interests, and inter-agent competition. However, horizontal coordination between international actors represents an important and understudied dimension of the political economy of international aid during refugee responses. Horizontal coordination structures, while offering a potential solution to the principal–agent problem of humanitarian responses, can either result in coordination in practice or coordination in performance. I argue that the incentives of coordinating actors, the level of donor monitoring, and the risk of elimination of some organizations or material opportunities as a result of effective coordination all factor into international organization and international non-governmental organization coordination behaviour. I examine the relationships between stakeholders during the Syrian refugee response in Jordan and the differential take-up of coordination technologies to test my theory with policy implications.

Establishing Nutritional Management after Natural Disaster for Children Under-five Years in Indonesia: A Systematic Review

Background: Indonesia has the potential for natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis and others. The impact of displacement for children under-five is the risk of infectious diseases, nutritional deficits, growth and psychosocial disorders. Food aid for adult refugees is relatively less problematic than for children because adults can consume various types of food. Otherwise, children under-five have been unable to consume all various foods provided at the shelter. If this problem is not addressed, children will suffer from malnutrition and may become malnourished further. This study focuses on nutrition management after-disaster for children under-five. Methods: The type of study was cross-sectional. This research was carried out by systematic review study, which was a literature study that published about Indonesia databases using Science Direct and Proquest. The inclusion criteria were studies that focused on food and nutrition management for children in the shelter. Results: The study shows that the nutrition management for children under-five in the shelter has not been addressed optimally, so it is urgent to specifically and integrated nutrition management. Nutrition programs in the shelter include nutrition services, nutrition counseling, nutritionist, and food supply. Conclusion: The role of nutritionists during emergency disasters can contribute to optimal nutrition services in shelter. They can help by arranging menus and attention to nutrition and food hygiene to be provided to children. SOP’s for addressing nutrition health are required, as well allocation funds to provide nutritious food for children under-five.

Supplemental Material for Linguistic Framing Effects in Business and Refugee Aid Contexts: A Replication and Extension of Cooley et al. (2017)

Supplemental Material for Linguistic Framing Effects in Business and Refugee Aid Contexts: A Replication and Extension of Cooley et al. (2017)