Narrative Sovereignty and African Futures: Congolese Refugees in Solwezi, Zambia and Early Warning Systems

This project investigates how Congolese refugees in Solwezi, Zambia - women, men, and children - use narrative practices to anticipate and navigate risks of slavery, child labour, and human exploitation. Solwezi is a mining town close to the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, shaped by copper extraction and the convergence of conflict, economic precarity, and ecological degradation. 

The research asks: What stories, warnings, and strategies do refugees share? How do these narratives shape decisions about trust, movement, work, and survival? And how can these practices inform a participatory African futures methodology for community-centred early warning? 

The project takes a broad view of slavery and exploitation. Many of the people we are working with are navigating dangerous, underpaid, and exploitative conditions because they have no alternatives. Drought has destroyed agriculture. Mining has poisoned the land. Conflict has severed them from their homes and livelihoods. Survival sex work, child labour, and informal extraction are not choices. They are the only options left when every other door has been closed. 

The project will document these realities through Participatory Action Research and creative methods - oral history, storytelling circles, photovoice, and participatory futures workshops. It will develop a community-centred anticipatory framework that centres the knowledge of those most affected. It will contribute to a redefinition of slavery that reflects the lived experience of people who may not be legally enslaved but are nonetheless trapped in systems of exploitation that leave them with no way out. 

The research sits at the intersection of security studies, African futures, and decolonial methodology. It is funded by the AHRC Doctoral Focal Award and based at the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War. 

Research Questions

• What stories, warnings, idioms, metaphors, or temporal vocabularies do Congolese refugees in Solwezi use when speaking about danger, mobility, work, and possible futures?

• How do these narratives shape practical decisions about trust, movement, livelihood, and avoidance under conditions of displacement and mining-linked precarity?

• How can participatory action research and creative futures methods be designed so that refugees' own anticipatory practices are centred as knowledge-making rather than translated extractively into external categories?

• How can a redefinition of slavery, grounded in lived experience, inform more effective and ethical early warning systems? 

Methodology

The project uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) as its overarching methodology, complemented by creative and narrative methods. Data generation will include narrative interviews, oral histories, small-group storytelling circles, participatory futures workshops, and photovoice. Analysis will proceed through narrative, temporal, comparative, and reflexive autoethnographic streams.

Ethical protocols are grounded in the Three R’s - Recognition, Return, and Restraint.  Timeline The project runs for four years full-time, commencing in October 2026. Year 1 focuses on doctoral training and the literature review. Year 2 involves fieldwork in Solwezi. Year 3 focuses on analysis and writing. Year 4 completes the thesis and submission.