Abstract This study examined the evolution of host community attitudes towards refugees in the first 4 years of a new rural resettlement location. We used threat, contact, and attribution theories to obtain a dynamic picture of responses to refugee settlement. Six telephone surveys with host community adults (N = 1,132) gathered cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Attitudes towards refugees became increasingly positive, perceived threats declined, intergroup contact initially grew and then decreased (during the pandemic), and the host community became more positive regarding the refugee intake numbers. Neighbours were perceived as more likely to help one another, and multicultural neighbourhoods were perceived as getting along increasingly well, although with a drop from 2020 to 2021. Interestingly, contact outcomes were attributed to refugees rather than self or circumstances. National survey data confirmed the changes did not reflect broader trends. These results demonstrate that even in less diverse rural areas, positive intergroup dynamics can develop, challenging stereotypes of closed-mindedness and resistance to newcomers.
Abstract Even in the midst of war and displacement, love persists. Yet, these lived realities remain mostly absent from refugee studies and from the vast body of literature on mass internal displacement and encampment in northern Uganda specifically. In this article, I document different narratives of romance, intimacy, love, and compassion in the context of Ugandan IDP camps and situate those accounts alongside a recognition of the harms caused by a decade of mass forced displacement, including their profound disruption of social-moral-intimate orders. Drawing on ethnographic insights, the article offers two key observations and arguments: I show that relations of love can be remarkably resilient, resistant, and adaptive, even in the face of adversity and despite divergences between lived realities and idealized notions. I also demonstrate how love and intimacy in the midst of violence can facilitate hope, perspective, and survival for displaced people, attesting to the power of love.
Abstract The notion of duty-bearers in forced displacement research is often confined to states. Yet, the responsibilities of humanitarian organizations in the governance of durable solutions for internally displaced persons remain scant in academic scholarship. This study goes beyond a formal and legalistic understanding of duty-bearers’ responsibilities and explores affected communities’ perspectives in the displacement context in the Tigray region, Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic interviews and focus group discussions conducted in Tigray and Addis Ababa in 2024 and 2025 and grounded in an actor-oriented approach, the study argues for moving from the top-down imposition of norms to value the affected community’s agency in shaping duty-bearer norms from below. This is in opposition to commonly held notions that duty-bearer norms are merely a top-down imposition by formal state-sanctioned rules and instead advances a multiple duty-bearer framework, with empirical evidence from the ground where accountability of duty-bearers is claimed and contested.
Abstract This article examines how emotional labour shapes the everyday implementation of forced migration governance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Cameroon, it explores how refugee aid providers’ emotional responses—including frustration, empathy, and ethical discomfort—inform situated forms of judgement in their daily work. Building on the emotional turn in the social sciences, emotions are conceptualized as epistemic dispositions through which actors interpret institutional tensions and, in some cases, act upon them. The analysis identifies three pathways through which emotional labour contributes to reconfiguring refugee assistance from within: pragmatic adaptations that soften bureaucratic rigidity; improvised forms of inclusion and relational alliances that challenge categorical boundaries; and structural engagements that support alignment with state institutions. These findings show how emotional labour makes visible institutional contradictions and informs practical adjustments, while remaining shaped by organizational constraints and unequal power relations, offering a more situated and embodied understanding of refugee governance in practice.
Australia's migration policies have resulted in many forced migrants navigating the 'permanent temporary'. After spending considerable time in detention, they have been given temporary visas-which are not necessarily 'temporary'-that affect their ability to resettle and feel at home in Australia. This paper explores how digital technologies and social media mediate and shape the permanent temporary for Sri Lankan refugees in Australia. Drawing on interviews and a digital scrolling method, the research revealed that the permanent temporary encompassed two critical aspects: precarity and waiting. Sri Lankan refugees relied on digital technologies to share emotions and stories, pass the time, and advocate for permanence. Their digital practices also responded to the temporal constraints imposed by the state. The paper extends understandings of the politics and meanings of home for those living in an extended state of impermanence and highlights how digital tools can shape and ameliorate such experiences.
