2026-10-14T18:49:59Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33360408 2026-09-30T12:00:25Z category_29725 portal_921 item_type_11 month_year_09_2026

Repatriation and de-territorialization: Meskhetian Turks' conception of home Forced Migration Online (24276783) Migration, asylum and refugee law FORCED MIGRATION ONLINE TURKISH MINORITIES GEORGIANS UZBEKS USSR NATIONALS FORCED RELOCATION NATIONALITY LAND TENURE RESIDENCE RESETTLEMENT REPATRIATION FIELD RESEARCH This article examines Meskhetian Turk refugees' conception of home as a way of investigating repatriation. Repatriation is considered ideologically and in policy making to be the preferred 'durable' solution for refugees: displaced people should go 'home', to their country or place of origin. Using the work of legal theorists and refugee studies scholars, the article analyses the theorizations associated with home and belonging. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Azerbaijan presents evidence of the disjuncture between Meskhetian Turk refugees' idea of home as they articulate it, and the conventional understanding of the idea of home in much of the theory and policy about place, belonging and the nation. Secondly, the article addresses the ability of the human rights regime or its regional manifestation to protect and represent refugee rights. This problem revolves around sovereignty. What has happened to sovereignty as a result of globalization processes contesting control functions of the state? It is concluded that the Meskhetian Turk refugees possess an account of community that runs against the grain of the meta-narrative of nation, which remains geographically bound. Though interrupted by the intervention of certain international bodies such as the European Union's Council on Minorities, sovereignty is not overcome. 2026-09-30T12:00:25Z Text Online resource 10.25446/oxford.33360408.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Repatriation_and_de-territorialization_Meskhetian_Turks_conception_of_home/33360408 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0