Books by Georgina Ramsay
The Indiana University Worlds in Crisis: Refugees, Asylum, and Forced Migration series will be a ... more The Indiana University Worlds in Crisis: Refugees, Asylum, and Forced Migration series will be a hub for groundbreaking work on the causes of, experiences within, and responses to forced migration. Focusing on refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers and the aid system that surrounds them, the series will move beyond mere pathos to investigate the complexity of lived experiences of displacement.
We are seeking proposals for books that address topics related to forced migration and displacement. Work in the series will be necessarily multi-scalar, showing how the international, national, and local interact when responding to problems caused when people fall out of the “national order of things” and lose their homes, their states, and their rights. The books that make up the Displacement and Forced Migration series will emerge as crucial resources for students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners seeking to further their understanding of the complexity of contemporary experiences of forced migration. Many of the books in the series will be based on ethnographic work, but we will also welcome policy-related books and “think piece” books organized around a central concept. The series will prioritize vivid, lively writing that makes strong arguments and engenders widespread discussion.
Please contact Georgina Ramsay at [email protected] or Elizabeth Dunn at [email protected] for more information about the series or how to submit a book proposal.
Impossible Refuge brings the perspectives of refugees into rapidly emerging dialogues about conte... more Impossible Refuge brings the perspectives of refugees into rapidly emerging dialogues about contemporary situations of mass forced migration, asking: what does it mean to be displaced? Based on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted with refugees from Central Africa living in situations of protracted asylum in Uganda and resettlement in Australia, the book provides a unique comparative analysis of global humanitarian systems and the experiences of refugees whose lives are interwoven with them. The book problematises the solutions that are currently in place to resolve the displacement of refugees, considering that since displacement cannot be reduced to a politico-legal problem but is an experience that resonates at an existential level, it cannot be assumed that politico-legal solutions to displacement automatically resolve what is, fundamentally, an existential state of being. Impossible Refuge therefore offers a new theoretical foundation through which to think about the experiences of refugees, as well as the systems in place to manage and resolve their displacement. The book argues that the refuge provided to refugees through international humanitarian systems is conditional: requiring that they conform to lifestyles that benefit the hegemonic future horizons of the societies that host and receive them. Impossible Refuge calls for new ways of approaching displacement that go beyond the exceptionality of refugee experience, to consider instead how the contestation and control of possible futures makes displacement a general condition of our time. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in migration and refugees, humanitarianism and violence, sovereignty and citizenship, cosmology and temporality, and African studies, broadly.
Journal Articles by Georgina Ramsay
Critique of Anthropology, 2019
Can the displacement of refugees continue to be understood as exceptional? The recent global incr... more Can the displacement of refugees continue to be understood as exceptional? The recent global increase in refugees has prompted calls to develop new solutions to displacement that focus on integrating refugees into the local economies of nations that receive them. Transforming refugees from economic burdens to economic benefits does not, however, resolve displacement: doing so only shifts the project of refugee protection from a supposedly humanitarian imperative to an economic incentive. Examining how political economy intersects with moral economy in the global refugee regime by drawing on fieldwork conducted with refugees in Uganda and Australia, I describe how efforts to incorporate refugees into local economies not only fail to resolve their displacement but serve to exacerbate it, with such 'humanitarian exploits' transforming refugees from recipients of humanitarian aid to highly exploitable workers who are, in their words, unable to 'make a life'. I consider that continuing to analyse refugees as objects of humanitarian intervention rather than actors in a globalised political economy is a way to reproduce the exceptionality of refugee experiences and conceal how their lives are implicated within and indicative of new formations of global capitalism. Not only is the displacement of refugees not exceptional: it is emblematic of an increasingly globalised experience of ordinary displacement through which citizenship and civic rights are stratified by reducing the value of human life to the potential to extract economic productivity.
