英语论文网

of transnational migration studies have been in the North American context, where asylum-seekers and refugees pose relatively fewer challenges and attract relatively less attention than elsewhere in the industrialised world. In Europe, meanwhile, it has usually been assumed that there is far less potential for the development of transnational identities and activities among refugees than among other migrants. Where refugees remain in their host countries, attention has usually focused upon their integration and they are assumed to maintain few links with the ‘homeland’ to which they have chosen not to return (Koser 2002a; Koser and Van Hear 2003). In excluding or exceptionalising refugees, transnational studies are building upon a long-standing trend in international migration studies, which is probably unsurprising as so much of what is sometimes depicted as the ‘new’ study of transnational migrants actually has clearly identifiable roots in earlier studies of labour migrants (Vertovec and Cohen 1999). Traditionally, a clear distinction has been drawn in the study of international migration between refugees and labour migrants, with the former representing the political, and the latter the economic, outcome of global
238 K. Koser systems and interactions. An alternative distinction casts refugees as the involuntary, and labour migrants as the voluntary, aspects of international migration. However, in continuing to tread this well-worn path, transnational studies run the risk of ignoring a range of relatively recent approaches within international migration studies that have begun to question the validity of the distinction between refugees and other migrants (Richmond 1994; Van Hear 1998). Without underestimating the crucial legal distinction between refugees and others, nor the social implications of that legal distinction, a number of studies have interrogated the conceptual bases upon which the distinction continues to be made. For example, it may not be accurate to distinguish so straightforwardly between political and economic migrants because of the need to recognise that all migrants in reality move for mixed motivations, including social reasons (Koser 1997b). Similarly, the distinction between forced and voluntary may belie the realities of migration decision-making: for at least some refugees, moving is only the start for a range of possible options in terms of destination and status, whilst for at least some labour migrants international migration results from a corporate imposition rather than an individual choice (Al-Ali et al. 2001).

Three ‘Scales’ of Transnationalism 三'秤'的跨国

This second part of the paper builds upon the conceptual blurring of the distinction between refugees and labour migrants in international migration studies to extend the focus of transnationalism to the case of refugees. It draws on evidence from three recent research projects to analyse the interrelationships between refugees, transnationalism and the state. It is arranged hierarchically around three ‘scales’ of transnationalism, from ‘transnationalism from above’ through the meso-level of transnational networks to ‘transnationalism from below’. Focusing on the evolution of ‘temporary protection’ for refugees in Europe, it is argued in the first case study that states have begun regularly to renege on ultra-state and inter-state obligations to asylum-seekers and refugees, privileging instead nation