Vivian Solana

VIVIAN SOLANA, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, was awarded funding in April 2018 to aid research on ‘Intimate International Aid: Regenerating the Sahrawi Revolution through Spanish-Sahrawi Relations.’ This project investigates how the intimate ties between a growing presence of Sahrawi refugees in Spain and a large network of Spanish advocates for the Sahrawi national liberation movement (known as the POLISARIO Front) is implicated in the regeneration of a longstanding Sahrawi struggle that claims sovereignty over the Western Sahara, Africa’s last official colony. The protracted irresolution of the conflict over the Western Sahara is propelling Sahrawi youth to find futures outside of the refugee camps in which the POLISARIO Front organizes its anti-colonial movement since 1975. The grantee asks how refugees’ regeneration of their struggle extends, suspends, and/or transfigures when they leave the refugee camps in which they have come of age, and enter Spain, the nation-state that first colonized their land. Examining how intimate Spanish-Sahrawi social relations are engaged in building new horizons of political possibility across this transnational field, this project contributes to scholarship that studies the intersection between the reproduction of political movements and forced migration, and it offers insights into international relations and post-colonial futures otherwise.