Anthropological Theory, 2019
Displacement is typically approached in anthropology as an exceptional experience that is associa... more Displacement is typically approached in anthropology as an exceptional experience that is associated with refugees and forced migration. Recent representations of migration 'crisis' have reinforced the exceptionality attached to displacement. Drawing on research conducted with people in both refugee and non-refugee contexts, in this article I put forward a more expansive theorisation of displacement as a sense of temporal dispossession. Additionally, I describe how, by characterising refugees and other migrants as people who occupy a temporality that is distinguished by their migration status, anthropology denies coevalness with and between migrants and non-migrants and thereby reinforces the very logics of otherness that we might otherwise seek to critique. Recognising the shared temporal rhythms of displacement, and how these manifest broadly as the effects of global capitalism and neoliberal restructurings, is one way through which anthropologists can strengthen our analyses and critiques of bordering structures. We must firmly situate refugees and migrants within these shared rhythms of displacement, rather than exceptionalise them through the lens of 'crisis'.
Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2019
Empirical interest in exploring the settlement experiences of people from refugee back- grounds h... more Empirical interest in exploring the settlement experiences of people from refugee back- grounds has long been an area of research interest and advocacy. In particular, there has been significant growth in research that focuses on students from refugee back- grounds as they navigate the education systems of these settlement contexts, with a particular focus on refugee children and youth in schooling contexts. Less is known about the experiences of students from refugee backgrounds in higher education. This article speaks to this gap in our collective knowledge, offering a meta-scoping study of 46 papers on students from refugee backgrounds in international higher education contexts. A key contribution of this article is its holistic view of higher education – as it explores higher education in both refugee camp situations in countries of first asylum and countries of settlement – as well as its attention to the theoretical and methodo- logical frames that have been used to make sense of the experiences of these students. From our reading of the field, we offer an analysis of the gaps in the literature, and pro- pose a research agenda for further advancing both our collective understandings and the possibilities for institutional transformation and advocacy with these students.
Critique of Anthropology , 2019
Can the displacement of refugees continue to be understood as exceptional? The recent global incr... more Can the displacement of refugees continue to be understood as exceptional? The recent global increase in refugees has prompted calls to develop new solutions to displacement that focus on integrating refugees into the local economies of nations that receive them. Transforming refugees from economic burdens to economic benefits does not, however, resolve displacement: doing so only shifts the project of refugee protection from a supposedly humanitarian imperative to an economic incentive. Examining how political economy intersects with moral economy in the global refugee regime by drawing on fieldwork conducted with refugees in Uganda and Australia, I describe how efforts to incorporate refugees into local economies not only fail to resolve their displacement but serve to exacerbate it, with such “humanitarian exploits” transforming refugees from recipients of humanitarian aid to highly exploitable workers who are, in their words, unable to “make a life.” I consider that continuing to analyse refugees as objects of humanitarian intervention rather than actors in a globalised political economy is a way to reproduce the exceptionality of refugee experiences and conceal how their lives are implicated within and indicative of new formations of global capitalism. Not only is the displacement of refugees not exceptional: it is emblematic of an increasingly globalised experience of ordinary displacement through which citizenship and civic rights are stratified by reducing the value of human life to the potential to extract economic productivity.
The highest number of displaced peoples ever recorded across the globe was reached in 2015, and h... more The highest number of displaced peoples ever recorded across the globe was reached in 2015, and has now risen into 2016 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] 2016a). This mass dislocation of peoples has been described internationally as a “crisis” (Holmes and Castañeda 2016). But the term “crisis” implies eventfulness (Roitman 2013): a distinct problem that can be solved. The idea of emergency that is signalled by the term “crisis” has justified more expansive techniques of sovereignty in Europe, the epicentre of the so-called refugee “crisis,” including the reinforcement of physical borders and the right for law enforcement to enter private space without a warrant (Kallius, Monterescu, and Rajaram 2016). Locating the development of new formations of sovereignty within the analytical space of the “crisis,” even critically, however, continues to reproduce the trope of the “refugee” figure as a category of the “exception” to the “rule” of law and ordinary life. Focusing instead on refugees who are attempting to reconstitute everyday lives in resettlement, in this article I consider how sovereignty is imposed on refugees through the very processes that are designed to resolve their displacement. Doing so opens up new ways to think about control over time as a technique of sovereignty.
