Exploring the Potential of Intersectionality for Enhancing Refugee Womens Research in Africa

Refugee women's research strives to bring about transformation, empowerment and seeks to produce knowledge that enhances policy formation on different issues that affect refugee women in the host country. Over the years, as part of this initiative to bring to light the experiences of refugee women important strides have been made to raise awareness on the conditions of refugee women in host societies in Africa. The resultant base of knowledge has been used to inform research and policy. However, the need to pay attention to inequalities faced by refugee women caused by multiple factors (nationality, ethnicity, gender, age etc. ) is confronting feminist forced migration scholars in the African region. The need for new conceptual frameworks with potential to produce knowledge capturing such inequalities is inevitable. This paper explores the potential of intersectionality paradigm to produce knowledge that captures how systems of oppression and discrimination overlap and articulate with each other in refugee women’s research and forced Migration in Africa. Through review of outstanding research conducted on intersectionality and durable solutions for refugee women in Africa, the paper highlights the value of adopting an intersectionality perspective in refugee women’s research to produce insights that can better inform policy as Africa seeks to hone gender dimensions in displacement.