People and things on the move

At the turn of the twenty-first century, many of the striking issues of poverty and development which reach an international audience involve displacement in one way or another.

Wars, famines and big dam developments are perhaps the most prominent examples, all of which leave many people dislocated, having had to leave their homes, neighbourhoods and perhaps even their countries in the search of safety.

Some of the more politically controversial work of international relief and development agencies has been concerned with addressing the immediate humanitarian needs of displaced communities and then, in the longer term, initiating development projects aimed at post-conflict reconstruction, for example, or famine prevention.

Often, though, it is the images of refugees and aid workers in emergency camps which capture the imagination (and the donations) of the global public.

While refugees across the world in recent years have been estimated at varying between 10 million and 17 million during the 1990s, and internally displaced people at between 10 million to 18 million during the 1980s and 1990s, the number of people estimated to have been resettled to make way for development initiatives has been put at around 100 million over the ten-year period from 1988.

At the same time as relief and development agencies are battling to respond to the complexities of political and environmental emergencies that cause displacement, and their longer-term consequences for poverty, many more people are arguably being displaced in the name of development.

One of the more prominent examples of development displacement is big dam construction. Perhaps you are familiar with some of the high profile public campaigns against dam developments, such as the Narmada Dam in India, against which prominent public figures, such as Arundhati Roy, have been lobbying. But there are others.

A range of development programmes has created many involuntary resettlers. Things like infrastructure construction for industrial estates, dams and reservoirs, highways, ports and airports, and urban transportation networks. Unlike refugees, people resettled as a result of development projects typically remain inside national borders.

Contrary to their stated aims these programmes generate forced displacements, which in turn create further impoverishment and hardship. It is not simply being displaced from one’s homeland that is a source of hardship; long-standing and hard-won livelihoods and social networks forged in particular places are disrupted by resettlement. And it is seldom those who are displaced who are expected to be the beneficiaries of the development in question.

Global flows

Even as the astonishing figures of people involuntarily displaced for various reasons seem to offer cause for alarm, there are many writers and popular commentators who see the present era of globalisation as intrinsically characterized by mobility and displacement. People, goods, cultural products, communications, ideas – these are all seen to be on the move, and in ways which are usually thought about as broadly positive.

Moreover, it is not only the displaced who experience displacement. For example, in post-colonial Britain notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Englishness’ have been transformed by the immigration of people from many different parts of the former empire. English people who have never moved anywhere are experiencing a sense of displacement as their identities and their cultural worlds are effectively hybridized.

So, we can think of ‘displacement’ quite broadly to refer not only to human displacement, but also to the movement of goods, activities and ideas around the world. Of course the two types of movement are related. Human migrations (whether forced removals or voluntary migrations) are closely related to the broader processes which enable the distribution and circulation of economic activities and cultural forms.

    next > Page 1 of 2

Content last updated: 09/06/2005

Comments