Somalia’s break-up in the early 1990s led to some 120 000 Somalis living in three refugee camps around the remote north-eastern Kenyan town of Dadaab. Many survive the harsh conditions due to money they receive from relatives across the globe. The strength of these remittance networks, and refugees’ traditional strategies for dealing with instability, suggests the need to rethink stereotypes of refugees as passive or keen to return to a single home locality.

Research from the University of Amsterdam examines Somali transnational networks. It questions the assumption – widespread in the academic world and within relief-providing organisations – that refugee crises are caused by external events disrupting previously stable social and political lives.

For many Somalis – whether in exile or in Somalia – insecurity constitutes life’s only certainty. Prior to the civil war Somalis overcame ecological, economic and political constraints thanks to livelihood strategies dependent on a strong sense of responsibility within social networks, a high degree of mobility and a strategic dispersal of family members and resources.

Dadaab offers little security. There are no prospects for refugees to engage in agricultural production or to be allowed to permanently settle elsewhere in Kenya. Northeast Kenya has poor infrastructure and is chronically insecure due to sporadic clashes between Kenyan Somali clans and frequent attacks by wandering bandits. Ongoing turmoil makes repatriation to Somalia an unlikely prospect. The preferred option of resettlement in the West is only available to a handful of refugees.

It is believed that the number of Somalis abroad has grown tenfold since 1990. Key characteristics of the Somali diaspora are:

• uncertainty about the number of Somalis abroad as so many lead clandestine lives – in the UK estimates of the number of Somalis are between 20 000 and 100 000.
• only 10% live in developed countries: the overwhelming majority live in neighbouring countries
• for many stuck in these intermediate countries life revolves around visiting embassies, obtaining papers, trying to obtain sponsorship and waiting for interviews.
• the integral role played by Somali-run transnational companies.

The main companies engaged in transferring money between Somali families across the world have invested heavily in telephones, mobile radio systems, computer networks and satellite telecommunication facilities. The amounts that the Somalis are efficient at sending round the world without use of the formal banking system are astonishingly large and frequent. While only 10 or 15% of refugees in Dadaab receive money from North America and Europe via the money transfer system, these funds (typically $100-200 a month) enable the survival of a much larger part of the camp population.

Images and contacts made possible by modern telecommunications fuel the obsessive desire of many Dadaab residents to migrate to the West. This helps them to survive the wait and escape despair but also puts them at risk of losing contact with reality.

The experiences of Somali migrants and refugees highlight the need to bridge the academic divide between refugee studies and migration studies. The policy-oriented work of refugee studies remains largely reactive with little interest in exploring conceptual or theoretical questions or understanding individual migration strategies. It is time that refugee analysts and practitioners improved their knowledge of how communities retain a sense of identity and mutual responsibility even across continents and generations of migration.

Source(s):
‘Transnational nomads: how Somalis cope with refugee life in the Dadaab camps of Kenya’ by Cindy Horst, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam
‘Xawilaad: the importance of overseas connections in the livelihoods of Somali refugees in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya’ WPTC-02-14, Amersterdam Rseaerch Institute of Global Issues and development Studies AGRIS – InDRA Full document.
Horst, C. (2001). Vital links in social security: Somali refugees in the Dadaab camps, Kenya. Geneva, UNHCR, EPAU. New issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 38 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 24 March 2004

Further Information:
University of Amsterdam
AGIDS – InDRA
Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130
1018 VZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Tel: 31-20-5255825
Fax: 31-24-3234716
Contact the contributor: C.Horst@inter.NL.net

Contact the contributor: C.M.A.Horst@uva.nl

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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'Staying put: time to join refugee self-sufficiency with local integration?'

'Locking away potential: What host countries lose when they keep refugees in camps'

'Water, livelihoods and resettlement of displaced people: lessons from Eritrea'

Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

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