The study of refugees before "Refugee Studies"

Abstract

Scholarship on refugee studies involves a wide variety of academic disciplines, including international relations and international law, anthropology and sociology, as well as economics, demography, geography, psychology, and history. This article traces the emergence of the field of refugee studies over the period 1920 to 1980, exploring its intellectual roots in some of the most important works about refugees and the pioneering scholars that produced them. Although coming from diverse professional backgrounds and academic training, scholars interested in refugees have asked many of the same questions. The authors address four enduring questions posed by pioneering scholars of this period: (1) Which refugees should be studied? (2) Who is a refugee? (3)What causes refugee movements? (4) What are the best solutions to refugee problems? While answers to these questions have varied over time and across disciplines, they all reflect the underlying assumption that refugees constitute a complex phenomenon worthy of attention and analysis.