Old homes and new homelands: imagining the nation and remembering expulsion in the wake of the Mali Federation's collapse
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Abstract This article examines concepts of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ for migrants and citizens in the twilight of empire. It focuses on the ‘ cheminots refoulés ’, railway workers with origins in the former French Sudan (today's Republic of Mali) who were expelled from Senegal shortly after both territories declared independence, and other ‘Sudanese’ settled in Senegal, sometimes for several generations. Using newly available archives in France, Mali and Senegal, and interviews with former cheminots and ‘Sudanese migrants’ on both sides of the border, this article seeks to historicize memories of autochthony and allochthony that have been constructed and contested in postcolonial nation-building projects. The Mali Federation carried the lingering memory of federalist political projects, but it proved untenable only months after the Federation's June 1960 independence from France. When member states declared independence from each other, the internal boundary between Senegal and the Sudanese Republic became an international border between Senegal and the Republic of Mali. In the wake of the collapse, politicians in Bamako and Dakar clamoured to redefine the ‘nation’ and its ‘nationals’ through selective remembering. Thousands of cheminots and ‘Sudanese migrants’ who had moved to Senegal from Sudan years (or decades) earlier were suddenly labelled ‘foreigners’ and ‘expatriates’ and faced two governments eager to see them ‘return’ to a hastily proclaimed nation state. This ‘repatriation’ allowed Republic of Mali officials to ‘perform the nation’ by (re)integrating and (re)membering the migrants in a nascent ‘homeland’. But, having circulated between Senegal and Sudan/Mali for decades, ‘Sudanese migrants’ in both states retained and invoked memories of older political communities, upsetting new national priorities. The loss of the Mali Federation raises questions about local, national and international citizenship and movement in mid-century West Africa. Examining the histories invoked to imagine postcolonial political communities, this article offers an insight into the role that memory has played in constructing and contesting the nation's central place in migration histories within Africa and beyond.Keywords:
Independence
Homeland
Repatriation
The Republic
Basing on the materials of the State Archives of the Russian Federation and other sources the article examines a little-studied problem of the post-war history - the massive repatriation of the Soviet civilian population and prisoners of war from Finland in 1944-1946. The reasons for the formation of the repatriation bodies are considered. Their activity on identifying, recording and sending repatriates to the USSR is analyzed. The author shows the attitude of the Finns to the repatriation work. The deliberate obstacles of the Finns, which impeded the course of repatriation, are revealed. Finally, the paper analyzes the results of the first period of the repatriation work.
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Prisoners of war
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Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Of Solutions and Problems. Part One: The Legal Framework. 2. The Concept of International Refugee Law. 3. Some Historical Observations. 4. The Mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 5. Marking the Contours of Voluntary Repatriation. Part Two: Voluntary Repatriation in Practice. 6. Cambodia (Thailand) 1980. 7. Iraq (Turkey) 1991. 8. Cambodia (Thailand) 1992, 1993. 9. Mozambique (Malawi) 1993-1995. Part Three: Synthesis. 10. The Solution of Voluntary Repatriation. 11. The Concept of Refugee Law Revisited. Annex: The Case of the Indochinese Refugees or An Exceptional Case of Voluntary Repatriation. Select Bibliography. Index.
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Articles 118 and 119 regulate the release and repatriation of prisoners of war after the cessation of active hostilities. These two articles deal with different situations from those addressed in Articles 109–117, which contain rules on the direct repatriation or accommodation in neutral countries of prisoners of war during hostilities.
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Article 119 supplements Article 118 by setting out the procedure for the release and repatriation of prisoners of war after the cessation of active hostilities. These two articles deal with different situations from those addressed in Articles 109–117, which contain rules on the direct repatriation or accommodation in neutral countries of prisoners of war during hostilities.
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A reference to the Republic of Biafra today arouses among most Africans and Africanists a little concealed emotional response to the internal politico-economic problems that are besetting the disintegrating Republic of Nigeria. However, to a relatively small number of African nationalists in Western Equatorial Africa, the name Biafra evokes all the sentiments of independence experienced by other Africans since the Gold Coast became Ghana in 1957. Biafra is the name the nationalists of Spanish Guinea had hoped to adopt when Equatorial Guinea will have finally achieved independence from Spain.
Independence
The Republic
New guinea
Gold coast
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Introduction: Refugees and Citizens 1. Repatriation, Refugees, and Returning Home 2. Patria, Protection and the Social Contract 3. Repatriation: a Historical Perspective 4. Repatriation after 1955: New Settings, Same Questions 5. Voluntary Repatriation after 1992: Continuing Crises 6. Repatriation in the Twenty-First Century: Learning History's Lessons? 7. The Ethics of Voluntary Repatriation 8. Repatriation as Reconciliation: the Community Dynamics of Return 9. Repatriation without Return? 10. Refugees, Rights and Repatriation
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This article analyzes the events leading to the aborted attempt to enforce “independence” on Kwa-Ndebele, a small area not far from Pretoria. These events are related to the youth-led revolt shaking South Africa after 1976, also emphasizing aspects relating to similar issues involved in independence in other homelands. By doing this, this study not only contributes to establishing the high priority that should be given to development of former homeland areas, but also provides guidelines regarding how such development should take place.
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Independence
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This essay traces the emergence of voluntary repatriation as a globally accepted durable solution to protracted refugee situations and how repatriation has operated as the preferred outcome of protracted displacement by the international refugee regime. Recognizing the inherent failings in framing repatriation as a natural solution to displacement, it instead points to a more nuanced understanding of what it means to shed one's 'refugehood'. Drawing on fieldwork with Karen refugees living on the Thai-Myanmar border, the author looks at some of the specific barriers refugees face in voluntary repatriation while showing how return is especially challenging for those who have spent decades in exile.
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Forced migration
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