Zurückgekehrte Flüchtlinge und Lokalpolitik in Angola: Ein Forschungsbericht

Flight Trajectories and Changing Camp Perceptions: Divergent Evidence from Zambia and Angola

“…Apart from the field observation that Zambia's and UNHCR's reactions to the persisting UNITA structures in Nangweshi were more ambivalent than described here (Inhetveen 2009), it is noteworthy that such accounts of political acceptance as "o povo da UNITA" ("the people of UNITA"; P168_Zam) by Zambians is less explicit in the material collected in Nangweshi. This retrospective appreciation may partly stem from the experiences of returnees, and especially of UNITA affiliates, back in Angola, where they experience discrimination, distrust and exclusion, not only by neighbors, but especially by the MPLA-controlled administration (Inglês et al 2017).…”

“…Many refugees went back to Angola in the years that followed, also from the Zambian camps, including Meheba and Nangweshi. I thus initiated a follow-up project to investigate how returning refugees, and especially local leadership figures, (re-)integrated into local political orders, and if and how cultural elements that the agencies in the camps had set out to teach the refugees were transferred to the country of return (for a recapitulation of the project, see Inglês et al 2017). Fieldwork in this project was conducted by Christoph Kohl, for the most part together with local research assistant André Melo, himself a returnee who had also been a camp inhabitant and my local research assistant in Meheba in 2003.…”