I was recently awarded the prestigious Graduate School of Social and Political Science (SSPS) Scholarship in 2022, to commence my PhD program at the Centre of African Studies, University of  Edinburgh. My PhD project is interested in understanding the idea of the impermanence to marginality or precarity, and lack thereof, and how the possibility of refugees’ refusal to stick to the expectations of subordination and exclusion that guide and guard the privileges of the hosts domination, results to a power struggle. Multiple accounts show struggles for power, recognition and resources pitch the displaced against the host community. How do ‘residual’ refugees navigate and possibly thrive against the otherwise established privileges of their hosts, thereby defying convention? Vast majority of refugees whose status have been terminated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees still find themselves in a situation of protracted exile. Even though termination of refugee status exposes residuals to vulnerability, not much of the extant literature explores life after, or post camp. 

This research seeks to contribute to the debates on the post-refugee status life by examining the socalled ‘residual’ Liberian refugees outside closed camps in Oru, Southwestern Nigeria, and Buduburam refugee settlement, Central Region of Ghana. After the war ended in 2003 and their UNHCR refugee status was terminated in 2012, many Liberians were exposed to vagaries of having to self-settle in the host community without international protection and legal status. This project highlights the politics of power and time, and contributes to an understanding of the longer-term effects of conflict in Africa and how the transformative agency outside camps and after refugee status termination intersect with everyday resistance, resilience and influence in host communities. 

Read here what I wrote about the impact of COVID-19 on residual refugees outside closed camps that was published in the Coronavirus and Mobility Forum of the University of Oxford's Centre of Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), United Kingdom.