Refugee Resettlement as an Institution

This book examines how scholars and policymakers primarily characterize refugee resettlement as a humanitarian solution or a migration pathway. While these descriptions may be accurate, they are not comprehensive. This book examines how such framing influences understandings of resettlement's scope and impact, generating conceptual blind spots that limit critical inquiry.

By reframing resettlement as an institution embedded in a complex network of actors, relations, and practices, the chapters in this book reveal how resettlement is not a passive process. They explore historical and contemporary questions about how resettlement influences refugee hosting countries in the Global South and its political dimensions as a "humanitarian" program offered by countries in the Global North. By including the experiences of refugees at various points along the resettlement trajectory, such as those who may never be resettled, the book's chapters demonstrate how refugees actively strategize to become resettle-able, advocate for others within their networks, or even reject resettlement altogether. Contributions centering perspectives from the Global South expand the discourse around resettlement by examining how it operates from Southern host countries. These dynamics underscore how the specter of resettlement shapes refugee experiences in enduring ways, even when the prospect of being resettled is unattainable.

This book is invaluable for students, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in refugee studies, migration studies, human rights, development studies, international relations, humanitarian affairs, political science, and sociology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic & Racial Studies.