Return to what? Reimagining home and belonging after conflict and refugee status cessation among Liberians in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines how displaced persons conceptualise home and evaluate the possibility of return after the cessation of refugee status and the narrowing of mobility options. Drawing on fieldwork with first-generation Liberians in the defunct Oru Refugee Camp in south-west Nigeria, it analyses how shared histories of violence, prolonged exile, and the withdrawal of legal protection shape return decisions long after the formal end of conflict. Although the international refugee system promotes repatriation as the preferred durable solution, Liberia is no longer considered by many interlocutors as a viable future homeland following the termination of their refugee protection. Home is sustained through everyday social life in exile, while return is assessed through comparative and forward-looking judgements about safety, trust, and the durability of peace within a defunct camp environment characterised by long-term social continuity alongside legal and political precarity. This paper demonstrates that the loss of refugee status, when combined with decades of camp-based exile, recasts return from a presumed resolution into a strategic and frequently rejected outcome, providing a lens for understanding mobility decisions in other post-cessation settings where protection ends without secure pathways to belonging.