In 2020, working on Tufts University’s Finance in Displacement (FIND) project, the Ekko team worked with an exceptional team of researchers. Among them was Fardosa Salah, who is continuing her research career with the Refugee-Led Research Hub in Nairobi. Under the Refugee-Led Research Hub, Fardosa had the opportunity to lead her own research project, which has been recently published as a working paper here. We were excited to catch up with Fardosa this week about her work. We were inspired by what we might learn when we diversify in perspectives that set research questions. We left the conversation thinking about how her insights around on not-so-voluntary repatriation resonate today.
Your paper is about circular migration, looking at Somali refugees who accepted voluntary repatriation and later returned to Dadaab. How did you become interested in this topic?
Back in 2013 and 2014, there were a lot of attacks from Al Shabaab, and there was a lot of blame on refugees. There was so much hostility towards Somalis. I felt it in so many spaces. I remember there was a time I sat on a matatu and the lady near me just literally got up and sat somewhere else and was muttering something about Somalis under her breath. I knew it was even worse in the camps. The government was calling Dadaab a “hotbed” of terrorism. It led me to question what’s happening and what it meant for people.
When I got the fellowship at Oxford to do a research project, that was my opportunity. I thought maybe this can help to get the conversation started.
By the time I got the fellowship, it was 2020. The government of Kenya was pushing voluntary repatriation of Somalis. Somalis were actually the first ones who had prima facie refugee status. Somalis would just come, and they were granted refugee status without even going through the whole asylum process. So it was a big twist from prima facie to being taken back, though they were calling it voluntary repatriation.
Was it voluntary?
Yes, it was a choice. But, there were a lot of push factors from the government. The push factors were not like the government knocking at your door and telling you, you know, you need to live, go back, go back to Somalia. They had consent forms and there were spaces to go for information, where you are told, this is the situation in Somalia, this is what’s happening. And I think UNHCR had created that space for people.
But the push factors came from funding issues. People were not given rations; there was so little and people were trying to share with each other. Dadaab was also heavily securitized. There was a heavy threat, so many organizations even stepped back their operations in the camp.
And also the police brutality was intense. The police were actually beating people up. One respondent shared that her husband was beaten so badly that he couldn’t work for two weeks and he needed to seek medical assistance. The police harassment never happened like that before in the camp.
It was hard for people to adapt to this hostile environment where you’re getting harassed and there is no food.
Why did you decide to focus on those who came back to the camp, rather than just those who left?
A big issue was access. I was not in a position to go back to Somalia at the time and talk to people who went back and stayed. At the same time, there were a lot of people coming back, which I also thought was interesting. It showed that repatriation wasn’t a durable solution for everyone. And I had better access to those who came back and were in the camps.
What did you learn?
In terms of why people left, the incentive package was a big deal. They were given $200 and supported for six months. That was important to people. Others were really thinking they would find greener pastures, that they might be able to reunite with family and be able to work and save. Some had the idea that Somali had changed, that there were opportunities. For those who came back, that just wasn’t the reality.
You’ve uprooted your life, only to find that Somalia is not home anymore. And it’s not just logistics of making money and getting by. It’s also human identity issues. Someone who’s been in Kenya 30-plus years who is back in Somalia, they’re just not the same. They have a really hard time integrating. They don’t know where they belong. They can’t even speak the same dialect as the people around them.
People came back to Dadaab even though it was harder than before and it meant they might not be eligible for the same services. I think it shows that if people leave before it’s really possible to make a life back home, they will still find a way to come back. Repatriation then just doesn’t solve the problem.
What was it like doing your own research?
I can start with the challenges. Since I didn’t have a lot of experience in research myself, I didn’t know where to start. I had all of those questions! I didn’t know how to do good literature review. That took a lot of time and reading. And also, I didn’t want to replicate someone else’s work. Maybe you even have the same ideas as someone else who’s already written about something. I had to speak from a different angle. Finding my own voice was a bit difficult. Thank God I had a mentor, Pauline Vidal, for all of that. I could go back and forth with her and talk through my ideas to be guided in the process.
Writing was also another challenge, because this was my first paper ever. It took a lot of back and forth and editing and thinking about ideas and how to write about them for the audience you want to reach. Now that I’m doing my third or fourth project, it has become a bit easier.
What I really found amazing was that this is something that I wanted to do and I had the opportunity to write my own paper, have my voice, include my voice into the space.
And it’s something that I hugely cared about. I thought, you know, these are people’s lives at the end of the day. And yeah, I just wanted to write about that. And I didn’t know how. It just took a lot of steps to get there. But I kept going, because I wanted people to talk about this and care about this as much as I did and help stop whatever it is that was going on and the camp.