Abstract

VALDIVIA RAMIREZ, Olimpia Montserrat. Space and Identity in Refugee Camps: Experience of the Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars Band. Migr. Inter [online]. 2013, vol.7, n.2, pp.127-155. ISSN 2594-0279.

This article analyzes the experience of the Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars band as refugees in the Kalia and Sembakounya camps, in Guinea, Africa, after the civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991-2001. Refugee camps are perceived as precarious spaces, whose inhabitants are passive entities that merely wait for and survive on international humanitarian aid. The experience of the Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars is used to show a different perspective, in which camps are dynamic spaces that involve processes of identity formation, while refugees are involved in the transformation and reconstitution of space, reshaping its contours and creating a sense of reality around them through narratives that legitimize their current circumstances.

Keywords : forced migration; refugee camps; identity; violence; Sierra Leone.

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