Between 2021 and 2024, approximately 600 Congolese quota refugees were resettled in Denmark. They are classified by UNHCR as “women at risk” understood as single women (often with children) without a husband or a male network to protect them. They have lived in camps in Rwanda for years. As resettled refugees, they must accept the need to restart their lives and renegotiate family relationships under new conditions. Inspired by theoretical developments in hauntology, this article discusses three interwoven forms of hauntings that, on different scales, influence and inform the new lives of resettled Congolese families in Danish municipalities.The first form is linked to absent men and how they continue to influence the women’s life. The second, how the women and children, upon arrival in Denmark, are haunted by racialized notions of Africa and Africans. Thirdly, how the families’ lives are shaped by historical events stretching back to the colonial regime of Belgian King Leopold II’s and current political utopias/dystopias of externalizing future asylum seekers to camps in third countries outside Europe.Overall, the article seeks to overcome the naturalistic approach found in much research on refugee resettlement and processes of so-called “integration”. Instead, we explore cross-temporal and spatial dimensions linked to the recent arrival of Congolese women and children in Denmark. The hauntological framework accounts for the less visible aspects of everyday life and for the various ways in which different pasts and futures inform the resettlement.
Rytter et al. (Thu,) studied this question.