Transcending Borders: The Evolution of the Refugee Diaspora in ‘Bounded’ and ‘Moebius ’ Space

<p>The emergence of ‘transnational refugee theory’ and the rubric of the ‘refugee diaspora’ have reignited refugee studies, and elicited an exciting theoretical vantage-point from which to explore refugee communities. This paper seeks to disentangle the core precepts of transnational refugee theory and, drawing upon compelling empirical evidence strengthen our understanding of the dynamic interaction between the refugee diaspora and the environment within which it evolves – in particular how the entrenched international refugee regime ontology impacts directly the effective functioning of the refugee community. Echoing Giddens’ Structuration Theory, what is proposed is that the refugee community exists within a ‘middle space’ – a synthesis of endogenous and exogenous factors that together establish the ‘boundaries’ that shape the diaspora space, and ultimately support or undermine the activities of those communities located within it. Accordingly, a refugee ‘middle space model’ is outlined, which defines a core set of economic, political and socio-cultural activities, and the endogenous and exogenous factors that shape their realisation in situ. This theoretical construct is applied to two case studies. Firstly, the ‘bounded’ space of Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya is shown to not only disregard but also actively undermine the transnational character of refugee displacement. Moreover, while the refugee community remains active in circumventing these boundaries, there remains an inherent ambiguity in this transnational activism, giving rise to a perversion or ‘transmutation’ of the bounded refugee space. In stark contrast, the Free Movement Protocols of the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) are establishing a fluid ‘moebius’ space that both acknowledges and facilitates the transnational foundations of the refugee diaspora – as both a ‘bottom-up’ (endogenous) and ‘top-down’ (exogenous) process. However, the nascent UNHCR-ECOWAS partnership remains mired in an incoherent demarcation of responsibilities and a dearth of cohesive regional processes. Notwithstanding these limitations, the moebius middle space clearly offers an invigorating alternative to the prevailing UNHCR containment model – providing a truly ‘durable solution’ for those transnational communities dispersed across the refugee diaspora.</p>

Transcending Borders: The Evolution of the Refugee Diaspora in ‘Bounded’ and ‘Moebius ’ Space

<p>The emergence of ‘transnational refugee theory’ and the rubric of the ‘refugee diaspora’ have reignited refugee studies, and elicited an exciting theoretical vantage-point from which to explore refugee communities. This paper seeks to disentangle the core precepts of transnational refugee theory and, drawing upon compelling empirical evidence strengthen our understanding of the dynamic interaction between the refugee diaspora and the environment within which it evolves – in particular how the entrenched international refugee regime ontology impacts directly the effective functioning of the refugee community. Echoing Giddens’ Structuration Theory, what is proposed is that the refugee community exists within a ‘middle space’ – a synthesis of endogenous and exogenous factors that together establish the ‘boundaries’ that shape the diaspora space, and ultimately support or undermine the activities of those communities located within it. Accordingly, a refugee ‘middle space model’ is outlined, which defines a core set of economic, political and socio-cultural activities, and the endogenous and exogenous factors that shape their realisation in situ. This theoretical construct is applied to two case studies. Firstly, the ‘bounded’ space of Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya is shown to not only disregard but also actively undermine the transnational character of refugee displacement. Moreover, while the refugee community remains active in circumventing these boundaries, there remains an inherent ambiguity in this transnational activism, giving rise to a perversion or ‘transmutation’ of the bounded refugee space. In stark contrast, the Free Movement Protocols of the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) are establishing a fluid ‘moebius’ space that both acknowledges and facilitates the transnational foundations of the refugee diaspora – as both a ‘bottom-up’ (endogenous) and ‘top-down’ (exogenous) process. However, the nascent UNHCR-ECOWAS partnership remains mired in an incoherent demarcation of responsibilities and a dearth of cohesive regional processes. Notwithstanding these limitations, the moebius middle space clearly offers an invigorating alternative to the prevailing UNHCR containment model – providing a truly ‘durable solution’ for those transnational communities dispersed across the refugee diaspora.</p>

Percolation on random networks with proliferation

The literature on growing network models, exemplified by the preferential attachment model and the copying model, has followed an exponential growth in the last few years. In many real-life scenarios, however, the adding of new nodes and edges is not an exogenous process, but involves inheritance and sharing of the local environment of the existing ones. In this paper, we develop a mathematical framework to analytically and numerically study the percolation properties of the random networks with proliferation. We compare random attack (RA) and localized attack (LA) on benchmark models, including Erdős–Rényi (ER) networks, random regular (RR) networks, and scale-free (SF) networks, with proliferation mechanism. Our results highlight the nonmonotonic connections with robustness and growth, and unravel an intriguing opposite effect for RA and LA. In particular, it is shown that unbalanced proliferation enhances robustness to RA while it mitigates robustness to LA, both independent of the network degree distribution.

