Refugees in abject spaces, protracted ‘waiting' and spatialities of abjection during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper engages with a reinterpretation of the concept of abject space situating it within abjection theory and the concept of ‘waiting'. It develops further the term of ‘spatialities of abjection' and discusses how the complex relationality occurring in abjection manifests in various spaces, through porous, changing, invisible boundaries but also specific temporal conditions. Doing so allows us to unpack the transformations of the abject space alternatively and simultaneously considered as a refuge and as a place of danger, factor of contamination. More importantly, the paper situates the reading of spatial abjection through a temporal lens, denoting how abject subjects are spatialized in a context of ‘political waiting' but more importantly in a situation where active ‘waiting' re-shifted to passive ‘waiting' because of the pandemic implications. To do so, we focus on the spatialities of abjection affecting Syrian refugees living in informal tented settlements (ITSs) in Lebanon during the COVID-19 crisis. While abjection, stigma and xenophobia were already occurring prior to 2019, ITSs as abject spaces and refugees as abject subjects were targeted by supplemented rules and control. Those led to more controlled encampments and immobilization, increasing their dependency and reliance on international aid.Alternate abstract:ResumenEste artículo involucra una reinterpretación del concepto de espacio abyecto situándolo dentro de la teoría de la abyección y el concepto de ‘espera'. Desarrolla aún más el término ‘espacialidades de la abyección' y discute cómo la compleja relacionalidad que ocurre en la abyección se manifiesta en varios espacios, a través de fronteras porosas, cambiantes e invisibles, pero también de condiciones temporales específicas. Hacerlo nos permite desempacar las transformaciones del espacio abyecto alternativa y simultáneamente considerado como refugio y como lugar de peligro, factor de contaminación. Más importante aún, el artículo sitúa la lectura de la abyección espacial a través de una lente temporal, denotando cómo los sujetos abyectos se espacializan en un contexto de ‘espera política', pero más importante aún en una situación en la que la ‘espera' activa cambia a ‘espera' pasiva debido a las implicaciones de la pandemia. Para ello, nos enfocamos en las espacialidades de abyección que afectan a los refugiados sirios que viven en asentamientos informales de tiendas de campaña (ITS por sus siglas en inglés) en el Líbano durante la crisis del COVID-19. Si bien la abyección, el estigma y la xenofobia ya estaban ocurriendo antes de 2019, los ITS como espacios abyectos y los refugiados como sujetos abyectos fueron objeto de normas y controles suplementarios. Estos llevaron a campamentos más controlados e inmovilización, aumentando su dependencia a la ayuda internacional.

The community table: Developing art therapy studios on, in-between, and across borders

This chapter explores The Community Table as an evolving model of practice originating in a context of crisis support. It has developed from initial beginnings at a dining room table in a safe house for young unaccompanied refugees. When working in the border town of Calais, northern France, the lack of consistent safe spaces has required a clear rationale for the work and adaptations to models, which have roots in the art therapy studio. The Community Table can be metaphorically concertinaed to expand, or contract. It has supported a dynamic way of working on, in-between, and across borders, real and symbolic. This model has been translated by Art Refuge to other settings including online under COVID-19. It opens up possibilities for thinking about art therapy studios in settings that previously may have felt out of reach. The chapter presents four iterations of The Community Table. One was developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The political and social context, seasons and weather, location and spaces available, and the displaced demographic present shaped each manifestation. This in turn informed what art materials and media were introduced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

