ABSTRACT
How can we re-imagine migration and protection for people who seek a secure home? During the Cold War, refugees enjoyed relative mobility and, as exiles, were valued as proof of ideological superiority. A consensus in the West to contain Communism prevailed. After the Cold War, containment refers to the 85% or more of refugees residing in the global South. Refugee mobility and currency in global geopolitics has declined precipitously. The new consensus is that refugees should remain in their ‘regions of origin.’ Current state-centric approaches to global displacement, such as the new global compacts on refugees and migrants this year, are not new and do not change the containment paradigm. Drawing on the manifesto at https://humanemobility.net" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">humanemobility.net and the Kolkata Declaration, this intervention calls for critical attention to the epistemological violence that categories and false binaries create: for example, between (worthy) refugees and (unworthy) migrants. The scaling down of grand state-centric narratives of governments to the testimonies and ontologies of the refugee-migrant-asylum seekers promotes understanding of the decisions people make to leave, and a rethinking of security and protection that is self-authorized.
