Paper short abstract:

Drawing from examples of Saharawi refugeehood, this paper will expose essentialism of the situation of prolonged forced displacement. I will also discuss Sahrawis' mobility strategies which both oppose and fit in their essentialist representations and legal, as well as the administrative framework.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last forty years, a Sahrawi migration culture - aspiration, desire and tendency of mostly young people to emigrate or start a circular migration - has developed (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2011). Nonetheless, the increase of migration barriers set by law and institutional practice significantly affects their mobility (Belloso 2016). These legal and institutional practices are based on forms of essentialist thinking, dividing spatial mobility into voluntary migration and forced displacement. A prolonged refugeehood of Sahrawis is a good example to analyze how the idea of "the refugee" has been reconstructed in the last decades.

In the second part of my paper, I will describe the strategies which Sahrawis developed to cope with the situation of prolonged forced migration and the image of "the refuge" and "the refugeehood". Sahrawi migration toward Spain, representing a spectrum of migrants' strategies (e.g. naturalization in Spain, the status of stateless person, refugee status, employment visas) shows how a legal figure of refugee and the refugeehood as an important part of national identity are (not) recognized.