Urban Refugees in Nairobi: Problems of Protection, Mechanisms of Survival, and Possibilities for Integration

This article examines the legal status and economic livelihoodsof refugees in Nairobi, focusing on Somalis, the largest urbanpopulation residing in the city. The results of the study challengethe Government of Kenya's (GOK) official position and the popularlocal perception that refugees are an economic burden, and showinstead that these urban refugees are economically self-sufficient.Despite this economic independence, conditions for most refugeesin Nairobi are extremely difficult. Urban refugees live largelywithout material assistance or legal protection from the GOKor UNHCR, are vulnerable to police arrest at any time and facehigh levels of xenophobia from the local population. By highlightingrefugee self-sufficiency in Nairobi, this article lends supportto the idea of local integration as a viable, durable solutionto their situation of protracted exile.     

Back Home? Refugees' Experiences of their First Visit back to their Country of Origin

This paper argues that the first visit ‘back home’is important for refugees because it acts as a catalyst forrenewed engagements with host country and country of origin.The study shows that conditions in both countries impact ondecision-making and ultimately that integration and return cancoexist. The first re-connection with ‘home’ isdescribed as a memorable event in and of itself. Marked by anawareness of the passing of time, it provides both an end towaiting and worrying and a measure of one's progress (or lackof) in life, thus enabling participants to move on. Establishmentof safety nets in both host and home countries as a conditionfor permanent return distinguishes the predicament of theserefugees from that of other migrants. As the meeting betweenimagination and reality, the first visit contributes to there-examination of the refugee cycle, the myth of return andthe meaning of home in a context where return encompasses onediscrete experience, the visit, and subsequent events. Overall,the paper provides a link between the literature on return asimagined while in exile and accounts of the reality of post-return.     

'No! I'm Not a Refugee!' The Poetics of Be-Longing among Young Oromos in Toronto

This paper presents some findings from an empirical study carriedout with young Oromos living in Toronto. To capture the complexitiesof negotiating be-longing, the paper offers dispersal–affinity—anew conceptual framework empirically grounded in an innovativemethodological design. Using participants' narratives in theempirical material, the paper contests the dualism created betweenessentialist and constructionist perspectives. It employs dispersal–affinityto explore participants' understandings of ‘the refugee’and the wider processes of refugeeization and refugee be-longing.Findings suggest that be-longing is a project of selfhood thatis both fixed and constantly shifting. It is argued that be-longingis constructed from the same movements of selfhood within andthrough social relationships. Young Oromos employ both essentialistand constructionist discourses to weave multiple layers of fixedand mobile be-longing. Implications for refugee studies arediscussed wherein dispersal–affinity is offered to criticallyengage the recent debate on ‘deceit and trickery’among refugees.     

Refugee Law and Protection in Brazil: a Model in South America?

Brazil has been committed to International Refugee Law sincethe 1950s. For much of this period, however, the country wasunder a dictatorship which made the implementation of refugeeprotection precarious, although refugees and asylum seekerscould count on the assistance of UNHCR and its implementingpartners—NGOs connected to the Catholic Church which remainpartners of UNHCR till today. Following re-democratization,Brazil has not only passed a specific law on refugees, but hasevolved to become a resettlement country. These changes haveled Brazil to be regarded as a model in refugee protection inSouth America. This paper aims to assess whether or not Brazilis fulfilling the said role by describing the evolution of refugeelaw and protection in the country.     

Refugee Camp Economies

This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortionsto the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda arenoted and the findings are used to construct a generic modelof a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced byhost country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolationof the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the natureof humanitarian assistance and the special demographic compositionof the refugees to determine the prices and quantities thatcharacterize the market. An awareness of the dynamics of therefugee camp economy has important implications for practitionersand scholars alike.     

