Exile and Resettlement: Refugee Theory

Abstract

People within any community differ in their sense of identification with their surroundings and in the degree of intensity with which they share prevalent, majority beliefs.1 Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that within any refugee wave, individuals who constitute it are not equal in their social relationships; some feel more marginal than others toward the society which they leave behind. Because in the resettlement phase many of the refugees* problems could be traced back to their emotional links with and dependence on their past, the refugees' marginality within or identification with their former home country is important. Regardless of whether a refugee chooses to leave the country of birth by an anticipatory flight, or is carried into exile in an acute refugee situation, refugees in their social relationship to the population of the home country which they leave behind appear to fall into three identifica? tion categories. The first of these categories consists of those refugees who are firm in their conviction that their opposition to the events is shared by the majority of their compatriots. These refugees identify themselves enthu-