Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness

Janet Mancini Billson's Refugee Pathways to Freedom explores the challenges and risks of escaping persecution and statelessness, offering ideas for revamping the global system to provide safe and secure futures for refugees.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Janet Mancini Billson's Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness offers extended interviews with Russian, Bhutanese, Rohingya, and Kurdish refugees, as well as resettlement workers who assist in their transition to Canada. Through these interviews, Billson paints a complex picture of creating a new life in a new land, highlighting the agonies of losing one's home and leaving loved ones behind, as well as the dangers of escaping into unknown territory. She argues that refugees and refugee agencies bring powerful ideas for revamping an overwhelmed global system that freezes victims of persecution in years of political and emotional limbo. Billson examines how shrinking refugee flows by addressing root causes of displacement is critical, but so is speeding up selection processes to reduce despair and lost years. She further posits that drastically limiting time in refugee camps would prevent counterproductive education and work gaps and that reducing language barriers to employment ensures well-being and successful integration.

Weight: 748g
Dimension: 236 x 160 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781793606570