Professor Cathrine Brun

In this article we suggest that the call for widening participation as part of the quest for a more localised humanitarianism has overlooked the clash of ethical registers that this would entail. We show that the formal script of the professionalised humanitarian system operates with an individualised ethics, while multiple other actors that exist alongside the humanitarian system operate with a relational ethical register. Based on a literature review on civic humanitarianism and humanitarianism embedded in social practice, we explore dimensions of the web of social interaction within which humanitarian practices often take place. We ask how to conceptualize these humanitarian relationships when relationships in themselves are understood as compromising humanitarian principles. Inspired by decolonial perspectives and relational ontologies and ethics, we then identify key dimensions of a relational humanitarianism: solidarity, responsibility and justice; identity and belonging; social distance and proximity; and temporality. In conclusion we suggest that for calls for localisation to succeed in genuinely changing power relations and practices, better understanding and recognition of relational ethical registers that operate alongside the formal script of the professionalised humanitarian system is required. 

This paper emerges out of a study with 293 young people (Syrians, Palestinians and nationals) living in contexts of compound crises and protracted displacement in Jordan and Lebanon. In the paper, we discuss how young people’s education trajectories can be conceptualised, operationalised and studied. We synthesise different approaches to understanding and analysing such trajectories into a framework that captures the intricate and multi-directional ways that young people navigate towards uncertain futures. The framework on multi-directional trajectories takes its starting point from an understanding of Victoria Browne’s ‘lived time’, captured through how different temporalities come together in one person’s story. After presenting our framework and the context in the first part of the paper, the second part applies the framework to analyse the ‘vital conjuncture’ of leaving education. By analysing leaving education as lived time, we create nuanced insights into how this vital conjuncture can be understood to shape young peoples’ trajectories. In conclusion, we discuss the value of understanding trajectories as lived time by illuminating how young people experience and navigate their education trajectories.

The  article  unpacks  and  analyzes  the  potentials  and  short-comings  of  a  humanitarian  framework  for  educational  response  during  protracted  displacement.  Humanitarian-ism  is  concerned  with  the  immediate,  while  education  is  future  oriented.  Calls  to  shift  the  humanitarian  discourse  from relief and survival to development have contributed to include education as part of the humanitarian response. The article analyzes potentials and limitations in Lebanon’s edu-cation provision and policies for Syrian refugees. We discuss the impact and implications of the humanitarian response and reflect on what principles should be formulated for pro-vision of a socially just, inclusive, and more developmental education for refugees in protracted displacement.

A temporal injustice is inherently built into the asylum-seeking system. Asylum seekers lack control over their biographical and their everyday time. In Norway, most asylum seekers live in reception centres while their applications are processed. This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding the asylum centre by drawing on geographical literature on architecture and contributions from migration studies on temporality. It analyses the ways in which the reception centre becomes a focal point in the asylum seekers’ lives and how people’s lived experiences, the asylum institution and the materiality of the buildings housing the centres come together in the particular temporalities produced by the asylum-seeking process. People’s agentic capacities within institutional and material structures are conceptualised as ‘orientations’. The paper analyses the lived experience of residents in three different reception centres in Norway. The temporal frames operating in the reception centres are expressions of power that produce blurred, uncertain and clashing temporalities. In this context, the reception centre operates as a material disorientation device where institutional durability, temporary dwelling and decaying as well as sub-standard materialities are significant aspects of the asylum seekers’ experience. However, some residents are able to re-orient their perspective and find ways of coping with the uncertainty and waiting. These strategies are identified as ‘reorientations’ to show how the governance and the inhabitation in the centres come together and how people engage with the reception centre through stubborn everyday strategies of inhabiting the centre. In conclusion, the paper reflects on the limited possibility that improving the material conditions may have for a better experience of the asylum-seeking process: it is the interaction between the material, the institution and the lived experience that creates the temporal injustice.

Initiatives designed to increase transparency have become a tool for improving governance and fighting corruption in the natural resource sector. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is an international organisation that administers a voluntary standard for natural resource revenue transparency. In line with liberal democratic ideals, EITI aims to empower citizens through the dissemination of information supporting governance improvements, public scrutiny and accountability in the sharing of benefits from resource extraction. Adopting a critical lens to transparency, the article examines EITI’s efforts to disseminate natural resource revenue data in rural Liberia. By focusing on how transparency is performed through dissemination workshops, the article creates a nuanced understanding of transparency by analysing how it is operationalised and practiced in encounters with people in areas where resource extraction takes place. The paper begins with an overview of relevant research and the conceptual framing of the study focusing on the performance in and of transparency and continues with a discussion of EITI internationally and in Liberia. Then follows a discussion of the ethnographic approach – travelling with the Liberian EITI-team on their dissemination trip. Through the analysis the article enables an understanding of the workings of transparency by examining how practitioners perform transparency through the performance in the workshops: the structure and orchestration of the workshops; and the performance of transparency by understanding the ways in which the workshops become spectacles that help to legitimise, rationalise and camouflage the fragmented and contradictory realities of extractive industries and their implications for people.