Abstract Scholarship on forced migration regularly contends with the politicization of its subject. In 2026, scholars again confront heightened political anxiety around migration and refugees, begging a reconsideration of the ethical stakes and impacts of research in an expanded and transformed academic field. In 2003, Jacobsen and Landau published their seminal article on ethics in forced migration research, arguing that there is a “dual imperative” to conduct research that is both rigorous and policy relevant. This dialogue article considers how the “dual imperative” has evolved over the past two decades. Rather than reaffirming the dual imperative, the dialogue suggests a critical shift, from asking how researchers can better engage policymakers to questioning whether, when, and at what cost policy engagement should occur. In doing so, the article reframes policy impact as a contested and negotiated process and calls for greater reflexivity about the politics that refugee research serves.
This article discusses how Ukrainian women search for meaning to cope with the state of liminality caused by forced migration after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While meaning-making has been widely examined in psychology, less is known about how forced migrants seek meaning in relation to their lived experiences. This study examines how Ukrainian women seek meaning in situations of forced migration ('situational meaning') and incorporate these experiences into their lives in ways aligned with experiential, creative, and attitudinal values ('global meaning'). Drawing on qualitative case studies based on 20 in-depth interviews, we identify three different scenarios of meaning-making, which constitute the article's contribution: (1) restoring previous meaning, (2) activating latent or postponed ones, and (3) discovering new forms of meaning. We show that these mechanisms of meaning-making are not merely individual strategies but are shaped by social relations and structural conditions in the new socio-political context.
Surface-level descriptions of humanitarian responses to protracted displacement often obfuscate displaced people's agency and conceal the role and significance of the 'host community'. We suggest that responses are situated in socially and geographically embedded relational ontologies and ethics of care while recognizing that a need for protection, and exhibiting resilience, are not mutually exclusive. This article posits an alternative conceptual framing device to think through economic relations and practices generated by displacement: 'displacement-affectedness'-for populations, localities, and communities. We illustrate this via research in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Pakistan (a locality-based survey of n = 14,024 and qualitative interviews, n approximate to 300). Our research confirms that displacement and refugee economies are more than how those affected by displacement relate to market structures, access to humanitarian assistance and financial services; they also encompass economies of care and responsibility, practices and networks of solidarity and mutual aid, that is, moral economies.
Syrian refugee women in T & uuml;rkiye face overlapping and prolonged adversities shaped by war-related displacement, structural inequality, and the 2023 earthquake. This study examined the levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms, psychological resilience, and perceived social support among 190 Syrian refugee women living in Hatay using validated Arabic versions of the CD-RISC-25 and PCL-5 scales. The results indicated that 75.8 per cent of the participants exceeded the clinical threshold for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Women living in modular container housing and those experiencing economic hardship exhibited lower resilience scores and higher PTSD symptoms than others. Younger age, lower educational attainment, and marital status also showed patterned associations with mental health outcomes. These findings highlight how structural and socio-environmental conditions, rather than trauma exposure alone, shape psychological vulnerability among displaced women. This study underscores the need for gender-responsive post-disaster psychosocial services and integrated support systems that address both individual symptoms and the structural determinants of health in disaster-prone refugee settings.
This study examines why displaced persons return to post-genocide Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina despite material hardship and insecurity. Drawing on interviews with returnees and non-returnees, the analysis challenges "sedentary" policy frameworks that view return as the restoration of pre-war life. Findings reveal a fundamental bifurcation: returnees are driven by a spiritual imperative to reclaim "hot ground"-sites of trauma and sacred obligation-while non-returnees prioritize the "cool ground" of material security. Yet non-returnees maintain active connections through annual cemetery visits, property stewardship, and postponed plans for return. This indicates that "home" is reconstructed through a dynamic negotiation of temporal obligations-a retrospective duty to honor ancestral legacy and a prospective duty to ensure the material viability of the living. Consequently, policy must move beyond rigid demographic metrics to support "symbolic sustainability"-validating diverse strategies displaced persons employ to maintain enduring political and spiritual connections to the homeland.
