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Abstract
Questions over durable solutions in the social, political and security terrain of southern Sudan and northern Uganda invite recognition that simple delineations between “home” and “exile” are inadequate for an understanding of displacement and refugee status. Contrary to existing policies that assume an unproblematic repatriation of Sudanese refugees from their protracted exile in Uganda to a “post conflict” Sudan, the emerging reality is that multiple strategies of survival, self-protection and development are being employed. This paper explores the variety and ingenuity with which refugees address challenges to livelihoods, identities and security with a portfolio of responses which render the notion of a straightforward cross-border movement “home” largely notional. Drawing on long-term research in a number of Sudanese refugee settlements in northern Uganda since the mid-1990s, this article emphasizes the need to recognize that durable solutions should not be constructed as single and fixed in contexts where individuals and groups may continue to migrate so as to meet their family's collective needs. It also invites recognition of the extent and ways in which re-crossing international borders has particular meaning for refugees given their specific legal status, as well as the additional relevance and significance of physical, social and symbolic boundaries in such a context.
Notes
1. CitationVan Hear, “From Durable Solutions to Transnational Relations.”
2. CitationKaiser, “Experience and Consequences of Insecurity.”
3. CitationGovernment of Uganda, The Refugees Act; CitationHovil, “Self-settled Refugees in Uganda.”
4. CitationKaiser, “We Are All Stranded Here Together.”
5. CitationUNHCR, “Number of Sudanese Repatriated from Uganda this Year.”
6. CitationInternational Crisis Group, Northern Uganda Peace Process.
7. CitationSchomerus, Perilous Border.
8. See for example CitationKaiser, “Social and Ritual Activity in and out of Place”; CitationKaiser, “Between a Camp and a Hard Place.”
9. This work was carried out under the auspices of the AHRC's Diaspora Migration and Identities programme and with support from the British Academy. I would like to thank the AHRC, the British Academy and SOAS for supporting this research, as well as the many refugees who have welcomed me to Kiryandongo, and representatives of the Government of Uganda, the UNCST and UNHCR who also participated in the research.
10. Interviews with UNHCR and GoU personnel carried out in Kampala and Masindi, March–April 2008.
11. CitationKibreab, “Revisiting the Debate”; CitationKibreab, “Citizenship Rights”; CitationMalkki, “National Geographic”; CitationTurton, “The Meaning of Place.”
12. CitationGupta and Ferguson, “Beyond Culture.”
13. CitationChimni, “From Resettlement to Involuntary Repatriation”; CitationJacobsen, “The Forgotten Solution.”
14. Van Hear, “From Durable Solutions to Transnational Relations.”
15. CitationAnderson and O'Dowd, “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality,” 594.
16. CitationAnderson and O'Dowd, “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality,” 594.
17. CitationMigdal, “Mental Maps and Virtual Checkpoints.”
18. CitationHyndman, Managing Displacement.
19. CitationWilson and Donnan, Border Identities, 5.
20. Migdal, “Mental Maps and Virtual Checkpoints.”
21. CitationGoodhand, “War, Peace and the Places in Between,” 225.
22. CitationGoodhand, “War, Peace and the Places in Between,” 228.
23. As Kibreab has commented, refugees may accurately be represented as likely “risk takers” in the sense that they have lost much and learned to gamble to achieve what security they can in the post flight context (personal communication 2009).
24. CitationBakewell, “Repatriation and Self-settled Refugees in Zambia”; CitationBlack and Koser, The End of the Refugee Cycle?; CitationHammond, This Place Will Become Home; CitationLong and Oxfeld, Coming Home?
25. CitationLubkemann, Culture in Chaos; CitationMonsutti, Afghan Transnational Networks.
26. CitationMonsutti, “Afghan Migratory Strategies.”
27. CitationPantuliano et al., “The Long Road Home”; CitationSchomerus, Violent Legacies.
28. Names of all refugees interviewed for and discussed in this research have been changed to protect their confidentiality. In some cases, non-essential details of individuals’ stories have also been changed to make them less recognizable.
29. Monsutti, “Afghan Migratory Strategies.”
30. Personal communication by email with a Sudanese male, September 2008