The accidental city : violence, economy and humanitarianism in Kakuma refugee camp Kenya

In this research I examine social ordering processes in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. I view the camp as an accidental city, by which I challenge the image of the camp as a temporary and artificial waiting space or a protracted refugee crisis per se. The reference to the city is both metaphorically and physically relevant. First, the metaphorical dimension of the city places refugees and their negotiation of space into the realm of the normal and the possible, contrary to prevailing notions of the camp as an abnormality. In this thesis, I analyze the ways in which refugees settle down in the camp and inhabit the humanitarian space. From a physical perspective, the camp has grown into a center of facilities in a wider region of insecurity, war and marginalized pastoral lands in a semi-desert. Compared to the region, the camp resembles a multicultural and cosmopolitan place, with various connections to the wider world. I have analyzed five domains in which social ordering takes place: humanitarian governance, the camp as a warscape, the camp economy, third country resettlement and repatriation. In all these domains, refugees seek to organize themselves and their surroundings vis-a-vis the humanitarian agencies and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In chapter two, I describe how UNHCR de facto became the government of the refugee camp on behalf of the Kenyan government. In this capacity it operates in a confusion of roles; it is both implementer of aid and assistance in the general administration of the camp, and monitor and guard of States’ obligations to respect refugee rights. This makes that UNHCR and its implementing NGOs not only offer, preach and teach entitlements, but are simultaneously for a large part responsible in their delivery and for the decision of who is granted inclusion in the camp’s services. I have recognized this in the notion of an entitlement arena, which highlights how refugees maneuver in the grey area between UNHCR’s camp governing and rights monitoring roles. The entitlements born out of refugee and human rights then translate into expectations and promises that become part of negotiations seeking to align, dodge or alter the camp’s organization. For a large part, this negotiation takes places along the interfaces between UNHCR and its implementing partners, and the refugees. By employing participation strategies in the governing of the camp, UNHCR contributed to the creation of subauthorities, which play an important role in the referral of refugees within the aid system, but also in the identification of vulnerabilities. In the domain of the warscape, I analyze how boundaries between refugee leadership and rebel movements have blurred, adding and altering these subauthorities. Apart from the camp having a function in the broader war tactics of rebel movements in the past and in the present, the notion of the camp as a warscape highlights how the politics of war and the dynamics of conflict reach and partly order the camp. This warscape notion, instead of being problematic, is analyzed from a perspective of place making, through which refugees claim political agency and room to organize themselves vis-a-vis the refugee regime, thereby reshaping the living arrangements of the camp and organizing where people settle on the basis of ethnic and violent histories in the past and in the camp. This authority transcends into everyday forms of power and governance, largely because of an understanding of imminent and symbolic violence between the different groups. In a socio-economic domain, I describe how refugees build on the resource of aid and create a diversity of livelihood strategies. Aid, more than just a handout or a necessity, is comparable to a natural resource in the contours of the camp. For refugees, once they are allowed inside the camp, aid is simply there. It is something one can vie for, and can harvest, until it is depleted. I describe this as a process of “digging aid,” comparable to subsistence farming. On the basis of this aid, a camp economy has grown, with linkages to informal and formal regional and international economies. The development of the camp economy has stimulated socio-economic changes. The local community has found a resource in the camp and “dropout pastoralists” have settled around the camp in a way that is comparable to the ways urban migrants flock to cities. The camp represents a cosmopolitan place where people of different backgrounds come together, meet each other, and adapt to each other. The fourth domain, described in chapter five, concerns the camp as a portal for resettlement. The perspective of third country resettlement in Kakuma has both been a reason for people to come to the camp, and a phenomenon that greatly contributed to its development. Resettlement can thus be seen as both an opportunity as a solution to which people seek access. With this, resettlement became an organizing principle for people in the camp. The large volume of resettlement from Kakuma contributes to the character of the camp as a transitory space. Many informants came to Kakuma not so much to return “home” again, but to move forward instead. Kakuma as a portal offers migratory routes to those who manage to be considered eligible according to the agencies’ and receiving countries’ qualifications. Although imagined as a measure to protect those most in need, in reality, becoming eligible for resettlement involves a combination of factors, including access to the agencies and a vulnerability or a fitting identity. It is here that the warscape and the entitlement arena intertwine to become the system of resettlement. Chapter six shows how repatriation becomes subject to maneuvering. Over the course of my fieldwork, peace broke out in Sudan and repatriation was initiated. The prospect was complicated, however. In Sudan, public amenities such as schools, health care, and water were scarce or lacking. Towns and urban centers were still largely under Arabic influence. The result was that the humanitarian government in the form of UNHCR and the NGOs sought to control return movements, while refugees sought to strategize and organize return in their own ways, and the Sudanese authorities in Sudan sought to keep the refugees in Kenya until further notice. The notion of the camp as an accidental city comes back in that the camp was recognized for its facilities and weighed against the lack thereof in Sudan. New arrivals similarly came for education, or for basic amenities and even food. Refugees from other nationalities had concerns because of a possible closure of Kakuma. Many of them had a rebel or military past, or feared being regarded as rebels in their home countries, and thus saw limited opportunities to go home. Also people from town were unsure of what would remain of Kakuma in the event of the camp being closed. This research contributes to earlier work in earlier stages of refugee hosting in other camps, and covering specific subthemes. With the analogy to the city, I bring together those subthemes in one common frame. The result can in part be understood as a history of the specific camp of Kakuma. This nicely captures the title of this research, for something that gains a history breaks free from the frame of temporality, perhaps by accident. With this approach, this book is not only relevant for social science or anthropology, but also as a historical record. Protracted refugee camps constitute an experiment in humanitarian action, but also in thinking about questions of governance and security in refugee hosting contexts in developing countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nepal, Thailand and other locations where the content of this book may be relevant.