Refugees in uniform: community policing as a technology of government in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

Brankamp, Hanno

doi:10.1080/17531055.2020.1725318

Cited by 12 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…A first layer of suspicion in the camp was the result of deadly terrorist attacks in Kenya in past years that have been collectively blamed on refugees as a “suspect community” (Brankamp, 2020, p. 11). Somalis were especially singled out as an ethno‐racialised minority whose religious affiliation and place of origin elicited generalised suspicion among Kenya's public (Jaji, 2014).…”

Section: Suspicion In Kakuma Refugee Campmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling the refugee camp: Affectual research, bodies, and suspicion

Brankamp

2021

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This paper advances debates in camp geographies and forced migration studies by centring the methodological import of emotions and affect in research on refugee camps. Camps are often spatial expressions of compassion, fear, care, suspicion, but also incubate hope, solidarity, and feelings of belonging among encamped communities. Researchers are never insulated from these complex emotions and affects. While qualitative, ethnographic, experiential, or otherwise sensory methods continue to be widely used in this field of study, the emotional entanglements that arise from the embodied encounters between researchers, residents, and camp spaces are not yet well understood. The paper argues that it is methodologically pertinent to not simply incorporate such affectual intensities into existing readings of the camp as an exceptional space, but to understand people's differentially experienced feelings as actively shaping the camp's geography. It illustrates this argument by engaging with feelings of suspicion that pervaded my long‐term ethnographic fieldwork in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Ultimately, the paper urges scholars to explore camps beyond their known capacities for controlling mobility and motion as spaces that are also imbued with feelings and sensibilities.

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Section: Suspicion In Kakuma Refugee Campmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling the refugee camp: Affectual research, bodies, and suspicion

Brankamp

2021

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“…Community police and informal justice systems are widely shown to be important components of camp order. However, their position as refugees and enforcers of rules set by the host state can create tensions in their role (Brankamp, 2020). Community authorities may prevent refugees from reporting crimes to the Kenyan police (Jansen, 2011, p. 71).…”

Section: Community Police and Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence on Measures to Address Security in Camp Settings

Kelly¹

2021

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This rapid literature review finds that authorities use a range of methods to reduce insecurity in camps. Security in camps can be addressed through better planning of services by camp management, by more involvement of refugees, and through the use of outside security support. However, the militarisation of camps is a broader problem that requires political support from a number of stakeholders. The review focuses on insecurity arising from conflict (militarisation) and from crime and disputes within and around camps. It starts from the position that camps for refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) should be ‘civilian and humanitarian in character’, and thus, they should not host active combatants or fighters or support conflict. The rights of camp residents - e.g. non-refoulment of refugees - should be respected. In the case of insecurity arising from crime and disputes within and around camps, security measures should be proportionate and consider refugee protection. This review surveys evaluations and academic papers on camp security management. There is a significant body of evidence on the problem of camp militarisation in settings including Zaire/DRC, Thailand, Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. However, the review has found relatively little evidence on successful efforts to counter militarisation in cases of conflict. It has found case studies and evaluations of a number of programmes to improve lower-level camp security, or in cases where conflict has abated. There are several reviews of UNHCR ’security packages’ involving support to host state police in African countries. These lessons are focused on how to engage with refugee and host populations, as well as host states, and how to manage security services. Guidance on camp management is also surveyed. There is very little evidence discussing liaison arrangements beyond stating the need to provide protection training and oversight for security forces; and the need for principled engagement with states and non-state conflict parties.

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“…75 In the Kenyan case, the chronology of handing over refugee registration to the state has proven challenging, and there are examples of international agencies acting on behalf of the state in performing governmental tasks, 76 while conversely, the camps' arrangement for security policing were co-opted by the state for its security and counter terrorism agenda. 77 International actors, including development and missionary groups, intervening in and around Kakuma have become an almost permanent influence in administering people and the environment in the area. They have become institutionalized as a substitute for the state which plays a limited role in the area but also operate in an ambiguous proxy role, as intermediaries between the state and its citizens, both controlling and empowering the role of the state in the area and being substitute service providers.…”

Section: Governance By Intention Consequence or Mitigation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian spill-over: the expansion of hybrid humanitarian governance from camps to refugee hosting societies in East Africa

Jansen

Bruijne

2020

Journal of Eastern African Studies

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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 cogovern 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.

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Refugees in uniform: community policing as a technology of government in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

Cited by 12 publications

References 29 publications

Feeling the refugee camp: Affectual research, bodies, and suspicion

Feeling the refugee camp: Affectual research, bodies, and suspicion

Evidence on Measures to Address Security in Camp Settings

Humanitarian spill-over: the expansion of hybrid humanitarian governance from camps to refugee hosting societies in East Africa

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