TY - JOUR
AU - Hovil,, Lucy
AB - Migration – whether forced, coerced, intentional or a little of all three – is a defining feature of our current global political landscape.1 It is also deeply misunderstood, with little correlation between the rhetoric surrounding migration and its reality. A narrative has evolved that is rooted in ignorance and is, at least in part, driven by political manipulation of public fears. Those of us who see ourselves as activists, practitioners and/or scholars concerned with seeing justice done in the places hardest to reach should be deeply concerned with the danger of this narrative. It has created a false record that needs to be set straight – not just for the sake of setting it straight, but because it drives responses that undermine social reconstruction and have a devastating impact on people’s lives. Many of these destructive responses emerge in the ‘global North’2 where the political significance of migration is driven by a fear that every migrant, whether a refugee or not, is spurred by desperation of some kind, and that collectively they are creating a crisis in wealthier countries. This has led to a one-dimensional description of ‘crisis’ rather than a nuanced understanding of lived experiences embedded in historical realities. This skewed narrative has created something of a single story3 that fails to reflect the diversity of factors that lead people to leave their homes, and the diversity of any migrant population. This erroneous understanding is harmful not only for those who are moving or needing to move, but also for the health of governments – both those that are striving to address the causes and legacies of conflict and authoritarianism, and those that are considered a benchmark for democracy and good governance. In the case of the latter, the ways in which governments treat people who are moving in search of safety and opportunity have become a stark indicator of the health of those democracies. The response to migration reveals a dark side that needs to be confronted, not least as it calls into question the moral high ground that many of these states claim. Mistaken impressions of the experience of migration have also served as obstacles to understanding and addressing the role that these states have played in creating the conditions that are now leading to migration. The dehistoricization of migration (and, therefore, of the individuals who move) removes from the equation the fact that many people who are currently on the move are fleeing wars and/or economic challenges that are embedded in injustices created by colonial and postcolonial sources of power. It is in this ‘darkness’ that the core concerns of transitional justice intersect with migration, not least the potential for truth telling and rehistoricizing narratives that could generate much-needed light and understanding. There are a number of reasons, therefore, why understanding the multiple stories that lie behind migration is of vital concern for those espousing the values that underlie transitional justice. This editorial touches on just a few. First, it is important to understand the structural drivers that motivate many to move, some of whom meet the criteria of ‘refugee’ and others who do not. The scale of current movement – most of which takes place within, not from, regions comprised of former colonies – is indicative of past failures to address structural drivers of conflict and injustice. Some, who likely fall under the refugee definition, are fleeing persecution or open conflict that continues to fester in the postcolonial state. Failures by post-independence leaders to build democratic states with viable institutions that allow not only free entry and exit to political power but also effective checks and balances to the abuse of power have created ongoing political instability and conflict. As a result, many postcolonial leaders have simply replicated the coercive machinery of the colonial state, leaving far too many of their citizens on the margins.4 Others, who might not qualify for the status of ‘refugee,’ move because of the lack of opportunities they see at home, which is often connected to legacies of social, economic and political injustice rooted in colonial history. They are moving away from spaces where open warfare has ended but where the failure of peace agreements and postconflict reconstruction to address this structural injustice has left people dispossessed and living with multiple insecurities. Others are escaping forms of injustice that have grafted themselves onto structures left behind by failed postconflict mechanisms, whether in the form of trafficking in human beings or drugs, or from illegal or unfair practices by extractive industries. Others still are trapped by the ongoing failure to address the occupation of indigenous lands, which has left them permanently uprooted. Their movement can only be responded to appropriately when understood in this broader historical context, in which people have always been on the move, but in which the nature of movement – why people move, where they move to and from, and how they move – is constantly shifting. In Europe, for instance, prior to the Second World War there was considerable migration from Europe driven by colonization of lands outside of Europe, followed by migration