REFOULEMENT AS PANDEMIC POLICY

A year and a half into a near-total shutdown of the United States border to asylum seekers, United States Border Patrol agents were recorded riding on horseback, swinging whips in the faces of Haitian refugees, and beating them back across the border into Mexico from Del Rio, Texas.1 The refugees were fleeing political instability and forced displacement-in July of 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated,2 and a month later, a devastating earthquake killed thousands of people and destroyed 53,000 homes.3 Upon arriving in the United States, instead of being granted temporary refuge, the asylum seekers were forced to live in encampments along the United StatesMexico border, waiting and hoping for an opportunity to make their case for asylum-an opportunity that would never come.4 Many of them were expelled from the United States en masse before they were ever able to ask for asylum, and thousands more were left in limbo in Mexico.5 During this humanitarian crisis, Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a warning to Haitians: "If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned. A. COVID, Border Closures, and Impact on Asylum Seekers On December 31, 2019, China reported the first cases of what would soon be recognized as the novel coronavirus COVID-19.8 On January 21, 2020, the United States Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") confirmed the first United States COVID case, which originated from a person who had traveled to Washington state from Wuhan, China.9 In early February, the United States and other countries formally imposed global air travel and quarantine restrictions.10 On March 11, the World Health Organization ("WHO") officially declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, and by midMarch 2020, U.S. states and localities began widely issuing stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the disease.11 Across the globe, nations closed their borders to human migration and movement. A Pew Research Report found that, by April of 2020, 91% of the world's population was living in a country with some sort of COVID travel restriction.12 Canada closed its borders to foreign tourism.13 The European Union restricted incoming nonessential travel14 and many member states banned entry from countries with high rates of COVID infection, such as India.15 The United States banned entry for non-essential travelers from the European Union and the United Kingdom.16 The most devastating consequences of border closures, though, have been for asylum seekers and refugees. At the height of the pandemic, at least 168 nations had closed or restricted their borders and around 90 countries had closed their borders to those seeking asylum.17 Simultaneously, COVID-19 served as a "threat multiplier," compounding the effects of poverty, lack of healthcare, and violence affecting refugees and displaced people.18 There were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people in the world at the end of 2020, the highest number ever recorded,19 but fewer refugees were resettled in 2020 than any year in the previous two decades.20 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ("UNHCR") estimated that about 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers were unable to seek international protection because they were stranded by these border closures in 2020.21 Border closures are particularly harmful to asylum seekers, who rely on the ability to cross borders to seek safety and refuge.22 Asylum seekers, by definition, have been displaced from their homes, and they rely on access to territory outside of their country of origin to seek protection from persecution.

Flying cars and bigots: projecting post-COVID-19 worlds through the atlas of the civic imagination as refuge for hope: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

In April 2020, the Civic Imagination Project at the University of Southern California, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, asked participants around the world to share some of their reflections on what the world of 2060 might look like, and what roles the COVID-19 pandemic may have played in transforming how we live and relate to each other. For the past six years, the Civic Imagination Project has been conducting world-building workshops with groups across America and around the world. Our workshops encourage participants to imagine together what the future might look like under the premise that before we can change the world, we have to be able to collectively imagine what a better world looks like. For this paper, our team draws tools from speculative fiction to create a process where communities come together and propose what an alternative world might look like. While it is still too early for any preliminary analysis, we anticipate being able to map responses from many different parts of the world, and in particular, across different regions in the United States. We are interested in the tensions amongst utopian, dystopian, protopian and heterotopian visions at a time of enormous anxiety.

Optimizing Island Refuges against global Catastrophic and Existential Biological Threats: Priorities and Preparations.

Human civilization is vulnerable to global catastrophic biological threats and existential threats. Policy to mitigate the impact of major biological threats should consider worst-case scenarios. We aimed to strengthen existing research on island refuges as a mitigating mechanism against such threats by considering five additional factors as well as recent literature on catastrophic risks and resilience. We also analyzed the performance of potential refuge islands during early phases the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a composite indicator (scored from 0-1) based on 14 global macroindices, we present analysis supporting Australia (0.71), New Zealand (0.64), and Iceland (0.58) as the leading candidate island nation refuges to safeguard the survival of humanity and a flourishing technological civilization from the threat of a catastrophic pandemic. Data from the COVID-19 pandemic supports this finding where islands have performed relatively well. We discuss the persisting weaknesses of even the best candidate refuges and the growing literature describing what preparations such a refuge should ensure to enhance resilience. Refuge preparations by Australia and New Zealand, in particular, may additionally provide some immunity against winter-inducing catastrophes such as global nuclear war. Existing disaster resilience frameworks such as the Sendai framework could be worded to mandate preventive measures against global catastrophic and existential threats. The issue of island refuges against certain global catastrophic risks should be raised at relevant international political summits.

A fractional order SITR mathematical model for forecasting of transmission of COVID-19 of India with lockdown effect.

In this paper, we consider a mathematical model to explain, understanding, and to forecast the outbreaks of COVID-19 in India. The model has four components leading to a system of fractional order differential equations incorporating the refuge concept to study the lockdown effect in controlling COVID-19 spread in India. We investigate the model using the concept of Caputo fractional-order derivative. The goal of this model is to estimate the number of total infected, active cases, deaths, as well as recoveries from COVID-19 to control or minimize the above issues in India. The existence, uniqueness, non-negativity, and boundedness of the solutions are established. In addition, the local and global asymptotic stability of the equilibrium points of the fractional-order system and the basic reproduction number are studied for understanding and prediction of the transmission of COVID-19 in India. The next step is to carry out sensitivity analysis to find out which parameter is the most dominant to affect the disease's endemicity. The results reveal that the parameters η , µ and ρ are the most dominant sensitivity indices towards the basic reproductive number. A numerical illustration is presented via computer simulations using MATLAB to show a realistic point of view.