Mobilizing Home for Long-Term Displacement: A Critical Reflection on the Durable Solutions Cathrine Brun and Anita H. Fa ´ bos* Abstract With long term displacement becoming the ‘new normal’, the three ‘durable solu- tions’ of local integration, resettlement, and return are increasingly unsuitable for of- fering social, economic and cultural means for refugees to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. This article retreads some common observations and critiques of the durable solutions, while attempting to find a new vocabulary to help address the co- nundrum of a refugee protection model that tries to integrate rights and needs. There have been other attempts to revise the durable solutions, introduce new solu- tions—often acknowledging refugee mobility, or revert to informality as an alterna- tive. However, such attempts have not sufficiently taken into account the extent of what refugees do. The consequences are an ‘integration lite’ where people may be able to survive, but their refugee status is not ended, nor is their refugee predica- ment closer to being addressed. The article suggests a new framework—constella- tions of home—that can be a significant bridging tool for the gap between rights and needs and that incorporates the static and ahistorical notion of the durable solutions as well as the mobile strategies of refugees in long-term displacement. Keywords: displacement; durable solutions; refugees; UNHCR Introduction Home and homemaking are fundamental human practices that take place from the most mundane level—daily practices that reproduce the conditions necessary for social and bio- logical life—to the grand political and legal structures that organize us into national home- lands. Our universal need for a space or site of belonging is shaped so profoundly by the * Cathrine Brun is Director of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice, Oxford Brookes University; Anita Fa ´bos is Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change in the Department of International Development, Community and Environment, Clark University. Worcester, Massachusetts. They can be contacted at info@livingwithdisplacement.org. V C The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2017, 1–7 doi: 10.1093/jhuman/hux021 Opinion Piece Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jhuman/hux021/4091596/Mobilizing-Home-for-Long- by guest on 11 September 2017