within Europe after the war. This has now been replaced by (relatively low numbers of) migration to Europe, a trend that is driven, in part, by the legacies of that colonization – a legacy in which the inheritance of multiple layers of injustice from colonial and postcolonial mismanagement of power has left people with limited autonomy and opportunity in their lives. Those arriving in Europe across the Mediterranean, therefore, are only a small part of a much, much larger story. Similar can be said of migration to the US and Australia. Remove these particular realities from the equation and the narrative and response to migration is driven solely by political expediency and populist hubris. Second, this one-dimensional understanding of migration criminalizes and demonizes those who move rather than holding governments and oligarchs accountable for structures that coerce them to do so. It addresses symptoms not causes, and creates a narrative in which victims are wrongly construed as a potential threat – a narrative in which those from poorer states take irresponsible and unreasonable risks to get to richer states and need to be kept out at all costs. Those who do get in are ghettoized and forced to carve out their lives on the margins of society. In the case of the latter, they become easy scapegoats when acts of violence and terror are committed in places where a one-dimensional logic dictates that the perpetrators must have come from outside. The criminalization of migration – and, therefore, of those who move – dehumanizes the protagonists and robs us of an understanding of movement and its drivers. What might look like an ill-informed decision to an outside observer may in fact be calculated risk-taking by those living with impossible choices. Ultimately, most who migrate irregularly do so because it is clear to them that legal routes are so limited for people in their situation that they cannot rely on them as viable solutions to their plight. Movement, as they know only too well, is controlled by powerful states. It forces them into irregular spaces, despite the risks involved. Third, and in order to maintain this hegemony over global movement, a one-dimensional narrative justifies policies that focus on limiting movement. In practice, this has meant that ‘global North’ governments have forged partnerships with governments previously seen as unpalatable on account of their human rights records in an attempt to shut down migration through increased border controls. Former president Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, for instance, used a partnership with the European Union (EU) to ‘manage migration’ as a means of coming in from the political cold (although the long-term impact of this approach is in question following the 11 April 2019 coup). An outstanding warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Darfur was subsumed beneath his usefulness in Europe’s quest to prevent migration from Africa to Europe. It allowed wealthier governments to show themselves more willing to assist the government of Sudan in preventing migration than to hold it accountable for producing refugees. Far from addressing drivers of conflict and migration, therefore, they were effectively feeding them. This was not just short-sighted; it was fundamentally immoral. Likewise, the EU’s support of a Libyan coastguard that is little more than a dangerous group of militias, ignores reports of slave markets and horrendous conditions in which migrants are kept in Libya, revealing an open disregard for the protection of migrants. These partnerships unsettle the very essence of the notion of transition that transitional justice espouses. The ideals of democracy that the West promotes are undermined by the contradictory bifurcation of foreign policies that simultaneously act as a powerful lobby group insisting on normative transitional justice pronouncements for transitional southern states, and yet support a disregard for normative concepts such as ‘human rights’ by funding the likes of the Sudanese regime and the Libyan coastguard militia, or the building of walls and increasing the use of detention, including of children, at borders. Instead, these policy choices have drowned out opposition voices and enhanced an unjust system in which the small bureaucratic challenges that confront people moving from wealthy to less wealthy parts of the world, become barbed-wire fences, walls, armed militias and brutal traffickers for those who have the audacity to move in the other direction. The main beneficiaries are the smugglers for whom the increased challenges of crossing borders have pushed prices up and led to ever-higher profits, and the traffickers who prey on the increased vulnerability of those who are moving – or trying to move. Yet instead of blaming those who have made these policy decisions, the association of migrants with smugglers and traffickers serves to reinforce a perception of the criminality of people who are moving. This obscures the political context in which these abuses take place. Finally, a one-dimensional narrative obscures where the real crisis is. Just to be clear: migration has not generated a crisis in the US or Australia or Europe – although the inhumane policies and practices that violate international laws and human rights deployed