■ IntroductionRefugees are migrants who leave their countrie.docx

■ Introduction
Refugees are migrants who leave their countries of ori-
gin for asylum, or a safe place to live, because of ongo-
ing armed conflict or fear of persecution based on their
religion, race, nationality, political affiliation, or mem-
bership in a persecuted social group, or a combination
of these items, within their home countries. Refugees
are either unwilling or unable to return to their coun-
tries of origin. The types of persecution that refugees
fear include cruel and inhumane treatment, unjust pun-
ishments, and threats of torture or death.
Unlike immigrants, who leave their home countries
seeking economic, educational, or social opportunities,
refugees seek to escape persecution and harm. Like inter-
nally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees are displaced from
their home because of safety and other humanitarian
concerns. IDPs remain in their country, however, under
the protection of their own government, while refugees
leave theirs. Refugees displaced outside of their home coun-
tries usually cannot return home, in contrast to immigrants,
who typically have the ability to return home without fear
of intimidation and oppression.
Causes of Displacement
One major reason why refugees are displaced is because
they live in a war zone caused by conflicts between their
home country and other countries. Other refugees leave
their homes because they face internal conflicts such as
civil wars or terrorism, and still others leave because of
turmoil caused by armed conflicts between neighboring
states. Refugees also flee due to agricultural problems

and food scarcity caused by water shortages and deserti-
fication, as well as by natural disasters such as floods,
earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. (Desertification
is the process of productive agricultural land being
turned into desert through deforestation, industrial ag-
riculture, or drought, or a combination of such items.)
Additionally, an economic collapse within a country or
fluctuations in local or international financial markets can
cause people to leave a country for safety and jobs
elsewhere. Some people live in fragile nations governed by
unpredictable dictators or weak or illegitimate political
systems, and these refugees choose to leave because of fear
of persecution or systemic instability. Finally, dangerous
cultural conflicts involving persecution over religion, lan-
guage, education, sexual orientation, and other factors also
cause people to flee their homes and seek asylum elsewhere.
International Understanding
of Refugee Status
Whatever the causes of refugees’ flight, their status is
defined and protected by international laws endorsed by
the members of the United Nations (UN), a body of
diplomatic representatives from countries around the
world. One such law, Article 1 of the Universal Declara-
tion of Human Rights (1948), states that “all human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”
and “should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies
a number of human rights relevant to the plight of refu-
gees, including the right to leave or return to their home
country (Article 13) and the right to seek asylum, or pro-
tection, from other countries if faced with persecution in
their own country (Article 14). Although this declaration

respects each country’s sovereignty, or right to govern itself
without outside interference, it obliges each UN-member
state to protect persons seeking asylum because denying a
refugee asylum can mean great harm or death to that
person. In the 21st century, this obligation has come to be
known as the responsibility to protect (R2P). According to
Thomas G. Weiss (1946–), professor of international rela-
tions and global governance at the City University of New
York, R2P implies that “if a state is unwilling or unable to
honor its responsibility, or itself becomes a perpetrator of
Refugees
668
COPYRIGHT 2018 Gale, a Cengage Company WCN 02-200-210
atrocities,” then the international community takes on
those protective responsibilities on behalf of refugees.
Refugees’ Journeys from Home
According to the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), as of 2016, the world faced a
global refugee crisis greater than any experienced in the
past, with almost 21.3 million refugees worldwide, more
than half of whom were children under 18 years old.
When fleeing their troubled home countries, refugees
often make dangerous journeys, sometimes paying for
the assistance of smugglers, some of whom run unau-
thorized, for-profit businesses to provide transportation
(including boats, rafts, trains, bicycles, and trucks), as
well as food, water, and maps for refugees. Although
refugees turn to smugglers for help, the smugglers are
not always primarily concerned with refugees’ safety.

