Book launch: Refugees, Conflict and the Search for Belonging

about the book

This book is about the convergence of two problems: the ongoing realities of conflict and forced migration in Africa’s Great Lakes region, and the crisis of citizenship and belonging. By bringing them together, the intention is to see how, combined, they can help point the way towards possible solutions. Based on 1,115 interviews conducted over 6 years in the region, the book points to ways in which refugees challenge the parameters of citizenship and belonging as they carve out spaces for inclusion in the localities in which they live. Yet with a policy environment that often leads to marginalisation, the book highlights the need for policies that pull people into the centre rather than polarise and exclude; and that draw on, rather than negate, the creativity that refugees demonstrate in their quest to forge spaces of belonging.

about the speaker

Lucy Hovil is Senior Researcher at the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), advising on research methodology across a number of programmes and conducting research and writing focusing on citizenship, displacement and cycles of violence. Lucy also conducts outreach and networking with partner organisations in the UK and is the Managing Editor for the International Journal of Transitional Justice. She was formerly the Senior Research and Advocacy Officer at the Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, where she founded the organisation's research department and oversaw their working paper series. She obtained her PhD (1999) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in which she explored the relationship between violence and identity in South Africa during the period of conflict that preceded the country's first inclusive election in 1994.

Contact

For any enquiries about this event, please contact Susanna Power at vfp@qeh.ox.ac.uk.