Gentille Meda Dusenge

What does it mean to grow up defined by a label you never chose—refugee—and still insist on shaping a life of hope and purpose?

In A Congolese Refugee’s Quest for a Purpose and Better Life, Gentille Meda Dusenge takes readers inside the often-invisible world of displacement, where childhood is spent in the confines of a Rwandan refugee camp and adolescence unfolds under the weight of stigma, poverty, and gendered expectations. From Kiziba’s clay huts to the lecture rooms of Kepler University, from heartbreaking exclusion to the triumph of education, Dusenge charts her journey as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, student, teacher, and advocate. Her story exposes structural violence that constrains millions of displaced people, and challenges systems that silence refugee voices. It is a testimony to the power of persistence, education, and self-determination, while offering a vision of what is possible when refugees become part of the change that is needed. This book is ideal reading for students of Forced Migration, Displacement, Refugee Studies, Migration Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, and Education Studies, as well as policy makers.

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