Paper short abstract:

Much research on property amongst refugees concentrates on dispossession. The context of forced migration can nevertheless be the setting for the creation of new forms of property. This paper explores how this is the case for Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara.

Paper long abstract:

The condition of being a refugee is often associated with dispossession. This paper explores how for Sahrawi refugees, whose exile in refugee camps in Algeria dates back to 1975, exile has been the setting not only of the dispossession of refugees' homes and livelihoods, but also of the appearance and creation of new forms of property.

These new forms of property range from refugee rations to new collective forms of property in the public domain of the refugees' state-in-exile. For example, camel herds have been created that are the collective property of state-in-exile entities such as a ministry or a residential administrative unit. More recently, though, new collective forms of property have emerged that are not owned by units of the state-in-exile. For example, some people are forming groups through ties of membership in a qabila ("tribe") and making collective investments such as in a truck for commerce between the camps and Mauritania.

This paper both identifies these new forms of property, and discusses a new challenge arising from the contact of new and old forms of privately and collectively owned forms of property. This challenge concerns the legitimate and illegitimate ways that a particular item can pass from one property sphere into another.

This paper is based on ethnographic research in the camps in 2007-2009, and in 2011.