Dawn Chatty - Deterritorialized Youth

General Editor: Roger Zetter, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

Volume 1

A Tamil Asylum Diaspora: Sri Lankan Migration, Settlement and Politics in Switzerland

Christopher McDowell

Volume 2

Understanding Impoverishment: The Consequences of Development-induced Displacement

Edited by Christopher McDowell

Volume 3

Losing Place: Refugee Populations and Rural Transformations in East Africa

Johnathan B. Bascom

Volume 4

The End of the Refugee Cycle? Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction

Edited by Richard Black and Khalid Koser

Volume 5

Engendering Forced Migration: Theory and Practice

Edited by Doreen Indra

Volume 6

Refugee Policy in Sudan, 19671984

Ahmed Karadawi

Volume 7

Psychosocial Wellness of Refugees: Issues in Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Edited by Frederick L. Ahearn, Jr.

Volume 8

Fear in Bongoland: Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania

Marc Sommers

Volume 9

Whatever Happened to Asylum in Britain? A Tale of Two Walls:

Louise Pirouet

Volume 10

Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development

Edited by Dawn Chatty and Marcus Colchester

Volume 11

Tibetans in Nepal: The Dynamics of International Assistance among a Community in Exile

Anne Frechette

Volume 12

Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey

Edited by Rene Hirschon

Volume 13

Refugees and the Transformation of Societies: Agency, Policies, Ethics and Politics

Edited by Philomena Essed, Georg Frerks and Joke Schrijvers

Volume 14

Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement

Edited by Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry

Volume 15

Religion and Nation: Iranian Local and Transnational Networks in Britain

Kathryn Spellman

Volume 16

Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East

Dawn Chatty and Gillian Lewando Hundt

Volume 17

Rights in Exile: Janus-faced Humanitarianism

Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond

Volume 18

Development-induced Displacement: Problems, Policies and People

Edited by Chris de Wet

Volume 19

Transnational Nomads: How Somalis Cope with Refugee Life in the Dadaab Camps of Kenya

Cindy Horst

Volume 20

New Regionalism and Asylum Seekers: Challenges Ahead

Edited by Susan Kneebone and Felicity Rawlings-Sanei

Volume 21

(Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis

Nicola Migliorino

Volume 22

Brothers or Others? Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt

Anita Fbos

Volume 23

Iron in the Soul: Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus

Peter Loizos

Volume 24

Not Born a Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices

Edited by Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed, Nazilla Khanlou and Helene Moussa

Volume 25

Years of Conflict: Adolescence, Political Violence and Displacement

Edited by Jason Hart

Volume 26

Remaking Home: Reconstructing Life, Place and Identity in Rome and Amsterdam

Maja Korac

Volume 27

Materialising Exile: Material Culture and Embodied Experience among the Karenni Refugees in Thailand

Sandra Dudley

Volume 28

The Early Morning Phone Call: Somali Refugees' Remittances

Anna Lindley

Volume 29

Deterritorialized Youth: Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East

Edited by Dawn Chatty

SAHRAWI AND AFGHAN REFUGEES AT THE MARGINS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Edited by
Dawn Chatty

Published in 2010 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

2010, 2012 Dawn Chatty
First paperback edition published in 2012

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deterritorialized youth : Sahrawi and Afghan refugees at the margins of the Middle East / edited by Dawn Chatty.

p. cm. -- (Studies in forced migration ; v. 29)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84545-653-5 (hbk.)-- ISBN 978-0-85745-806-3 (pbk.)

1. Refugee children--Afghanistan--Relocation. 2. Sahrawi (African people)--Relocation. 3. Refugee children--Middle East--Social conditions. I. Chatty, Dawn.

HV640.5.A28 D47 2010

362.870835'0956--dc22

2010006546

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

ISBN: 978-0-85745-806-3 (paperback) ISBN: 978-0-85745-822-3 (ebook)

Dawn Chatty

Studies of refugee youth in the Middle East have largely focused on Palestinians, while the situation of Afghan and Sahrawi refugee youth at the margins of the Middle East has attracted little attention. The resilience of Palestinian youth has come to be a contemporary theme in numerous academic and practitioner studies (Barber 2001, 2008; Chatty and Hundt 2001, 2005; Hart 2007). Their right of return to their original homeland continues to be hotly debated and discussed internationally. However, Israel, the government occupying their historic homeland, does not allow them back. Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth, unlike their Palestinian contemporaries, are encouraged to return both by international agencies and the powers occupying their traditional homelands. Some Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth do return, but largely they remain in transnational exile. For Afghan refugees the reasons for not returning are numerous. In the early years they revolved around a fear that education might not be sustainable especially for their daughters and sisters once they return to Afghanistan. This position has now largely reversed itself with some Afghan refugees returning to Afghanistan because educational opportunities in Iran have been curtailed. For Sahrawi youth, education is seen as an important individual and national tool to prepare themselves for reintegration into their temporary nation state in the refugee camps established by the United Nations near the border town of Tindouf in south-western Algeria.