Brun, Cahrine (2001) Reterritorializing the Relationship Between People and Place in Refugee Studies

Reterritorializing the Relationship between People and Place in Refugee StudiesAuthor(s): Cathrine BrunSource: Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 83, No. 1 (2001), pp. 15-25Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and GeographyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/491116 .Accessed: 14/06/2011 13:44

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RETERRITORIALIZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE AND PLACE IN

REFUGEE STUDIES

By Cathrine Brun

Brun, C., 2001: Reterritorilizing the Relationship between People and Place in Refugee Studies. Geogr. Ann., 83 B (1) 15-25.

ABSTRACT. The article discusses different conceptions of space and place in refugee studies, especially contributions from anthropology and geography. A main distinction is drawn between two understandings of space and place; an essentialist conception, stating a natural relationship between people and places and an alternative conception attempting to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places. The consequences of applying different conceptions of space and place for the development of refugee policies and representations of refugees and displaced persons are addressed. For many displaced persons, displacement is experienced as being physically present at one place, but at the same time having a feeling of belonging somewhere else. It is argued that though attempts to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places have been important for how the refugee experience is conceptualized, there has been too much focus on imagination accompanied by a neglect of the local perspective of migrants and displaced people. In the local perspective of forced migration, the present lives of displaced people are emphasized. Es- pecially the attitudes from the host communities, the policy environment that displaced people are part of, and their livelihood opportunities are the focus of regard. 'Territoriality' and 'reterritorialization' of the relationship between people and places are discussed as tools to analyse the local perspective of forced migration in general and the strategies of internally displaced persons and their hosts in Sri Lanka in particular.

Introduction

Becoming a refugee or a displaced person means that one, by some degree of force, has to move from one's place of residence to another place. Analyses of refugee experiences and broader issues of forced migration often include spatial perspectives. Also, refugee-policies and humanitarian agencies dealing with forced migration often use spatial meta- phors in discourses about displacement. The way space and place are conceptualized, applied and ex- pressed within the field of refugee studies and in policy work are important for how refugees are understood and represented. In this article, I question how space, and place in particular has been, and continues to be understood within the field of refugee studies.

Space has become a central dimension of social

theory and social sciences. In refugee studies, especially since the 1990s, this interest has resulted in debates concerning the relationship between people, place and identity (see Kibreab, 1999; Malkki, 1995, 1997; Stepputat, 1994, 1999). The first part of this article reviews refugee studies, especially the way space and place have been conceptualized in refugee studies. A main distinction will be drawn between two approaches to space. In the first approach space is conceptualized as stasis, as a flat, immobilized surface, and place is defined as a singular, fixed and unchanging location (Massey, 1994a, b). This may be understood as an essentialist conception of place, suggesting that all people have a natural place in the world, and therefore refugees have been regarded as being torn loose from their place and thus from their culture and identity. Contesting this view, an alternative understanding of space and place, separates identity from place to show that though refugees have to move from their places of origin, they do not lose their identity and ability to exercise power. This approach suggests that space is constructed from the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales. In this re- spect, place is a particular articulation of those relations, a particular moment in those networks of social relations and understandings (ibid.).

The de-territorialization of identity is important for changing the way refugees and displaced persons are conceptualized in research and policy work. However, some of these studies have had a tendency to neglect the way many refugees and displaced persons express the experience of displacement in essentialist ways, and more generally the local perspective of refugees and displaced persons. By the local perspective I mean the possibil- ities and constraints that come from being in a particular place, here exemplified by the attitudes of the host community, the policy environment in which the refugees find themselves and their livelihood opportunities. There are advocates for a

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need to reterritorialize the relationship between people and places, which implies looking at the changing status, power and meaning of "territory" and "place". The final part of this paper will discuss reterritorialization of the relationship between people and places as experienced and practised by displaced people in Sri Lanka.

Place is not always regarded as integrated with space, and it is common to discuss place without mentioning space and vice versa. However, in this article, space and place are regarded as closely connected. Space may be understood as a fundamental dimension of all social processes, as social spatiality. Spatial forms are integrated parts of social practices and social processes and such practices and processes are all situated in space (and time) and all inherently involve a spatial dimension. Thus there are no fundamental differences in theorizing about space and place; social spatiality is the foundation for both concepts (Simonsen, 1995, 1996).

