The Politics of Return: Understanding Trajectories of Displacement and the Complex Dynamics of ‘Return’ in Central and East Africa

Abstract

By 2019, a record high of 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations (UNHCR 2020a: 2). In the decade leading up to this only a fraction of this number were able to ‘return’ or find a ‘durable solution’. Multiple waves of displacement are common, and ‘return’ often involves far more complicated arrangements than the term suggests. Yet if ‘return’, as a one-directional durable solution is increasingly rare, the need to understand it in difficult and dynamic contexts of precarity and multi-directional mobility, is all the more urgent. This introductory essay reflects on what studies of return can tell us about the ‘life cycle’ of conflict and displacement dynamics in war-affected Central and East Africa, with particular focus on Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda. ‘Return’ and the ‘returnee’ category is broad and includes former combatants, especially those involved in non-state armed groups. We survey the historical and conceptual background of ‘return’ and its growing prominence in international policy before introducing four areas in which the articles in this special issue contribute to our understanding of internally displaced person, refugee and combatant return dynamics: conceptualizations of home and mobilities; everyday negotiation of belonging; the relationship between return and ‘cycles of violence’; and finally, the ways in which return shapes and re-shapes governance and public authority across settings.

Arrival or Return? Temporality and Materiality of Transit Sites in Overlapping Displacement Context in Border Cities of the Lake Chad Basin Region

“…African cities are characterized by informality. In the post-conflict context, displaced persons are more likely to be hyper-invisible because the minimum standards for the displaced persons seem to compete and overlap with the urban margins in Africa (Macdonald & Porter, 2021). This can play a role in the ways the displaced and disempowered transit from the pre-condition of conflicts and how humanitarian actions interact with the dynamics of urbanization processes.…”

“…In the recent studies on waiting, stuckness and confinement in Africa, hope, patience and aspiration have been explored from an analytical lens through which the strategy of displaced persons can be understood ( Macdonald & Porter, 2021;Stasik et al, 2020). Particularly, three fault lines have been in the studies as a frame of analysis with respect to how people develop strategies to navigate urban confinement and temporalities: these include continuity, exclusion/inclusion and hope/abjection (Jefferson et al, 2019a).…”

“…Due to the linkages of informality and urbanization processes, the minimum standards for the displaced persons compete and overlap with the urban margins in Mubi (Macdonald & Porter, 2021;Sanyal, 2014a). The challenges of getting to the poor at the urban margins are described by physical distance (that is, remoteness of the location), social distances (poor access to public services and opportunities) and infrastructure deficiency (Von Braun & Gatzweiler, 2014).…”

“…African cities are not an exception to protracted conflicts (Jansen, 2016;Macdonald & Porter, 2021;L. Pech & Lakes, 2017).…”

“…Despite the shift in humanitarian crisis to border cities in the LCB region, to the best of my knowledge, arrival or return practices among refugee and IDP returnees are yet to receive scholarly attention. Attempts to study protracted conflicts in Africa have been made on temporalities of confinement, stuckness and imposed waiting, and how displaced persons exercise political actions as a strategy to navigate everyday life during the waiting period (Jefferson et al, 2019b;Macdonald & Porter, 2021;Stasik et al, 2020). Central to these previous studies is the view that stuckness does not amount to passivity, and forced mobility creates both opportunities and challenges, depending on how the condition of stuckness is lived, contested and reproduced in everyday life (Jefferson et al, 2019a(Jefferson et al, , 2019b.…”