Description
This paper is part of my ongoing PhD project which seeks to explore how the return to armed resistance by the Polisario Front to liberate Western Sahara from Moroccan colonial occupation is affecting Western humanitarian aid. I do so through researching how the discursive representations of Sahrawi refugees as ideal and hence worthy of international support are unsettled by this return to armed resistance.
This paper aims to present some of my initial findings which are taking shape in the early stages of data analysis. Specifically, the paper focuses on understanding how the NGOs involved in the Sahrawi refugee camps have textually and visually represented Sahrawi refugees, Sahrawi history, and the role and missions NGOs perceive themselves as playing within this history. This paper evaluates the discursive changes that took place after 2020 and the return to armed resistance. I pay special attention to how the return to armed resistance is articulated and silenced in most instances. I use Laclau and Mouffe’s model of discourse analysis to make sense of the data collected and draw from postcolonial theorists to approach how these (changing) discursive articulations are informed by colonial arrangements.
