Free World? The Campaign to Save the World’s Refugees, 1956–1963 (review)

This solidly researched book examines the World Refugee Year (wry) of 1960, the global campaign to galvanize attention to, and action for, the refugees around the world. The first several chapters provide an exhaustive historical background of the events, trends, and processes that set the stage for it. Chapter 1 provides a broad overview of the major global events, such as World War II and de-colonization, that moved millions of people, though often without any welcoming place to go. Chapter 2 examines in greater detail some of the major refugee crises—including those in Palestine, Hong Kong, Hungary, and Algeria—that grabbed the world’s attention and created some momentum for wry. The second half of the book explores the political, discursive, cultural, and performative aspects of wry.

Free World? is a fine contribution to the literature about the international response to refugees during the period from 1945 to 1963. Yet it also uses this period as a focus for certain important features about the dynamics and trends surrounding the plight of international refugees. Some of these broader observations are widely accepted—for instance, those regarding the importance of geopolitics. Some of the issues that Gatrell discusses could use more attention, such as the politics of representation for refugees, and others are mentioned without adequate analytical probing, including how we are to understand the relationship between patterns of mobility and immobility.

Every field of study has its idioms and accents; that concerning refugees is no exception. It often operates within the tradition of critical social science, keen to identify the causes and effects of disparate forms of power that are often accepted without question. But it equally often contains unstated assumptions that merit deeper examination, particularly when the sympathies of scholars color the materials and analyses of the historical record. Gatrell’s account of the plight of the Palestinians is not immune to this danger. He states as a matter of fact that “the ‘survival’ of the Jewish nation is predicated on the continued curtailment of Palestinian rights to a secure a future on land they once held” (243). But whose position does this statement represent, his or the “Jewish nation’s”? Why is survival put in scare quotes? Is Gatrell implying that we know better than to accept the possibility that Jews might be reasonably worried about their physical survival? Is he intentionally or unintentionally conflating all Jews with Israeli Jews?

In a subsection titled “God and Caesar: Churches and ngos,” Gatrell reviews the different Christian-based agencies involved in wry. At the end of the section on “church” activity, he states, “One notable feature of wry was the relative invisibility of Jewish agencies and the emergence of a vocal Islamic agency” (135). One might ask, “Relative to what—to what we expect from Jews, or to the generosity of Christians?” Why does Gatrell believe that Jewish agencies were surprisingly quiet? Is it because Jewish organizations were consumed with the task of helping Israel absorb countless displaced peoples and refugees from Arab countries? Should we be as surprised that Christian agencies favored Pal-estinians but neglected the Jewish refugees in Israel who faced similar challenges after 1948? Why is it significant that an Islamic agency arrived on the scene? Furthermore, what are we to make of Gatrell’s explanation that the primary reason for its presence was to use refugees to further a different agenda? What are we to make of the fact that, according to Gatrell, only one Islamic-based agency was involved in the movement even though wry focused on Palestine, and additional headline-making refugee crises were affecting Islamic populations in South Asia and North Africa?

These questions are not intended to depreciate Free World, which is a valuable contribution to the field of refugee studies, but rather to suggest important considerations that could be incorporated into future research.