The Role of Somali Kinship in Sustaining Bureaucratic Governance around Dagahaley Camp in Kenya

Ikanda, Fred Nyongesa

doi:10.1080/00141844.2020.1773894

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Minorities such as Somali Bantus were housed in specific areas for their own safety, and other Somalis preferred to settle in blocks inhabited by their close relatives, sometimes through buying land in those areas. However, the refugee wave of 2011–12 – and to some extent the influx in 2006–08 that was occasioned by the war that brought Al-Shabaab into power – was distinctive because kinship considerations played a lesser role (Ikanda 2014). Earlier arrivals (who defined themselves as ‘old’ refugees) referred to these later groups as ‘new refugees’.…”

Section: Study Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animating ‘refugeeness’ through vulnerabilities: worthiness of long-term exile in resettlement claims among Somali refugees in Kenya

Ikanda¹

2018

Africa

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Refugees are generally viewed as a transitory problem. In many African countries, however, protracted refugee situations have turned the temporary refugee state into a more or less permanent phenomenon. In this article, I draw on the concept of uncertainty, and on claims that suspicion structures humanitarianism, to examine how long-term residents in Dagahaley refugee camp in Kenya attempted to make themselves worthy of being considered for resettlement. I demonstrate how the incompatibility between the UNHCR's resettlement criteria and Somali refugees’ lived realities provided both sets of actors with a resource: they used understandings of vulnerability as a means for making or denying resettlement claims. Refugeeness is a process of becoming, premised on how earlier arrivals deployed long-term suffering as a justification for being prioritized for resettlement. These dynamics resulted in the emergence of ‘new’ and ‘old’ refugee distinctions through which the meanings of vulnerability were redefined.

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Section: Study Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%