This chapter looks at immigration as a battlefield in the struggle over the future. It considers how international law can be reinterpreted to limit the rights of refugees and otherwise to constrain immigration, as well as the harms these changes likely would bring about.

Chapter 7 investigates the reception of, and approach to, new speakers in Catalonia and Galicia. There is considerable evidence of a buy-in to the need to integrate new speakers and thus not only boost the profile of the respective language but also add to social cohesion in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual context. Particular attention is paid to the role of the Voluntariat per la Llengua programme in Catalonia. This pairs indigenous speakers with Catalan learners, several of whom migrated to Catalonia from Africa and Asia. Not only are the linguistic skills of the migrants improved by the programme but so also is the level of social cohesion and integration into the host community. Neofalantes in Galicia offer a quite distinct version of the new speaker phenomenon involving dual or mixed identities, ideological tension and challenges to official policies as to how best to represent the needs and demands of this small but very active section of society.

This essay looks at the acts of saving that unfold in the maritime spaces of the Mediterranean as they are represented in Helon Habila’s 2018 novel Travellers. Habila’s radical proposition links the sea crossings undertaken by refugees to slavery. But rather than positing violence against black people as what structurally ties the refugees to the slaves, Habila’s novel suggests it is saving and its politics that establish continuities between slavery and the so-called refugee crisis. Probing eighteenth-century insurance discourses, I argue that the paradigm of saving that emerged from those discourses, can be found and operates in the Mediterranean scenes of rescue. Looking at what happens in the Mediterranean through the lens of the logic of slavery derived from the eighteenth century allows not only to discern how contemporary acts of saving thrive, politically and economically, on the utility of the refugees’ life rather than death but also to reveal a set of other significant and related claims: that refugee deaths in the Mediterranean are not exceptional; that structural unsaveability is a form of border control; and that the maritime borders redefine refugees as those who fail to arrive.

This chapter examines the ways in which people with mental health conditions who also belong to other excluded groups may be particularly disadvantaged, in general and by mental health services. People with mental health conditions are at risk of social exclusion, but many from certain social identity groups are particularly at risk: for example, women, people from black and minority ethnic groups, and those from sexual minorities. In addition, certain groups of people are defined by their exclusion from society, such as refugees and asylum seekers, prisoners, and the homeless. The occurrence of mental health conditions in these groups is much higher than in the general population and they will often face barriers to accessing essential material resources and adequate healthcare. The presence of mental health conditions and group characteristics intersect to exacerbate the degree of exclusion experienced by the people in these groups. Some combinations may result in particularly profound states of deprivation and destitution. These severe and multiple forms of exclusion have been named ‘deep social exclusion’ or ‘people with multiple and complex needs’, two examples of which are seen in ‘multiple exclusion homelessness’ and people with multiple diagnoses.

This chapter recovers the performances of Saint Domingue’s refugees who fled the slave uprisings and acted out their relationship to Haiti on professional American stages. The Haitian Revolution’s refugees also appeared as stage characters in original plays such as John Murdock’s 1795 The Triumphs of Love, which reimagined refugees as refined but unfortunate figures, integrating them into American culture by differentiating them from comic but rebellious slaves.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Latin America was a region of immigration, where people moved from one country to another and/or people came from other continents, mostly from Europe. But by the 1960s, when many Latin American countries were suffering economic downturns, and the 1970s and 1980s, when state repression intensified, immigration turned to emigration, and many began making their way to the United States. Today, Latin Americans continue to migrate to the United States; people from all over the globe migrate to Latin America; and people move within the region. It is one of the most complex challenges confronting the United States and Latin America, and remains a very divisive issue in most countries of the region, especially the United States. This chapter looks at the push and pull factors that lead people to move from their home countries to resettle elsewhere.

This chapter addresses the role of culture in the making of political mobilisations around race and migration. Taking its cue from debates about convivial culture, it focuses in particular on how music has provided a medium of connections that network across community campaigns, popular culture, and specific moments in the cultural history of the United Kingdom in the 1990s and 2000s. We argue that as the strange becomes familiar, expressive cultures open new ways of making the politics of race visible, alternative cultures that can have longer-term impacts on how racial politics may cross boundaries and explore and address modes of intolerance.