Visual evaluation of the condition of sites of location of linear objects of the Khasyrei deposit

When conducting visual observations, the main criteria for assessment of their sites of location’s state should include: the degree of chemical contamination and / or mechanical cluttering of the riverbed and the banks, the floodplain and valley slopes, the water-shed surface; the dynamics of geological-engineering process in the studied area; visible deformations of the linear objects. Comparison and analysis of data received in the process of visual inspection of the waterway crossings allow us to state out that all sites have the same common problem, which is the development of the erosion process on the natural slopes, or on the slopes of the roadway and of the road ditches. The most dangerous areas for the linear part of the pipelines are those that are characterized by complex stress conditions, including longitudinal slopes in the zone of exogenous process action, transitions through the waterways and marshes, and curvilinear sections.

The origins of neoliberalism in late ‘socialist’ Hungary: The case of the Financial Research Institute and ‘Turnabout and Reform’

This article contributes to ongoing debates in the transformatology literature, as well as the wider literature on the global neoliberal revolution, on the origins of neoliberalism in Soviet-style economies. Within these debates, the transition to a (free) market economy and liberal democracy in Hungary and elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc has commonly been perceived as an exogenous process, dating to the annus mirabilis of 1989. This article challenges this consensus. Through a case study of the Financial Research Institute ( Pénzügykutatási Intézet), the official research institute of the Ministry of Finance, and a programme of radical economic reform, known as ‘Turnabout and Reform’ ( Fordulat és Reform), published in 1987 by a group of experts at the institute, the article demonstrates that in the case of Hungary, neoliberalism was not simply an ‘imported project’, which arrived ‘from the West’ on the eve of the formal transition in 1989–1990. Rather, it is argued that it emerged organically in Hungarian society in the 1980s, as a response by domestic economic and political elites to the deepening crisis of the Kádár regime. Hence, the essential aim of the ‘neoliberal turn’ was to reconfigure the Hungarian economy in line with the exigencies of the capitalist world economy, while ensuring that the political transition went as smoothly as possible. As such, while obviously a repudiation of past policy, policymakers in Budapest pursued the similar objectives as central planners under ‘actually existing socialism’.

Modern theories of regional development – a review of some concepts

Researches on determinants of regional development are an important part of economic thought. And just like the whole economic theory, it was the subject of visible evolution as the whole economy had changed and as we gained some practice in stimulating economic development. However, in the public awareness one can still observe a strong influence of “old” or traditional theories. Many (also some economists) still see regional development as an exogenous process which should be inspired and managed by a central government. Also, there is a strong tendency to consider the main goal of regional policy as artificial leveling of regions’ development. Only recently there has been a visible shift in the approach to the problem of regional development. The aim of the article is to present some most commonly recognized modern theories of regional development, which stand opposite to the traditional approach. It shows the evolution of theories of regional development from exogenous to endogenous concepts, and from the sectoral to holistic view on this issue. Of course, it does not cover all of the thoughts of a fruitful discussion on this topic. It is rather an inspiration to increase and improve one’s knowledge of this topic.

Home Market and the Artisans in Colonial India: A Study of Brass-ware

Studies on Indian artisans in the recent times have tended to be guided by the notion of a world market which, it is believed, drove them towards obsolescence through changing tastes or productivity. This framework, however, is not without problems. First, the presence of older industries in modern India, or their long continuance, tends to be seen in terms of ‘survivals’ or ‘revivals’, which terms deny them any inherent dynamics. On the other hand, the impression that many of them ‘survive’ today in strikingly modernized forms, utilizing production and marketing institutions vastly different from those that prevailed a hundred years ago, would demand of historians an account of how old industries evolve, and become integrated into the rest of the economy. Secondly, the crux of the world market story is the economy's opening up to trade. That foreign trade had a critical impact on crafts such as textiles, partially decimated by imports, or leather, where trade commercialized an erstwhile custom-bound exchange, is indisputable. But there are other notable examples where the effect of trade was benign, minor, or indirect, where artisans remained producers of a mass consumable; and where neither did they face significant competition from imported goods, nor were reduced to fodder for metropolitan industrialization. Yet they changed profoundly. In a way, their history reflects not the play of a dominant exogenous process, but the totality of the economy's structural change. Crafts history does not yet provide us with prototypes of this endogenous transformation.

Finite Sample Distributions of t and F Statistics in an AR(1) Model with Anexogenous Variable

The distributions of the test statistics are investigated in the context of an AR(1) model where the root is unity or near unity and where the exogenous process is a stable process, a random walk or a time trend. The finite sample distributions are estimated by Monte Carlo methods assuming normal disturbances. The sensitivity of the distributions to both the values of the parameters of the AR(1) model and the process generating the exogenous time series is examined. The Monte Carlo results motivate several theorems which describe the exact sampling behavior of the test statistics. The analytical and empirical results present a mixed picture with respect to the accuracy of the relevant asymptotic approximations.