In public discourse, displaced people are often portrayed as burdens to their host communities that add additional pressure to already scarce resources. Recently, scholars and practitioners are... Show moreIn public discourse, displaced people are often portrayed as burdens to their host communities that add additional pressure to already scarce resources. Recently, scholars and practitioners are paying more attention to the resilience or self-reliance of refugees. Our article takes yet another step by arguing that rather than being dependent or merely self-reliant, displaced people may in fact enrich local economies by introducing products from their communities of origin into the host markets. Based on qualitative research with internally displaced persons in an urban setting in the east of Congo, we show that, through entrepreneurship and innovation, displaced people actually add value to the local economy and carve out their own niche, thanks to their access to resources in their community of origin. This contributes to a more positive attitude among host communities towards displaced and is beneficial to their local integration, but is not a blueprint strategy that can be transferred to other settings. Show less
Conflict mobiles are individuals whose mobility—and lack of mobility—is informed by violence andconflict. Based on personal narratives of those who move across borders within and beyond the Central... Show moreConflict mobiles are individuals whose mobility—and lack of mobility—is informed by violence andconflict. Based on personal narratives of those who move across borders within and beyond the Central African region, this thesis is an ethnography of mobility. By taking mobility as its axiom and placing the lives of people on the move at its centre, the goal of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, it contests fixed (national) borders and defies static historical readings of Central Africa. On the other hand, it investigates how the multiple trajectories of individuals in Central African give form to the mobility paradigm. There are many avatars of the conflict mobile, the CAR (Central African Republic) refugee-students in Kinshasa (DR Congo), on whom the empirical part of this thesis is based, form only one. It is these students’ journeys, their life stories and means of fending for themselves, as well as their dreams and frustrations, that stand at the core of this thesis. By acknowledging the role of the people (including artists) with whom researchers produce knowledge, this thesis finally invites the reader to ‘un-border’ by looking at the field, and academia, through a mobile lens. Show less
