Refugia: Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement.

• Author: Cohen, Robin

"There is no longer a place in the world for someone to take shelter" Milan Kundera The number of refugees worldwide has doubled in the last decade to more than 80 million. As the number of refugees increases, walls rise on the borders of countries, and deadlock in the international system reduces the opportunities and possibilities for the displaced to find refuge -or to return- every day. The subject of Refugia is the search for an alternative protection zone for refugees -which they dub Refugia- as another possibility, apart from return or resettlement. The main aim of Refugia is to lay out a framework for how such a quest can be realized.

In the words of Cohen and Van Hear, two distinguished authors in the field of displacement, Refugia is a utopia (p. i). However, Utopia is not a search for impossibility, as the name at first implies. Rather, Utopia is a design for a society that cannot be realized today yet is nonetheless possible. The search for a place where refugees can take shelter on earth is becoming more utopian with each passing day. So much so that the idea of establishing a colony of refugees on Mars to shelter them seems to be more realistic than the idea of finding an 'anywhere land' on earth.

Refugia consists of six chapters. A 'trailer' at the end of each section adds a kind of fiction-novel vibe to the book. The book starts with a glossary section to familiarize readers with the basic concepts. A prediction set up in the first section, "Refugia 2030," presents the utopia as partially realized; the authors draw an imaginary framework of where the 'Refugia' idea will have evolved by 2030, under the subheadings of management, economy, and general structure.

In the first chapter, a 'refugee nation' (p. 4) is imagined, with its own flag and national anthem. Refugees can move freely, thanks to the "Sesame Pass," among a group of autonomous 'somewhere lands' established in different parts of the world, conceived as multiple citizenship opportunities (p. 3). The authors discuss an operational framework for an autonomous economic structure, they especially emphasize that 'Refugia' is not "based on any nationalist or religious belief association" (p. 4); instead, "Refugia is a pragmatic arrangement, a kind of secession by mutual agreement" (p. 4). After drawing a general framework of displacement on earth, the introductory chapter stresses that "three conventional 'durable solutions'" (p. 8) have become dysfunctional since the...