© UNHCR 2007, all rights reserved
The study of refugees before "Refugee Studies"
Lawrence University, United States
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Abstract |
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Scholarship on refugee studies involves a wide variety of academic disciplines, including international relations and international law, anthropology and sociology, as well as economics, demography, geography, psychology, and history. This article traces the emergence of the field of refugee studies over the period 1920 to 1980, exploring its intellectual roots in some of the most important works about refugees and the pioneering scholars that produced them. Although coming from diverse professional backgrounds and academic training, scholars interested in refugees have asked many of the same questions. The authors address four enduring questions posed by pioneering scholars of this period: (1) Which refugees should be studied? (2) Who is a refugee? (3)What causes refugee movements? (4) What are the best solutions to refugee problems? While answers to these questions have varied over time and across disciplines, they all reflect the underlying assumption that refugees constitute a complex phenomenon worthy of attention and analysis.
Key Words: refugees • refugee studies • UNHCR • League of Nations • durable solutions
* Dr Claudena Skran is associate professor of government at Lawrence University. Her research and writings focus on the role of international organizations in providing emergency relief and the resettlement of refugees. She is the author of Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime, published by Oxford University Press.
Dr Carla N. Daughtry is assistant professor of anthropology at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is affiliated with the Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies programs. She has done research on southern Sudanese refugee communities in Cairo, Egypt.