Description
Book SynopsisWho helps in situations of forced displacement? How and why do they get involved?In Helping Familiar Strangers, Louise Olliff focuses on one type of humanitarian group, refugee diaspora organizations (RDOs), to explore the complicated impulses, practices, and relationships between these activists and the familiar strangers they try to help. By documenting findings from ethnographic research and interviews with resettled and displaced persons, RDO representatives, and humanitarian professionals in Australia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Indonesia, Olliff reveals that former refugees are actively involved in helping people in situations of forced displacement and that individuals with lived experience of forced displacement have valuable knowledge, skills, and networks that can be drawn on in times of humanitarian crisis. We live in a world where humanitarians have varying motivations, capacities, and ways of helping those in need, and Helping Familiar Strangers confirms that RDOs and si
Trade Review"Helping Familiar Strangers unravels the motivations and dynamics that inform acts of helping, with a specific focus on refugee diaspora humanitarianism. . . . Olliff's argument is convincing and well-grounded."—Antonio De Lauri, author of The Politics of Humanitarianism
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
1. Humanitarianism and the international refugee regime
2. The ecology of refugee diaspora humanitarianism
3. Forces that compel
4. Modalities: governance and economies
5. Modalities: mobility, (in)visibility, knowledge, and networks
6. Implications and imaginings
7. Helping familiar strangers
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