Studies of forced migration, contributions of anthropology and the place of geography Refugee studies is an interdisciplinary, or a multi- disciplinary, academic field focusing on refugee processes. From early in the history of refugee studies, the field was defined as "a comprehensive, historical, interdisciplinary and comparative perspective which focuses on the consistencies and patterns in the refugee experience" (Stein and To- masi, 1981, p.5). A dominant discussion within the field focuses on the question of who can be defined as refugees, ie. who are the research subjects? Su- hrke (1993) distinguishes between a judicial and a sociological definition of refugees. The judicial definition is a narrower definition, based on the UN convention from 19511 and focusing only on those refugees who have been able to cross an internationally recognized border. A sociological definition can potentially be much broader and independ- ent of laws and conventions, but with emphasis on some degree of force in the causes of migration. There is a continuing debate about whether to include people in refugee-like situations and former refugees in the field of refugee studies (Van Hear, 1998). The increased realization that refugees and other migrants in refugee-like situations are part of a complex network of migrants who have migrated with different degrees of force and intention, is an argument for expanding the field.

To use the UN Convention as a delimitation of the field is to take socially constructed categories

for granted. The UN Convention was formulated to deal with one specific situation, the refugee crisis in Europe after the Second World War, and has today lost some of its value in dealing with the complex crisis of forced migration in the post Cold War period. For example, because of the no-entry regime in Western countries, there was an enormous growth of internally displaced persons (IDPs)2 during the 1990s, while the number of refugees de- clined in the same period. In order to analyse crit- ically the relevance of the categories constructed by policy-makers, there is a need to expand the field of refugee studies to involve other kinds of displacement. To study the complexity of migration and displacement also facilitates the generation of new theoretical understandings. Accordingly, studies of forced migration, should address the way different categories and concepts are understood and applied and how these conceptualizations influence the way refugees and displaced people are represented and dealt with as a policy issue.

Finding solutions to complex crises of forced migration requires the involvement of different academic disciplines. Here the attention will be given to the part of refugee studies concerned with the experiences and strategies of being refugees, i.e. those studies addressing the human consequences - personal, social, economic, cultural, and political - of forced migration (Ager, 1999). During the 1990s, many anthropologists in refugee studies started to show increased interest in the concepts of space and place. This may be seen in relation to a general increased interest in space and spatial relations in the social sciences. Several of the contributions from anthropology present valuable cri- tiques and contributions to studies of forced migration and conceptions of space and place.

Increased interest in space and place is part of a broader 'spatial turn' in social science, a turn which draws on human geography, where space is commonly regarded as 'the mother concept' (Haikli, 1994). However, though migration has long been an important topic of research within the discipline of geography, studies of refugees and forced migration have not had a strong position. Black (1991, 1993) and Robinson (1993) have reviewed areas of research in which geographers have contributed, and suggested potential future contributions to refugee studies. They maintain that geography as a discipline of synthesis, has the potential to explain complex causes of forced migration, involving economic development, environmental degradation as well as ethnic conflict. Also, the close contact be-

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RETERRITORIALIZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE AND PLACE IN REFUGEE STUDIES

tween geographers, planners and decision-makers makes geography well suited for addressing policy alternatives related to consequences of refugee movements. Both authors stress the spatial perspective, the analysis of spatial patterns generated by resettlement of refugees, and the tradition in geography to quantify, chart, and monitor patterns of refugee generation, refugee flows and refugee set- tlements. This perspective represents a narrow and positivist view of the geographical contribution concentrated on the 'spatial science paradigm'. In many ways however, it also presents how geography can contribute more actively to the field of refugee studies. Hence, Robinson (1993, p. 3) continues by stating that "geographers have a passion for place, as well as space, a concern which can throw much light on topics such as why some individuals become refugees whilst others do not, why some refugees eventually return whilst others do not, and why refugees 'choose' the resettlement destination which they do".