The consequences are an ‘integration lite’ where people may be able to survive, but their refugee status is not ended, nor is their refugee predicament closer to being addressed. The article suggests a new framework--constellations of home--that can be a significant bridging tool for the gap between rights and needs and that incorporates the static and ahistorical notion of the durable solutions as well as the mobile strategies of refugees in long-term displacement.

to be included into existing frameworks rather than challenging them. The article therefore explores a third way between a programme of insurgent radical action and the more pragmatic consensus-based participation model practised in Malawi today. Here, the potential for transformation is to be found not within one group or one type of space, but in the ways in which different spaces of participation connect, overlap and partly constitute each other. To better understand the transformative potential of participation in the context of urban planning in Malawi, we thus propose a ‘trialectics’ of participatory spaces where ‘claimed’, ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ dimensions of participation connect, overlap, and open up for ways in which actors

can meet.

Este artículo pone su foco en cómo las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales (ONG) y sus socias, las organizaciones basadas en la comunidad (OBC), están ‘trabajando’ sobre el género luego de la crisis. Explora la relación entre una ONG que apunta al mainstreaming de género y a una OBC de mujeres en un pueblo en el sur de Sri Lanka luego del tsunami de 2004. Se analizan las políticas de género de la ONG y cómo la OBC ha cooptado estas políticas en términos de discurso, interdependencia, poder y desempeño. Los desafíos estructurales e individuales para trabajar sobre el género en las situaciones postcrisis son analizados y las limitaciones para hacer cambios profundos que pueden alterar las relaciones de género identificados. Debido a las diferencias en la conceptualización y la implementación de las políticas y las prácticas de género, la OBC ha maniobrado para mantener sus propios intereses, mientras que la ONG ha experimentado desconexiones al trabajar el género entre los niveles organizacionales y los lugares de implementación. En conclusión, se argumenta que para que los cambios ocurran, la producción de conocimiento sobre género necesita estar situada localmente y ser sensible a las condiciones estructurales y a las relaciones de poder con las que las organizaciones y comunidades están en contacto.

Recherches en temps réel : décolonisation des pratiques de recherche ou simplement un spectacle de plus de collaboration chercheur-praticien?
 

Cet article examine les expériences et les résultats d'une collaboration entre un groupe de chercheurs et une ONG de l'hémisphère Nord afin d'améliorer les travaux de relèvement menés au Sri-Lanka après la catastrophe du tsunami survenu dans l'océan Indien en 2004. Une méthodologie de recherches en temps réel a été établie pour suivre et intervenir dans les pratiques de relèvement pendant qu'elles avaient lieu sur le terrain. Ce qui a été appris et réalisé à travers cette collaboration est évalué et tourne tout particulièrement autour des relations entre diverses parties prenantes dans la collaboration.
 

Pesquisa em tempo real: descolonizando práticas de pesquisa ou apenas um outro espetáculo de colaboração entre pesquisador–praticante?
 

Este artigo examina as experiências e resultados da colaboração entre um grupo de pesquisadores e uma ONG do hemisfério norte para melhorar o trabalho de recuperação no Sri Lanka após o desastre do tsunami no Oceano Índico em 2004. Uma metodologia de Pesquisa em Tempo Real foi estabelecida para se seguir e intervir nas práticas de recuperação conforme elas ocorrem na base. O que foi aprendido e alcançado através desta colaboração é avaliado e trata particularmente das relações entre os vários agentes envolvidos na colaboração.
 

Investigación en tiempo real: ¿la descolonización de la investigación o sólo una simulación más de colaboración entre investigador e implementador?
 

Este ensayo analiza los aprendizajes y resultados del trabajo conjunto entre investigadores y una ONG del Norte para mejorar las labores de reconstrucción tras el tsunami que asoló Sri Lanka en 2004. Se diseñó una metodología de Investigación en Tiempo Real para supervisar y modificar la reconstrucción sobre el terreno. El ensayo también analiza los aprendizajes y avances conseguidos a partir del trabajo conjunto, en especial la relación que se estableció entre los distintos actores.