Practices of state-mandated forced child removal in Australia have historically served to govern ... more Practices of state-mandated forced child removal in Australia have historically served to govern minority cultural groups. Despite an overarching imperative to prevent harm to children, contemporary systems of child welfare continue to impose forms of governance, particularly in regard to resettled refugees. This article focuses on the experiences of women who have been resettled in Australia as refugees from Africa, and who have, upon their resettlement, had their children forcibly removed from their care as a result of concerns over child protection. Examining how forms of governmentality are embedded within these interventions but legitimated by assumptions of benevolence, I show how the child welfare system can impose forms of pastoral power on resettled refugees, in which " care " for children is concentrated within institutions of government authority and, subsequently, oriented through state agendas. I argue that the state mandate of child protection combines governmentality and pastoral power to produce what I term benevolent cruelty, in which the imperative to protect children complicates and contradicts the refuge that is provided to resettled refugees. [African refugee resettlement, child welfare, governmentality, institutions of care, pastoral power]
This article explores the phenomenon of forced childlessness as a result of state interventions f... more This article explores the phenomenon of forced childlessness as a result of state interventions for child protection, with a focus on the ways in which such practices impact subjective experiences of motherhood. I draw on the case of an intervention by the child protection system in Australia, in which an African woman experienced the forced removal of her children after being resettled as a refugee. I analyze this experience not as the result of parental deficiency, but as the outcome of a disciplining imperative implied in the operations of the child welfare system and through which resettled refugees are governed as either " deserving " or " undeserving " of civic belonging. In the case study, the intervention of forced child removal results in an experience of what I term " ruptured " personhood: whereby intersections and contestations of motherhood as, concurrently, a social role, legal category, and affective experience, produce a situation in which a woman lives a paradoxical state of existence that she herself describes as being " dead. " The case study compels a broader problematization of refugee resettlement and motherhood
This article explores how experiences of racialisation toward women who are resettled in Australi... more This article explores how experiences of racialisation toward women who are resettled in Australia from Central African countries of Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo reflect a colonial imaginary and a legacy of postcolonising dominance in Australia. Drawing on 18-months of ethnographic research, I describe how assumptions of difference, dirtiness, and savagery become attached to women resettled in Australia from Central Africa by the persons they encounter within their everyday lives. Although resettled refugees are provided with civic inclusion in the nation as permanent residents, such experiences of marginalisation in contexts of everyday life represent a form of mis-interpellation, in which their inclusion as residents does not equate to being treated with social worth. I argue that the resettlement of refugees in Australia is as much a civilising process as a process of providing resettled refugees with protection.
In this article I explore how the child welfare system in Australia is a basis of governmentality... more In this article I explore how the child welfare system in Australia is a basis of governmentality, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with 35 women resettled in Australia as refugees originating from African countries. Although the explicit aim of the child welfare system is to protect children from a risk of significant harm, the findings presented here suggest that such systems can concurrently operate to evaluate, monitor, and demand behavioural change from women who are the subject of intervention in accordance with logics of white neoliberal motherhood, in which parental merit is measured through, and problematised by, factors of racialisation, assumptions of cultural difference, counter-heteronormativity, and socioeconomic marginalisation. I argue that the child welfare system not only operates to protect children, but can also function as an instrument to govern women to 'fit' with an idealised standard of citizenship in Australia. Thereby supplanting maternal guardianship with the mandate of government institutions, operations of child welfare position the paternalistic authority of the state as absolute and render mothers who do not conform to white neoliberal motherhood as vulnerable to intervention. Motherhood is an arena in which national anxieties are imagined and played out on the bodies of women and the formation of families. Tensions concerning who is considered a 'good' mother, how the 'right' parenting is conducted, and what constitutes as a 'proper' family not only attach hierarchical frameworks of merit to motherhood and family, but also express – and co-constitute – shared anxieties about race and nationhood) emphasises, nationhood is not static: and it is through the bodies of women and their experiences of motherhood particular formations of civic belonging are both natur-alised and excluded. Drawing on research conducted with women from African refugee backgrounds who have experienced the removal of a child through the child welfare system in Australia, in this article I describe how 'good' citizenship is realised through formations of state governance over family life and, particularly, through the kinds of expectations that are attached to 'good' motherhood.
Avoiding poison refers here to practices of securitization that enable refugees from the Democrat... more Avoiding poison refers here to practices of securitization that enable refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to exert agency in urban asylum in Uganda. I consider that the stakes of poisoning are not exclusively understood in terms of physiological survival, but are existential, relating to the ways that Congolese refugees imbue purpose in their lives through acts that restore cosmological continuity. Focusing on the cosmological logics through which refugees experience urban asylum, I argue that practices of avoiding poison can be seen as acts of securitization whereby refugees exert agency in precarious contexts of urban asylum.
