Somali Refugees

This paper is an updated version of the author's one of the PhD thesis chapters where she explains the asylum trajectories and the decision making processes of non-European applicants before the adoption of the first asylum law in Turkey. Although the field work data covers the period between 2008 and 2012, the papers' arguments remain valid to understand the present conditions of the Turkish asylum system. It shows that as long as the geographical limitation to the 1951 Refugee Convention is not lifted by Turkey, the asylum system will continue to create its own applicants. Without an integration option in law, the system will always be temporary and the applicants are destined to leave Turkey for another country. For this reason, the author discusses the early 2020 Edirne incident and its consequences alongside the legal changes that were made during the State of Emergency (2016-2018). She claims that these changes together with the EU policy effects of the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement has turned the country into a deportation regime rather than a safe destination as is contrarily claimed by the Turkish lawmakers.

ABSTRACT
This study focused on understanding the drivers of entrepreneurship amongst Somali migrants in South Africa. An administered survey questionnaire and in-depth case studies are used to explore the manner in which Somalia migrants, who arrive in South Africa, as refugees, establish enterprises and thrive in the business environment despite their uncertain status and limited access to investment capital or other supportive initiatives. Drawing on the wider available literature a broad conceptual framework was used to guide and shape the areas of detailed exploration. These broadly include, a) the socio cultural explanations, b) the push and pull factors that encourage entrepreneurial activities, and c) the environmental factors (economic and legal) that facilitate entrepreneurship amongst migrants. At an overall level, there are no ‘secret’ transferable ingredients for such entrepreneurship. The study reveals that it is a combination of historic factors and elements of ‘social capital’ that shape and motivate entrepreneurship activities amongst these migrants. The lessons derived can and are being be used to inform policy interventions to shape entrepreneurship in the wider society. However, there has to be appreciation of the unique circumstances and historic incentive opportunities that drive particular practices. In so doing, the study concluded on the need for further research in this terrain and the importance of building a deeper understanding on verifiable and substantive quantitative and qualitative data.
Keywords: Migrant Entrepreneurship, Social Capital, Small Enterprises, Somali Refugees, South Africa.

My paper examines the reproduction of power differentials among Somali refugees in Kakuma refugee camp, in Northern Kenya's Turkana County. By examining how the spatial organisation of the camp mirrors, and amplifies, pre-existing inequalities, it contribues to the scholarship that discusses the importance of refugees' social relations crossing, and blurring, the boundaries of the camp. Based on interviews and focus group discussions with refugees and humanitarian personnel in the camp and in Nairobi, this paper builds upon the spatialising approach to the refugee camp suggested by Adam Ramadan and Doreen Massey's notion of 'power geometry' to empirically contribute to the debate on space, biopolitics and the reproduction of inequality. In doing so, it describes how, in Kakuma, Somali entrepreneurs, mostly from Darood and Hawiye clans, leveraged their social networks to gain better access to the connectivity infrastructure of the camp, in return entrenching their position of economic dominance while leaving Somali Bantu vulnerable to exploitative working conditions and dependent on debt. By suggesting that relations of power are entwined to the materiality of the camp, it argues that the plan of Kakuma has indeed been shaped by the rush of resourceful Somali entrepreneurs to secure privileged access to the connectivity infrastructures of the camp, such as the main road and the telecommunication network. In return, the control of these infrastructures through which goods, money and information circulate has contributed to reproducing pre-existing power relations. Citation This is the author-archived version of Iazzolino, G. (2020) 'Power geometries of encampment. The reproduction of domination and marginality among Somalis refugees in Kakuma', Geoforum. Elsevier, 110(March 2020), pp. 25-34.

Without conducting much analysis on the multiethnic texture of the country, colonial ethnographers and ethnohistorians obsessed with the ideology of ‘Somali homogeneity’, and stakeholders of the nationalist sentiments of self-same Somalia successfully demonstrated the Horn of Africa nation as an ‘egalitarian’ society pursuing a cultural mode of ‘pastoral democracy.’1 To break away from that
erroneous diction, this essay aims at problematizing the vagueness of that notion by introducing a counter narrative that unravels not only the existence of other ethnic groups and cultures but also an enormous nature of subjugation, prejudice and discrimination-factors antithetical to the ideals of egalitarianism. For the sake of unlearning that early and enduring misinterpretation, this essay presents an
account of the discrimination against the Bantu/Jareer people and their place in the Somali social and political system. It attempts at offering a realistic situation as compared to the idealistic image of the colonial writers’ and early Somali scholarship’s self-same tutelage. At another level, the revelation in the study challenges the fallacy in
Prof. Lidwien Kapteijns’s recently formed discourse that the Bantu Jareer people benefited significant political and economic consideration in independent Somali, an extremely mendacious concoction which, despite being absent from the available literature, Prof. Kapteijns’s work shied away from producing empirically based,
factual evidence to support her argument (M. Eno, 2013b:21-31). In its general scope, the study intends to contribute to the principle of “understand[ing] Somalia for what it is and not what it ought to be” (Kusow 2004: xii).

