A systematic review of the literature on displacement, return and cycles of violence

To date, repatriation or in other words ‘going home’ is the most preferred sustainable solution put forward by the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR) and governments to address displacement triggered by violent conflict. The return and reintegration of refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and former combatants is also widely presented as being crucial to peacebuilding and national reconciliation; to the promotion of state stability and legitimacy; and to the triggering of post-conflict economic development. The prioritization of return (over local integration or resettlement options) was put forward from the late eighties and early nineties onwards, receiving strong impetus in 1992 by the then UNHCR High Commissioner Sadako Ogata, who declared the nineties as the ‘decade of voluntary repatriation’ (Long 2011, 240). The growing importance of repatriation as strategy in the past three decades has not, however, coincided with an increase in safe, voluntary and dignified returns. On the contrary, scholars, practitioners and human rights organizations have observed how refugee returns are often organized in unstable and war-like situations, and do not always maintain a voluntary character (Chimni 1999; HRW 2017; Long 2013: 106–109; Toft 2007). Moreover, investigations into the later stages of repatriation have shown that return is a very problematic concept and a long-term process (rather than an event) that carries many challenges (Allen 1996; Allen and Morsink 1994; Black and Koser 1999; Markowitz , Stefansson and Anders 2004; Oxfeld and Long 2004). Strikingly, despite the growing salience of these critiques, issues of return and repatriation remain significantly under-researched. Very little is known about the lived experiences of those who returned and/or stayed behind, the longer term dynamics of return, and about the position of returnees in (re)constituting societies. So, there is a limited understanding of a process that profoundly impacts and transforms entire societies in conflict-affected areas, and which “remains a powerful symbol of the end of conflict and a return to normalcy” (Black and Gent 2006: 31).