Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses integration policies, geopolitics of hosting, and practices of home-making in protracted refugee situations on the everyday level in Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania from a descriptive bottom-up perspective.

Paper long abstract:

The paper argues that the full economic, political and social integration aspired by the international refugee regime remains largely different from the de facto national policies and also from the actual everyday practice. Instead of asking how the refugees adapt or alter the global refugee regime, the paper proposes to reverse the gaze and observe how the regime is translated into local integration policies on the one hand and into everyday home-making practices on the other hand. A bottom-up perspective reveals high levels of agency of refugees and displaced communities. But it also indicates that regional sociocultural contexts, national powerplays, and international politics remain decisive factors. The results point at various interdependent layers of de facto home-making and options for partial integration – and thereby a potential fourth durable solution. The research draws from long-term and multi-sited socio-anthropological field research conducted between 2015 and 2022.