Con la sentenza del 28 giugno 2011 nel caso Sufi e Elmi contro Regno Unito 1 la Corte Europea dei Diritti dell'Uomo (CoEDU) è tornata sanzionare il livellamento verso il basso degli obblighi internazionali assunti dagli Stati Membri dell'Unione Europea nei confronti dei richiedenti asilo o altre forme di protezione internazionale. La sentenza in esame, attraverso un'analisi della giurisprudenza della Corte di Giustizia dell'Unione Europea (CGUE) e di alcune corti nazionali, ha messo ancora una volta in risalto, le diverse falle del Sistema Comune Europeo in materia di asilo. Sempre più spesso infatti, i migranti a rischio espulsione che non riescono ad ottenere alcuna forma di protezione internazionale in uno dei Paesi dell'Unione a causa delle tensioni interpretative proprie di un dialogo giurisprudenziale multilivello, si rivolgono alla CoEDU, la quale si va ormai configurando come l'organo di appello per i casi di non -refoulement in Europa. La linea di demarcazione più difficile da tracciare è, in particolare, quella tra i criteri per il riconoscimento di una qualsiasi forma di protezione internazionale così come espressi nella normativa dellUnione Europea (UE) e gli altri precetti normativi posti dalle altre fonti, soprattutto internazionali, tra cui il divieto di allontanamento, imposto dal principio di non -refoulement.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 149.130.90.2 on Sun, 08 Nov 2015 02:39:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 384 BOOK REVIEWS YESTERDAY, TOMORROW: VOICES FROM THE SOMALI DIASPORA. By Nuruddin Farah. Literature, Culture, and Identity Series. London and New York: Cassell, 2000. Pp. x, 198. $74.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Moria or Dadaab? Greece, Kenya, the Forthcoming Tsunami of Illegal Refugees, and the Final Salvation of the Greeks
ΑΝΑΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΑΝΕΝΕΡΓΟ ΜΠΛΟΓΚ “ΟΙ ΡΩΜΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΗΣ”
Το κείμενο του κ. Νίκου Μπαϋρακτάρη είχε αρχικά δημοσιευθεί την 10η Νοεμβρίου 2019.
First republished on 18th August 2021 here:
https://profmegalommatistextsingreek.wordpress.com/2021/08/18/μόρια-ή-νταντάαμπ-ελλάδα-κένυα-το-επε/

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how the criminalization of immigration and poverty interacts with community engagement and service provision in the lives of Somali refugees in a Midwestern town. Fortunately, we find that most refugees’ concerns were echoed by public and private service providers, and support for cultural competency training was widespread. On the other hand, respondents are highly vulnerable to administrative, logistical and legal challenges that they are underprepared to address. First, we argue that efforts to comply with regulations regarding housing, employment, food, health, and childcare services criminalize vulnerable refugees by placing users at constant risk for accusations of non-compliance and fraud. Second, the obligation of service providers to investigate and prevent fraud is compounded by frequent misunderstandings regarding social as well as administrative rules and expectations. Unfortunately, these tensions are exacerbated by a narrative of suspicion surrounding Somali social networks, such that even sharing food or helping a distant relative can be seen as fraudulent. We argue that the lives of refugee women are marginalized and often criminalized by their obligation to fulfill contradictory moral, legal and gendered norms.

Kenya has passed a controversial amendment to the country’s existing security laws, days after heated debates led to brawling on the floor of the Kenyan Parliament. Despite the fracas, the bill was passed with only minor changes, to the dismay of observers at home and abroad.

Domestic and international attention has mainly focused on the impact the bill would have on the period of detention without charge, the tapping of communications without court consent, the erosion of media freedom and the limitations placed upon the right to protest. But the world has paid less attention to the severe implications the new amendments have for refugees in Africa’s second-largest refugee-hosting country.

For Kenya’s half a million refugees, many of whom have escaped diabolical threats across the Somali border, this is very bad news indeed.

Full piece: https://theconversation.com/kenyas-harsh-new-security-laws-put-hundreds-of-thousands-of-refugees-at-risk-35789