'I Find Myself as Someone Who is in the Forest': Urban Refugees as Agents of Social Change in Kampala, Uganda

An in-depth investigation of the Kampala Urban Refugee Children'sEducation Centre (KURCEC), a refugee-initiated community-basedorganization in Uganda, allows for detailed exploration of thelivelihood strategies employed by urban refugees in the sphereof education and of the ways in which these strategies can promoteself-reliance and individual and community development in urbansituations. Urban refugees' development of KURCEC challengesperceived notions of refugees as burdens or as passive recipientsin a system that fosters dependency and shows that they areagents of social change within their own and their host communities.The focus on what works in the midst of crisis, desperation,and uncertainty is a deliberate attempt to promote researchand policy-setting that is forward-looking and productive ratherthan reactionary and regressive in the context of new developmentsin policy and practice relating to urban refugees worldwide.     

Hearts, as well as Minds: Wellbeing and Illness among Greek Cypriot Refugees

Recently the psycho-social health of refugees has rightly receivedemphasis, but the physical health of long-term refugees warrantssimilar attention. This paper uses qualitative and quantitativedata on informant-reported health outcomes for two Greek Cypriotvillage cohorts, one displaced, the other not displaced. Supplementarydata from a national diabetes prevalence study confirmed a possiblelink between refugee status and greater probability of cardiovascularillness. Depressive illness also seemed higher among the refugeevillage cohort. But it is not only the illness of some of theserefugees, but their surviving this, and the comparative wellnessof others which is important, compared with the ‘demographicshock’ victims of post-socialist Europe, 1989–1995.The paper suggests why the Greek Cypriots have done rather betterin health terms than the post-socialists of Eastern Europe,1989–1995, but argues that refugees in failing statesmay have much worse health outcomes.     

Negotiations for Refugee Repatriation or Local Settlement: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

This paper uses a model developed by Brams and Doherty (1993) to examine negotiations among a country of origin, a country of asylum, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a refugee crisis. A unique feature of the paper is its treatment of the country of asylum as a separate player in the negotiations, which makes the choice to permit or deny settlement in the asylum country endogenous.
The model is applied to two groups of Rwandese refugees: Tutsis living in exile in Burundi for three decades and Hutus in Zaire during the 1990s. The contrasting circumstances surrounding these two refugee crises provide an opportunity to study asylum countries that were sympathetic and unsympathetic, and to model changing attitudes in the country of origin and the international community toward the refugees. For both crises, the predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the unfolding of the negotiation process and the opportunities that eventually became available to the refugees.     

The Microphysics of Participation in Refugee Research

This paper examines the involvement of refugees in the productionand reproduction of knowledge of which they are ultimately meantto be beneficiaries. By using examples from research with CentralAmerican refugees and Rwandan displaced children, it considersforced migrants’ roles as participants in research, theirposition in ‘participatory’ research, and the representationof refugees’ voices in refugee-centred research. Poweris intimately connected to the diverse ways in which participationunfolds, and the last part of the paper examines refugees’participation in research in terms of ‘power that circulates’(Foucault) to show that they are not more or less powerful butvehicles for the circulation of power, simultaneously undergoingand exercising it.     

Information and repatriation: the case of Mozambican refugees in Malawi

Koser (1993) proposed a research model for examining the interaction between information and repatriation, which focused upon the receipt and evaluation of information about their homes by refugees in exile. That model is presented and tested using interview responses from Mozambican refugees in Malawi sampled in 1992. The goal was to disaggregate refugees' decision-making process in an attempt to understand the repatriation process. Findings are based upon the interview responses of 125 randomly selected refugee household heads, all members of 50 of the households, and local leaders. The study found that such a narrow focus will fail to yield any comprehensive explanation. However, the specific focus upon information was determined to have certain empirical, conceptual, and policy-oriented advantages.     