Geographers who have worked explicitly with forced migration have only to a limited extent the- orized the concepts of space and place. Geograph- ical studies of forced migration tend to be of a more regional geographical character, and also often fail to take into consideration and link different geographical scales (Hyndman, 1999). Today, however, more geographers can potentially contribute in this work through broader research on globalization, transnationalism, regionalization, and the movement of people (Massey, 1991; Watts, 1991; Smith, 1993; Agnew, 1994; Mitchell, 1997; Lie and Lund 1998). A dialogue between anthropologists and geographers in this field would allow further development of useful spatial conceptions, both for theoretical understandings of and policy work for refugees and refugee movements.

During the so-called cultural turn in geography and anthropology, geography has not, according to Marcus (2000), lost its sense of the social to the same extent as anthropology. In discussions on the meaning of space and place in refugee studies, a main aim should be to maintain a social dimension, and let the refugee experience inform our theoretical categories. The field is already debating ways that power works through the organization and conceptualization of space, place and movement (Step- putat, 1999). Understandings of power and the maintenance of the social aspects, or local perspectives, of displacement may enable further explorations of geographical concepts like territoriality and reterritorialization.

Conceptions of space and place in studies of forced migration Out of place - uprootedness and an essentialist conception of space The theoretical work on space and place in refugee studies has led to a critique of the dominant and taken for granted ways of understanding space and place as essentialist. An essentialist understanding expresses a natural relationship between people and places. Here culture has a place-focused understanding, where people are seen as being firmly settled in an home environment as opposed to a state of uprootedness and displacement. The tendency in the west to regard non-western people as closer to nature - as more rooted in places - has also contributed to this understanding (Hastrup and Olwig, 1997). When people and cultures are understood as localized and as belonging to particular places, places become fixed locations with a unique and unchanging character (Massey, 1994b).

The concept of places as fixed locations is often accompanied by an understanding of nation states as homogenous entities with homogenous cultures. The refugee status is closely connected to this idea, because the refugees who have been forced to flee their places of residence are suddenly out of the place where they originated from. How refugees have been represented and viewed is therefore often connected with an essentialist notion of place, because to become a refugee and be granted the status and rights of a refugee you have to cross an internationally recognised state border. When people have become refugees and "moved out" of a nation state, it creates a challenge to the "national order of things" (Malkki, 1995).

In academic studies on refugees the same tendency of viewing and presenting refugees can be found. During the inter-war period, and since the Second World War, the loss of national homelands represented by refugees was often defined by policy makers and scholars of the time as a 'politico- moral problem'. The physical separation between the refugees and their national homelands was understood as a loss of moral behaviour, and many refugees were thus no longer regarded as honest citizens (Malkki, 1997).

Moral breakdown may no longer be a relevant topic in studies of refugees and forced migration, but the premise that refugees represent a psycho- logical problem is still valid. Descriptions of the relationship between people and place as being rooted in a place are commonly used, and refugees are

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described as 'uprooted' (Sorensen, 1996). Moving from one place to another generates economic, legal, cultural, and social challenges and touches upon the very essence of existence. A commonly held view is that displacement constitutes a major psycho-pathological problem where roots are an existential part of identity. This is not exclusively a view in studies of forced migration, but also a central position in humanist geography. Tuan (1980, p. 6) states that; "It is a current and popular belief that people do not know who they really are unless they can trace their roots, and that a place is devoid of personality unless it exhibits time in the differing ages of its edifices".

In this more essentialist understanding of the relationship between people and place, to be territo- rially uprooted means to be torn loose from culture, to become powerless and to lose one's identity. These essentialist views have deep-reaching consequences for the way solutions to the refugee problem have been formulated. For example, to regard refugees as being "out of place", and uprooted, also means that their temporariness at the place of arrival is stronger. Refugees can, in this perspective, never belong to a territory where they are refugees, and therefore, the only solution would be either to end their refugee status by integration or relocation, or by repatriation, either forced or volun- tary. Viewing integration and relocation as a solution to the refugee problem is based on the belief and aim that refugees then will become natu- ralized inhabitants of a new nation state, and thus neglect their "old identity", and absorb the culture and habits of the new place. Repatriation has also been seen as a "natural solution" to displacement. A return to the place of origin, may in this sense, be regarded as unproblematic because people return to their native places, like putting people back into place (Allen and Turton, 1996; Hammond, 1999). However, this view represents a static view of the relationship between people, identity and places, and is difficult to accept because it cannot include an understanding of places as multicultural.

