The Making of the Modern Refugee - Softcover

Gatrell, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198744471 ISBN 13: 9780198744474

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Making of the Modern Refugee is a comprehensive history of global population displacement in the twentieth century. It takes a new approach to the subject, exploring its causes, consequences, and meanings. History, the author shows, provides important clues to understanding how the idea of refugees as a 'problem' embedded itself in the minds of policy-makers and the public, and poses a series of fundamental questions about the nature of enforced migration and how it has shaped society throughout the twentieth century across a broad geographical area - from Europe and the Middle East to South Asia, South-East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Wars, revolutions, and state formation are invoked as the main causal explanations of displacement, and are considered alongside the emergence of a twentieth-century refugee regime linking governmental practices, professional expertise, and humanitarian relief efforts.

This new study rests upon scholarship from several disciplines and draws extensively upon oral testimony, eye-witness accounts, and film, as well as unpublished source material in the archives of governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. The Making of the Modern Refugee explores the significance that refugees attached to the places they left behind, to their journeys, and to their destinations - in short, how refugees helped to interpret and fashion their own history.

About this title

Review:

Peter Gatrell provides an in depth source for not only historians and researchers in related interdisciplinary fields such as migration and refugee studies, but also for anyone interested attempting to develop a better understanding of population displacement and refugeedom from a historical viewpoint. In this sense, the book makes a significant contribution as an in-depth history of the modern refugee. (- Elif Önol, The Journal of Turkish Weekly)

[a] magisterial survey and analysis ... With extraordinary skill, Gatrell weaves together the data, political decisions, NGO programs, refugee regimes, public opinion toward the strangers, and voices of individual displaced human beings. This study is a model in showing how the political and the personal are entwined, the regimes and the (re-)actions of individual men and women interwoven. (Dirk Hoerder, Journal of World History)

Peter Gatrell has written a superb book. It is the starting point for anyone who wants to understand the recent historical roots of refugees. (Carl Bon Tempo, American Historical Review)

Gatrell offers a deftly written, comprehensive and at times heartbreaking account of the mass movement of populations. Drawing from a rich array of primary and secondary materials, first-hand accounts and historical reflections, The Making of the Modern Refugee is a terrific introduction to the history of mass displacement in the past century. (Michael Barnett, The European Review of History)

a major contribution to refugee history ... what elevates it is the author's awareness of refugees themselves ... each chapter could stand as a reference work on its own. The chapter on Palestine/Israel [is] a masterful piece of history writing (Greg Burgess, Social History)

The Making of the Modern Refugee will remain an essential work of historical synthesis for the foreseeable future that authors will have to consult before embarking on new research projects. (Philip Peterson, History)

Gatrell also lets the refugees speak for themselves, which introduces still more complexity to our understanding of refugees and allows us to hear the voices of people too often portrayed as voiceless ...This represents a major contribution to an emerging body of literature on refugees (Carl Lindskoog, H-Net)

the book is truly a tour de force [with] a vast scope. (Frank Caestecker, Economic History Review)

insightful and empathetic ... this is a volume to be celebrated. (Mezna Qato, Journal of Palestine Studies)

Highly recommended. (J. M. Shumway, Choice,)

About the Author:

Peter Gatrell was educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1976 he joined the University of Manchester where he is currently Professor of Economic History and affiliated to new Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute. He teaches courses on refugees in modern world history, Russian economic and social history, the cultural history of war, and the history of humanitarianism. He is the author of several books including The Tsarist Economy, 1850-1917 (1986), A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (1999), and Free World? The campaign to save the world's refugees, 1956-1963 (2011).

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0198744471
• ISBN 13: 9780198744474
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336