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Hello all, This is just to announce that a copy of my paper "Geography and refugees: some theoretical reflections" has gone online on the crit-geog-forum website. The address is: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/crit-geog-forum/files/white.htm Another copy of this paper is also available at the Popfest site: http://come.to/popfest/ thanking you Allen Abstract follows: In this paper I argue that research into asylum-seekers and refugees has rested on a separation within Refugee Studies into two discursive formations - one of 'asylum' and one of '(re)settlement'. I argue that these two discursive formations occupy very different asylum spaces. In 'asylum' literature the scale is often transnational and global, whereas the scale is sub national, more localised and often individualised in '(re)settlement' literature. This dichotomy doesn't arise simply because of particular types of research in refugee studies, instead it is linked to a deeper, more structural separation in the discourses and institutional framework of the refugee world and is the result of the under theorisation of refugee flows in human geography. This is partly because the social sciences and the humanities accept at face value legal discourses on refugees, asylum and asylum-seeking, and also because refugee flows are not seen in the context of international migration flows, and by extension international migration theory. I conclude by arguing that refugee and asylum institutions comprise a research 'space' that we can use to overcome this separation. Refugee and asylum institutions offer refugees and asylum seekers access to social resources and resettlement networks as well as being the places asylum law is given meaning and where asylum claims and appeals are prepared etc. Allen White email: [log in to unmask] Lecturer in Human Geography tel: 01570 424753 University of Wales Lampeter fax: 01570 424714 Ceredigion SA 48 7 ED Wales %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%