Civil war,genocide and political order in Rwanda: security implications of refugee return

Scholars and policy-makers now recognise the security risks posed by refugee militarisation, including the spread of civil war and regional destabilisation. These analysts pay little attention to the militarised exiles once they return home. Instead, repatriation is uncritically accepted as the most desirable solution to refugee crises and as a prerequisite for post-conflict peace-building. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the refugees desire a peaceful and stable return home. For the minority of militarised exiles, however, return may facilitate a continuance of their programme of political violence. This article examines whether and how previously militarised refugees engage in political violence upon return. It does this by tracing five decades of forced migration in Rwanda, paying particular attention to the Tutsi exiles in Uganda and their eventual militarised return. In the Rwandan case, leaders relied on the mechanism of socialisation, defined as transformative learning and the development of new worldviews, to achieve their goals. Such socialisation operated in exile to form the Tutsi exile army and later functioned as a tool for the coercive imposition of political control in Rwanda.     

A Profile of Poverty for Palestinian Refugees in Jordan: the Case of Zarqa and Sukhneh Camps

This is one of few known studies on poverty and poverty relatedissues among Palestinian refugees in Jordan. The camp refugeehouseholds identified in this research represent concrete manifestationsof the ways in which the political and historical legacy translatesinto economic hardship today. Poverty among the refugees inJordan represents a legacy of the refugees’ inabilityto generate sufficient income in order to provide for themselvesthe ‘minimum basic needs’. Therefore, poverty shouldbe understood not only in terms of the social and economic circumstancesof Palestinian camp refugees but also as a particular consequenceof various policies pursued by the state over the past fivedecades, including the Jordanization of public and militarysectors of employment, the provision of public services, andwage determination policy. In this context, the paper examinesthe causes of poverty and considers how various ‘implicit’policies contribute towards luring and ‘locking’a large number of camp refugees in poverty.     

Buufis amongst Somalis in Dadaab: the Transnational and Historical Logics behind Resettlement Dreams

The Somali word buufis is commonly used in the Kenyan refugeecamps of Dadaab, referring to a person's dream of resettlement.It is an ambiguous phenomenon, bringing hope and remittancesinto the camps but also removing investments from the regionand, when the dream cannot be reached, sometimes having adversepsychological effects. Buufis is triggered by the fact that,due to transnational flows of remittances and information, refugeesin remote camps like Dadaab can compare their lives in the campsto those of others elsewhere. This illustrates how the opportunities,constraints, hopes and dreams that refugees experience locallyare often determined by transnational factors. Whereas the resettlementdreams analysed in this article are thus likely to occur inother contexts as well, it is argued that they are more intenseand elaborate amongst refugee communities with a strong cultureof migration, like the Somalis.     

Humiliation Experienced by Somali Refugees in Norway

Life as a refugee attempting to create a new life in an unfamiliarcountry is filled with uncertainties. Due to a lack of languageand cultural knowledge, misunderstandings occur. People in thesecircumstances are vulnerable to experiences of humiliation.The majority population's prejudices against strangers alsocontribute to newly-arrived refugees experiencing more humiliatingsituations than do others. This paper attempts to analyse experiencesof humiliation among refugees, using Somali refugees as a case.The principal research question here is why and how refugeesexperience humiliation in exile. What kinds of situations triggerfeelings of humiliation in refugees and why are these situationsexperienced as humiliating? This paper attempts to develop atheory of humiliating experiences among exiles, based on interviewswith 27 Somalis and 20 Norwegians, as well as participatoryobservations and meetings with a focus group. Refugees in asociety vastly different from that of their home country mightbe vulnerable to intimidation, and might also be met in hurtfulways. Humiliation occurring in the home country might continuein the new country, and new types of humiliating situationsmight develop between individuals from the home country in thenew setting. The theory set forth here identifies typical reactionsof the refugees to certain humiliating situations, and offerssome suggestions for ways to prevent humiliating experiences.     

In Search of 'Invisible' Actors: Barriers to Access in Refugee Research

The paper traces the early history of refugee research and showshow, from originally being prime movers in the research, refugeestoday have largely been reduced to invisibility. In the South,access to refugees held in camps is controlled by local governmentbureaucracies and by lead agencies, and may be severely restrictedor completely denied; in the North, refugees held in detentioncentres are equally difficult to access and even more disempowered.Examples are given of studies carried out in Sierra Leone, Sudan,Egypt, Kenya, Greece and the Former Soviet Union. The paperalso considers barriers to disseminating refugee research, andconcludes that now more than ever the duty of the researcheris to speak on behalf of refugees.     

