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Abstract
The article examines the gender micropolitics of non-governmental assistance to refugees in the Czech Republic – a post-socialist society which is becoming a country of immigration. It critically examines relations of power between refugees and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs act as mediators between refugees and the state, media, wider public and academic production of knowledge. It is argued that despite the important roles they play in securing refugees' access to rights, their assistance is often perceived as problematic by refugees. The article analyses these relations in a wider context of the institutions of the refugee system where the state has increasing power in defining the conditions under which NGO assistance to refugees is provided. The study is based on qualitative research among recognised refugees from the former Soviet Union living in the Czech Republic and local NGOs assisting them with integration into society. I demonstrate how particular forms of assistance and public representation depoliticise refugees in a sense of fostering rather than challenging unequal power relations that lock refugees in a position of clients lacking political means of influencing their place in a receiving society. This is done by conceptualising ‘a refugee’ as a performative identity that is being produced and enacted in feminised NGO spaces. The analysis highlights refugees' critical reflections on their position in the relations of assistance.
El artículo estudia las micropolíticas de género de la asistencia no gubernamental a los refugiados en la República Checa – una sociedad post socialista que se está convirtiendo en un país de inmigración. Examina críticamente las relaciones de poder entre los refugiados y las organizaciones no gubernamentales locales (ONG). Estas ONG actúan como mediadoras entre los refugiados y el estado, los medios, el público en general y la producción académica de conocimiento. Se argumenta que a pesar de los importantes roles que juegan en asegurar el acceso de los refugiados a sus derechos, su asistencia es a menudo percibida como problemática por los refugiados. El artículo analiza estas relaciones en un contexto más amplio de las instituciones del sistema de refugiados, donde el estado tiene un poder creciente en definir las condiciones bajo las cuales la asistencia de las ONG a los refugiados es provista. El estudio está basado en investigación cualitativa con refugiados reconocidos de la ex Unión Soviética que viven en la República Checa y las ONG locales que los asisten en su integración en la sociedad. Demuestro cómo las formas particulares de asistencia y representación pública despolitizan a los refugiados en un sentido de fomentar, más que desafiar, las relaciones desiguales de poder que encierran a los refugiados en una situación de clientes, que carecen de medios políticos para influenciar su lugar en una sociedad receptora. Esto se hace por medio de la conceptualización de ‘un refugiado’ como una identidad de representación que está siendo producida y representada en espacios de ONG feminizados. El análisis destaca las reflexiones críticas de los refugiados sobre su posición en las relaciones de asistencia.
Acknowledgements
This article greatly benefited from comments from and/or discussions with: Caroline Wright, Annie Phizacklea, Jennifer Hyndman, Katarzyna Grabska, Gail Hopkins, Robyn Longhurst, Karel Novotný, Marek Čaněk, Olena Fedyuk, Julia Jiwon Shin, Jan Drahokoupil, three anonymous reviewers and the participants in the conference ‘Migrations: Theorising and Researching’ in Telč, Czech Republic, where it was presented in May 2008.
Notes
1. I refer to ‘refugeeness’ as a social construction of what is considered to be typical for people labelled as refugees. This construction changes over time and varies in relation to different beholders and performers. Refugeeness is by no means a set of given psychological or social features. It is constantly being re-created and performed in social interactions.
2. The act of recognition and granting of refugee status is a crucial precondition for the debate about refugeeness as a form of performance. Asylum as a category of protection bestows displaced people with access to a range of crucial rights without which they can be put into detention, expelled or deported back to their countries of origin. Performance of refugeeness discussed here relates to the situation when these basic conditions are secured and refugees are legally permitted to try to establish themselves in a receiving society.
3. I would like to acknowledge that I have partly relied on NGO help and mediation when looking for refugee interlocutors. Around 30% were contacted directly via NGOs or were met at public events organised by NGOs. The interviews were conducted by me in Czech or in Russian depending on the choice of the informants.
4. In this research, refugee research participants were divided into two groups: 1) 11 ‘core informants’ whom I met a number of times and maintained contact with over the period of one to three years, and 2) 34 ‘standard informants’ who were interviewed only once or twice. The rationale for this division was to generate both depth and diversity of narratives. Contacts with the core informants provided a longitudinal perspective on how people cope with being asylum seekers and refugees, how their position in society changes and how their views of institutions evolve over time.
5. For the sake of maintaining their anonymity, all markers of informants' identities are omitted in the text as well as the names of NGOs and their representatives, some of whom also wanted to remain anonymous.
6. Due to the predominance of women among refugee clientele the voices of refugee men are missing from this analysis. They either did not have a lot of experiences with NGO assistance or they were not particularly keen on discussing their position as NGO clients.
7. Strategy of cooperation between the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic and NGOs in the sphere of integration of foreigners, http://www.cizinci.cz/clanek.php?lg = 1andid = 392 (accessed 15 March 2008).
8. More specifically, it was its Department of Asylum and Migration Policy (DAMP).
9. The Charter 77 initiative was active in Czechoslovakia from 1977 to 1992 and is considered to be the most prominent action against the communist regime between the late 1970s and the 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’.
10. The NGOs have also been influenced by an ongoing process of professionalisation and standardisation of social services coordinated by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. For example, if they want to have their social services accredited by the Ministry, any future employee must have a formal university degree in social work or other relevant field. Such a condition effectively disqualifies the vast majority of recently arrived adult refugees, who could be interested in and capable of taking up such a job.
11. In these events, refugees' cultures are being predominantly constructed as elements of ‘folklore’ which contributes to the effacement of the plurality of positions and problems that characterise refugee populations in today's Europe.
12. One of the NGOs started a programme in support of professionalisation of refugee women into paid cooks and caterers in 2006. As a result of this commodification of refugee women's labour, it has become more difficult for other organisations to use their unpaid work for self-promotion.