Refugees’ Political Participation and State-(Re)Making in Displacement

ongoing

In today’s world, the majority of refugees originate from states plagued by civil war and extreme violence, where the legitimacy of the state as guarantor of protection is unsettled. Furthermore, refugees often find themselves subjected to various forms of violence at the hands of state actors in host states – regardless of whether they seek refuge in authoritarian or democratic ones. Yet, little is known about how refugees perceive and engage with the state throughout their displacement journeys, and how these perceptions shape their roles as political actors: How do they experience and perceive the state, and in the context of state-inflicted violence in particular, before, during and after displacement? How do these perceptions and experiences affect their political participation? Centring refugees’ political agency, the RESTATE project aims to: (1) provide a dynamic understanding of refugees’ experiences and interactions with the state along their displacement journeys; (2) discern which forms of state violence, both within refugees’ origin and host states, erode trust in state institutions and potentially incite political resistance; (3) theorise the conditions of refugees’ political participation throughout their displacement trajectories; and (4) theorise the implications of refugees’ political participation in both origin and host states for processes of ‘state-making’ – attempts to fulfil key government functions such as protection, justice, the provision of basic services and mobility control. Employing a novel comparative mixed-methods and multi-sited approach, the project studies displacement from three civil-war states (Afghanistan, South Sudan and Syria) in four major host states (Iran, Turkey, Uganda, and Germany) for innovative theory-building on refugees’ political agency in state-(re)making. The empirical knowledge gained will critically inform possible avenues for peacebuilding, conflict resolution and political inclusion.