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Questions in the 2003 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey were used to compare Islamophobia with four other Scottish phobias: sectarianism (primarily anti-Catholic), and phobias about Europe, Asylum seekers, and ‘the auld enemy’(England). Social factors affected all phobias the same way, but political factors discriminated. Conservative voters scored low on Anglophobia but high on every other phobia; SNP voters scored high on Anglophobia but not on other phobias. This suggested that Anglophobia itself displaced Islamophobia by providing another target, and that England itself helped reduce within-Scotland phobias by providing Scots with a common, external and very significant ‘other’. Scotland is too small, too peripheral, and too insignificant to play a corresponding role in displacing phobias within England. However, by stimulating English nationalism without providing a truly significant ‘other’, Scottish nationalism may actually increase Islamophobia in England, but not in Scotland.

The 1990s ushered in a new era in which humanitarian issues played a historically unprecedented role in international politics. Refugee movements in northern Iraq, Somalia, former Yugoslavia, and Haiti were the subject of increasing discussion in political and military fora such as the UN Security Council and NATO. Forced displacements were also at the centre of crises in the African Great Lakes region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Albania, Kosovo, and East Timor. The eighth High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, initiated changes within UNHCR that permitted it to respond to internal displacements in ongoing civil wars as well as to promote mass repatriation movements to countries of origin in Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. These events have significant implications for the protection of refugees and for the future of humanitarianism.

Chapter 3 examines two types of grassroots resistance in Beijing triggered by inner‐city redevelopment. One concerns property rights protests launched by pre‐Revolution private homeowners; the other focuses on residents' rights protests by long‐term inner‐city residents displaced by redevelopment projects. The homeowners succeeded in recovering their pre‐Revolution homeownership, and their protests quickly escalated to challenge the more fundamental issue of the state's exclusive claim over land and land rents. The displaced residents, on the other hand, framed their grievances and demands not as property owners, but as residents whose livelihood is rooted in the inner city. While both groups used legalistic and territorial strategies to negotiate with the state and to expand mobilization networks, the expansion of their demands from property rights to residents' rights is particularly meaningful in the pursuit of citizenship rights.

Chapter 7 looks at peasants who lost their land to urban expansion in the last three decades. It seeks a territorial explanation for the gap between the magnitude of peasants' grievances and the low frequency of protests on the one hand, and peasant's mobilizational capacity on the other. It argues that the mobilizational capacity of peasants is undermined by the snowballing effect of forced relocation. Forced relocation often leads to the deterioration of villagers' household financial status, disintegration of village organization, and rupture of collective identity, all of which contribute to village deterritorialization. More specifically, relocation produces deterritorialization through nebulous compensation negotiations that undermine mutual trust within villages, phased demolition and relocation that gradually destroy the physical environment and village solidarity, and switching peasants' status from members of village collectives to urban residents, thereby splitting villagers' interests. These moves weaken villagers' potential for successful collective action.

In the 1990s, new conflicts broke out, particularly in connection with the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as several places in Africa. Initiatives were invented and re‐invented, and policy responses reverted to a largely reactive mode.

Ethnic and internal conflicts, which produced displacement emerged as key features of the decade, and sorely tested the capacity of the international community to respond to crises of forced displacement. The so‐called ‘CNN effect”’ led to engagement as well as disengagement (Somalia) and the term ‘nation building’ came into vogue and then later became an epithet. At the outset of the twenty‐first century, refugee policy is driven by selective apathy and creeping trepidation.

Duplication of efforts is endemic in the humanitarian ‘new economy’ that has emerged over the past decade, and gaps are more prevalent than structure in international humanitarian action. Any future impetus for reform of the humanitarian components of the UN, moreover, must come from outside system, if at all. The problem of internal displacement could provide this impetus. Nevertheless, decisive reform is needed, and the bureaucratic trend is clear —consolidation of the varieties of entities and functions involved in the provision of humanitarian assistance and protection in order to become more effective. This trend should be promoted and institutionalized. Ultimately what is needed is a consolidated UN humanitarian agency with a fully integrated budget and programme, an Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) with budgetary, and programmatic authority.

