Sustainability and Social Justice

Mobilizing Home for Long-Term Displacement: A Critical Reflection on the Durable Solutions

Document Type

Article

Abstract

With long term displacement becoming the 'new normal', the three 'durable solutions' of local integration, resettlement, and return are increasingly unsuitable for offering social, economic and cultural means for refugees to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. This article retreads some common observations and critiques of the durable solutions, while attempting to find a new vocabulary to help address the conundrum of a refugee protection model that tries to integrate rights and needs. There have been other attempts to revise the durable solutions, introduce new solutions - often acknowledging refugee mobility, or revert to informality as an alternative. However, such attempts have not sufficiently taken into account the extent of what refugees do. The consequences are an 'integration lite' where people may be able to survive, but their refugee status is not ended, nor is their refugee predicament closer to being addressed. The article suggests a new framework - constellations of home - that can be a significant bridging tool for the gap between rights and needs and that incorporates the static and ahistorical notion of the durable solutions as well as the mobile strategies of refugees in long-term displacement.

Publication Title

Journal of Human Rights Practice

Publication Date

7-1-2017

Volume

9

Issue

2

First Page

177

Last Page

183

ISSN

1757-9619

DOI

10.1093/jhuman/hux021

Keywords

displacement, durable solutions, refugees, UNHCR

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