Paper short abstract:

Resettlement is, ostensibly, a process of inclusion through refugees are provided with 'refuge.' Yet the assumptions of resettlement as an automatic 'solution' to displacement overlook the ways in which a sense of being displaced endures beyond static temporal frameworks.

Paper long abstract:

Resettlement is designated by the UNHCR as a 'durable solution' to refugee displacement— but the term 'solution' implies that the experience of displacement is linear, temporary, and automatically resolved upon migrating to a third country of 'refuge.' Whilst flows of 'normal' time are suspended and subverted in spaces where refugees are spatially excluded in camps and settlements, I consider in this paper how the temporal contingencies of displacement are similarly contested in spaces of, and processes that ostensibly support, inclusion, such as resettlement. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with African refugees resettled in Australia, I describe in this paper how resettlement is experienced as a contested temporal space. Mediating memories of past trauma, and often remaining connected with relations who remain in exile, I show how the affective feeling of being displaced endures for refugees in contexts of resettlement. However, when in resettlement, these refugees are shepherded through time-limited support systems which assume that the at-times immobilising insecurities of displacement are neatly resolved upon migration to Australia. These refugees live a contested sense of temporality, in which they are concurrently corralled into migrant support systems that assume a linear trajectory of settlement, but still often feel as if they live in a state of displacement. I argue in this paper that the 'refuge' which is implied through processes of resettlement does not take into account the temporal contingencies through which displacement is lived and experienced by refugees themselves.