Different policy futures could result from preferences such as containment, international cooperation, or taking a proactive approach. The continuing problem of forced displacement makes international cooperation and proactive policy important objectives. Yet, achieving cooperative arrangements in the midst of crisis can be difficult. Policy reform may thus depend on marshalling and promoting a variety of counter‐intuitive factors and motivations in advance of crisis—i.e., leadership. In order to foster more international cooperation on refugee arrangements, an international organizational mechanism is needed to map out the interests and incentives to promote more concerted and sustainable humanitarian policy.

The chapter examines the dynamics of policy responses and their ultimate effectiveness. It identifies typical sequences of policy failures, caused by the misfit between new problems and existing policy legacies, which may generate processes of policy learning that ultimately produce effective solutions; but it also points to instances in which policy learning is blocked by conflicts of interest or by divergent cognitive orientations in multi‐actor institutional settings. Of equal importance are sequences of lateral spillovers, where the solutions to problems in one policy area generate new problems that subsequently must be dealt with in adjacent policy areas. In the 1970s and 1980s, these spillovers were most important in countries where the rise of open unemployment was mitigated by resort to early retirement and disability pensions. In analysing these sequences of policy failure, learning, and problem displacement, the chapter also compares and assesses the greater or lesser effectiveness of the policy responses actually adopted and identifies successful countries that were able to adjust to the challenges of the open economy without abandoning their welfare‐state goals.

One of the less contentious issues surrounding MNCs is their significant and still increasing impact on international trade flows and policy. This trend is the result of increasing reliance by large manufacturing companies on FDI as an alternative to exporting to sell their goods and services to customers in other countries. This chapter surveys the data demonstrating the extent to which FDI has displaced exports as a marketing vehicle and altered the product composition of many countries' exports and imports. It presents several country case studies to provide more specific and detailed insight into changing national trade patterns. The other two topics discussed at length are the questions first, of the likely extent that the proliferation of FDI has decreased national exports and jobs, and second, of the extent to which FDI proliferation has rendered traditional trade theory largely or totally obsolete.

This chapter describes structural and computational properties which are the basis of the design and analysis of fast algorithms for the numerical solution of structured Markov chains. Toeplitz matrices, circulant and z-circulant matrices with their block analogs are introduced together with the fast algorithms for their manipulation. The concept of discrete Fourier transform is recalled with the FFT algorithm for its computation. Attention is given to the concept of displacement operator and of displacement rank needed to design efficient algorithms for a wide class of matrices related to Toeplitz matrices.

In this chapter a series of processes with a variety of transition structures are considered and their analysis is presented in a unifying manner. These processes are grouped under the generic name of Phase-type queues, they include G/M/1-type Markov chains, QBD processes, Markov chains with Toeplitz-like transitions and limited displacements (non-skip-free), and tree-like processes. A duality property between M/G/1 and G/M/1 Markov chains is described and a reduction of M/G/1 and G/M/1 Markov chains to QBD is analysed.

This chapter examines how transnational companies make use of what it calls time arbitrage—the exploitation of time discrepancies between geographical labor markets to make a profit. The extension of work hours through global outsourcing raises the possibility of a 24-hour work cycle. This means long hours for offshore Indian workers. The other option is the direct adoption of Western timings in offshore offices. This translates into permanent night shifts for workers as spatial and temporal disorientation are neatly combined. The chapter considers the impact of offshore workers' long, busy, and odd hours on family and friends as well as mental and physical health. It highlights the tension between the network time of corporate globalization and the prosaic rhythms of ordinary life. It shows that time arbitrage has resulted in long work hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement among Indian offshore workers.

This chapter discusses the niche concept. One of the earliest applications of the niche theory in quantitative ecology addressed the seemingly simple question of the extent to which the niches of two species can overlap and allow co-occurrence or coexistence of the species. This question grew out of the then recent development of the notions of limiting similarity and niche packing, according to which coexistence among species with similar resource requirements was assumed to be promoted through minimization of niche overlap through divergence in habitat utilization patterns or character displacement. The answer is highly relevant in the context of climate change, or of any environmental change in general. Fluctuation in abiotic conditions such as mean annual temperature may be seen as just as important, if not more so, to the persistence or maintenance of the degree of niche overlap that is tolerable for co-occurring species as the trend in abiotic conditions itself.