As one of the largest hosts of refugees in Africa and globally, Uganda has been studied from a variety of perspectives. However, one major research gap is the domestic political role of refugees in Uganda-how are refugees considered in domestic narratives, and to what political gain? We show that two dominant, politically influential positive narratives focus on the benefits of community development and shared Pan-African identity. These narratives are especially impactful at the local level, where economic gains from supporting refugees often translate into political capital. Negative narratives do exist, but focus more on perceived deprivations for Ugandans, not on blaming refugees. Political elites only give limited attention to concerns like security, land, and environmental degradation, as positive narratives on refugee protection offer greater political capital. The paper draws on a variety of data, including parliamentary debates and newspapers sources in addition to interviews and focus group discussions.
This article argues that India's post-independence engagement with international refugee governance was shaped less by outright resistance and more by a repertoire of selective accommodations. Drawing on Indian bureaucratic archives, it shows how the state sidestepped legal frameworks by recasting refugee issues as 'technical' and within the purview of domestic limits. International involvement was refracted through this lens: acceptable when channelled as 'technical interventions', unwelcome when it implied legal oversight. The article conceptualizes this 'technicality' as a layered mode of governance: procedural, developmental, and diplomatic, through which the state absorbed global norms while avoiding juridical commitments. This logic of 'technical' assistance emerged from an intricate terrain of Partition-era exclusions, Cold War alignments, regional geopolitical tensions, and domestic planning imperatives. Rather than reject global governance outright, India redirected it, forcing international actors like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to recalibrate their methods. The article places India's approach within a longer history of how humanitarianism travelled as a language of rule, showing how refugee governance in the postcolonial world was negotiated and detached from rights-based norms.
This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the association between war-induced migration and fertility behaviors through an analysis of women fleeing into T & uuml;rkiye from Syria, including residents in the destination country, using theoretical frameworks of disruption and adaptation hypotheses. The 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey-T & uuml;rkiye and Syrian sample data are used within the framework of a life course approach. Discrete-time logistic regression models are used, wherein Syrian refugee women are covered first before the T & uuml;rkiye sample is added to the modeling. The findings indicate no disruptive effects of migration on fertility outcomes of women among forced migrants compared to non-migrants in a specific year, indicated by a statistically insignificant association between migration and fertility among Syrian refugee women. Finally, no adaptation of fertility of Syrian refugee women to the native population in T & uuml;rkiye is observed.
Jonathan, a refugee who has become a renowned TV personality in South Korea, is a noteworthy figure in challenging Koreans' negative perception of refugees and the meaning of 'successful' integration. This paper argues that Jonathan is an example of practicing multicultural social justice in the so-called culturally and racially homogeneous Korean society. To do so, the paper first problematizes the 'successful' integration of refugees through assimilation by looking into South Korea's experience with multiculturalism. It then contextualizes its discussion with Nancy Fraser's social justice that demands balancing distributive justice with recognition of difference. The paper also examines South Korea's multicultural integration policies to reconsider the 'successful' integration in relation to the politics of recognition. Lastly, focusing on Jonathan's adaptation strategy, the paper analyzes how he represents a new refugee figure who recognizes his distinct identity and actively engages with Korean society by negotiating the demands of assimilation.
This article examines how Ukrainian refugees experience wartime home visits. Relying on in-depth, repeated interviews with Ukrainian refugees in Germany, the article explores a state of in-betweenness that characterizes these individuals' lives shortly after arrival, particularly by disrupting their sense of belonging and capacity to imagine the future. During short-term home visits to Ukraine, the visitors acquire a feel for life in war that is associated with complex feelings of alienation, disillusionment, and futurelessness. This experience helps individuals overcome subjective states of the in-between and move forward in life, irrespective of the persistent structural limbo related to temporary protection. Considering migrant home visits as transformative events advances recent debates about liminality and protracted displacement. It also has important implications for longer-term processes of social inclusion.
