RAPID: The Emergence and Evolution of Forced Migration Routes

全世界有超过6530万被迫移民，全球流离失所人数达到历史最高水平。大多数流离失所者居住在与其原籍国相邻的国家，主要是在中东或非洲。当代流离失所的一个特点是，这些第一庇护国收容了大多数难民，他们往往在难民营或城市中心生活多年，而富裕国家则通过威慑和边境控制政策与难民和移民保持距离。然而，从2014年到2016年，超过100万移民通过巴尔干半岛的陆路抵达欧洲，以前所未有的方式突破了“欧洲堡垒”。这种大规模移民对欧盟的稳定以及数百万难民和移民的生活产生了深远的影响。然而，几乎没有对这条路线进行过实证研究，这就留下了关于这条路线是如何形成的以及难民本身在这条路线形成中所起作用的悬而未决的问题。这些问题只能通过人种学实地考察来回答，而许多关键的行为者和地点仍然沿着路线。这项研究是在第二次世界大战以来最大规模的全球被迫移民的背景下进行的。调查结果将分发给探索和管理大规模移徙的原因、后果和复杂性的援助组织。该研究还促进了国际科学合作，并将培训本科生人类学数据收集和分析的方法。该RAPID奖支持在埃及，希腊，塞尔维亚和德国-出发国，过境国和目的地国-进行实地考察，以了解巴尔干半岛的路线沿着的流动性。调查人员是科尔比学院（Colby College）的Nadia El-Shaarawi博士和Maple Razsa博士，他们与来自中东的移民和难民有着长期的关系，并在这条路线上建立了沿着的网络，这将使他们能够进入原本可能是秘密和无法进入的地点。通过在对最近的移民流动至关重要的地点进行参与性观察和采访，移民和人道主义工作者聚集在一起的地点，研究人员将研究使这条路线成为可能的谈判和斗争形式。此外，他们将调查移民如何经历和管理限制其流动的努力。重点关注路线本身，以及难民和移民如何在路线沿着的网络中保持流动，将为分析难民作为受害者提供一种经验性的替代办法，并为研究当地难民提供一种方法上的倾向。这种方法将揭示移民流动本身是如何组织、维持和减少的。虽然正在发生的危机规模独特，但对其社会复杂性的了解可以为我们了解美国和世界各地其他类似的移民和流离失所过程提供信息。随着全球难民人数不断增加，流离失所仍然是一个重要的社会和政治问题。

With more than 65.3 million forced migrants worldwide, global displacement is at an all-time high. Most of the displaced are located in states adjacent to their countries of origin, primarily in the Middle East or Africa. One of the characteristics of contemporary displacement is that these countries of first asylum host the majority of refugees, who often live in limbo in camps or urban centers for years, while richer states keep refugees and migrants at arms' length through policies of deterrence and border control. However, from 2014 through 2016 more than one million migrants reached Europe via the Balkan land route, breaching "Fortress Europe" in unprecedented fashion. This mass migration has far reaching impacts for the stability of the European Union and the lives of millions of refugees and migrants. Yet, almost no empirical research has been conducted on the route, leaving open questions about how the route was forged and the role of refugees themselves in its creation. These questions can only be answered through ethnographic fieldwork while many of the key actors and sites remain in place along the route. This research takes place in the context of the largest global forced migration since World War II. Findings will be disseminated to aid organizations that explore and manage the causes, consequences, and complexities of mass migration. The research also fosters international scientific cooperation, and will train undergraduate students in methods of anthropological data collection and analysis.This RAPID award supports fieldwork in Egypt, Greece, Serbia, and Germany - countries of departure, transit, and destination - to understand mobility along the Balkan route. The investigators, Drs. Nadia El-Shaarawi and Maple Razsa of Colby College, have longstanding relationships with migrants and refugees from the Middle East, as well as networks along the route, which will allow them to gain access to sites that might otherwise be clandestine and inaccessible. Through participant observation and interviews at sites that have been crucial to recent migrant mobility, sites where migrants and humanitarian workers come together, the researchers will study the forms of negotiation and struggle that made the route possible. Further, they will investigate how migrants experience and manage efforts to restrict their movement. A focus on the route itself, and the ways that refugees and migrants sustained mobility within networks along the route, will provide an empirical alternative to analyses of refugees as victims as well as a methodological tendency to study refugees in place. Such an approach will shed light on how migrant mobility itself is organized, sustained, and curtailed. While the ongoing crisis is unique in scale, an understanding of its social complexity can inform our knowledge of other, similar processes of migration and displacement in the U.S. and worldwide. With the number of refugees only increasing globally, displacement remains a topic of important social and political concern.