The chapters presented in this volume have covered a wide range of case studies; the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria and Spain; the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza; the Turkish settlers in Cyprus; the Iraqi refugees in Jordan and the internally displaced Iraqis in the northern Iraq; and the Afghan refugees in Iran. These chapters have opened up areas of research which are important to pursue. They have examined displacement and the impact of generation and gender including the physical and mental stress of refugee situations. They have explored the phenomenon of repatriation and its various forms such as voluntary repatriation and involuntary repatriation such as the case of the Afghan and Iraqi refugees. The chapters also have discussed the Palestinian ‘right of return’ within the context of legal, emotional and cultural expressions. In addition to these, the crisis in identity in exile has been addressed to provide a better understanding of assimilation, integration and alienation. Policies have also been considered to understand the international refugee regime as well as national and regional interpretations. The chapters in this volume hope to prove to be significant contributions to the understanding of the plight of refugees and displaced people and the political and economic universe in which they must operate. Refugees are categories of people who have lost the protection of their government and who thrive at the margins of the global nation-state system. Their struggle to survive depends upon turning their exile or forced migration around; to regain the protection of a government and to become ‘citizens’ once again either in the original homeland or a new nation. It is a quest all should sympathize with and support.

This chapter focuses on evolutionary branching in niche position due to frequency-dependent competition. When the majority phenotype of a population is competing for one type of resource, selection may favor minority phenotypes that consume different types of resources, which could result in phenotypic differentiation and divergence. The idea of divergence due to competition is also the basis for the well-known concept of ecological character displacement, although here the focus is not so much on the origin of diversity arising in a single species, but rather on the evolutionary dynamics of existing diversity between different and already established species. Ecological character displacement embodies the possibility that competition between species can drive divergence in characters determining resource use. However, there are alternative evolutionary scenarios for phenotypic diversification. In the context of resource competition, one such alternative is that individuals diversify their diet by evolving a wider niche.

Dispossession and displacement have always afflicted life in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Waves of people have been displaced from their homeland as a result of conflicts and social illnesses. At the end of the nineteenth century, Circassian Muslims and Jewish groups were dispossessed of their homes and lands in Eurasia. This was followed by the displacement of the Armenians and Christian groups in the aftermath of the First World War. They were followed by Palestinians who fled from their homes in the struggle for control over Palestine after the Second World War. In recent times, almost 4 million Iraqis have left their country or have been internally displaced. And in the summer of 2006, Lebanese, Sudanese and Somali refugees fled to neighbouring countries in the hope of finding peace, security and sustainable livelihoods. With the increasing number of refugees, this book presents a discourse on displacement and dispossession. It examines the extent to which forced migration has come to define the feature of life in the Middle East and North Africa. It presents researches on the refugees, particularly on the internally displaced people of Iran and Afghanistan. The eleven chapters in this book deal with the themes of displacement, repatriation, identity in exile and refugee policy. They cover themes such as the future of the Turkish settlers in northern Cyprus; the Hazara migratory networks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Western countries; the internal displacement among Kurds in Iraq and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Afghan refugee youth as a ‘burnt generation’ on their post-conflict return; Sahrawi identity in refugee camps; and the expression of the ‘self’ in poetry for Iran refugees and oral history for women Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

In addition to the traumatic and post-traumatic effects migration has on young refugees, prolonged displacement poses a greater effect. It affects the young refugees’ perception of their selves, homeland and future. Reintegration of young refugees is more difficult as most of them have profound alienated feelings towards their homeland which they feel that they barely know and they often feel intense attachment to the host country in which they grew up. This chapter addresses some gaps to better understand the less visible social and emotional trajectories experienced by young Afghan refugees in the process of reintegration to their homeland. It examines the personal journeys resulting from the respondent’s experiences of Iran and Pakistan, and their return to Afghanistan: their resettlement and their remigration. It highlights the expectations and the meaning of returning and repatriation to the homeland through the perspectives of the young refugees. The first section of the chapter provides a background to the study and the approach for the selection of a target group. The next section discusses the contradictory characteristics of young Afghan refugees who grew up as refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and looks at their perceptions and expectations with regard to Afghanistan. The last sections are devoted to the discussion of the barriers to successful reintegration and the key issues which can provide support to young returning Afghans beyond material assistance.