AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	35. Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Development in the African Great Lakes Region
Paper ID	200
Author(s)	Vorrath, Judith
Paper	View paper (PDF)
Abstract	Over the last decades the security situation in the African Great Lakes has been characterized by high levels of violence and refugee flows, turning the region into a “bad neighborhood” according to Weiner’s definition. An increasing interest in regional dynamics and external factors in internal wars such as the militarization of refugee flows and diaspora nationalism led to extensive research on the relation between conflict and refugees. Though this causal link is in no way peculiar to the Great Lakes, there are few other regions where it is more evident. However, while refugees have been established as a relevant social category in the analysis of causes and dynamics of war in the Great Lakes, there is hardly any systematic reference to returning refugees as actors in post-war periods. The main reason is that returning refugees are a kind of “re-internalized” factor. However, looking at the development of a different identity among refugees in the course of absence, at newly established networks of trust and political organizations in exile and at the often difficult socio-economic conditions that returnees face it seems hardly plausible that return is the end of the refugee cycle. While many authors stress the potential dangers of refugee return waves for political stability during transition, the mechanisms behind such an effect have hardly been explored. The PhD project this paper will be based on focuses on returnee mobilization in post-conflict periods as a possible explanatory link of refugee return and stability. Do returnees show different patterns of political mobilization compared to "stayees", and if yes, how and why does this distinct mobilization take place? In answering these questions, the study will concentrate on conflict-related refugees that fled to neighbour-countries within the Great Lakes region. The underlying assumption is that a kind of “civic differentiation” took place over the time of exile which remains politically relevant after return in a post-war transition that most likely is characterized by an intensified struggle over (state) resources. The project wants to take a fresh look at mobilization patterns under the conditions of state (re)building, going beyond the usual focus on ethnic identity politics. The importance of the latter factor is not neglected, but it will be argued that more attention should be drawn to differences and divisions within ethnic groups. The overall study will be based on two phases of field research in Burundi, the DR Congo and most likely Rwanda during 2007 and 2008. Ahead of these phases, this paper will present the research design and an analysis of the political mobilization of refugees in exile as well as first evidence for distinct mobilization patterns after return from the relevant literature on the Great Lakes.

Return in Transition: The Political Mobilization of Former Refugees in the African Great Lakes Region