Does refugeehood ever end? Cessation, homing, labelling, and resettlement dreams among Post-Cessation Liberians in Nigeria

Abstract

When does refugeehood ever end? One of the central debates in forced migration studies is the question of how and when refugeehood ends. While the Cessation Clause is designed to signal the resolution of displacement, its invocation often leaves individuals in protracted situations, where they are excluded from international protection yet unable to reintegrate fully into their country of origin or host communities or resettle elsewhere. This thesis argues that refugeehood extend beyond the withdrawal of legal status, and it persists through an unending search for home and belonging, legal and socio-economic precarity, contested identities and resources, and the enduring mobility aspirations of those seeking alternative futures. This study focuses on the empirical bottom-up and on-the-ground realities of “residual” Liberian refugees in Nigeria, whose legal status was terminated under Article 1C(5) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 2012.

Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, oral life histories, and participatory observations (July–December 2023) of “residual” Liberian refugees in the defunct Oru camp and host community members, this study interrogates three key questions: (1) Why do post-cessation populations remain in defunct camps, and how do their understandings of home, memory, and belonging shape their decisions? (2) When does refugeehood end, and how do post-cessation populations navigate the persistence of the refugee label in everyday life within the host community? (3) How does the hope of resettlement shape the aspirations and dreams of those unable to access durable solutions, and how do post-cessation populations resist the precarity reinforced by unsuccessful resettlement outcomes? These research questions build upon one another to explore different dimensions of post-cessation displacement.

This thesis makes four key contributions. First, it reveals how displacement endures in multiple ways beyond state and institutional framework in the long-term, challenging the assumption that refugeehood ends with the cessation of legal protection. Second, it reframes home beyond its sedentary assumptions, demonstrating how rupture of home after camp closure shape residual refugees’ sense of home, which become less about affinity to their homeland and more about memorialising the dispersal of loved ones and the fragmentation of their previous settlement. Third, it advances bottom-up empirical understanding of the politics of refugee labelling in the aftermath of the invocation of the cessation clause, illustrating how these labels are co-constructed by displaced individuals and host communities beyond immediate legal or operational purposes. Finally, it expands how resettlement, rather than being a purely bureaucratic process, endures as a deeply embedded aspiration, a site of resistance, and a contested terrain where post-cessation populations negotiate futures that remain structurally foreclosed to them.