Another manifestation and consequence of the attitude of refugees as being out of place is 'the right to remain at home strategy'. The closing of borders in the Western world, has spurred greater interest in protecting and assisting displaced people within their countries of origin. If the prevailing attitude is that people have a natural place to live, the best way of helping them would be to help them at home. Therefore displaced people are encour- aged to stay within their nation states, and assist-

ance will ideally be provided to them there (Hynd- man, 1999). There are risks connected to the 'right to remain strategy' because people will be closer to the reasons for displacement (conflicts, environmental disasters, etc.). Also, it conceals the displacement problem, when the strategy implies that people become displaced within their own country.

Life is elsewhere: images of home

Observing that more and more of the world lives in a 'generalized condition of homeless- ness' - or that there is truly an intellectual need for a new 'sociology of displacement,' a new 'nomadology' - is not to deny the importance of place in the construction of identities. On the contrary, as I have attempted to show [...], deterritorialization and identity are inti- mately linked: 'Diasporas always leave a trail of collective memory about another place and time and create new maps of desire and of attachment' [...]. To plot only 'places of birth' and degree of nativeness is to blind oneself to the multiplicity of attachments that people form to places through living in, remember- ing, and imagining them. (Malkki 1997, pp. 71-72)

The critics of the essentialist understanding of space and place in refugee studies stress that people are more mobile than ever, that being a refugee is not a pathological state of being, and that understandings of nativeness are difficult to maintain (Allen and Turton, 1996; Malkki, 1997). Even though people have to flee, they are not torn loose from their culture, they do not lose their identity, and they do not become powerless. Refugees are not passive victims in an abnormal state of being, rather they are active agents who are able to develop strategies and thus still function socially.

These views represent a departure from the ideas of whole separate cultures, and towards an interest in questions of place and the way that culture is spa- tialized in societies increasingly characterized by deterritorialization (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997a). The question of how understandings of locality, community and region are formed and lived is central to this work. States of movement, of homeless- ness and displacement have resulted in a need for new ways of conceptualizing and understanding space and place, and to de-naturalise the link between people and places (Stepputat, 1999).

Appadurai (1991) focuses on the changing so-

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cial, territorial and cultural reproduction of group identity. He explores new understandings of the deterritorialized world that many people inhabit, and the meaning of locality as lived local experience in a globalized, deterritorialized world. In his understanding, deterritorialization is the loosening of the bonds between people, wealth, and territories. This leads to what he sees as a new power in social life; the imagination where more persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they did before. Here, fantasy becomes a social practice, and imagination becomes part of the construction of people's biographies which in turn become partly imagined lives "tied up with images, ideas and opportunities that come from elsewhere, often moved around by the vehicles of mass media" (p. 199). Appadurai identifies the need for new ways to represent the increasingly global and de- territorialised links between imagination and social life.

Works dealing with the increased globalization of social life have become extremely influential in the social sciences. However the romanticizing of displacement, exile and diaspora as generalized and often preferred conditions of modern life, is not always easily transferable to the plight of the mil- lions of refugees and displaced persons in the world today. The problems related to deterritorialization are therefore necessarily also problems relating to reterritorialization; the changing status, power and meaning of territories for the refugees and displaced persons (OTuathail, 1998). Reterritorializa- tion in Malkki's (1995) understanding means to lose one's territory, and then construct a new community within a new area, like a refugee camp. She is not emphasizing the present territory, but the image of a community as the decisive factor in the reterritorialization. Within refugee studies, many authors have gained inspiration from the work of Mal- kki (Sorensen, 1996; Turton, 1996). Her work is useful for understanding how the links between people and places can be de-essentialized. Howev- er, she is actually studying the social construction of a national past. In order to understand crises of displacement, it is not only the imagined place of the past that must be understood. The here and now should also be present when analysing situations of forced migration. Though many refugees and migrants feel that they live, or want to live, their lives elsewhere, they have a present life, where they need to survive, to make a livelihood, and thus through their actions construct the place where they are physically present.

A very good example of an attempt to reterritorialize understandings of space in relation to people on the move, is presented in a book edited by Olwig and Hastrup (1997) entitled Siting Culture. The book addresses the role of place in the conceptualization of culture. Here, space is defined as practised place (de Certeau, 1984), an understanding where practice is a mobile engagement in itself, and that particular places and paths form the spatial grid defining people's memories, imaginations and heu- ristic values (Crang, 2000). According to the authors, this makes possible a space that cuts across boundaries and sites in human relations, and shows how people are involved in complex relations of global as well as local dimensions (Hastrup and 01- wig, 1997). Place is here a cultural construction, not a fixed entity; a location, not only about ideas, but about embodied practices that shape identities and enable resistance (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997b). Place is defined solely as a cultural construction, and Olwig (1997, pp.17 and 35) illus- trates this understanding of place with the concept of "cultural sites" as "cultural institutions which have developed in the interrelationship between global and local ties. These cultural sites attain their significance because they are identified with particular places, at the same time as they accommo- date the global conditions of life [...]. These institutions can be viewed as 'cultural sites' in the sense that they are created through an interplay between dwelling and travelling, presence and absence, lo- calizing and globalizing".

Olwig shows how people have a strong tendency to migrate, but at the same time maintain a strong notion of attachment to place, and describes this as contradictions of being physically present in specific localities, but at the same time being part of translocal communities 'rooted' in distant places. In many ways the definition of cultural sites corre- sponds with Massey's (1991, 1993, 1994a, b) understanding of space and place as created through social relations. Massey sees space as the simulta- neous coexistence of social interrelations at all spatial scales, from the most local level to the most global. Place is a particular articulation of those relations, a particular moment in those networks of social relations and understanding. The place, or rather the identity of place, is formed out of interrelations, both present at the same locality as well as interrelations that will stretch beyond that place itself (Massey, 1994b). The places of migrants and displaced people constitute complex locations where numerous different, and frequently conflict-

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ing, communities intersect (Massey, 1994a). This understanding means that refugees are not out of place, their place is defined by the particularity of their social interactions that intersect at the specific location where they are present. To talk about refugees and displaced people as out of place, or as guests in someone else's place does not make sense according to Massey's definition of place.

To de-naturalize the links between people and places leaves greater potential for conceptualizing the experience and practices of displacement. However, the focus on imagination and the fear of becoming essentialist seem to have resulted in a neglect of the location where displaced people and migrants are present. Another consequence following from the neglect of the local perspective of refugees is that the so-called "host communities" are ignored in many studies. Host communities are those groups of people already present at a place, and who in most cases become part of the networks constituting the places of refugees and migrants.

The local perspective of displacement - between experience and analytical categories

[...] whatever the abstract concept of place which people hold, there will always be differences, debates, even struggles, about how places are viewed. There will be differences within the place, and differences between those within (or some of them) and some without [...] there will be relations of contest and contradiction, of dominance and subordi- nation, between the groups of unassimilated others [...], and these relations will be power- ful in determining what becomes the hegemonic view of any particular place. Which meaning of a place will be hegemonic is always being negotiated, and it is in that sense always the subject of power and politics. (Massey 1994b, pp. 118-119)

Different groups relate to the same place with different meanings, uses and values. These are differences that may give rise to various tensions and conflicts over the use of places. People have different positions to negotiate from, and the negotia- tions will be influenced by the multiple identities of a place and complex power-relations. Refugees' and displaced people's understandings of their places are not only determined by the past, but also by their present life at the location where they need to survive and make a livelihood. Hence, to analyse

the situation, identity creation and the place making of displaced people, the local perspective of refugees is decisive (see Allen and Turton, 1996).

Kibreab (1999) identifies at least three signifi- cant factors relevant for a local perspective of refugees. First, the attitudes of the "host community" are one of the key determinants of refugee relation- ships and the integration into the host communities. Second, it is necessary to pay attention to the policy environment in which the refugees find themselves. Third, the livelihood opportunities are important for both idealistic preferences and practical actions. In the local perspective of forced migration, the "local" is not necessarily equal to "place", but place can be studied through the local perspective. The local perspective does not mean to disconnect the refugee situation from the broader processes causing displacement (like decolonization and the development of modem nation states and conflicts over scarce resources). Neither does it mean to iso- late the refugees from their connections with the past and their involvement in transnational networks. With Massey's (1994b) definition of place, the local perspective of refugees should be ana- lysed through the particularity of the social interactions that intersect at the location where the refugees are present. The intersection of these social relations at that location will in itself produce new social processes. Here, I will give a brief example from a group of Muslim internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka.