by governments at their borders have often created crisis conditions. But there is a crisis in many countries that border areas of conflict, where failures in refugee policies and practices in first countries of asylum have left millions of people living for years and sometimes decades in a protracted situation of exile with no prospect of any real solution. These failures hinge primarily around the emphasis on encampment for those in exile and failures to end displacement, policies that have been fed by a global system that has repeatedly failed in its commitment to share the responsibility for displaced populations. Instead, it has allowed for a semi-permanent state of emergency that has jeopardized quality of life and brought the humanitarian system to breaking point. Again, the response of wealthier states is to send more (but seldom enough) aid to these places in order to discourage people from moving onward. Yet while there is some benefit derived from this, its impact is limited. Not only is it often tied to militarization and typically benefits a small elite rather than the majority, it also misses the wider point: that while people certainly want access to livelihoods, they also need to have a degree of security that places their economic security within a broader context of political and structural security. As a result, this essentially top-down, instrumentalist approach to ‘managing migration’ is relatively ineffective in a context in which individuals are determined to escape oppressive political systems, conflict and a lack of opportunity. Dehistoricizing migration, therefore, is a dangerous business. It stunts public discussion and fuels bad policy choices. But most of all, it dehumanizes and criminalizes people who are on the move. It leaves them ensconced in layers of injustice that are hard to unravel – layers of injustice that are intimately connected to incomplete transitions of power and structural drivers of conflicts that have never been properly resolved. Every unfair international trade deal that allows former colonizers to benefit from former colonized territories with weaker negotiating power; every conflict that continues to fester; and every land grab rooted in corruption and injustice, is evidence of this. It is important, therefore, that discussions on migration are not left to hover on the fringes of transitional justice discourse in a poorly defined and slightly uncomfortable way. Instead, the standards that transitional justice espouses provide a lens for viewing migration within its wider historical and political context. In the first instance, it is crucial that migration is not allowed to be a decoy for the degeneration of democratic norms in the West. Scapegoating outsiders for internal ills – the default position in many societies – marginalizes debate on issues that really do matter, including economic disparities, regional tensions and the challenges of social decay. At the same time, it maintains an image of the bleakness and ‘otherness’ of countries from which people are migrating – the ‘single story’ that does so much damage. Second, it is important that transitional justice mechanisms invest far more energy in addressing the forms of structural injustice and historical claims over land, territories and resources outlined above. The processes should run from the grassroots up, driven by the perspectives of those who are most marginalized, allowing a narrative to emerge that places migration in its broader context. When this happens, migration is given voice as a form of agency or protest in which individuals defy structures of power and vote with their feet against the historic and current injustices that they face. While it is important to remember that for many there is nothing romantic or inherently empowering about migration – too often it represents trauma and marginalization for those who reach their destination, and failure or death for those who do not – this narrative begins to break down the walls that have prevented a multidimensional, historically rooted discussion on an issue that is not going to go away any time soon. And neither should it. Articles in this issue It is thus encouraging that the first two submissions in this issue emphasize the hollowing out of transitional justice mechanisms in the context of incomplete or unsubstantial transitions. Joram Tarusarira’s ‘Anatomy of Apology and Forgiveness’ speaks about the Gukurahundi massacres in Zimbabwe and makes the case for ‘transformative apology and forgiveness.’ He emphasizes ‘the need to transform the cognitive and epistemic subjectivities underpinning wrongdoing’ in affording substance to acts of apology and forgiveness. Anna Macdonald identifies a similar concern in Uganda, exposing how a confluence of technocratic donor approaches and the manoeuvrings of a domestic political elite have enabled a cynical caricaturing of transitional justice and a ‘calculated stasis,’ which has served to stall the emergence of substantive transitional justice reform. Also on Uganda, Grace Akello examines the dynamics in Acholiland between former Lord’s Resistance Army combatants and survivors. Despite Uganda’s amnesty framework, Akello finds that survivors have not forgotten the past violence and moved on. Instead, they feign compliance with amnesty laws and practise what Akello describes as ‘survivors’ acts of resistance.’ Janine Clark, drawing on fieldwork with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Uganda, Colombia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, poses a conceptual challenge to the field and ‘calls for embodied ways of doing transitional justice.’ She establishes an awareness of corporeal connectivity, arguing that ‘bodies represent important sites of connectivity that can bring together communities fractured by war and armed conflict.’ The next two articles respond to challenges in postwar Kosovo, including interethnic reconciliation efforts and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, respectively. Applying a realist lens to the establishment of the court, Robert Muharremi illustrates the way the court was set up to serve the interests of powerful states and utilized to protect international actors ‘from possible legal exposure in connection with their involvement in Kosovo during the time when the alleged crimes were committed.’ In her article, Flora Ferati-Sachsenmaier assesses the intersection of Kosovo’s postwar struggle for statehood against the efforts of interethnic ‘reconciliation agents’ from 1999 to 2008. She argues that, ‘among other factors, it was the ensuing governance in postwar Kosovo that made it difficult, if not impossible, for any kind of meaningful interethnic reconciliation to take place.’ Focusing on the political and legal context surrounding the presidential pardon of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, Leiry Cornejo Chavez, Juan Pablo Pérez-León Acevedo and Jemima García-Godos argue in their article that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had sufficient grounds to overturn the pardon. The final two articles build on the Journal’s recent Special Issue, ‘Advancing Transitional Justice through Technologies.’ Beate Goldschmidt-Gjerløw and Merel Remkes reveal how the children of the disappeared in Argentina have influenced the perception of the regime and the transitional justice process there through the ‘performance of their life stories’ online. Through an analysis of the social media profiles of the ‘found grandchildren,’ the authors uncover a contested reconstruction of self and identity, constrained by social reactions. Klaus Bachmann, Gerhard Kemp, Irena Ristić, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, Ana Ljubojević, Aleksandra Nędzi-Marek, Fortunee Bayisenge, Mohammed Ali Mohammed Ahmet and Vjollca Krasniqi provide a detailed survey of the narrative impact of international criminal tribunals (ICTs) in multiple postconflict regions. Based on media content analysis, the authors find little evidence that ‘controversial ICT decisions triggered changes in narratives or frames about the conflicts which formed the background of the respective ICT decisions.’ In this issue’s Note from the Field, Cheryl Lawther, Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster discuss the challenges of conducting fieldwork in postconflict and transitional societies. Encouraging a more reflexive practice in working with survivors, the authors reflect on their own positionalities and the power dynamics that emerge in relations with both partner organizations and vulnerable communities. Finally, Nicola Palmer and Felix Kroner’s review essay addresses the challenge of interdisciplinarity in establishing normative transitional justice precepts between law and the social sciences. Reflecting on the work of three leading anthropologists, Palmer and Kroner review Richard Wilson’s Incitement on Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimes, Holly Porter’s After Rape: Violence, Justice, and Social Harmony in Uganda and Louisa Lombard’s State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic. Through these contributions, they challenge the supposed rigidity of ‘classic and foundational issues of criminal law theory concerning harm, causation, consent and the authority of the state,’ and argue for a more ‘diverse repertoire’ in the practice of international criminal law. Footnotes 1 The term ‘migration’ encompasses both refugees/asylum seekers and those who do not have a claim to asylum. While the category of refugee remains a vital legal tool for protection for those fleeing persecution, the distinctions between forced displacement and ‘voluntary’ migration with the use of smugglers and trafficked persons are often blurred. 2 While it is acknowledged that this term is a blunt instrument, it is used for want of a better alternative. 3 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘The Danger of a Single Story,’ TED Talk, 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (accessed 30 March 2019). 4 Lucy Hovil and Zachary A. Lomo, ‘Forced Displacement and the Crisis of Citizenship in Africa’s Great Lakes Region: Rethinking Refugee Protection and Durable Solutions,’ Refuge 31(2) (2015), https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/40308. © The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Telling Truths about Migration
JO - International Journal of Transitional Justice
DO - 10.1093/ijtj/ijz014
DA - 2019-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/telling-truths-about-migration-fnXERTrTy0
SP - 199
VL - 13
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -