during thirteen months of research in Ghana and Liberia between 2008 and 2009. During this period of fieldwork in West Africa, I conducted a total of some 400 interviews with refugee households and non-refugee stakeholders, including staff members of the UNHCR, government officials in charge of refugee issues and Ghanaian villagers living in the area of the camp.
In addition to a large volume of qualitative data, in the later stages of fieldwork I gathered a significant volume of quantitative data on sources of income and food, and on patterns of expenditure from sample households. As few previous studies of Liberians in Buduburam provide any convincing quantitative data on their economic status and living conditions, I considered it important to complement my qualitative data with numerical evidence.
After my departure from West Africa in late 2009, I maintained regular communication with my refugee interviewees. Especially after the announcement of the Cessation Clause for Liberian refugees, I conducted intensive follow-up interviews by telephone and Skype with residual households in Ghana between 2012 and 2013.
During data collection, I faced myriad ethical dilemmas. Provision of financial reward for interviewees was one of these challenges. Before beginning the fieldwork, I made a clear decision not to give financial compensation to any interviewees for their participation in the study, regardless of their living conditions. At a first interview, I articulated this rule to my interviewees and asked whether they were still comfortable about being interviewed by me. When I explained this no-financial-compensation rule to interviewees, several refugees asked me what benefit my research would bring to them if I was not financially compensating them. In response to such an inquiry, I explained that my research project would in the end aim to generate a better understanding of the present refugee population among external stakeholders, and would eventually contribute to better policies for forced migrants in the future.
As the research progressed, however, I began to feel less comfortable with this prepared explanation. Extended interaction and participation in the daily life of the community deepened my understanding of the imminent and daunting challenges faced by refugees on a day-to-day basis. Importantly, for some households in the poorest economic category, their main concern was how to cope with the day at hand and the next few days. What they needed was immediate access to some material assistance such as cash and food, not vague hints about potential benefits which might in the future be brought to them or others like them as a consequence of my research. This dilemma continued to afflict me throughout fieldwork. In fact, I breached this rule several times with some interviewees. I made charitable donations to some refugees when I saw the urgency of their situation, such as when their children were suffering from severe malaria or typhoid but they did not have money for medical treatment.
Another ethical dilemma I confronted was how to deal with people’s traumatic experiences during interviews. As I collected oral histories from refugees about their pre-flight life in Liberia, my questions had the potential to trigger some painful and negative memories and experiences. This moment often abruptly popped up during an interview; my interviewee’s facial expression would suddenly turn gloomy and the tone of their voice lowered. Whenever I realized that an informant was uncomfortable or in distress, I immediately told interviewees that they did not have to say anything if it was uncomfortable for them. I also knew that I was in no position and had no capacity to assist them with the possible consequences of remembering such traumatic events.
In some cases, however, they continued to speak with long periods of silence, and sometimes tears. For example, Daniel, a thirty-five-year-old male refugee, spoke to me for nearly three hours about his and his family’s traumatic experiences in Liberia; he was severely tortured by rebel soldiers, and his wife was raped by insurgents. He showed me his wounded knees because the rebel soldiers had hit his knees with their guns repeatedly. While he was talking, I listened to him without interruption. After listening to these bitter and graphic episodes, I was lost for words and remained speechless. At the end of his talk, he said: ‘Thank you for listening and for your time and patience … I haven’t shared this story for many years. You are the first person in Ghana who sacrificed such long hours with me’.6
Paying attention to these negative signs often enables researchers to discover the different layers of refugees’ experiences, which are not expressed in words. When ‘negative evidence’ (Ghorashi 2007: 126) such as a moment of silence or crying surfaced during an interview, I patiently tried to understand what was behind it. These unexpectedly long interviews consequently changed my daily interview schedule because it was so difficult for me to cut them short. At the same time, I felt a moral obligation to accept people’s negative experiences as part of my research. As a consequence, I stopped viewing the interviews I conducted as simply a source of data from which I could extract a specific piece of information that I needed for my research.
Outline of the Book
This book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 sets out the research context of the book. It begins by providing general information about Buduburam camp and the demographics of the camp population, as well as distinctive features of Buduburam life. It moves to a brief explanation of Liberia’s ethno-political landscape during the pre-civil war period, and the entrenched monopoly of economic and political power among Americo-Liberians – descendants of former liberated American slaves. This historical inequality is significant for understanding refugees’ current socio-economic conditions in exile. The chapter also summarizes the root causes which brought about the forced displacement of Liberian refugees to Ghana, and finally highlights the increasingly inhospitable environment in which Liberian refugees have found themselves in their prolonged exile.
Chapter 2 presents an overview of livelihood activities employed by the Liberian refugee population in Buduburam camp. As my research progressed, the idealized image of Buduburam as an exemplary economic model sustained by refugee businesses started to fall apart. The research revealed that a key livelihood resource for refugees in the camp was not their commercial activities; instead, refugees highlighted the significance of access to overseas remittances as a main determinant of economic well-being. The chapter elucidates how remittances have contributed to sustaining the Buduburam refugee economy by introducing the concept of ‘remittance clusters’ to illustrate systematically how remittances ‘trickle down’ to non-recipients of remittances. Crucially, however, not all refugees had access to these social networks, and about half of the camp residents lived hand-to-mouth, relying on various types of mutual or charitable support from other refugees. By illustrating livelihood strategies employed by different groups of refugees, the chapter demonstrates the diverse realities of refugees’ survival strategies and indicates the economic stratification behind the façade of a thriving economy.
With a wealth of quantitative evidence, Chapter 3 shows how refugees with different economic statuses made ends meet in the camp. Using an adaptation of the household economy approach, it presents a detailed analysis of the income sources, food consumption and patterns of expenditure of refugee households. The numerical data confirm that there is considerable economic inequality induced by access to remittances, and demonstrate which refugee households are managing and which are not, at what cost and under what conditions. The research also illustrates the ways in which refugees in the camp share and transfer resources to assist each other through various forms of relational networks. While the refugees’ informal support is often painted as a sign of communal resilience or solidarity, mutual assistance among the poverty-stricken refugees in Buduburam was better characterized as ‘shared destitution’ (Leliveld 1991). Throughout the chapter, the quantitative data is brought to life by compelling narrative accounts describing how a ‘decent life’ exists alongside the grinding poverty in Buduburam camp.
Given the significant economic divisions within the
