Local Integration: A Durable Solution in need of Restoration?

Abstract

Abstract Local integration has long been seen as the “forgotten” durable solution to refugee displacement1 evidenced by the reluctance of governments across the world to accord refugees a new citizenship. This article goes further. It argues that local integration as a durable solution has not been merely forgotten, but deliberately avoided at a national, regional and international level. As a result, its veracity as a realistic durable solution for the majority of refugees is now in question. The article examines ways in which states seek to evade local integration. It begins by investigating the multiple tactics used by wealthier governments to elude responsibility both at a national level and through the influence they exert over global refugee responses. It then explores how countries hosting the greatest numbers of refugees, with a specific focus on Africa, have allowed significant numbers of refugees into their territory but have then maintained a short-term approach that has, in practice, blocked local integration as a durable solution. We argue that a mix of global, national, and local processes and forces have effectively conspired to diminish local integration as a durable solution to the point that it has all but vanished from the political arena. The implications for refugee populations of these processes and forces – talked of collectively as the politics of evasion – are profound. While refugees continue to find ways to negotiate their own access to communities and labour markets, this is often done against national, regional, and international policies rather than with them. Ultimately, by highlighting its value as a durable solution, while showing that there is almost uniform acceptance by states and international organisations working on protection concerns that it is no longer politically viable, this article hopes to restart an urgent conversation about the value of local integration and how it can be reinvigorated.