ABSTRACT
If conventional solutions to displacement are not really solutions at all, then what other options exist through which to resolve displacement? Is it even possible to identify a solution to displacement as a distinct, stable, and absolute condition of refuge? What is at stake when being critical about such processes as refugee resettlement given that, for so many refugees, it may be the only possible means to alleviate protracted situations of encampment across the world? These are the questions that emerge from the critical analysis of forced migration provided by Ramsay throughout Impossible Refuge, which are the focus of discussion in concluding the book. Ramsay puts forward the possibility of connection as a way to develop responses to forced migration that focus less on refugees as problems and more on the problems that have created their displacement, arguing for the creation of opportunities for connectedness that humanise, rather than objectify, refugees as they attempt to make sense of worlds that have come undone. Providing a critical overview of the ways in which humanitarian responses to forced migration, and even scholarly work, can reify and objectify refugees as exceptional subjects, Ramsay calls for new ways of thinking about displacement that go beyond the exceptionality of the refugee experience to consider instead how temporal discordance and control over possible futures make displacement a general condition of our time.
