Refugees: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Refugees are one of the great contemporary challenges the world is confronting, and the international community struggles to provide adequate responses to refugee needs. Gil Loescher explores the causes and consequences of the contemporary refugee crisis for both sending and receiving states, for global order, and for refugees themselves.

• Explores the long history of the refugee phenomenon and how refugees became a central concern of the international community during the twentieth and twenty first centuries
• Investigates the responses provided by governments and international aid organisations to refugee needs
• Includes short case studies of individual refugees
• Discusses the identity of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons
• Considers the challenges faced by vulnerable refugee groups such as women, children, disabled persons, elderly people and LGBQ persons
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Gil Loescher, Visiting Professor, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford

Gil Loescher was a Visiting Professor, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford,he was also a longstanding author and authority on UNHCR and global refugee policy issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
1:Refugees: a brief history
2:Who are refugees and how do they differ from other migrants?
3:How critical is today's refugee crisis?
4:Root causes of forced migration
5:Strengths and limitations of present legal, institutional, political and local responses to refugees
6:The global refugee situation today
7:Understanding current realities and present and future challenges
Further reading
Index

Reviews

"A perfect example of what this series should be" - Mayte Martin, Society