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ABSTRACT
The impact and effects of protracted refugee camps on their host environments in East Africa has been the subject of much academic attention since the late 1990s. Such camps are often viewed as exclusionary spaces that isolate refugees from their host societies. Recent analyses, however, posit such camps as hybrid spaces, with fluid boundaries, that provide socio-economic opportunities and are potential drivers of development. Less thinking has gone into how forms of (humanitarian) governance emanate from such camps and impact their host environments. This paper is based on ethnographic research in and around refugee camps in Kenya and Tanzania. Grounded in a spatial analysis of camp development processes, this paper explores the notion of ‘humanitarian spill-over’. It argues that camps’ specific governmental processes and bureaucratic power come to co-govern and co-shape socio-spatial relations beyond the boundaries of the camp and the initial targets of humanitarian concern. By analysing the socio-spatial effects of long-term humanitarian governance, this paper contributes to, debates about camps as hybrid spaces and locates experiments with developmental approaches to camp environments in East Africa in a history of a more organic process of spill-over. We show how the spill-over is increasingly posited as intention rather than effect.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Agier, Un Monde de Camps; Vemuru et al., Refugee Impacts on Turkana Hosts; Oesch, “The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities.”
2 Agamben, State of Exception.
3 Janmyr and Knudsen, “Introduction: Hybrid Spaces”; Martin, “From Spaces of Exception to Campscapes”; Oesch, “The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities.”
4 Meiches, “A Political Ecology of the Camp.”
5 Smirl, Spaces of Aid.
6 Barnett, “Humanitarian Governance.”
7 For instance: Chambers, “Hidden Losers?”; Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid; Vemuru et al., Refugee Impacts on Turkana Hosts; Waters, “Assessing the Impact of the Rwandan Refugee Crisis”; Whitaker, “Refugees in Western Tanzania.”
8 Oesch, “The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities.”
9 Buscher and Vlassenroot, “Humanitarian Presence and Urban Development”; Meiches, “A Political Ecology of the Camp”; Smirl, Spaces of Aid; Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils.
10 Barnet, “Humanitarian Governance”; Williams, “From Humanitarian Exceptionalism to Contingent Care.”
11 Martin, “From Spaces of Exception to Campscapes”; Oesch, “The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities.”
12 Agier, Un Monde de Camps; Betts et al., Refugee Economies; Jacobsen, The Economic Life of Refugees.
13 Agamben, State of Exception; Agier and Bouchet-Saulnier, “Humanitarian Spaces”; Bauman, Wasted Lives.
14 See Chkam, “Aid and the Perpetuation of Refugee Camps” for an account about how NGOs perpetuate encampment.
15 Fresia and Von Känel, “Beyond Space of Exception?”; Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp; Sigona, “Campzenship”; Turner, “What is a Refugee Camp?”
16 Martin, “From Spaces of Exception to Campscapes.”
17 Meiches, “A Political Ecology of the Camp.”
18 Agamben, Homo Sacer; Bauman, Wasted Lives.
19 Lefebvre, The Production of Space.
20 Smirl, Spaces of Aid.
21 Chaulia, “The Politics of Refugee Hosting in Tanzania”; Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover.
22 Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover.
23 Chaulia, “The Politics of Refugee Hosting in Tanzania”; Milner, “Two Steps Forward.”
24 See UNHCR, “Refugee Situation Tanzania, Statistical Report 30 June 2017”: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/58615
25 See for instance: Waters, “Assessing the Impact of the Rwandan Refugee Crisis”; Malkki, “Refugees and Exile”; Whitaker, “Refugees in Western Tanzania”; Chaulia, “The Politics of Refugee Hosting”; Berry, “The Impact of Environmental Degradation on Refugee-Host Relations”; Alix-Garcia and Saah, “The Effect of Refugee Inflows on Host Communities”; Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover; Turner, “The Barriers of Innocence”; Morel, “The Lack of Refugee Burden-Sharing in Tanzania”; Milner, “Two Steps Forward”; Fresia and Von Känel, “Beyond Space of Exception?”
26 Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover.
27 See for instance Agier, Managing the Undesirables.
28 Feldman, “Humanitarian Refusals.”
29 Agier, “Humanity as an Identitiy.”
30 UNHCR, “Burundi Regional Refugee Response Plan – 2015,” 46.
31 Makere/Kalimungoma/Kasulu/Nyarugusu village December 2016–March 2017, interviews with farmers, local drivers’ aid agencies, farmers, aid workers, local government officials, school teachers and church leaders. See De Bruijne, Negotiating Borders of Exception.
32 Makere/Kalimungoma/Kasulu/Nyarugusu village-camp, issues with natural resources came up in 19 interviews with citizens, government officials and aid workers. See De Bruijne, Negotiating Borders of Exception. See also: UNHCR, “Burundi Regional Refugee Response Plan – 2017”; Whitaker, “Refugees in Western Tanzania”; Berry, “The Impact of Environmental Degradation on Refugee-Host Relations.”
33 Kasulu, March 2017, interview district official. See also: UNDP, Tanzania Human Development Report 2014.
34 Kasulu, January 2017, interview CEMDO programme manager; Kasulu, February 2017, interview WFP Head of Sub-office. See also: UNICEF, “Final Report. Evaluation of Tanzania UNDAP 2011–2016.”