Smugglers sometimes neglect to provide basic necessi-
ties for the journey, hold refugees hostage for additional
payments, create forged documents, or harm the refu-
gees physically or sexually before their arrival in the
host country.
On arrival, refugees may find that the asylum country
is not prepared to receive large influxes of people in crisis,
but the refugees still must be resettled by the asylum coun-
try with assistance from the UN and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), which provide international hu-
manitarian aid (basic human necessities such as water, food,
and shelter). The primary goal of the UN and other groups
who work with refugees is to find a long-term solution for
them, such as permanent residency (legal and permanent
resettlement in the asylum country), naturalization (citizen-
ship within the asylum country), or voluntary repatriation
(a return, of their own free will, to their home country).
■ Historical Background
Refugees leave their home countries for various reasons,
not knowing what they will experience along their jour-
ney to safer environments. Many are welcomed while
others are rejected, but laws were created to protect
refugees from unfavorable and harmful behaviors and
protocols put in place to ensure aid and asylum.
WORDS TO KNOW
ASYLUM: The protection given by a nation to a refugee who
has fled his or her native country in order to escape
harm.
DEPORTATION: The forced removal of a foreign national
from a country, often resulting in the return of the
person to his or her home country.

DESERTIFICATION: The process of turning productive
agricultural land into desert through deforestation,
industrial agriculture, or drought; one of the
environmental causes of displacement.
INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSON (IDP): A person who has
been forced to leave his or her home, often due to
natural disaster or violent conflict, but remains within
the borders of his or her country of origin.
NATURALIZATION: In the context of immigration, naturaliza-
tion refers to the process by which immigrants are
granted citizenship in their adoptive country.
1951 REFUGEE CONVENTION: Also known as the Conven-
tion Relating to the Status of Refugees; the United Na-
tions High Commissioner for Refugees’ key legal docu-
ment signed by 155 states. This document contains a
definition of the term refugee as well as rights of the
displaced and the obligations of governments to
protect them.
NON-REFOULEMENT: The basic principle on which the
United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention rests, requir-
ing asylum nations not to return or expel refugees to
countries in which their lives are in danger, their
freedoms might be or have been threatened, or they
might be or have been physically harmed.
RESETTLEMENT: The multipart process of housing and help-
ing refugees in an asylum country, often by the United
Nations and nongovernmental organizations acting in
cooperation with the host country.
SOVEREIGNTY: A country’s right to govern itself without

outside interference; in general, this right cannot be
violated by another nation under international law un-
less conditions for war are met.
SURVIVAL MIGRATION: A term used by aid workers, United
Nations officials, and scholars interested in refugee
issues to describe the complex causes of displace-
ment that derive from both persecution and
deprivation.
VOLUNTARY REPATRIATION: The voluntary and willing
return of refugees to their home countries after asylum;
usually involves help from the United Nations.
Refugees
IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION: IN CONTEXT 669
Refugees’ Experience after World War II
During World War II (1939–1945), millions of Euro-
pean people lost their families, their homes, their coun-
tries, and even their lives because of genocide, wide-
spread violence, and destruction. When the war ended,
millions of refugees were left in its wake. Various refu-
gees were treated ruthlessly by countries in which they
had sought asylum during the war. Some host countries
reclaimed property, replaced refugees in camps, or de-
ported them. Not only had many refugees lost their
financial stability through the loss of their homes and
livelihoods, but they also suffered from psychological
distresses (such as depression and anxiety) because of
trauma from war, the shock of being uprooted, the loss

of family ties, and the challenges of adapting to a new
culture.
As a result of this crisis, leaders of the UN first pro-
claimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948 to protect all people, and then adopted the 1951
Refugee Convention (also known as the Convention Relat-
ing to the Status of Refugees) specifically to protect refu-
gees in Western Europe in the years just following World
War II. In addition to defining a refugee’s human rights,
the 1951 convention established international laws regard-
ing countries’ responsibilities to protect refugees from
harm. The convention also set an initial three-year time
limit on addressing the plight of Western European refu-
gees after the end of World War II.
In the 1950s refugee crises began to arise in other
parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, Africa, and
Asia. During this time, world leaders reevaluated their un-
derstanding of refugee status. One major event that caused
this reassessment happened in Hungary in 1956, when
more than 200,000 refugees fled their home country for
Austria and Yugoslavia in a short time during the Hungar-
ian Revolution against the pro-Soviet government. With
help from the UN, Austria and Yugoslavia were able to of-
fer the Hungarian refugees asylum in a more orderly, ef-
ficient, and welcoming way than the manner in which refu-
gees were received after World War II in Western Europe.
As with other refugees, Hungarians experienced eco-
nomic distress because of leaving their homes and jobs
behind, and they faced difficulties resettling in countries
with different social, cultural, and political systems. They,
too, experienced psychological suffering (such as delusions
and suicide attempts). As a result of this and other refugee

