Panel: Force, Persecution, Violence and Multiple Mobilities – Questioning Linear Understandings in ‘Forced Migration’ Research

Abstract

Refugees’ journeys are normally framed as ‘movements out of violence’ (Bank et al. 2017) in the sense that people are forced to flee from persecution, conflict or violence in the ‘country of origin’. Such framing is also enshrined in international humanitarian law. In forced migration and refugee studies, debates about ‘labelling’ refugees helped to understand how the category of the refugee has been constructed by states and humanitarian actors (Zetter 2007). We would, however, argue that most of these re-constructions still centre around ‘linear displacement’ from a certain territory and fail to capture the multiplicity, multidirectionality and prior experiences of mobility of people who are being displaced. In addition, many do not adequately reflect how people actually experience acts of violence and conditions of conflict, and how variations in these experiences and capacities to respond translate into very diverse adaptation strategies to violence, of which ‘forced migration’ is only one. Moreover, it is often not explicitly acknowledged that encounters with force, persecution and violence are by no means limited to the ‘country of origin’ but often continue en route, at place of refuge, and in the context of onward and return mobility. In this panel, we want to question simplistic and linear understandings in ‘forced migration’ research. We invite contributions that offer conceptual reflections or nuanced empirical insights into the intricate interdependencies between force, persecution, violence and human (im)mobility, how they shape actual patterns and trajectories of displacement, and the traces this leaves in the lives of people experiencing them.

in-person event