'This is not our place' During one week in October 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam expelled nearly all the 75 000 Muslims living in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka for reasons connected to the civil war in the country. Up to now, this is the largest case of ethnic cleansing that has taken place in the almost 20 years old civil war on the island. The majority of the northern Muslims came to an area called Putta- lam (see Fig. 1). Ten years after the expulsion they are still living here as IDPs. Two of the administra- tive regions of Puttalam are 'hosting' 52,000 IDPs who live together with 90,000 'locals'. The northern Muslims live in camps, resettlement villages, or in rented or bought houses. The massive influx of people meant challenges for the maintenance of livelihoods for the displaced people as well as for the local people. In some areas the arrival of displaced people has certainly changed the environment, both physically and socially, to the extent that

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Jaffn

Northern Province

Trlncomalee

Puttaiam

North Western Batticaloa SProvince

Kandy

Colombo

Matara

s 0 5 t0 iome

Fig. 1 Map of Sri Lanka.

both the northern Muslims and the locals express the experience of displacement. The area has also experienced a substantial economic development following the arrival of the northern Muslims. New economic activities and new commercial centres are emerging, new forms of doing business have been introduced, and in addition to the internal networks, new external networks have been formed.

At the time of arrival and settlement of the northern Muslims, the reception from the local people, the authorities and organizations in the area were very effective and welcoming. The locals gave the displaced food and clothes, land to live on, and of- fered them places to fish the lagoon. Both locals and displaced considered the situation as tempo- rary, and after a couple of years the local people felt that they could no longer share their resources with the northern Muslims, and wanted to return back to their former lives. The northern Muslims, on the other hand, became tired of being displaced. An at- mosphere of dissatisfaction and insecurity led to tensions and open conflicts between as well as

within those two groups. In many refugee situations, scarcity of land is a major problem in the re- lief work and settlement process of displaced people, and often the source of tension between different groups. Before 1990, land was not in short sup- ply in the district, and people seem to have taken access to land for granted. However, with the arrival of the northern Muslims, the price for land increased, and created a new consciousness of the meaning of land. Changes in access to land had se- vere consequences for the local landless people, who had to compete with the displaced for casual work. Following the arrival of the IDPs and the increased competition for work, the wages for casual work became lower. Many local people therefore experienced a kind of double deprivation, and felt the need to protect themselves from these processes by claiming their rights to land. Local fishermen therefore resumed an old and not much practised system of rights to fishing, according to which ad- ministrative division people belonged to. This ex- cluded the northern Muslims because they were not 'citizens' of the area.

The policy environment for the IDPs is dominat- ed by the politics of the Sri Lankan government that acknowledges the IDPs, and considers them as their responsibility. Though the preferred strategy of the government is repatriation, the situation in the north has made it almost impossible for the northern Muslims to return. With a new government in power, a strategy of resettlement from camps to more permanent housing started in 1995. The resettlement policy, however, came under dis- pute. Some of the northern Muslims' organizations argued that resettlement would represent a greater barrier to the possibility of returning back to their homes, as the situation would be normalized when people settled more permanently in Puttalam. However, with the economic support for resettlement given by the government, the displaced people bought land at an increasing rate and built resettlement villages in order to control their own lives. The need for a place of their own was also pressing, as people felt they still lived in someone else's place, and that to establish resettlement villages would create a possibility for maintaining their social networks from home.

The attitudes of the host communities, and the status of the northern Muslims as displaced (out of place) are also determined by the livelihood opportunities in the area. In Sri Lanka, after living in a district permanently (i.e. on your own land) for more than six months, you can become a 'citizen'

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of the province. The northern Muslims have now lived in Puttalam for ten years, and almost 50% of them have bought their own land. However, most people have not had the chance to register in Putta- lam, and do not possess voting power there. To re- strict their voting power is partly a political decision taken to prevent a political upheaval with un- foreseen consequences for the local groups. Partly it is a collective pressure among the displaced to remain citizens of the Northern Province, and to have their own politicians fighting for the rights of the northern Muslims. In spite of the economic development, underemployment is an unresolved problem in Puttalam. One factor contributing to the interest of maintaining the status as displaced (out of place) is therefore closely linked to the rights or 'privileges' of being displaced, because being displaced means having the rights to food rations given by the World Food Programme and the government.

