Abstract
We live in unprecedented times – the number of displaced people has reached extraordinary proportions, as more and more people are forced to flee their homes. Poverty, environmental degradation, persecution, war and conflict are not only the source of mass displacement, but also the source of impoverishment and impairment. And yet, rarely visible, seldom heard, disabled forced migrants are persistently recast in an epistemological and ontological shadow. This chapter explores the disability/forced migration nexus in an attempt to understand some of the critical intersectionalities that emerge, and their implications for theory and practice. We argue that forced migration studies, as well as humanitarian responses, maintain an ableist approach focusing on heteronormative productive bodies, whilst disability studies continues to pursue social justice and access to rights within a corpus of knowledge framed within the hegemony of sovereign structures and liberal democratic norms, thus excluding the non-citizen disabled body.Engaging a critical approach, in this chapter we frame the study of disability and forced migration within broader global political, economic and social structures and processes, that seeks to locate the multidimensional individual within macro structures and processes, whilst acknowledging how the agency of the subaltern disabled forced migrant located in the global South persistently confronts, challenges and negotiates such global structures.
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Notes
- 1.
An earlier version of this chapter (Pisani and Grech 2015) was published in the journal Disability and the Global South .
- 2.
Article 1a of the 1951 Geneva Convention defines refugees as people who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or membership of a social group, find themselves outside their country of origin, and are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country’.
- 3.
The United Nations defines IDPs as ‘persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border’ (OCHA 2004).
- 4.
As Betts (2009: 2) indicates, even in the case of IDPs , where their own state is unwilling or unable to assure protection, there is a broader international responsibility to guarantee such individuals access to their rights and receive protection.
- 5.
In 2014 more than 3000 individuals drowned in this body of water. The number of deaths in the early months of 2015 suggest that even more will lose their lives this year.
- 6.
For a review on how protracted refugee situations impact regional security, see Milner 2014.
- 7.
Article 11 of the CRPD on situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies states: ‘States Parties shall take, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.’
- 8.
Research has demonstrated how, in reality, detention does not act as a deterrent. Asylum seekers and migrants are generally not informed of such policies, do not communicate the information to others considering the journey, and may also perceive detention as unavoidable (International Detention Coalition 2015).
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Pisani, M., Grech, S., Mostafa, A. (2016). Disability and Forced Migration: Intersections and Critical Debates. In: Grech, S., Soldatic, K. (eds) Disability in the Global South. International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42488-0_18
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