What can a historical perspective provide in understanding the current refugee 'crisis'?

Amidst the current climate and the predominant view in the media that Europe is facing an 'unprecedented refugee crisis,' historians have tended to emphasise the historical precedents of the current 'crisis.' Widening the scope both in time AND space can provide insights on the legacies of colonial boundaries and decolonisation, on how refugees have been dealt with before, on the impact of international humanitarian responses, and on how interconnected the artificial boundaries of global North/South really are. However, a historical perspective can not only provide past examples of other migratory movements and their reception in the host societies, or grand narratives of the building up to the current crisis, but also a questioning of socially and historically constructed categories such as 'refugee' and 'crisis.' This essay recognises the many times inadequate distinction between refugees and (economic) migrants, and although aware of how the media has confused both terms to promote hatred, uses the terms interchangeably in affirmations that could be applied to either.

A historical perspective of the current refugee crisis has to widen time and space, starting from the legacies of colonial and postcolonial times. Colonial boundaries formed in the 'scramble for Africa' openly disregarded ethnological, tribal and national considerations, and decolonisation would later release these and other political forces into play, forcing many people to migrate amidst conflict and material deprivation, as the cases of Eritrea-Ethiopia or Sudan have illustrated. In the meantime, Western governments have historically tended to make loud proclamations about human rights, as when Hungarian refugees were taken by Western Europe in 1956, while de facto ignoring existing laws and regulations, and slowly extending restrictive immigration policies to cover asylum seekers, making them into 'illegal' criminals and in turn increasing their vulnerability. Irregular migration has progressively replaced asylum, as many refugee camps (especially in Africa) have proven a failure and the number of urban refugees has increased.

Looking at how host societies have historically dealt with refugees, examples such as that of the city of Glasgow in the last ten years has shown how a disjointed, housing-led dispersal policy of resettlement has been reactive and chaotic in the provision services, extenuating the voluntary sector, and showing a lack of strategic planning that resembles today's crisis. This lack of planning and 'crisis' framing has not only increased local hostility due to myths of preferential resource allocation (promoted by negative press coverage), but has also missed out on the benefits that urban refugees could bring to cities if they were allowed to pursue productive lives absent of legal restrictions, harassment and insecurity. It has been the role of the voluntary sector (and in the case of Glasgow its long history of community organising) which has been left almost alone to deal with the problem, while funding is cut and resources exhausted.

If the current refugee crisis has showed us anything it is that general interest in international migration ebbs and flows with various 'waves' of emigration/immigration. In the academic debates around the 'new migration' to Europe starting in 1989, it was already clear that an emphasis on the new character of specific migratory movements has normally been at the expense of properly analysing underlying processes. A historical perspective can thus help disentangle the process of construction of migrants and their movements. Migratory 'flows' are generally perceived and labelled in terms of the migrants' collective ethnic and national characteristics rather than in terms of numbers, and thus while the 'return' of ethnic Germans to Germany after World War Two was seen as something natural, the huge movement of Syrians, Eritreans and so on is framed as an 'unprecedented crisis.'

Refugee movements in particular have been constructed as 'emergencies' and 'problems' rather than as economic opportunities for the receiving societies. Refugee movements have been constructed as temporary phenomena, and thus money given for their assistance has tended to fall under emergency relief. The social and historical construction of the 'refugee' (beyond UNHCR's faulty definition) has tended to be in terms of helplessness and dependency, disregarding how many (especially urban refugees) try to disassociate themselves from the term 'refugee' for the connotations it carries and to avoid dealing with officialdom. The media has often been blamed for the negative construction of refugees, although historical analyses of the role of the media have been inconclusive. Most studies have however shown a correlation between society's views of refugees and their negative portrayal in the media, although establishing a correlation has proven methodologically challenging. By framing refugees as 'illegal immigrants' and 'failed asylum seekers,' as has been the case in the UK media, the media has propagated the images of illegality and failure, effectively legitimising punitive and exclusionary responses to migratory movements in the last few decades. Through news-framing and agenda-setting, the media has the potential not only to frame the way reality is socially constructed by the readership/viewership, but in some cases is able to determine the priorities for policy development. In her seminal work on Ugandan refugees in Sudan Imposing Aid, Barbara Harell-Bond took it as far as insinuating that the concept of refugee may be an artificial category maintained more for the convenience of donors than for the people involved, particularly in light of the blurring boundaries between refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and other categories of migrants. Ultimately, refugee status is a historically placed, socially constructed, legal category stemming from the specific and European context of the end of the Second World War, and which leaves many in ambiguous and vulnerable legal positions as the case of the IDPs of the Casamance conflict in Senegal has shown.

The vast literature on the 'refugee experience' has criticised the common dismissal of refugees as 'flows' and the tendency to think of refugees as an undifferentiated, essentialised and universal category irrespective of the different historical and political conditions of displacement. The bureaucratic need for standardised categories and the presentism of much service provision has tended to deny the individuality of refugees, whose status is however considered on an individual basis in Europe. A historical perspective through the study of refugees' life stories can thus provide a voice through which refugees become 'rehumanised' and move from being a socially constructed, abstract category to a social reality. In the middle of the current refugee crisis, it is crucial to remember the role of refugees' trauma narratives as testimonies, i.e. as documentation and denunciation of political violence, while also a struggle between the moral imperative not to forget and the extreme pain of remembering. By looking at refugee narratives, history shows that we should be wary of the 'politics of disbelief' towards refugees and of medical certificates replacing refugees' own words.


A historical perspective reminds us that our views are largely determined by the structures of observation, i.e. the history of refugee and migration studies itself. Observation an be a powerful tool of domination or surveillance, similar to Foucault's invisible 'disciplinary power.' By carrying their own expectations of refugees' behaviour, outsiders have created a double impasse. First, representation acts as a mirror, telling more about ourselves, our preoccupation and prejudices than about those who are being represented. The 'refugee crisis' is no more than part of the European crisis of identity, which has seen the rise of far-right political parties to the mainstream (one just has to look at the current Austrian presidential election) and increased xenophobia, as part of what has been call 'chauvinism of prosperity' as that heralded by the Swedish Democrats. Second, as Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh's study of Sahrawi refugee camps has shown, outsiders' expectations of refugee behaviour can lead refugees to play the role expected of them, be it passive recipients of aid or empowered and egalitarian individuals. The Polisario, acting as the political representative of the Sahrawi refugees, has strategically mobilised gendered images and concepts to uphold the humanitarian and political support of Western state and non-state actors. Gender analysis is a key part of a well-rounded historical perspective, a gender lens can help us understand the 'refugee crisis' and its underpinning heteronormative and racialised features. Thus, while Syrian 'poster' families are very much welcomed, single North African men become oversexualised as rapists through an Orientalised discourse as made evident in the aftermath of the New Year incidents in Cologne.

A historical perspective can thus provide a better understanding of the current 'refugee crisis' in two ways. First, by illuminating the precedents of the crisis, i.e. the legacies of colonial boundaries and rapid decolonisation, and of European responses to refugee crises, i.e. the slow politization of refugee policy in Europe. Second, by transcending the material and looking at the historical and social instruction of terms such as 'refugee' or 'migratory movement,' and how they have been used in academia, the media and the public. We have created this crisis: it is in our hands to deal with it adequately.