Urban Congolese Refugees’ Social Capital and Community Resilience During a Period of Political Violence in Kenya: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Community resilience has been used as a conceptual framework to promote urban refugee protection, integration, and well-being. In the context of this focus on “refugee communities,” it is critical to gain a deeper understanding of the ways urban refugee “communities” function. This study explored urban Congolese refugees’ use of social capital to promote resilience during a period of political violence in Nairobi, Kenya. Findings illustrate how refugees used social capital across different contexts to access and distribute resilience-promoting resources. Women primarily relied on informal bonding forms of capital while men exhibited greater degrees of access to formal bridging and linking networks. I argue for a conceptual shift from “community resilience” to “resilience within networked communities” in order to develop a more nuanced understanding pertaining to how urban-displaced refugees interact with various social networks to survive and thrive.

Keywords:

• Urban refugees
• community resilience
• social capital
• gender
• Africa
• Kenya
• Democratic Republic of the Congo

Acknowledgments

I am thankful for the support, feedback, and encouragement of my dissertation committee members during all stages of this study: Drs. Burris Duncan, Mark Nichter, Ivy Pike, and Nicolette Teufel-Shone. Many thanks to Dr. Ufuk Coşkun and Keri Miller for early reviews and discussions of this manuscript and to Dr. Rebekah Coşkun for continued engagement with this project. I am also grateful for Desmond and his ongoing support and encouragement. The revised manuscript benefited from the constructive feedback of two anonymous reviewers. This fieldwork would not have been possible if not for the help of Mohamed, Anne, Patrick, and Rinado and the generosity of Congolese participants.

Additional information

Funding

This dissertation fieldwork was supported by the Boren Fellowship.