crises, in 1967 UN leaders created a new set of laws called
the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which
redefined the geographical boundaries for refugee
resettlement. The protocol also extended the original time
limitations so that all refugees (beyond Western Europeans,
who were specifically identified during the 1951 Refugee
Convention) could be provided with humanitarian aid and
asylum during times of armed conflict.
Asylum Countries’ Responsibilities
Through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the 1967 protocol,
the participating countries legally bound themselves to
protect all people fleeing their home countries in
distress. The main concern of the UN after World War
II was to restore and protect the dignity and equal
rights of people who had been denied theirs by authori-
tarian states or because of the wartime devastation of
their home countries. The primary responsibility of the
asylum countries was to protect vulnerable refugees
based on the principle of non-refoulement, which comes
from a French concept meaning “nonreturn.” Non-
refoulement requires that asylum nations refrain from
returning refugees to countries in which their lives
would be in danger, their freedoms might be or have
been threatened, or they might be or were previously
physically or psychologically harmed.
With the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN sought
to assist asylum countries receiving refugees, so the leaders
established what was to be a temporary, three-year Office
of the High Commissioner for Refugees to oversee the
work of humanitarian aid and to encourage countries to
adhere to the laws. As of 2017, this office, the UNHCR,
not only assisted refugees in most aspects of the naturaliza-

Refugee population (number and percentage)
by region, 2015
* Does not include Northern Africa
SOURCE: Adapted from "Table 1: Refugee Populations by
UNHCR Regions 2015." Global Trends: Forced Displacement
in 2015. UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, June 20, 2016.
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/
unhcr-global-trends-2015.html.
Middle East and
Northern Africa
2,739,500
17%
Asia and Pacific
3,830,200
24%
Europe
4,391,400
27%
Total Africa*
4,413,500
27%
Americas
746,800
5%

Figures from UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency show Europe
and Africa (excluding Northern Africa) being nearly tied in the
number of refugees in those regions. Asia and the Pacific are
close
behind with the Americas having the least.
Refugees
670 IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION: IN CONTEXT
tion process, helping them to settle permanently and safely
in their asylum country, but also assisted those who wished
to return to their country of origin in the process of volun-
tary repatriation.
One key way the UNHCR supports naturalization is
by keeping records on each refugee and cross-checking
these with other databases, which helps countries as they
consider accepting refugees for asylum. The UNHCR also
keeps numeric data about the movement of refugees
around the globe, assisting participating countries and
NGOs with tracking refugee flows and coordinating re-
sponses to emerging crises and ongoing demands for food,
water, shelter, other basic needs, and additional protections.
Rather than concluding its work with refugees just three
years after it was established, the UNHCR has increased its
role since the 1950s to become a crucial part of the process
of helping millions of refugees around the world find safety
and build new lives for themselves in asylum countries or
back in their home countries.
■ Impacts and Issues

War, poverty, and the lack of education and health care
continue to dominate the lives of many people through-
out the world and are primary reasons for the escalating
number of people fleeing their home countries. The
overall impact is far-reaching and complex. In December
2015 António Guterres (1949–), the UN High Com-
missioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015, noted in a
speech to the UN that there is an international struggle
to respond appropriately to refugee crises because of
the “staggering escalation” in the number of people
seeking asylum and the growing number of complex
causes for displacement.
The magnitude of the refugee crisis as of 2016 is exem-
plified, in part, by the plight of refugees from the civil war
in Syria, from which more than 4.8 million people have
fled to other countries, primarily Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon,
and Egypt, according to the November 2016 “Syria Re-
gional Refugee Response” report by the UNHCR. A simi-
lar November 2016 report, “South Sudan Situation,” by
the same office also notes that more than 1 million refugees
and asylum seekers have fled South Sudan since December
2013 to go to Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya be-
cause of armed conflict and political strife within the
country.
Other areas of the world are also experiencing high
numbers of refugee flight, including countries in the
Middle East (such as Iraq), Africa (including Somalia and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Asia (such as
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Myanmar [also known as
Burma]). A large number of refugees had requested asylum
in countries around the world in the mid-2010s, but their
Germany emerged as a leader within the European Union for

