“This place is not magnificent”: trajectories and narratives of Congolese refugees at the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda

Abstract

From past, present, and future, from politics to biopolitics, from migration(s)s to immobility, the trajectories and narratives of the Congolese refugees interviewed at the Nakivale refugee settlement are processing through the highly complex and ambiguous structures inherent of the international and national systems managing forced migration. From Congo to Uganda, the multi-faceted socio-political and economical situation having shaped the Great Lakes region for more than fifty years have been narrowed, in the vicinity of the settlement, almost exclusively to the humanitarian discourse. By an interdisciplinary framework, this thesis aims at questioning the specific rhetoric encountered in the settlement and understands its influences on the condition of being a refugee at Nakivale.