Refugees Without Refuge

Refugees Without Refuge explores what it means to be a refugee without asylum or protection in the Horn of Africa, from the perspectives of people on the move and the people who help them escape. As anti-immigrant sentiments rise around the world, legal asylum and humanitarian assistance for refugees are disappearing. Only about one percent of people escaping violence and persecution in their home countries are resettled, given citizenship elsewhere, or returned home in peace. Instead, many refugees today escape home by migrating abroad—leaving without passports, visas, or protection from deportation or criminalization. They are refugees without refuge. Through an "ethnofictional" intergenerational migration story told in comic form as well as extensive ethnographic, historical, and policy research, Refugees Without Refuge provides a unique case study of Oromo Ethiopians as they travel eastward—often invisibly on remote trails and at night to avoid detection—through the harsh deserts and mountain ranges of Djibouti and on boats to cross the Red Sea, with dreams of work and a new life in the Middle East. Intertwining evocative artwork, storytelling, and scholarship, Refugees Without Refuge demands we look anew at the courage and creativity of refugees and critically assess the tactics and missions of the international humanitarian organizations and governments who purport to assist and protect them.