taking in refugees. This street art in Berlin, shown in September
2015,
features poor refugees. Various artists in Europe have used
graffiti to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. ©
Radiokafka/Shutterstock.com.
Refugees
needs were not simple and included not only aid for basic
survival but also psychological aid, health care, and educa-
tion among other things.
The Challenges of Resettlement
Refugees usually seek asylum in nations neighboring
their home countries because those countries are geo-
graphically closer and easier to travel to. Such asylum
countries, however, are not always stable themselves.
For example, in 2016, while Turkey faced its own seri-
ous political and economic challenges, including an at-
tempted government takeover by factions within its
military in July 2016, it was also providing asylum for
over 2.7 million refugees from Syria, according to a UN
report.
On arrival in an asylum country, refugees such as those
from Syria are often first known as asylum seekers, and
they face a long resettlement process that begins with ap-
plications, security screenings, and interviews. If the asylum
seeker is not listed for deportation from the host country
and is accepted as having a legitimate claim for asylum, the

person is then considered to be a refugee and receives
placement and orientation in the new country. The refugee
can also receive UN-sanctioned aid in refugee camps in less
stable countries (such as Turkey or Greece) or transition
assistance such as money, health care, psychological services,
and job training to help them reestablish themselves in
neighborhoods within more stable countries (such as the
United States or Germany).
The resettlement process is not easy for refugees, who
face the permanent loss of their homes, families, communi-
ties, and countries and can be confronted with residual
problems of physical or psychological trauma. Once in the
asylum country, they must also learn new languages, follow
the unfamiliar practices and customs of everyday life in new
social and cultural environments, and, in some cases, en-
dure the challenging conditions of life in crowded refugee
camps, which can include living in tents for extended peri-
ods through harsh weather.
Although the UN, the asylum countries, and the
NGOs express a shared goal of helping refugees find a
permanent solution to their homelessness, not all asylum
countries welcome refugees. This occurs because of social
or political prejudices against refugees or because of the
host governments’ inability to maintain efficient resettle-
Another group of asylum seekers are Rohingya Muslims, shown
here sorting scrap collected from a dump yard for their daily
livelihood
during the holy month of Ramadan in the old city of Hyderabad,
India, in June 2016. Fleeing sectarian violence and bloodshed in
2012
between the Rohingya and Buddhist population, more than
1,200 Rohingya Muslims left Myanmar (also known as Burma)

and settled in
Hyderabad. These asylum-seeking refugees work as daily
wagers and live crammed into cheap quarters. According to the
United Nations
(UN) at that time, clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists
and Rohingya Muslims had left 115,000 people displaced and
several dead.
The Rohingyas have been described by the UN as one of the
world’s most persecuted refugee groups. © NOAH
SEELAM/Getty Images.
Refugees
ment processes for large influxes of people, making refugees
one of the most vulnerable populations of people
worldwide. This type of refusal occurred in the April 2016
case of 200 Pakistani and Bangladeshi refugees being re-
jected from European nations and sent to Turkey. This
type of situation adds additional stress to refugees’ lives and
a layer of complexity to the international agreement to
protect all refugees.
Survival Migration: Refugee Persecution
and Deprivation
By the 2010s, aid workers, scholars, humanitarians, UN
officials, and others working closely with refugees
around the world noticed that direct forms of persecu-
tion are no longer the only major cause of displacement
of people outside of their home countries. More people
are fleeing their homes because of deprivation, which is

a lack of basic needs (such as food, water, and shelter)
or the absence of basic services (such as education and
health care). An example of deprivation is the problem
of food scarcity, Between 2004 and 2014, food scarcity
caused “millions of persons [to abandon] their homes
in countries such as North Korea, Sudan, Ethiopia,
Congo, and Somalia, hoping that by moving they could
find the nourishment needed to survive,” according to
a 2014 article by James C. Hathaway, the director of
the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the Univer-
sity of Michigan Law School. Although people experi-
encing deprivation may not be persecuted through
threats of torture, unjust punishment, or violent death,
they are desperate, in fear for their lives, and may be in
need of international assistance and protection.
Because of this shift in the causes of displacement, the
UN began to consider adding deprivation as a primary
cause of displacement, in addition to the cause of
persecution. Alexander Betts, a scholar at the Refugee Stud-
ies Centre at the University of Oxford in the United King-
dom, uses the term survival migration to refer to the range
of causes of displacement that fall under both persecution
and deprivation. As a result of the challenges of deprivation
and persecution, in late 2015, Guterres asked global lead-
ers to develop a new international response to the refugee
crisis and to redefine refugee status so that the international
community might provide better aid and relief for all
refugees.
SEE ALSO Citizenship; Deportation; Education; Forced
Migration; Health and Health Care; Human
Rights; Human Trafficking and Human
Smuggling; Internal Migration; Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs); Naturalization; Refugee
Camps; Refugee Fatigue; Refugees, Afghan;

