Camps and counterterrorism: Security and the remaking of refuge in Kenya (original) (raw)
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They're All Terrorists: The Securitisation of Asylum in Kenya
Extremisms in Africa, Vol. 2, 2019
Across the globe, migration is becoming securitised. Restrictive European polices and the US exclusion list prevent inward migration and are justified on the basis of security and other ‘threats’. In this global context, Kenya is no exception. Kenya’s Al Shabaab security threat has been increasingly externalised as an ‘outsider’ problem. The clear outsiders have become Somalis in Kenya, be they asylum seekers, refugees, Kenyan citizens, or Al Shabaab members. This externalisation has led to a strong security response to Somali refugees and citizens, who are seen to typify and collectively reflect the domestic (yet ‘external’) terrorist threat. In Kenya, the overwhelmingly security-focused approach has led to an array of policy reactions, not least the securitization of (Somali) migration and asylum in Kenya. By tracking major policy and operational responses to terrorism from 2011-2019, this chapter will show how anti-terrorism government and state actions in Kenya have increasingly targeted Somali refugees and Kenyan Somalis. This has included tightening immigration and refugee policies, including unconstitutional and unlawful removal of services; increasing border and security controls; and militant and aggressive police raids and operations. Kenya’s governmental responses and shifts in policy and practice have tended to accelerate in the immediate aftermath of Al Shabaab attacks. During these times, security and nationalist discourses are used to justify such moves. By tracking state responses, we see how the effect of policy and operation shifts, while populist, have counter-productive results that often undermine democratic values and fail to manage the so-called ‘social ills’ that come with outsiders. Indeed, the chapter clearly shows that Kenya’s response to terrorism has been ‘killing a mosquito with a hammer’, and has had profoundly negative effects of Somali asylum seekers, refugees and citizens in Kenya.
Enforced Disappearances, Colonial Legacies and Political Affect in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
Berghahn Books, 2023
This research is an ethnographic study into the processes of violence in contemporary Nairobi, Kenya. The ethnographic investigation was primarily focused on the residents of Eastleigh and its neighbouring districts. The ethnographic matierial taken from Eastleigh indicated that violence within that context appeared in two forms: dramatized and structural. Those two forms were a result of the observed and ongoing acts of police brutality, terrorist actions, gross inequalities, deep-rooted corruption and ethnic marginalization. Dramatized violence and structural violence were both used as theoretical tools to analyse these forms of violence taken from the ethnographic data. However, from the interlocutors’ stories regarding violence, the notion of citizenship arose as an intersecting feature between dramatized and structural violence. Thus, citizenship became a theoretical axis which connected strucutural violence and dramatized violence. Citizenship worked as a frame to observe how an act of dramatized violence could result in a reduction of one’s agency, in turn maintaining the victim as marginalised and therefore more prone to the forces of structural violence. In the case of Somalis in Eastleigh, police violence distinguished them as lesser or non-citizens. A reduced citizenship maintained a constrained agency, making one more suseptable to structural violence. Therefore, dramatized and structural violence interact with one another within the intersection of citizenship.
The Dilemma of Hosting Refugees: A Focus on the Insecurity in North-Eastern Kenya
2012
Physical security is paramount if any country is to progress both politically and economically. This article examines the problem of physical insecurity in Dadaab refugee camps in Northeastern Kenya in the last two decades (1991-2011).The three camps of Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera accommodated an approximate of 300,000 refugees as of July 2009, a number that far exceeds its capacity of 90,000 refugees. The recent influx of economic refugees fleeing from famine and Al shabaab stricken Somalia has further pushed the number to 470,000 refugees as of January 2012.These camps have had several cases of reported and unreported violence since its inception in 1991.As of July 2009, Dadaab refugee camp has remained the largest in the world. These camps are dominated by Somali refugees who depend on livestock keeping for their livelihood. Despite the Government of Kenya(GoK) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees( UNHCR’s) effort to promote security in and around Dadaab refugee ...
A Post-Cold War Geography of Forced Migration in Kenya and Somalia
Drawing on recent research in the Horn of Africa, emerging patterns of managing forced migration in the post-Cold War landscape are identified and analyzed. While camps continue to house refugees, the meaning and value of 'refugee' have changed dramatically since the Cold War. Efforts to prevent people from crossing political borders to seek safety are increasing, giving rise to a new set of safe spaces. These new spaces are expressions of a distinct geopolitical discourse and take the names 'UN protected area', 'preventive zone', and 'safe haven'. Their significance as a challenge to state-centric geopolitics both within conflict zones and as refugee camps is explored in the Kenya-Somalia context.
