Refugee Return, Reintegration, and Sustainable Futurity
Politics, Pitfalls and Possibilities of Repatriation in Post/Conflict Situations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4777646 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Khatharya Um (University of California System, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1130-1160 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-27 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2023.2170787 |
| OpenAlex | W4323353553 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 25 |
With conflict and displacement among the most pressing issues of our time, refugee repatriation and reintegration are integral to post-conflict development and enduring peace. Regarded by the UN as a durable solution, repatriation has come to be viewed as the most viable option given the prevailing global landscape of increased displacement and stringency of national policies towards asylum seekers. These realities have also engendered a pragmatic turn from the principle of voluntariness to an emphasis on safety and the politicisation of the humanitarian agenda that destabilise the foundational principles of the refugee protection regime. Drawing upon the experiences of the Cambodian refugee repatriation in 1992–93, the more recent repatriation of Burmese refugees1 from Thailand and insights from other instances of return, this paper examines the politics, pitfalls, and possibilities of Southeast Asian refugee repatriation following political settlements, prompted as they were by political and other exigencies rather than the restoration of peace and stability. With attention to the relationships between refugees, refugee originating and receiving countries, and the UNHCR, it underscores the predicament, ambivalence, and dismissal that undergird refugee return. It interrogates notions of voluntariness in the context of constrained choice, and of safe and dignified return, citizenship, and belonging in the context of fragile peace. It also reflects on the delimitation of accountability by the changing status of refugees when they re-crossed the border and argues for looking at repatriation and re-integration as a continuum, and for centering sustainability and the restoration of refugee futurity in the discourse of return
Development economics · Economics · Geography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Repatriation · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
The End of the Refugee Cycle?
In Search of a Durable Solution
Engaging Displaced Populations in a Future Syrian Transitional Justice Process
The Ethics and Practice of Refugee Repatriation
Listening to Images
Active Waiting and Changing Hopes
Restoration of Life
Safe and Voluntary Refugee Repatriation
Place-based disruptions of humanism, coloniality and anti-blackness in early childhood education
Punitive futurity and speculative time
Back to Basics
Rethinking refugeehood
Repatriation and Reintegration of Cambodian Refugees
Return in Dignity
Repatriation
Cambodia in 1989
Transitions, state building and the ‘residual’ refugee problem
Futurity Now
The Inter-generational Politics of 'Travelling Memories
Prophecy and the near future
Time with/out Telos
Incommensurable Futures and Displaced Lives
There is no Future in Humanitarianism
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |