‘Resilient’ Refugees? Eritreans in Addis Ababa

Resilience — the ability to ‘bounce back better’ from hardships — has gained prominence as an empowering idea for refugees worldwide. However, due to its conceptual ambiguity, there is no consensus on what counts as ‘resilience’ in practice. To survive without access to humanitarian aid or the right to work, Eritrean refugees in Addis Ababa adopted a range of tactics: mobilizing their networks with Ethiopian hosts and the diaspora, forming cohabitation groups with fellow refugees, and pursuing migration to the Global North. While aid workers perceived refugees’ use of social networks and cohabitation groups positively as forms of ‘resilience’, Eritrean refugees themselves regarded these practices as unavoidable responses to a lack of alternatives. Meanwhile, aid workers dismissed refugees’ transcontinental migration aspirations as a non‐resilient practice although refugees saw it as one of the few available avenues to ‘bounce back better’. By juxtaposing the perspectives of aid workers and refugees, this article highlights the gaps between their understandings of ‘resilience’ and demonstrates how certain activities described as resilience by aid agencies can be harmful for refugees. It also illuminates the role of resilience as a governing tool and highlights implications for the mainstreaming of resilience in refugee protection and humanitarian governance.