Already in America: Transnational Homemaking among Liberian Refugees

Abstract


 
 
 This article explores how refugees at the Buduburam Liberian refugee settlement in Ghana constructed and imagined home in and through a place they have never been to—“America.” Drawing on ethnographic examples of homemaking at Buduburam, this article develops the concept of entanglement to show how preferences for and access to the three durable solutions of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees were influenced by centuries of transnational homemaking embedded in the histories of the transatlantic slave trade and colonization of Liberia. Refugees preferred and practised resettlement not as a final destination, but as an active form of transnationalism. The reconfiguration of homemaking through the lens of entanglement demonstrates the importance of developing migratory policies and practices that are attentive to historic and future forms of inequality. 
 
 

Migration Status, Class, Race and Home

“…However, Gil Everaert (2021) argues that even as residents of such centres enact home-making practices, they do so as a way of 'inhabiting the meanwhile', that is, of building temporary homes without letting go of their future plans for a more permanent home elsewhere. Some scholars have looked at how precarious housing is intersected with materiality, how objects of significance are used for personalisation and how small-scale acts attempt to give new meanings to spaces of non-home (Boer, 2015;Neumark, 2013;Trapp, 2015). Motasim and Heynen (2011) show that IDPs in Sudan design their own space, establishing it as a mode of resistance against the forceful urban environment of Khartoum (the capital city) which is different to the lands they have had to flee from.…”

Beauty and Beautification in Refugees’ Lives and Their Implications for Refugee Policy

“…Even in temporary dwellings, refugees' cosmetic acts of beautification began in the first few days after their arrival and continued throughout their stay. These acts eventually became larger home improvements and transformations: roofs became gardens; porches became covered entryways for guests; sterile shelters became personalized homes (El Masri, 2020;Steigemann & Misselwitz, 2020;Trapp, 2015;van Liempt & Miellet, 2021;Wagemann, 2017;Zibar et al, 2022). The examples demonstrate purposeful decisions and actions to the material world that were meaning-filled and delight-producing.…”

“…For refugees, homemaking entails a losing and remaking in each of these different dimensions (Hammond, 2004;Korac, 2009;Pérez Murcia, 2020). Beyond the personal level, homemaking can be political (Beeckmans et al, 2022;Benson, 2022;Brun & Lund, 2008;Katz, 2022) and, for migrants specifically, transnational (Beeckmans et al, 2022, p. 15;Koptyaeva, 2017;Trapp, 2015;Walsh, 2006). Increasingly, "home" is more practice than place, more verb than noun (Boccagni, 2022b;Hammond, 2004;Pérez Murcia, 2020;S.…”

“Never had the hand”: Distribution and inequality in the diverse economy of a refugee camp

“…Of the households I surveyed, 73% (ninety‐nine) had received remittances at least once, while 37% (fifty) received remittances regularly (every month or every other month). Elsewhere, I have argued that transnational remittances, and the relationships behind them, became an informal mechanism of aid, displacing the responsibility, power, and hierarchies of humanitarian aid onto the social relationships of refugees (Trapp , ). While the ability to press (and receive) claims to remittances could afford a certain degree of comfort, it could also become a liability.…”