Refugee Voices in Modern Global History

Across modern history, refugees have articulated their experiences and wishes against the backdrop of mass displacement brought about by world wars, civil war, revolution, population exchange, decolonisation, and state formation. Men and women displaced in different sites, from different backgrounds, and at different times have played for high stakes: they deliberated about what to say and to whom, and they sought, expected, and effected a response.

Refugee Voices in Modern Global History places refugees at the centre of modern history. It demonstrates how ordinary refugees understood their experiences of displacement and engaged with institutions that sought 'solutions' to their predicament. Ranging widely across global contexts to establish what refugees had to say and to whom, it shows them to have consistently been purposeful actors, making it possible to transcend conventional and hackneyed depictions of 'crisis'.

By adopting the term 'refugeedom' the authors show how the voices and perspectives of refugees can be incorporated alongside the power dynamics associated with the multiple incarnations of the refugee regime that 'managed' refugees and articulated 'solutions' to their predicament. Extensive archival research across three continents makes it possible to explain in comparative terms the significance attached to the encounters between refugees and officials in modern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The result is an original and in-depth study of the contrasting responses of refugees to displacement and to the arrangements made on their behalf at a series of critical junctures in the past.