Conflict (im)mobiles : biographies of mobility along the Ubangi River in Central Africa

Conflict mobiles are individuals whose mobility—and lack of mobility—is informed by violence and conflict. Based on personal narratives of those who move across borders within and beyond the Central African region, this thesis is an ethnography of mobility. By taking mobility as its axiom and placing the lives of people on the move at its centre, the goal of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, it contests fixed (national) borders and defies static historical readings of Central Africa. On the other hand, it investigates how the multiple trajectories of individuals in Central African give form to the mobility paradigm. There are many avatars of the conflict mobile, the CAR (Central African Republic) refugee-students in Kinshasa (DR Congo), on whom the empirical part of this thesis is based, form only one. It is these students’ journeys, their life stories and means of fending for themselves, as well as their dreams and frustrations, that stand at the core of this thesis. By acknowledging the role of the people (including artists) with whom researchers produce knowledge, this thesis finally invites the reader to ‘un-border’ by looking at the field, and academia, through a mobile lens.