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State Sovereignty vs. Refugees’ Resilience: Repatriation, Securitization, and Transnationalism in Dadaab

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Refugees and Forced Migration in the Horn and Eastern Africa

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Abstract

Focusing on state-civic dynamics in refugee repatriation schemes, this contribution aims to go beyond the conventional understanding of refugees as victims. It proposes a dialectical process of interconnected state actions, humanitarian concerns, and refugee responses. Employing Simmel’s form and content analysis to better understand and explain the dynamics of transnational formations, the study empirically highlights refugee responses to Dadaab policy discourses by Kenyan authorities. Apart from the analysis of documents from Kenyan authorities, the UN, and NGOs, the work builds on a fieldwork method among 25 refugees both in Kenya and in Somalia as well as interviews with transnational community members in Denmark.

The study finds that though formally occupying different roles, states and humanitarian organizations collaborate in the implementation of refugee state policies letting the displaced to seek civic—mainly transnational and communal—alternatives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unfortunately just few months in his political life, he was killed by militias within the Somali army in Mogadishu. Somalia attack: Minister Abas Abdullahi Sheikh killed in Mogadishu (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39799961)—Accessed in 16-07-2018.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Abdulkadir Osman Farah

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  1. Abdulkadir Osman Farah
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Correspondence to Abdulkadir Osman Farah .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt

  2. Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya

    Leah Kimathi

  3. Department of Political Science, School of Development and Strategic Studies, Maseno University, Maseno, Kenya

    Michael Omondi Owiso

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Farah, A.O. (2019). State Sovereignty vs. Refugees’ Resilience: Repatriation, Securitization, and Transnationalism in Dadaab. In: Schmidt, J.D., Kimathi, L., Owiso, M.O. (eds) Refugees and Forced Migration in the Horn and Eastern Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03721-5_14

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