Interview with Dr Chris Dolan (Director, Refugee Law Project, Uganda)

Question 1: The “Forced Migration and Refugee Studies: Networking and Knowledge Transfer” project aims at, among other things, internationalising FMR studies in Germany and contributing to the further development of international research networks. How relevant is it that Forced Migration and Refugee Studies are being internationalised – and what is it relevant for?

Dolan: While the number of forced migrants globally continues to increase exponentially, the reasons underpinning these journeys of fear, desperation and hope, are constantly evolving. After World War II the direction of flight was largely politically determined, and this is reflected in the legal frameworks that were established at that time. In the post-Cold War world this really began to shift, with a corresponding change of emphasis from providing asylum to a concern with containment, a concern associated with increasingly ugly efforts to prevent asylum seekers from even reaching Europe’s shores.

For the European Union—and for Germany as a dominant member—forced migration from multiple directions has become a source of contestation domestically. As an easy issue for right-wing nationalists to project their voices onto, forced migration has thus become something of an Achilles heel for the Union. Globally, and with climate change beginning to bite harder, new directions and scales of forced migration are likely to be seen, and the current concern with ‘otherness’ may come to be seen as a historical concern rather than a current priority. Californians may move further north in response to ever longer fire seasons; Dutch may move into Germany to escape rising sea levels, and so forth. Germany, being a major economic and political powerhouse that is central to European politics in particular, but also on the global stage, thus cannot afford to lag behind in researching, thinking through, teaching and making evidence-based policy that can tackle not just forced migration but also the socio-economic, political and climatic issues that such migration is symptomatic of.

Question 2: In Germany, FMR studies is only beginning to establish itself as a research field. The same is true in most European countries, with the notable exception of the UK. You live and work in Uganda, one of the most eminent refugee-hosting countries in Africa, and indeed worldwide. What is the situation of forced migration and refugee studies in Uganda—and in Africa more general?

Uganda’s university sector has grown hugely in recent decades, and the domestic study of forced migration and refugee studies is undoubtedly emerging, though the potential and appetite for further growth is huge. Across the continent as a whole, there are a number of centres focused on FMR studies, as for example Wits University in South Africa, Moi and Kenyatta Universities in Kenya, the Refugee Law Project and Uganda Martyrs University in Uganda, American University in Egypt and the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

The relative lack of such centres is partly because FMR matters are largely viewed through a humanitarian lens that tends to focus on very immediate challenges but not the underlying causes and dynamics – and related disciplinary frameworks. In Uganda, although the country is rich in people with their own very personal experiences of forced migration, Ugandan researchers with formal expertise in FMR studies are few in number, and refugees who have benefited from training on a range of approaches to the study of FMR are even fewer. This itself is partly a reflection of fears in the global north that if too many students are taken from the global south, they may seek to remain as eternal students rather than returning to their countries of origin.

As is the case for many former colonies, Uganda thus tends to be favoured as a site for field research and case studies that, while enabled by ‘local partners’, are instigated, conducted, led and owned by universities based in the global north. It is the unfortunate reality that, rather than having or building a strong FMR research base in the country under study, such projects are more likely to deploy Ugandans and refugees with research capacity as research assistants than as Principal Investigators or Co-Investigators. The highly uncomfortable and political story of the ‘native informant’ is thus far from over.

Question 3: Do you have advice for European researchers who want to cooperate with African partners on the study of forced migration and refugees? What are crucial aspects they should pay attention to?

Dolan: There is a tendency to reduce our thinking about ‘research’ to a discussion of particular data collection and analysis techniques. Yet in reality, the study of Forced Migration and Refugees cannot be extricated from the complex dynamics and contexts that generate and host such movements, and the ability to make informed and appropriate methodological choices requires an understanding of them.

The study of forced migration and refugees is thus undoubtedly enriched when people who have their own experience of forced migration engage actively in ‘co-creating’ the research agenda and all stages of implementation. Equally, the development of critical research capacity with so-called ‘sending’ countries, can itself be an ethical contribution to lessening north-south imbalances, the push into forced migration of south-based members, and any unwarranted sense of entitlement on the part of north-based members.

The strongest research partnerships, therefore, will be those in which European and African researchers work side by side wherever possible. Such teams will jointly strategise about the most effective deployment of their members’ respective technical, social, cultural and political skills and contributions for any given research project, including joint strategising around the dissemination of findings.

Project proposals for such partnerships should very consciously build in opportunities for processes that enhance the academic and research CVs of all participants. At a minimum, for example, African team members would join colleagues for fieldwork to better understand the realities confronting forced migrants who have made it to Europe.

Question 4: Should the focus of internationalising FMR studies in Germany be on the global phenomenon of forced displacement from a German vantage point, the phenomenon of forced migration in Germany from a global vantage point, or both?

Dolan: The welcome given by Germany and Germans to more than a million Syrian refugees has no precedent in Europe in recent decades. How it plays out, from the most micro-level study of individual experiences of integration and/or exclusion, to the international-level implications for the country’s domestic politics and its place in the European Union, is of pertinence to the world at large. At the same time, the development within Germany of the study of forced migration globally should not take second place. It is only through a thorough understanding of these global flows that Germany can truly position itself within this ever-evolving global landscape—for whether people actually cross international borders or not, the causes and impacts of their forced migrations are no respecters of national sovereignty.

Dr. Chris Dolan has spent most of his working life in sub-Saharan Africa working on questions of forced migration, conflict and gender. His research work with Mozambican refugees in South Africa contributed to the establishment of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University in Johannesburg in the mid-1990s. His extensive fieldwork with internally displaced persons in the LRA-Government of Uganda war in Northern Uganda in the late 1990s led to his PhD from the London School of Economics, and his first book, “Social Torture”. He has taught refugee studies in Oxford and other universities. In 2006, he returned to Uganda and since then, as Director of the Refugee Law Project in the School of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, he has built it up into a leading regional Centre for Justice & Forced Migrants. This has included establishing numerous research partnerships with universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, USA and Canada. He is also a Visiting Professor at Ulster University in Northern Ireland.

The interview was conducted by Jörn Grävingholt.