Forced Migration Studies: Could We Agree Just to 'Date'?

This essay questions the soundness of a scholarly shift awayfrom ‘refugee studies’ in favour of ‘forcedmigration studies’. It contends, first, that subsumingrefugee studies into the broader framework of forced migrationstudies may result in a failure to take account of the specificityof the refugee's circumstances which are defined not just bymovement to avoid the risk of harm, but by underlying socialdisfranchisement coupled with the unqualified ability of theinternational community to respond to their needs. Second, itargues that forced ‘migration’ (rather than, forexample, forced ‘migrant’) studies encourages afocus on a phenomenon rather than on the personal predicaments,needs, challenges, and rights of refugees themselves. It maythus contribute to a lack of criticality in relation to policieswhich subordinate refugee autonomy to the pursuit of more systemicconcerns. The first concern is illustrated by reference to theemergence of the ‘internally displaced persons’category, the second by reference to the determination to findand mandate ‘durable solutions’ to forced migration,including to the movement of refugees.     

Gender Relations in a Refugee Camp: A Case of Chechens Seeking Asylum in the Czech Republic

This article aims to give an account of how refugees' familyrelations are constructed in exile. It is based on fieldworkconducted among Chechen asylum seekers living in a refugee campin the Czech Republic in April 2004. It argues that althoughtraditional norms defining women's and men's position in Chechenfamilies have often been transgressed in the actual experiencesof men and women in situations of emergency such as war, flightand life in the camp, they remain relatively unchanged at thelevel of refugees' ideal notions of femininity and masculinity.It also shows that the environment of the refugee camp provides,on the one hand, some opportunities for the increase of women'spower in the family and men's involvement in childcare and householdduties. But on the other hand, the assistance in the camp isbased on an undiversified and gender-blind perception and constructionof refugees as passive objects of aid, and latently sustainsgendered violence.     

The election trap: the cycle of post-electoral repression and opposition fragmentation in Lukashenko's Belarus

Recent work on competitive authoritarianism has not explored the full consequences of electoral participation for opposition movements. While prominent work argues that the government must employ a mix of side-payments and repression to fragment opposition to its rule, Belarus’ history since the ascension of President Alexander Lukashenko in 1994 shows that the opposition has been repressed after most parliamentary and presidential elections without any substantial co-optation. I argue that electoral contestation and subsequent post-electoral repression have led to the Belarusian opposition's fragmented state. This state is grounded in competition for foreign aid, which creates a need among Belarusian opposition leaders to demonstrate their ability to mobilize support through campaigns. Invariably, successful opposition leaders emerge as the principal challengers to the regime, leading to their arrest or exile. Repression then fosters division within anti-government movements and restarts the cycle for new aid-seeking parties and leaders. A quantitative test establishes that repression concentrates in post-electoral periods and a qualitative assessment shows that opposition fragmentation stems from the arrest or exile of opposition leaders. The empirical findings provide contrasting evidence to work on co-optation in autocracies while suggesting an adverse effect of foreign democracy assistance around the world.     

Place and Afghan Refugees: A Contribution to Turton

This article contributes to the discussion on place/space/identityrecently re-opened by David Turton, who introduces the notionof ‘place-making project’ to describe the relationbetween a group of Ethiopian agro-pastoralists and place. Thisarticle aims to expand Turton's framework to situations otherthan the one he depicts, as well as to develop some of the conceptspresented therein. With reference to Afghans in Pakistan, thefollowing arguments are made. First, a vast array of overlappingplace-making projects simultaneously encompass territory andindividuals, attributing a different significance to them onthe basis of peculiar logics. Second, the interaction betweensuch projects has material effects on spatial and institutionalpractices of migration and assistance. Third, these materialeffects have different significance for refugees, since eachof them is differently encompassed by such projects. The articleconcludes by highlighting how such a framework can be used toassess power relations and challenge de-politicized narrativesof refugee protection and assistance.