35 Initiated by CARE and UNHCR as early as 2001.
36 A mayor of a ward surrounding Nyarugusu camp recalled how the surrounding communities threatened to expel humanitarian organisations should they not see positive impacts of their presence.
37 Turner, “Under the Gaze of the ‘Big Nations,’” 227.
38 Smirl, Spaces of Aid.
39 Kasulu, February 2017, interview WFP Head of Sub-office; March 2017, interview Camp Manager TWESA (local Tanzanian organisations and UNHCR lead partner for Camp Management and Coordination); Kasulu, December 2016, participant observation; I stayed in the same guesthouse as Oxfam employees and observed and spoke to one employee helping a Masaai writing a proposal for his local development organisation in Mwanza. See also: Landau, the Humanitarian Hangover.
40 Nyarugusu village, March 2017, focus group discussion with community.
41 Makere, February 2018, interview mayor; Kasulu, February 2017, interview WFP Head of Sub-office.
42 Kasulu, January 2017, interview with retired civil servant.
43 Kasulu, February 2017, interview employee Good Neighbours.
44 Kasulu, February 2017, interview WFP Head of Sub-office; informal conversation employee UNHCR; Kasulu District official; Nyarugusu refguee camp, January 2017, MSF field coordinator.
45 As observed during field visits to Zaatari camp, Jordan, in 2016 and 2018, where this was proposed as new scenario for refugee hosting by the VNGi and the Municipality of Amsterdam.
46 Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover, 145.
47 Fellesson, “From Roll-Out to Reverse.”
48 Agier, Managing the Undesirables.
49 Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp.
50 Crisp, “A State of Insecurity”; Kagwanja and Juma, “Somali Refugees: Protracted Exile and Shifting Security Frontiers.”
51 Newhouse, “More than Mere Survival”; Oka, “Unlikely Cities in the Desert”; Brankamp, Refugees in Uniform.
52 With the exception of a decrease after the initial repatriation of Sudanese to South Sudan around 2008/2009, and other occasional fluctuations.
53 See UNHCR update Kakuma. Total Population as of 31st July 2019: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/70776
54 Massey, For Space.
55 Hyndman, Managing Displacement.
56 Newhouse, “More than Mere Survival”; Oka, “Unlikely Cities in the Desert.”
57 Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp.
58 Aukot, “It is Better to be a Refugee than a Turkana in Kakuma”; Otha, “Coexisting with Cultural ‘Others.’”
59 Sanghi, Onder, and Veremu, “Yes” in my Backyard?; Vemuru et al., Refugee Impacts on Turkana Hosts.
60 Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp, 16.
61 Kakuma, interview UNHCR head of security, see Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp, 17; and Loescher and Milner, “Protracted Refugee Situations,” 354.
62 LWF-EMOP (Emergency Operations) is a collaboration between LWF, OXFAM and WFP for distributing relief in the wider Turkana region, which was located in LWF’s Kakuma compound. Over the years emergency food relief operations have taken on a recurring and chronic character in northern Turkana.
63 Newhouse, “More than Mere Survival.”
64 See also Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp.
65 Vemuru et al., Refugee Impacts on Turkana Hosts.
66 Carr, River Basin Development.
67 Betts et al., Refugee Economies; Enghoff, In Search of Protection; Jacobsen, The Economic Life of Refugees.
68 The invasive Prosopis Juliflora, rather than from indigenous plants, that were diminishing due to widespread chopping of trees in the vicinity of Kakuma. See also: http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2017/12/28/kenya-s-drought-solution-becomes-major-menace-once-again.
69 Minca, “Geographies of the Camp.”
70 See i.e. ‘Development of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement’, 2016 KCRP Consultation of 8 Dec 2015, UNHCR Regional Support Hub (internal document) and the Regional Development and Protection Program by the Dutch MoFA and other online sources (such as: http://www.unhcr.org/ke/2078-unique-eu-programme-to-benefit-refugees-and-host-communities-in-kalobeyei.html). See also, UNHCR, “Kenya Comprehensive Refugee Programme.”
71 UNHCR, “Kenya Comprehensive Refugee Programme.”
72 As observed and recorded by L. De Jong, during graduate fieldwork with Wageningen University in 2017.
73 Brankamp, “Refugees in Uniform”; Oesch, “The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities”; Turner, “What is a Refugee Camp?”; Janmyr and Knudsen, “Introduction: Hybrid Spaces.”
74 Newhouse, “More than Mere Survival,” 4.
75 Andersen, “Statebuilding as Tacit Trusteeship.”
76 Kagwanja and Juma, “Somali Refugees”; Lindley, “Between a Protracted and a Crisis Situation.”
77 Brankamp, Refugees in Uniform.
78 See also Landau, The Humanitarian Hangover.
79 See for instance, Büscher and Vlassenroot, “Humanitarian Presence and Urban Development”; De Bruijne, Negotiating Borders of Exception.
80 Carr, River Bain Development.
81 Personal communications, internal background documents and workshop participation related to the Al Zaatari project with the Municipality of Amsterdam (since 2014); related to various communications, internal documents, workshops and consultations on the Regional Development and Protection Programme for the Horn of Africa, implemented by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (since 2016).