Forced Migration and Displacement in Yemen and the Horn of Africa in the Twenty-First Century

FAIN: FT-291727-23

Nathalie Mae Peutz
NYUAD (Abu Dhabi 00000 United Arab Emirates)

Writing and revisions toward a book analyzing the experiences of refugees and migrants in the Red Sea region.

Based on ethnographic research in a Yemeni refugee camp in Djibouti between 2016-2022, this project follows migratory movements in a geopolitically-strategic region where refugees from Yemen’s ongoing war interact daily with Ethiopian migrants heading to Yemen. Recounting the refugees’ migration experiences and the everyday encounters between refugees racialized as Arab and migrants racialized as African, the book unsettles categorical distinctions made between “refugees” and “migrants” and theoretical distinctions drawn between states of abandonment and captivity. It examines the ramifications of the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees in an era of gated nations and shrinking humanitarian spaces. And it shows how individuals in the camp navigate these constraints and classifications in order to shape their futures. In doing so, it explains why refugees in the Global South may experience the application of the Compact as yet another impasse: a new and more pernicious form of encampment.