Deterritorialized Youth

March 25, 2024

Studies of refugee youth in the Middle East have largely focused on Palestinians, while the situation of Afghan and Sahrawi refugee youth at the margins of the Middle East has attracted little attention. The resilience of Palestinian youth has come to be a contemporary theme in numerous academic and practitioner studies. Their ‘right of return’ to their original homeland continues to be hotly debated and discussed internationally. However, Israel, the government occupying their historic homeland, does not allow them back.

Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth, unlike their Palestinian contemporaries, are encouraged to return both by international agencies and the powers occupying their traditional homelands.