More than 22 million of those human beings are refugees (half of whom are under the age of 18), and 10 million are stateless. United Nations data shows that nearly 66 million human beings in the world have been forced from their respective homes. We aim to link communities, movements, networks, other collectives, artists and academic institutions as critical partners, forging new and humane reciprocal paradigms, dialogues, visuals and technologies that replace and reverse the dehumanization of refugees within imperialist gazes and frames, sensational stories, savior narratives, big data, colorful mapping, and spectator scholarship. To establish this interdisciplinary field, the Collective facilitates, promotes and funds innovative projects, devises K–12 and university curricula, and organizes conferences, gatherings, symposia, transnational networks, webinars, lectures, installations, testimonies, and negotiations that: a) trace the impact of colonialism, imperialism, gradualism, centrism, and militarization on refugee movements: and b) integrate scholarly, policy, artistic, legal, diplomatic and international relations interests with refugees’ everyday experiences. Such reconceptualization requires approaches that integrate theoretical rigor and policy concerns with refugees’ rich and complicated lived worlds - approaches that fuse the critical and the creative. This has created a multi-billion dollar professionalized field for rescue recreation, and precluded any critical examination of the global geopolitical-historical conditions that create and sustain the refugee “crisis.” In contrast to the problem-oriented approach to refugees, the Collective charts an interdisciplinary field of Critical Refugee Studies (CRS), a humane and ethical site of inquiry that re-conceptualizes refugee lifeworlds not as a problem to be solved by global elites but as a site of social, political and historical critiques that, when carefully traced, make transparent processes of colonization, war, and displacement. Spectacular, supranational, hyper-focus on refugee suffering, desperation and neediness in media and international relations, and legal and social science scholarship have all represented refugees as passive recipients of western generosity and increasingly as the targets of racial profiling, surveillance and detention today. Stay connected with us as we implement more initiatives in the upcoming years. More recently, we were awarded a Whiting Foundation Grant to develop the Refugee Teaching Institute at the University of California, Merced. It was a four-year initiative (2017–2021) that allowed us to make the University of California system the premier intellectual space and resource for critical research, teaching, and public initiatives that privilege and address the concerns, perspectives, knowledge production and global imaginings of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced and stateless human beings. Our Collective has been generously funded by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the Critical Refugee Studies Collective.
What started as a health crisis has expanded with many of the most vulnerable populations, like refugees and displaced populations, facing a pandemic of hardship and poverty in addition to being vulnerable to the virus. This year World Refugee Day is marked against the backdrop of a global crisis, as a record number of people are forced to flee their homes because of persecution in their home countries as well as due to the Coronavirus public health emergency. The 1951 Refugee Convention acknowledges a refugee as an individual unable to return to their country of origin due to the threat of violence and persecution associated with their identity, such as race, religion, political affiliation, and social group. World Refugee Day was established by the United Nations on June 20, 2001, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. World Refugee Day is an annual international day organized to honor refugees and recognize their courage and resilience in fleeing violence and conflicts in their home countries and in rebuilding their future elsewhere.