"But displacement itself is not a form of symbolic domination. The displaced are subject to brute force. Even those who are told to leave because their land is wanted by others for economic reasons, and who are given assistance to resettle elsewhere, know that displacement symbolizes nothing but their weakness. They may be asked to agree to being uprooted but they are unable to prevent it. Those violently uprooted, or who leave because of fear of persecution, are only too conscious that they live in a dangerous world, akin to the pre-state order envisaged by Hobbes, without a citizen’s right to pursue redress through legal channels.
They may not share the intellectual’s or the libertarian’s disillusionment with the state as a political form, however much they wish to change the occupants of office or the political institutions of their home governments, or to alter the laws of countries of asylum to improve their chances. Refugees show a strong preference for settlement with the possibility of becoming citizens over a life in holding camps. They know they continue to be vulnerable until they can reestablish themselves as citizens, whether in their own or in some other state." - Colson
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