Transnationale Migration - eine dauerhafte Perspektive? Saharauische Flüchtlinge zwischen agency und vulnerability

Abstract

Recently, scholars have advocated transnationalism as a viable and durable solution to displacement, stating that transnational mobility and networks have become an important means of sustaining refugees and, thus, increasing their agency. Drawing on the case of the Saharawi refugee camps, one of the most protracted refugee situations worldwide, this paper takes a critical approach to these assumptions. First, it shows that while transnational migration may strengthen refugees' agency it is also accompanied by new vulnerabilities. Second, it is argued that favouring transnational migration as a "durable" solution risks normalising the status quo of the Saharawi's protracted displacement, instead of engaging with solutions for the Western Sahara conflict itself; that is, ending the Moroccan occupation and decolonising Western Sahara.