HARBOR · HARBOR. Humanitarianism and Refugees at the Border: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of Nonprofit Organizations
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-01-15 → 2023-03-17
- EU contribution
- €251,940
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
HARBOR. Humanitarianism and Refugees at the Border: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of Nonprofit Organizations
HARBOR—Humanitarianism and Refugees at the Border—was a feminist project that turned a critical eye towards the humanitarian sector. Given that humanitarian players have become such relevant actors in refugee management—among other things, because of the (neoliberal) privatization of public services—academics have argued that the study of the intersection of border control and assistance to border-crossers needs further research (Bosworth et al., 2018; Gerard and Webber 2019, 267). Within this scenario, HARBOR’s aim was to explore the importance of these organizations within the broader migration regime. Using interviews and participant observation as methods, as well as engagement with secondary sources, news outlets and academic literature, HARBOR has studied how humanitarian organizations influence the construction of border-crossers’ subjectivities; provided an analysis of the ways in which solidarians (humanitarian workers, NGO workers, and/or volunteers) engage with their work; and explored the potential for resistance (within the organizations) and radical change (within a broader structural context). This research has resulted in a series of academic articles, blog posts, conference presentations, talks at different venues with different audiences, and a book (all detailed in the technical report). HARBOR has contributed to the literature on critical humanitarian studies, critical migration studies, critical border studies and its intersection with neoliberal ideology and feminism. Disclosing the ways in which humanitarianism is entangled with border control and how it affects the construction of border-crossers’ subjectivities offers the possibility to redress how aid is framed. Discourses and narratives about those who flee from violence have material consequences—such as confinement, punishment, and/or detention. The struggle against today’s border regimes is constantly refracted through a reformist-humanitarian response that is in conversation with detention to constrain mobilities. Analyzing the way in which humanitarianism co-opts and depoliticizes activist demands—such as border abolition—can shed light in the ways in which struggles for freedom get embedded in reformist responses. In this regard, through the production of knowledge, HARBOR has contributed to illuminating how borders not only do not protect but rather, create violence, and how humanitarian organizations are part of the migration management apparatus.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
HARBOR—Humanitarianism and Refugees at the Border—departs from the idea that humanitarianism is a neutral and timeless ideology, and instead turns a critical eye towards this sector to understand the ways in which nonprofit organizations become complicit with the neoliberal order—through reinforcing certain ideals of citizenship and sovereignty, occupying spaces that are destined for public institutions, and influencing refugees’ decision-making processes—and their possibilities for resistance. This feminist transnational comparison project expands my previous research in the refugee nonprofit sector at the US-Mexico border by including the two other most sought-after destinations in the world for refugees: Australia and Europe. Its aim is to make connections between nonprofit local practices and global dynamics to draw broader conclusions about the role nonprofit organizations play within refugee management. Through a combination of a transnational feminist lens and a Foucauldian framework, as well as ethnographic, participant observation and interview methods, HARBOR will reconstruct the role that humanitarian organizations play in the current refugee regime. In so doing, this project works at the connections between the academic, humanitarian, and policy-making sectors. In order to achieve my research objectives, I will be based at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane Australia where I will be trained in Global Governance and feminist political theory under the supervision of Dr. Hoffstaedter. Upon my return to my European host institution, CSIC, I will bring my new skills and engage in theory-building that challenges the idea of borders as protection with my mentor Professor Velasco at the Humanities Research Center.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union