Many of the conflicts between the locals and the displaced have been conflicts over the relationship between people and places and especially the rights to resources at those locations. But people most often settle the conflicts by clarifying the right to the place, or the "ownership" of the place. Commonly used arguments by both groups have been based on the "natural" rights to land use and fishing. This is not ourplace, displaced people would tell me when explaining their strategies. The classification of place based on ownership of the place is applied as a way of solving conflicts among people themselves, but is also used by authorities and organizations working in Puttalam.

Reterritorialising the link between people and places

[...] if one says deterritorialization one appar- ently also has to introduce the notion of reterritorialization. For various (good) reasons, 'essentialist' perspectives in anthropological cultural analysis have in recent years been increasingly submitted to criticism. However, non-essentialist theorizing has tended to leave too little space for the occurrence of often si- multaneous, or parallel processes of essential- isation. (Steen Preis, 1997, p. 90)

We all use different ways of thinking about space in different situations (Curry, 1996). The process of categorizing places into 'our places' and 'their

places', or the tendency to connect people with cer- tain territories is an essentialist understanding of place. Though we should not accept essentialism, there may still be a place for what we tend to term essentialist understandings of space, as long as it is included in the way displacement is experienced. Can we then integrate both understandings of space discussed here? As discussed above, attempts to reterritorialize place were attempts to overcome the contradictions of being physically present at one location, and simultaneously being part of translocal communities.

In the more "traditional" geographical understanding of territory and territoriality, territory is a spatial extension as well as a demarcation of social relations. Territoriality is the way actors and groups of actors try to gain control over a geographic area, through attempts to affect, influence, or control actions and interactions of people, things and rela- tionships (Sack, 1986). In this understanding territoriality is about exercising power and control over space, and power involves the use and organisation of space (Allen, 1997; Herbert, 1997). Territoriality may be understood as an everyday strategy and a geographical reflection of different modes of power (see, for instance, Simonsen, 1994; Paasi, 1996; Allen, 1997, 1999; Radcliffe, 1999). These different modes of power may be domination, coercion, authority, inducement, and seduction (Allen, 1999).

Critics would argue that the territory itself has no special significance. Territory is only a site for activities, and becomes secondary to the activities that take place within it (Warner, 1999). However, territoriality as a strategy may sometimes be a way of analysing these activities, and the ways different modes of power work through the organization and conceptualization of space, place and movement.

As stated earlier there is a tendency to think of refugees and displaced people as powerless, and without culture and identity because they have lost their place. However, the ways different groups try to gain control over places and classify places in Puttalam show a different picture. In some ways, the northern Muslims appear as a much stronger group than the locals. They are better organized, they feel a strong unity, they have more unified interests, and their interests have been disseminated to external actors like government agencies, international and local non-governmental organizations and religious organizations. However, the strong identity as displaced, in the meaning of belonging to somewhere else, also marginalizes the displaced. The rights to

22 Geografiska Annaler - 83 B (2001) - 1


livelihoods are restricted for the displaced, and the ownership of properties and resources are still pre- dominantly in the hands of local people. Displaced people do not have much access to formal political power in Puttalam, and very few have been given posts in local institutions. Thus there is no singular picture of domination and resistance in the relation- ships between locals and displaced.

One example is the way territoriality is put into practice in the establishment of resettlement villages. In this process boundaries are important mark- ers of territory, not only physical boundaries, but also creation of boundaries through symbolic meanings, like membership/non-membership. The resettlement villages of the northern Muslims have become important for promoting feelings of belonging and unity, and also symbolise the places they were forced to leave. Many of the villages are attempts at the social reconstruction of villages from the north, some of the villages are even given place-names from the north, and they represent segregated places only for displaced people. Though they may be marginal, they are places where displaced people can exercise power and develop a strong sense of solidarity (Brun, 2000). They are like hooks' (1990) concept of 'home- place', constructions of safe places that act as positions to negotiate the meanings of place from.