Refugee Coloniality: An Afrocentric Analysis of Prolonged Encampment in Kenya
PhD, 2021
This thesis is a critical examination of ‘prolonged’ refugee encampment in Kenya. By foregrounding encampment in Kenya, the thesis demonstrates how the camp – a temporary solution to the refugee phenomenon – has become a permanent institution for the concentration of so many refugees. With 33 of 54 African nations establishing some of the largest refugee camps in the world, millions of refugees have effectively become in situ, trapped in prolonged encampment. Current approaches such as the institutionalisation of the camp and the securitisation of borders, are critically analysed by placing the problem of refugee encampment against the context of colonial relations in Africa. Refugee encampment prevents free movement across borders and those borders must be understood, this thesis argues, as part of the legacy and persistence of colonial power. Methodologically, this thesis is an interdisciplinary undertaking; a critical legal analysis of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Convention), the 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (the 1969 Convention), and Kenyan domestic legislation relevant to refugees. It uses the socio-political and cultural frameworks of the camp, and key themes such as securitisation, sovereignty, borders, campzenship and Ujamaa to reveal the colonial/imperial continuity embedded within encampment paradigm. The interdisciplinary methodology applies diverse theoretical and conceptual frameworks to the legal texts/laws that regulate the existence and persistence of the camp as a permanent security architecture. Addressing encampment as emanating from colonially bordered Africa reveals the continuation of the colonial logics structuring prolonged encampment while also highlighting that current theoretical and practical approaches to resolve the problem have failed. As such, this thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge by enriching scholarly understanding of the camp. This thesis offers a detailed and nuanced reading of the role played by international refugee law in producing the problem of prolonged encampment in Africa. Inspired by my own embodied history of encampment in Kenya, this thesis models and advances an Afrocentric approach to understanding prolonged encampment in Africa.
International Journal of Public Policy and Administration
Purpose: This study is about refugees and national security in Kenya: Case Study of Eastleigh, Kamukunji Constituency, Nairobi County. The research examined whether refugees are a threat to national security, evaluated the relationship between refugees and terror activities and examined whether the Kenya’s open-door policy on refugees is a threat to national security. This research was guided by conceptual framework on what national security is and threats to national security, as well as refugees and the security threats they pose to Kenya. Push and Pull Theory and Securitization Theory further guided the research. Methodology: The study was conducted using Mixed Methods research design that incorporated both qualitative and quantitative approaches in data collection, data analysis and interpretation of the findings. The research instruments for data collection were questionnaire and one on one interviews with refugees and relevant key stakeholders such as UNHCR, Danish Refugee Cou...
Camp Abolition: Ending Carceral Humanitarianism in Kenya (and Beyond)
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2021
Refugee camps are among the most prevalent institutional responses to global displacement. Despite a quasi consensus among scholars, activists, and humanitarians that camps are undesirable, and should only ever be temporary, little work has charted the political project and practices of camp abolition that challenge their spatial unfreedom. Rather than life-supporting spatial technologies of care that unwittingly signal political failures of inclusion, camps form part of a calculated system of "carceral humanitarianism". This article draws on experiences from Kenya where aid interventions have shaped politics, social dynamics and economic life since the 1990s. Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei settlement serve as empirical windows to explore the limits of institutional decampment and reform policies, while demonstrating that more radical, abolitionist struggles are enacted through everyday mobilisation and acts of fugitivity among refugees themselves. Advancing critical studies of humanitarianism and forced migration, this article contends that only abolishing camps and their carceral logics helps to build more viable, safe, and humane futures for people on the move.
Kenya's decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex highlights structural flaws in the international refugee regime. While much attention has been paid to Kenya's reasoning, less has been given to the reactions of organisations and states. Given the state's primacy in the international system and uncertainty about refugees, Kenya's decision is perhaps unsurprising. It is contended that the stakeholders were unprepared because of path dependence and disbelief that Kenya would repatriate the refugees. While stakeholder reactions arguably demonstrate concern for refugees, the international refugee regime remains unquestioned, sustaining revenue streams that may fuel corruption, encourage lengthy encampment and prolong conflict,