To compensate or not to compensate? Law, property and Sahrawi refugees in Algeria

Forced migration often leads to refugees’ dispossession, and thus to refugees’ pursuit of various strategies to try and gain access to property, from home or in the new living space. This essay examines how forced migration affects access to inherited property in a conflict setting, that of the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Over some forty years of exile, some Sahrawi refugees who live in exile in Algeria have inherited property located in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, to which the refugees have limited access. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Sahrawi refugee camps, the essay explores refugees’ strategies with regard to such inheritance rights. It finds that, in contrast to some accounts – from refugees themselves and from some historical research – that inheritance amongst Sahrawis closely follows Islamic precepts, in the conflict setting refugees navigate legal, political and moral regimes as regards their inheritance rights, leading to diverse outcomes. The legal framework for inheritance is only one of several regimes, alongside political and moral regimes, that the refugees must navigate.