“How Hybrid Bureaucracy and Permit Regimes Made Citizenship” tracks the bureaucratic response to the violence of partition, war, and independence in each of the states, focusing on the mobility regimes established to prevent return in Israel and India, where the documents and evidentiary demands of the mobility regimes enabled claims to citizenship. Focusing on the adoption of the colonial bureaucratic toolkit of emergency by the governments of independent India and Israel to restrict the mobility of returning Muslim and Palestinian refugees, the chapter show how mobility restrictions became obstacles to claims to citizenship. Demonstrating how the transfer of bureaucratic practices governing mobility depended on the continuity of emergency laws, this chapter shows the divergent outcome in Cyprus, which relinquished emergency laws at independence.

As the pace of climate change accelerates, the impacts of a warming world become more evident and more inevitable. Climate change multiplies and compounds stresses on human and natural systems and amplifies the risk and implications of slow- and sudden-onset disasters worldwide. Some of these risks can be avoided. Some can be alleviated. Some, however, may now or soon be unescapable. The risk continuum is shaped by the degree to which the international community mobilizes to mitigate emissions, to facilitate adaptation, and to prepare for climate-related impacts that cannot be eased or eliminated. The less we do to mitigate, adapt, and prepare, the more acute the risks of climate change become, especially in the global south and especially for already-vulnerable communities. With average global temperatures currently on track to exceed the 2°C target, climate change is expected to multiply the number of people susceptible to poverty, undermine food security, intensify heat and water stress, and increase the risks of fires, storms, flooding, landslides, and infectious and parasitic diseases. In this world of amplified risk, the lines between natural disasters and climate-related disasters blur. Even as these lines blur and the demand for improved coordination grows, critical institutional and legal disjunctions remain. Focusing on the Warsaw Mechanism for Loss & Damage, this chapter examines evolving efforts to construct a more effective and equitable rule of law and institutional framework at the intersection of climate change and disaster law.

This chapter explores the structure of society and the composition of the Jewish communities in the Netherlands, Belgium and France from the late nineteenth century until 1941 (when the ‘Jewish Councils’ were established). It highlights the similarities and differences between the three countries’ social structures in this period. These include the number and outlook of (Eastern European) Jewish immigrants, the presence of official religious Jewish representation and Jewish integration in non-Jewish society in each case. Central themes are the level of integration of Jews into the non-Jewish communities, the position of immigrant Jews vis-à-vis the longstanding Jewish population, the level of religious adherence, the influence of Zionist thinking, the role of religious institutions and the organisational structure of the Jewish communities. This chapter also examines the institution of Jewish refugee organisations in the 1930s, and the position of the later chairmen of the “Jewish Councils” in Western Europe in these pre-war refugee aid organisations. Moreover, it addresses the establishment of so-called Coordinating Committees in 1940, either by German demand, or by initiative of Jewish community members, which aimed to oversee all Jewish philanthropic work and sought to unite the various Jewish communities. It argues that the supposed failures of these committees served as the springboard for establishing the ‘Jewish Councils’.

This chapter explores the structure of society and the composition of the Jewish communities in the Netherlands, Belgium and France from the late nineteenth century until 1941 (when the ‘Jewish Councils’ were established). It highlights the similarities and differences between the three countries’ social structures in this period. These include the number and outlook of (Eastern European) Jewish immigrants, the presence of official religious Jewish representation and Jewish integration in non-Jewish society in each case. Central themes are the level of integration of Jews into the non-Jewish communities, the position of immigrant Jews vis-à-vis the longstanding Jewish population, the level of religious adherence, the influence of Zionist thinking, the role of religious institutions and the organisational structure of the Jewish communities. This chapter also examines the institution of Jewish refugee organisations in the 1930s, and the position of the later chairmen of the “Jewish Councils” in Western Europe in these pre-war refugee aid organisations. Moreover, it addresses the establishment of so-called Coordinating Committees in 1940, either by German demand, or by initiative of Jewish community members, which aimed to oversee all Jewish philanthropic work and sought to unite the various Jewish communities. It argues that the supposed failures of these committees served as the springboard for establishing the ‘Jewish Councils’.