Gendered Negotiations of Social Citizenship in Cameroon’s Displacement Crisis

In Cameroon's conflict-affected North-West, South-West, and Lake Chad regions, women and girls bear disproportionate burdens of displacement, yet they also engage in innovative strategies to negotiate social rights and secure livelihoods. This paper explores how displaced and marginalised women navigate exclusionary systems, asserting access to education, healthcare, and social protection while contesting social hierarchies that limit their participation. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted across these three regions between 2018 and 2023, the study highlights the gendered dimensions of social citizenship, revealing how women become active agents of resilience and social cohesion. The paper introduces the concept of 'negotiated citizenship' — a set of practices through which women claim and reconstruct social membership in conditions of formal exclusion — and explicitly situates it in relation to cognate concepts including insurgent, lived, and informal citizenship. Intersectional analysis examines how widows, adolescent girls, elderly women, women associated with armed groups, and women with disabilities experience citizenship negotiations differently. The paper also engages critically with the limits and risks of informal strategies, and provides concrete institutional recommendations for policy actors operating in conflict-affected Cameroon.

social citizenship, gender, displacement, Cameroon, Anglophone crisis, negotiated citizenship, intersectionality, resilience, informal networks, social protection

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