Lacey Gale

Visiting Fellow

Lacey Gale’s areas of interest include refugee camps, refugee diasporas, gender and family studies, child fostering, and child trafficking. She has worked with international humanitarian organizations on issues of refugee protection, repatriation, and child trafficking. Gale’s publications explore such issues as: durable solutions for refugees in situations of protracted conflict, research methods with refugee populations, changing marital and child raising patterns among camp based refugees, post-conflict child fostering, and gender and Islam in West Africa. She has worked with refugees in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and the United States. Her current research focuses on community leadership, remittance sending, and mental health among refugee diasporas in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Brown University.

Email: lgale@bowdoin.edu

Briefing Papers

  • Beyond men pikin

    There is growing agreement that separated children are best cared for in community settings, rather than in institutions. However, even in a community setting, there is a need for standards of care that allow for monitoring of children’s well-being. This is particularly important in countries such as Sierra Leone which is recovering from a brutal civil war and suffering from poverty, malnutrition, and limited access to adequate medical care. Since the civil war ended in Sierra Leone, child fostering—whether informal or facilitated by humanitarian agencies and the government—has become the preferred solution for the estimated 800,000+ orphaned, abandoned, and vulnerable children.

    • Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • The Invisible Refugee Camp: Durable Solutions for Boreah ‘Residuals’ in Guinea

    By Lacey Gale. 2008. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21: 537-552.

  • Bulgur Marriages and Big Women: Navigating Relatedness in Guinean Refugee Camps

    By Lacey Gale. 2007. Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 80 no.2: 355-379.

  • The Refugee ‘Family’: Child Fostering and Mobility among Sierra Leonean Refugees

    By Lacey Gale. 2006. The International Journal of Sociology of Family, Vol 32, No. 2:273-287.

  • Sustaining Relationships across Borders: Translocal Livelihoods and Mobility among Refugees in Guinea

    By Lacey Gale. 2006. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 25: 69-80.

    • Other Major Publications

  • Women, Gender and Refugee Camps: Sub-Saharan Africa

    By Lacey Gale. 2006. Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, volume IV, Leiden, Brill.

  • Sub-Saharan Africa: Fulbe Societies

    By Lacey Gale. 2004. Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, volume II: 144-5, Leiden, Brill.

  • When is a Refugee not a Refugee? Refugee-Host Relations in Guinea

    By Lacey Gale. 2003. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) New Issues in Refugee Research (Working Paper No. 88).