Mistrusting Refugees

The 20th century has seen people displaced on an unprecedented scale and has brought concerns about refugees into sharp focus. These essays maintain a balance between providing specific details of the refugee experience and exploring corresponding theories of trust and mistrust. "A welcome contribution to the literature on refugees and refugee experience. It brings a refreshingly broad range of interpretive strategies and data to bear on the problem of how humanitarian agencies, intellectuals, and political activists might best understand the conflictive experiences of refugees."—Deborah A. Poole, New School for Social Research "A momentous effort in the elaboration of a meaningful discourse on the issue of refugees."—Jean-Paul Dumont, George Mason University The twentieth century has seen people displaced on an unprecedented scale and has brought concerns about refugees into sharp focus. There are forty million refugees in the world--1 in 130 inhabitants of this planet. In this first interdisciplinary study of the issue, fifteen scholars from diverse fields focus on the worldwide disruption of "trust" as a sentiment, a concept, and an experience. Contributors provide a rich array of essays that maintain a delicate balance between providing specific details of the refugee experience and exploring corresponding theories of trust and mistrust. Their subjects range widely across the globe, and include Palestinians, Cambodians, Tamils, and Mayan Indians of Guatemala. By examining what individuals experience when removed from their own culture, these essays reflect on individual identity and culture as a whole.