Lifeworlds in Crisis

Making Refugees in the Chad-Sudan Borderlands is an engaging book that addresses the gap in the literature on refugee precarity in the Chad-Sudan borderlands.The book pursues an intersectional approach to examine crises and gendered forms of migration and unpack the complex web of cross-border activities and the multifaceted experiences of refugees in the Chad-Sudan borderlands.Andrea Behrends engages with critical questions about borderland migration regimes and civil society responses to crises and precarious livelihoods.She provides a compelling account of the contexts and conditions of lifeworlds in crisis that illustrates how crises profoundly reshape refugees' social and spatial worlds.Behrends discusses the nuanced strategies that households and communities in the borderlands employ to navigate everyday situations of severe crisis and uncertainty.Also, she examines the interventions of international, military, and non-governmental organizations that have reshaped the social landscapes of the borderlands.She assesses livelihoods before, during, and after the Darfur war and discusses how communities struggled to sustain their livelihoods when social and institutional arrangements were disrupted.The book is divided into three parts.Part I, organized around the themes of displacement and emplacement, provides an exposition of how the war had shaken many lives, with some families losing almost everything and recovering very little.Behrends highlights the resilience of the communities who reacted to violence, displacement, and everyday insecurity in the borderlands following the outbreak of war.Drawing on ethnographic data collected from participants in the study, Behrends expounds on the increased mobility brought about by the 2003 Darfur war, its negative impact on the established modes of subsistence in the borderlands, and the different responses of various communities.Part II focuses on the refugee camps and the everyday realities of people living in and around the camps in the borderlands.It discusses the tensions and dynamics in the borderlands, which had become an arena that embodied the struggles of displaced refugees engaged in precarious work.Behrends examines the socio

Development economics · Economics · Geography · Political science · Refugee · Refugee crisis · Sociology · African Studies and Geopolitics · Gender Studies · Law