Abstracts of Papers
Laimas Fergizas:
Refugee Migration as Founding Basis of Multiculturalism
During last decades of the 20th century numbers of western nations-states have been transformed into urban multicultural societies simply by the fact of constant flow of immigrants of different backgrounds of race and religion from around the world. This trend is set to continue firmly in the future bringing its benefits and challenges of building the multicultural societies.
My paper will examine the choices of an individual asylum seeker in the western urban environments. As time after immigration goes on, individual asylum seekers tend to reconsider their identities in new cultural soil. Decisions need to be made about whether to go home; whether to keep someone at home to look after the family house, farm or business; or whether to uproot the family members left at home and reunite the family in the urban areas of the host country.
After asylum in multicultural urban environments becomes permanent, the issue of local integration or resettlement arises: the refugee may become an established resident forming new ethnic and cultural communities in the metropolitan areas. The other possible way of 'resolution' of displacement often takes a long time, which is not anticipated by engaged governmental bodies. Thus the displaced persons are often deemed to find themselves in a state of protracted limbo. New nationality or citizenship may not be easily acquired or re-acquired, and are often disputed or problematic. People in such circumstances develop ambiguous relationships towards the urban places in which they find themselves.
My thesis will conclude that temporary status of refugees in their place of asylum should not last long: either the conditions that forced flight are resolved and the displaced should go home, or the displaced should be incorporated permanently into emerging multicultural communities. These statuses or 'solutions' are linked to distinct physical locations, although they might be conceived as applying to individuals who have no own choices to make decisions on their identities in relation to places of physical being.
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