Crossing Invisible Boundaries and Re-Gaining Home

The current chapter deals with two different cases of post-war displacement, divided by thousands of miles and located in two different social, cultural, and political contexts. The two authors of this chapter believe that sometimes what the construction of knowledge within any discipline needs is to use more comparative empirical research for seeking more insights and understanding of the social world. Thus, collectively, the authors through this chapter compare two far away cases of displacement but too similar within their lived experience in reality in order to contest some of the mainstream notions within the anthropological library. The main focus is to study the concepts of home and belonging between two post-war displaced cases in Africa, the post-war Acholi of Northern Uganda and the Palestinian refugees of Jaziret Fadel village at Al-Sharqyiah Governorate in Egypt. They have found that when people come across the borders, the act of physical crossing is not as difficult as penetrating the invisible ones. People can acquire visas, escape the authorities at checkpoints, or easily camouflage to be able to go through border points. However, when it comes to crossing the intangible borders, to be able to penetrate the social fabric of the newly settled in community across the border is a laborious exercise.