Refugees, Central American; Refugees, Iraqi;
Refugees, Sudanese and South Sudanese; Refugees,
Syrian; UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency; United
Nations (UN); War
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
B o o k s
Betts, Alexander. Survival Migration: Failed
Governance and the Crisis of Displacement. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, Gil Loescher, Katy Long,
and Nando Sigona, eds. The Oxford Handbook of
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014.
Hollenbach, David, ed. Driven from Home: Protecting
the Rights of Forced Migrants. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2010.
Weiss, Thomas G. “Reinserting ‘Never’ into ‘Never
Again’: Political Innovations and the Responsibility
to Protect.” In Driven from Home: Protecting the
Rights of Forced Migrants, edited by David Hollen-
bach, 207–227. Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 2010.
P e r i o d i c a l s
Cohon, J. Donald, Jr. “Psychological Adaptation and
Dysfunction among Refugees.” International
Migration Review 15, no. 1/2 (Spring–Summer
1981): 255–275.

Hathaway, James C. “Food Deprivation: A Basis for
Refugee Status?” Social Research 81, no. 2 (Sum-
mer 2014): 327–329. This article can also be
found online at http://repository.law.umich.edu
/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2075&context
=articles (accessed March 5, 2017).
We b s i t e s
“Desperate Journeys: Refugees and Migrants Entering
and Crossing Europe Via the Mediterranean and
Western Balkans Routes.” UNHCR: The UN
Refugee Agency, February 2017. http://www
.unhcr.org/en-us/news/updates/2017/2
/58b449f54/desperate-journeys-refugees-migrants
-entering-crossing-europe-via-mediterranean.html
?query=number%20of%20refugees%202016 (ac-
cessed March 3, 2017).
Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. “Introductory Note to Conven-
tion Relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva,
28 July 1951 and Protocol Relating to the Status
of Refugees, New York, 31 January 1967.” United
Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law.
http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/prsr/prsr.html (ac-
cessed March 5, 2017).
Guterres, António. “High Commissioner’s Dialogue
on Protection Challenges: Understanding and Ad-
dressing Root Causes of Displacement. Closing
Remarks.” Speech delivered at a United Nations
Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, December 17,
Refugees

2015. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/admin
/hcspeeches/567971969/high-commissioners
-dialogue-protection-challenges-understanding
-addressing.html (accessed March 5, 2017).
“Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe Explained in
Seven Charts.” BBC News, March 4, 2016.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe
-34131911 (accessed March 5, 2017).
“The 1951 Refugee Convention.” UNHCR: The UN
Refugee Agency. http://www.unhcr.org/pages
/49da0e466.html (accessed March 5, 2017).
“South Sudan Situation: Information Sharing Portal.”
UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. http://data
.unhcr.org/SouthSudan/regional.php (accessed
March 5, 2017).
“Syria Regional Refugee Response.” UNHCR: The
UN Refugee Agency. http://data.unhcr.org/
syrianrefugees/regional.php (accessed March 5,
2017).
Mary O’Shan Overton
Refugees

M3A2 Create an Action Plan for Your Goals Worksheet
Use this worksheet to organize your responses to Module 3,
Assignment 2. Submit this worksheet in the Module 3:
Assignment 2 Dropbox no later than Day 7 of Module 3. Include
vocabulary and concepts from your readings to support and
illustrate your own insights. In preparation for the papers you’ll
write later in this course, take the time to organize your
thoughts for each question and write clearly. The completed
worksheet should be no more than three pages.
1. Write the personal goal that you identified in Module 1
Assignment 3. For this goal, come up with a minimum of three
intermediate goals. Then, describe at least two action items for
each intermediate goal.
Personal goal:
· Intermediate Goal 1:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
2. Write the academic goal that you identified in Module 1

Academic goal:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
3. Write the professional goal that you identified in Module 1
Professional goal:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:
· Action item 2:
· Action item 1:

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