Displacement and resettlement are current hot topics, and several books have recently appeared that address these issues. While some of those contributions are from and aimed at practitioners, this hardcover book is a product of the faculty staff, doctoral students and visiting fellows at the Refugee Studies Centre and Department for International Development at the University of Oxford, and is linked to a conference held there in 2013. The book contains 14 chapters selected from 50 odd presentations at that conference. Most chapters tend to comprise an academic critique of resettlement and development. They are well written and easy to read, frequently chronicling the many implementation problems and unintended consequences of development-induced resettlement in particular cases of resettlement in past decades. The stories make for sad reading, with each case discussed outlining how the displacement/resettlement process made people worse-off and/or impoverished. Much attention was given to the lack of fairness in the way compensation was implemented. Unfortunately, most chapters were short of recommendations and in that sense offer little to assist future resettlement practice.
One particularly interesting chapter, ‘They are not family, they just live with us’ discusses the practical, social and ethical implications of how ‘household’ is defined. With the World Bank, IFC and other guidelines tending to use ‘household’ in preference to ‘family’ to cater for a wider range of socio-economic living arrangements, this chapter highlights the limitations of this approach, particularly in an African context where polygamy is common. After an extended discussion and comparison of alternative social grouping concepts, the chapter concludes that ‘there is still a use for defining the household as the unit of entitlement as it attempts to strike a balance between the individual and the larger social groupings, and remains the most practical construct to use’.
Perhaps, the most useful chapter is about displacement in international law. It cross-references many of the impacts of development-induced displacement with human rights law. It is likely to be a good resource for resettlement practitioners and people interested in human rights issues of projects.
I enjoyed the book very much, and development scholars will find the book interesting and consequently every academic library should have a copy of the book. However, ultimately the book was not written for the more practice-oriented resettlement and impact assessment professionals. Arguably, the current issues faced by practitioners were by-passed, including questions around topics such as: the effectiveness of current (rather than past) resettlement practice and standards; with improved governance and compensation arrangements, can resettlement be a pathway to assist the development of project-affected people?; how can livelihoods be restored or enhanced, especially in situations where there are constraints on land availability; is restoring people to the standards they are used to appropriate or should resettlement provide opportunities for increased sustainability in housing and livelihoods?; and the tension between public sector and private sector interests in resettlement.
University of Groningen, The Netherlands,
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© 2015, Frank Vanclay
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2015.1069668