In-between Lives: Attending to age-position in adolescent refugees’ experiences of forced migration in the Horn of Africa

This study uses a qualitative approach to examine the experiences of forced displacement from the perspective of adolescent Eritrean refugees residing in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). It uses a “generational” framework to analyse the ways in which their age-position influences their lived experiences. In so doing it highlights the ways in which interconnectedness with family and peer group, within a historical and social context, combined with their stage in life, shapes the complexity of their experiences. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the perspective of this age-group and illustrates the usefulness of employing more sophisticated concepts of ‘age’ to enable more age-sensitive analysis. It demonstrates that attending to the position of adolescents, as distinct from younger children, can serve to deepen an understanding of their lived experiences. For instance, this study highlights the role of family attachments (and separations) in the interviewees’ displacement trajectories, and the age-specific impact of displacement on their educational opportunities. It also explores the important role of the peer group in providing a social identity, and a social support, in situations of exile. This analytic approach contrasts with more binary and linear accounts of forced migration, that often miss out on the processes that shape and link the different stages of displacement.