Refugee Resettlement as Humanitarian Governance : Power Dynamics, Introduction Refugee Resettlement (Berghahn 2018)

Refugee resettlement is defined by UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as “the transfer of refugees from an asylum country to another State that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent settlement”. Resettlement has traditionally been understood by scholars and practitioners as a part of global refugee management, with a particular focus being given to the scarcity of resettlement slots. This introduction understands refugee resettlement as a form of humanitarian governance at the international, national and local level. We understand humanitarian governance as involving care and control: it is driven by a humanitarian ethos of helping the most vulnerable, but in doing so involves practices ruling the lives of the most vulnerable without providing them with a means of recourse to hold the humanitarians accountable for their actions. This analytical approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the political, social and symbolic properties of contemporary resettlement practices. Although resettlement is an important tool for protecting vulnerable civilians, it is also an unaccountable, costly process permeated by inequality. To examine resettlement as a form of humanitarian governance, we rely on three analytical approaches. First, we take a lifespan approach to our discussions of resettlement, emphasizing movement in space and time. Second, we analyze this spatial and temporal trajectory through the theoretical prism of power.Third, we assess resettlement as a multileveled form of humanitarian governance, which can be analyzed by exploring and unpacking how resettlement is constituted at the international, national and local level as policy and practice