Paper short abstract:

J. and J. Comaroff argued that in African contexts lack of access to the possibility of social becoming is synonymous with “social death”. Based on an ethnography among Congolese refugees in Kampala, this paper interrogates the category of “silent death” and the repertories of the future it contains

Paper long abstract:

Largely fleeing the conflicts in the Kivu region, over 220.000 Congolese now live in Uganda as refugees, with an increasing number of "urban refugees". Although the flows have never ceased and continue in waves, many of them have been in the host country for ten years or more. This prolonged permanence in what in the original aspirations of many refugees was to be a “transit” country (towards resettlements or awaiting repatriation) is producing a phenomenon that is increasingly being described withing the Congolese refugees community in Kampala as “silent death” (mort silencieuse): a growing inability to build perspectives for the future linked to an incomplete or impossible integration in the Ugandan contexts and associated with an experience of gradual deterioration of health, social and physical body. The legal-institutional condition in which they find themselves, defined as “protracted refuge”, in fact suspends access to fundamental freedoms and rights in a structural way, while jamming the mechanisms of social reproduction, mobility and affirmation. This determines a gradual loss of aspirations and well-being, and produces what, following the concept proposed by Sarah Whyte (2010), we could define “ill-being”. Based on the idea expressed by John and Jean Comaroff (2001) according to which in many African contexts the lack of access to the possibility of social becoming and well-being is synonymous with “social death” this paper aims to interrogate the vernacular category of “silent death” and the repertories of the future it contains.