Rohingya Muslims fleeing ongoing military operations in Myanmar,cross the border to Teknaff, Bangladesh on October 08, 2017. NurPhoto//Press Association. All rights reserved.We all know the story. On almost every continent, men, women and children are driven from their homes by persecution, poverty, or the effects of climate change. Regardless of geographic location or individual circumstance, we are told that refugees just want to return home.
In January, the UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and Hollywood actor Ben Stiller told TIME that all the refugees he had met professed a profound desire to eventually return home. Two months later, Sir Paul Collier (co-author of the recently-published Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System) informed CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that most refugees are currently in developing regions close to their country of origin and prefer to go home when the conflict is over. Melissa Fleming, Head of Communications and Chief Spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), stated in May that she “never met a single refugee who does not want to go back”. Diplomats such as the US Ambassador and Australian representatives to the UN have repeated the same sentiment.
This sweeping narrative is false. Not all refugees wish to return home. It is unlikely that all refugees wish for any one thing. Refugees, it really needn’t be said, come from a huge array of backgrounds and experiences. They want different things for themselves, their families and their countries. Many refugees cannot return home and do not want to. Many build their lives in new countries, with or without links to their old home. Many may become more attached to their new state than they were to their old. And many young refugees grow up knowing only their country of resettlement or integration and feel no desire to return at all.