This article expands on conceptualizations of refugee " return " by examining why African women r... more This article expands on conceptualizations of refugee " return " by examining why African women resettled as refugees in Australia return to visit the country of first asylum from which they were previously resettled. I show that their return visits do not relate to attachment to place, but are motivated by social obligations to practise " motherhood " to family members who, due to conflict-induced displacement, remain in a country of first asylum. I argue that the phenomenon of refugee " return " cannot be conflated exclusively with return to country of origin but is, for African women in particular, centred on the reinvigoration of care relationships across diasporic settings of asylum in which family remain. Building on an emergent focus on feminization in migration studies, I show how these gendered dynamics of refugee " return " are an entry point from which to reconsider how scholarship and policy take into account " family " in contexts of forced migration.
Ramsay, G., Baker, S., Irwin, E., and Miles, L. 2016. Reimagining support models for students from refugee backgrounds: Understandings, spaces and empowerment. In M. Davis & A. Goody (Eds.), Research and Development in Higher Education: The Shape of Higher Education, 39: 279-288. This research paper was reviewed using a double blind peer review process that meets DIISR requir... more This research paper was reviewed using a double blind peer review process that meets DIISR requirements. Two reviewers were appointed on the basis of their independence and they reviewed the full paper devoid of the authors' names and institutions in order to ensure objectivity and anonymity. Papers were reviewed according to specified criteria, including relevance to the conference theme and audience, soundness of the research methods and critical analysis, originality and contribution to scholarship, and clear and coherent presentation of the argument. Following review and acceptance, this full paper was presented at the international conference.
Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia and Uganda between 2012... more Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia and Uganda between 2012 and 2014, I highlight the phenomenon of refugees who have received third country resettlement but continue to engage in periodic return travel to the country of their previous exile, where they were first granted refugee status. I explore the factors that motivate refugees to return to the country of their previous exile, and I show that third country resettlement does not necessarily remove resettled refugees from the ‘refugee cycle.’ The need to critically re-examine third country resettlement as a durable solution to refugee displacement from a social perspective is explored.
Dissertation by Georgina Ramsay
The resettlement of refugees to a third country is characterised in dominant humanitarian and pol... more The resettlement of refugees to a third country is characterised in dominant humanitarian and political discourses as a durable solution to ‘displacement.’ This thesis challenges that presumption through an ethnographic exploration of how ‘displacement’ is experienced by Central African women living in different contexts of refugee settlement in Australia and Uganda. It illustrates how, for the small number of refugees who are offered resettlement to a third country, a sense of ‘displacement’ can both endure and emerge within such settings. ‘Displacement’ is critically explored here as an embodied experience that is oriented through the subjectivities of Central African women across settings of refugee settlement in both Australian and Uganda. Through a comparative, in-depth analysis of ‘displacement’ in both contexts, the assumption that resettlement offers a durable solution of ‘refuge’ is critically unsettled.
The thesis draws on 18-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with Central African refugee women resettled across regional towns and urban settings in Australia, as well as a shorter period of fieldwork with Central African women living as refugees in Uganda. In documenting experiences of ‘displacement’ from the subjectivities of the Central African women, refugee settlement emerges here as a process that is oriented for them through cosmological logics of regenerative flow. Broader insecurities of ‘displacement’ manifest within, and are expressed through, the women’s everyday practices of cultivating plant foods, cooking food, and bearing and rearing children. In particular, it is the capacity to contribute to this regenerative flow of life through existing as ‘mother’ that is a fundamental basis of their sense of stability and ‘refuge’; or, conversely, rupture and ‘displacement.’ Subsequently, for the Central African women who participated in this research, ‘displacement’ cannot be mechanistically reduced to the socio-spatial and politico-legal shifts that are encompassed within experiences of forced migration. ‘Displacement’ is the experience of having their cosmological logics of regenerative continuity ruptured within the conditions of their settlement. The thesis thus transcends static notions of refugee ‘displacement,’ to consider instead the lived experience of being displaced as an existential condition of cosmological rupture.
