Classified integration – Urban displaced persons in Dar es Salaam

ABSTRACT

The strict encampment policy enforced by Tanzanian authorities in the last years made it harder for displaced persons to settle outside camps. The article showcases possible impacts of policy changes on the legal, social and economic position of once relatively well-integrated urban refugees. Many refugees that had formerly managed to integrate successfully into the urban space of Dar es Salaam as workers, artists, entrepreneurs, or service providers were increasingly forced into illegality, faced more systemic discrimination, and became prone to exploitation and threats. The paper argues that the likelihood of urban refugees to nevertheless stand their ground depends on a relational set of factors in which class background plays a decisive role on various levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• Tanzania
• urban displaced
• integration
• durable solutions
• Dar es Salaam

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This definition of DP includes persons officially recognised as refugees and those officially labelled as irregulars, illegals, or migrants (cf. introduction) without conflating the terms. Differences in legal status are evident and undisputed, but this working definition makes it possible to differentiate de-facto refugees classified as migrants from voluntary migrants.

2 This paper focuses on Tanzania, and the less often scrutinised cases of urban displaced from DRC. For a wider discussion cf. paper 3.

3 The usage of social class in this article draws more from Max Weber than Karl Marx. The term is used to refer to an economic and social position in a hierarchised society and not to differentiate access to means of production. In line with Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1987), it is different from Weber insofar as it follows the everyday use of the term, which conflates what he meticulously differentiated: namely class, status and power (Weber 1980). For a less everyday rather descriptive and theoretically eclectic differentiation cf. introduction.

4 Structural limits are neither limited to refugee policies nor displaced populations: In many regards urban displaced are facing similar vulnerabilities and needs as locals e.g. among the urban poor. A study in Dar and Dakar described how evicted street sellers that might – though being national citizens – become refugees in their own place (Brown, Msoka, and Dankoco 2015).

5 Urban displaced are no exception: all displaced populations in Tanzania use strategies of invisibility (Malkki 1995) to widen their choice of jobs.

6 They have been altered in regard to names, locations, or professions but otherwise remain unchanged.

7 Article 4 describes similar cases of individuals that made their way out of camp thanks to work with NGOs as the virtually only upward mobility observable in Tanzanian camps.

8 The same pattern prevails in displacement situations in Ethiopia (Tufa et al. 2021).

9 The prevalent fear among refugee parents that children would reveal their identity has also been reported by Mann (Mann 2008, 42).

10 Putnam does hold trust to be a proxy of social capital – not a part of its definition.

11 Landau and Duponchel have shown that the category of refugee is not consistently associated with a person (Landau and Duponchel 2011).