Reterritorialization is therefore not only the process of moving from one location to another. Re- territorialization may, in this way, be understood as the way displaced and local people establish new, or rather expand networks and cultural practices that define new spaces for daily life. This understanding of reterritorialization involves the emergence of otherwise marginalized voices and alternate repre- sentation that can be carried over into the "host" society and carried back into the "homeland" (Knox, 1995). Reterritorialization in relation to refugee experience and refugee practices, may therefore not be so much about power and control over others, but rather control over one's own life, about safety and protection, and the maintenance and development of social networks. Reterritorialization is to find one's place, not only finding a house or a plot of land, but as much to find one's position in the society in which one is present (Olwig, 1997). Reterri- torialization as an analytical concept, thus represents the "spatial process" and spatial strategies that refugees and displaced people develop, in the con- tradictory experience of being physically present in one location, but at the same time living with a feeling of belonging somewhere else.

Conclusion The way we characterize place is fundamentally political, and has implications for how we represent displaced people and for the policies of displacement. In this article, two different theoretical approaches to place and space have been reviewed. First an essentialist conception of place gives an understanding of refugees as torn loose from their place and thus from their culture and identity. An alternative approach de-naturalizes this link between people and places. The latter approach has been very useful for analysing the way many refugees and displaced persons are physically present at specific localities, but at the same time being part of translocal communities.

One of the main arguments in this article is that the experience of displacement and the local perspective of displacement must inform our analysis and theoretical work. To de-naturalize the links between people, places and identities is necessary to avoid looking at refugees and displaced people as torn loose from their culture, as being powerless and without identity. However, both the displaced and locals in Puttalam express the experience of displacement and their image of place in essentialist ways. One of the challenges is therefore to leave space for these processes of essentialization in the way we analyse and represent the refugee experience. No one has natural rights to any place, but some of the works criticizing the natural link between people and places have had a tendency to overlook that these essentialist conceptions of place may still be of importance to the strategies applied by people in creating places and boundaries. The consequence is often that the local perspective of refugees and displaced persons are neglected.

The basis for territorial strategies and the lan- guage used by displaced and locals in the Puttalam area to solve conflicts and to protect livelihoods and scarce resources often involve an understanding of a natural link between people and places. Ten years have elapsed since the arrival of the northern Mus- lims. During this time, some of the IDPs feel that they have settled more permanently in Puttalam, however together with the other IDPs, local people and the policy-makers, they still consider themselves as Northern Muslims - as Muslims belonging to the Northern Province. How the relationship between people and places is understood affects the policies and the way refugees and displaced people are received and survive at the places of arrival.

Rather than deterritorialization, one way to inte-


CATHRINE BRUN

grate the local perspective and experience of displacement may be to reterritorialize the relationship between people and places; to look at the changing status, power and meaning of territories for people on the move. Refugees and displaced people's places are constructed out of the social interactions that intersect the specific location where they are present. Reterritorialisation involves the process of how displaced and local people expand their networks, make livelihoods and develop strategies to control their own lives.

Acknowledgements I thank Nicholas Van Hear for constructive comments during the preparation of this paper. Warm thanks to all the participants and organizers of the inspiring PhD Course 'Local/Global Fields of Ten- sion', University of Lund, April/May 2000, and especially to Cindi Katz who was the discussant for a draft of this paper. I also thank Gunhild Setten, Anne Sofie Laegran, Eric Clark and two anonymous referees for useful comments. Thanks to Frank Robert Haugan for making the map.

Cathrine Brun, Department of Geography, Norwe- gian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Dragvoll, Norway. E-mail: cathrine.brun@ svt.ntnu.no

Notes The UN Refugee Convention includes any person who: [...] owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself to protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. (From Hathaway, 1991, p.6). Internally displaced persons are refugees within their own countries. They are still under the jurisdiction of their government, and do not have any additional legal status like refugees who have crossed an internationally recognised border.

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Documents

Brun, Cahrine (2001) Reterritorializing the Relationship Between People and Place in Refugee Studies