Abstract :
[en] This article examines how forced displacement and international aid reshape local authority, focusing on the role of customary leaders in refugee-hosting areas. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, it analyses how chiefs navigate increasingly plural governance landscapes shaped by state officials, aid organisations and refugee-led institutions. Mobilising the concept of polycephaly of power, the article argues that authority in displacement contexts is not eroded but rather reconfigured through negotiation and brokerage. Forced migration reveals both the resilience and the fragility of customary institutions, while aid interventions simultaneously reshape local hierarchies and reinforce state authority. Polycephaly constitutes a mode of governance shaped by symbolic capital, negotiation and overlapping claims to legitimacy. Forced displacement becomes a site of political reconfiguration where authority is enacted, contested and continuously reassembled.
