Why do refugees in Africa's Great Lakes Region refuse to repatriate? This thesis offers a detailed examination of this question through a comparative study of Rwandan and Congolese refugee communities across three countries: Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The policies of international agencies and local governments are assessed against the lived experiences, responses, and perceptions of refugees through first-hand research, undertaken in eighteen sites across the region during extensive fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2013. The pervasiveness and intensity of reactions amongst refugees against repatriation is forceful and striking. Conversely, it is aggressively promoted and implemented by international actors, home, and host states. The thesis examines the interactions that occur as refugees seek to remain 'in exile', whilst international actors and regional states seek to coerce them to repatriate, and investigates the mechanisms that underpin this stalemate. The principal chapters of this thesis address the themes of (i) acculturation, de facto integration, and de jure segregation; (ii) conceptualisations of rights secured through refugee status; (iii) information concerning homelands and its diffusion in exile; and (iv) experiences of return. It is shown that refugee communities are adept at articulating past and present grievances, and are critically aware of their human rights in the context of their exile. The international protection of exile is perceived as a pseudo-citizenship that secures more rights than those accorded citizens in their states of origin. These communities maintain a wealth of information concerning their homelands, the diffusion of this knowledge being determined by connections between sites of exile, shaping it into accepted and collective communal narratives. This collective consciousness of status selectively reinforces refugees' resolve against repatriation. When repatriation is forced or frustrated, its experience is integrated into communal narratives of persecution, generating further grievance and reifying resistance to return.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:714059 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Stys, Patrycja |
| Contributors | Anderson, David |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a2ed0880-9a67-4ea8-940f-0e179742098e |
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