Seeking security in a translocal arena: IDPs in Eastern DR Congo

Abstract

Scholarship on translocal migration dynamics focuses predominantly on transnationality of both refugees and other migrants. More recently, scholars have argued for a ‘translocal turn’; expanding a focus on in-country movements. Others call for an ‘immobility turn’ and the need to pay attention to people who are—either voluntary or involuntary—immobile. This paper looks into ways in which the ‘translocal arena’ is shaped by both conflict and insecurity actors but also by Congo’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) themselves and how IDPs navigate this arena to seek human security. Drawing on empirical research, the paper takes a comparative perspective to analyse daily mobility and immobility, and back and forth movements in rural-to-urban as well as rural-to-rural and rural-to-camp displacement settings. It zooms in on actors and factors that facilitate or hinder translocality and mobility of IDPs. In the spatio-temporal fragmented security landscape of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), translocality but also options to craft new connections in displacement are highly fragmented and to a large extent determined by security considerations. The ones who control the security landscape are dominant actors in the translocal arena which IDPs navigate to find security.