Liminal Spaces: Changing Inter-Generational Relations among Long-Term Liberian Refugees in Ghana

Liminal Spaces: Changing Inter-Generational Relations among Long-Term Liberian Refugees in Ghana

Hampshire Kate, Porter Gina, Kilpatrick Kate, Kyei Peter, Adjaloo Michael, George Ampong

This paper reports on changing inter-generational relations among long-term Liberian refugees in the Buduburam settlement camp in Ghana. Four months of fieldwork were conducted in the settlement, using a range of qualitative methods to elicit emic understandings of the nature and causes of changes in inter-generational relations: focus groups, individual interviews, participant observation, and diary-keeping by refugees. Various aspects of the refugee experience, in particular the strategies used by young people to cope with long-term livelihood insecurity, are seen by camp inhabitants to have led to a reconfiguration of relationships between older and younger people and even to the blurring of generational categories. There is a powerful discourse linking economic impotence of older people with the erosion of inter-generational relations of authority and deference. This is seen to have encouraged both a …

Society of Applied Anthropology

2008

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=NogL9W0AAAAJ&citation_for_view=NogL9W0AAAAJ:WF5omc3nYNoC

English