Paper short abstract:

Initiatives that merge development with humanitarianism, emphasize local integration as a means to stem migration. However, these approaches are flawed because the temporality of developmental approaches to refugee management are disjunctive with refugees conceptualizations of time and progress.

Paper long abstract:

As walls are thrown up to keep migrants from the Global South out of wealthy countries a corollary migration management paradigm has emerged in large refugee hosting states, which merges development with humanitarianism. Efforts to simultaneously promote "local integration" as the most promising durable solution for refugees and prevent secondary migration were introduced through initiatives such as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), which emerged out of the 2016 Global Refugee Summit and the subsequent Global Compact on Refugees. In Ethiopia, these initiatives seek to curtail secondary migration by opening opportunities for refugees to locally integrate through development initiatives. Through ethnographic research in refugee camps in Northern Ethiopia, we explore the early role out of these new policy paradigms. Our findings show that the temporality of developmental approaches to refugee management which supplement, and at times supplant, humanitarian projects are disjunctive with refugees conceptualizations of time and progress in several ways. First this policy orientation is fundamentally spatial in its orientation while refugees are fundamentally temporal in theirs; these policy goals are to encourage refugees to stay in Ethiopia while refugees seek a safe and stable life where they can work to improve their circumstances. Second, these policies ostensibly encourage refugees to stay, but are framed by the concept of hospitality toward refugees which is inherently a temporary condition. Third, temporalities of development are teleological in their orientation towards progress, but structural barriers prevent refugees from achieving progress, leading to stasis, frustration, despair and a desire to get unstuck.