Making Refuge

Making Refuge focuses on Somali Bantu refugees who were resettled in the town of Lewiston, Maine in the early 2000s. These refugees had been the focus of Besteman’s earlier research in Somalia in the 1980s. About a decade after Somalia plunged into civil war, Somali Bantus were being resettled in the United States, enabling Besteman to physically reconnect with them. One of the strengths of this book is that it provides rich historical context, giving the reader an overview of the different stages of the refugee experience: the events leading to war and displacement, life in refugee camps in Kenya,… show more.

My next recommendation is an unusual book by American anthropologist Catherine Besteman, who teaches at Colby College. In 2016 she published Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston Maine. Besteman explains that she carried out fieldwork in southern Somalia in the late 1980s, on the eve of a long and bitter civil war that consumed the country from 1991 until 1995, although violence has continued to bedevil Somalia since then. Large number of Somali Bantu refugees fled to Kenya. Astonishingly, more than twenty years later, she realised that some of her original informants had made their way to her… show more.