Tales of Loss and Sorrow: Addressing Methodological Challenges in Refugee Research in Uganda

Abstract

This article discusses methodological challenges in refugee studies through a case study of interactions between refugees and host-population in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. The article suggest that one solution to the challenges identified is to make use of James C. Scott’s theory of private and public transcripts to form an argument that public stories of victimhood are utilized strategically as a weapon of the weak to navigate the terrain of Nakivale. Victimhood is one of many social roles among the actors in Nakivale and the stories become performance narratives with shifting roles depending on the audience. To shift from a social pose as a hardworking refugee in everyday life to a public presentation of self as a refugee with uttermost needs to the researcher is a tactic move. We can successfully read and interpret how the actors in Nakivale navigate in a competitive terrain by listening to the meaning of the public stories, and thus also understand the powerful narrative(s) across the different groups that live within the settlement.

Keywords:

• methodology
• narratives
• refugees
• host-population
• victimhood
• agency
• Uganda

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Notes on contributor

Ingunn Bjørkhaug is a researcher at Fafo (Oslo, Norway) and a PhD-fellow at Noragric, NMBU (Ås, Norway). She has conducted a number of studies in conflict and post-conflict settings on displacement, gender-based violence, children and youth, and ex-combatants, including in Colombia, Liberia and Uganda. The focus of her PhD is on displacement economies in Nakivale, Uganda, and on the Liberian side of the Liberian-Ivorian borderlands. In this context she contributed to the edited volume Displacement Economies in Africa – Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativities (2014).