Published Opinion Pieces by Georgina Ramsay
Political rhetoric relies heavily on these dualistic categorisations of migrants. What such rheto... more Political rhetoric relies heavily on these dualistic categorisations of migrants. What such rhetoric fails to recognise is how the motivations for the migrations of “illegal labourers” and “asylum seekers” often overlap.
The offer by an asylum seeker jailed on Manus Island to donate his organs to Australia reveals a ... more The offer by an asylum seeker jailed on Manus Island to donate his organs to Australia reveals a shared humanity, writes Georgina Ramsay
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Books by Georgina Ramsay
We are seeking proposals for books that address topics related to forced migration and displacement. Work in the series will be necessarily multi-scalar, showing how the international, national, and local interact when responding to problems caused when people fall out of the “national order of things” and lose their homes, their states, and their rights. The books that make up the Displacement and Forced Migration series will emerge as crucial resources for students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners seeking to further their understanding of the complexity of contemporary experiences of forced migration. Many of the books in the series will be based on ethnographic work, but we will also welcome policy-related books and “think piece” books organized around a central concept. The series will prioritize vivid, lively writing that makes strong arguments and engenders widespread discussion.
Please contact Georgina Ramsay at [email protected] or Elizabeth Dunn at [email protected] for more information about the series or how to submit a book proposal.
Journal Articles by Georgina Ramsay
Dissertation by Georgina Ramsay
The thesis draws on 18-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with Central African refugee women resettled across regional towns and urban settings in Australia, as well as a shorter period of fieldwork with Central African women living as refugees in Uganda. In documenting experiences of ‘displacement’ from the subjectivities of the Central African women, refugee settlement emerges here as a process that is oriented for them through cosmological logics of regenerative flow. Broader insecurities of ‘displacement’ manifest within, and are expressed through, the women’s everyday practices of cultivating plant foods, cooking food, and bearing and rearing children. In particular, it is the capacity to contribute to this regenerative flow of life through existing as ‘mother’ that is a fundamental basis of their sense of stability and ‘refuge’; or, conversely, rupture and ‘displacement.’ Subsequently, for the Central African women who participated in this research, ‘displacement’ cannot be mechanistically reduced to the socio-spatial and politico-legal shifts that are encompassed within experiences of forced migration. ‘Displacement’ is the experience of having their cosmological logics of regenerative continuity ruptured within the conditions of their settlement. The thesis thus transcends static notions of refugee ‘displacement,’ to consider instead the lived experience of being displaced as an existential condition of cosmological rupture.
Published Opinion Pieces by Georgina Ramsay
We are seeking proposals for books that address topics related to forced migration and displacement. Work in the series will be necessarily multi-scalar, showing how the international, national, and local interact when responding to problems caused when people fall out of the “national order of things” and lose their homes, their states, and their rights. The books that make up the Displacement and Forced Migration series will emerge as crucial resources for students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners seeking to further their understanding of the complexity of contemporary experiences of forced migration. Many of the books in the series will be based on ethnographic work, but we will also welcome policy-related books and “think piece” books organized around a central concept. The series will prioritize vivid, lively writing that makes strong arguments and engenders widespread discussion.
Please contact Georgina Ramsay at [email protected] or Elizabeth Dunn at [email protected] for more information about the series or how to submit a book proposal.
The thesis draws on 18-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with Central African refugee women resettled across regional towns and urban settings in Australia, as well as a shorter period of fieldwork with Central African women living as refugees in Uganda. In documenting experiences of ‘displacement’ from the subjectivities of the Central African women, refugee settlement emerges here as a process that is oriented for them through cosmological logics of regenerative flow. Broader insecurities of ‘displacement’ manifest within, and are expressed through, the women’s everyday practices of cultivating plant foods, cooking food, and bearing and rearing children. In particular, it is the capacity to contribute to this regenerative flow of life through existing as ‘mother’ that is a fundamental basis of their sense of stability and ‘refuge’; or, conversely, rupture and ‘displacement.’ Subsequently, for the Central African women who participated in this research, ‘displacement’ cannot be mechanistically reduced to the socio-spatial and politico-legal shifts that are encompassed within experiences of forced migration. ‘Displacement’ is the experience of having their cosmological logics of regenerative continuity ruptured within the conditions of their settlement. The thesis thus transcends static notions of refugee ‘displacement,’ to consider instead the lived experience of being displaced as an existential condition of cosmological rupture.