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- Convenors:
-
Jochen Lingelbach
(University of Bayreuth)
Joel Glasman (University of Bayreuth)
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Short Abstract:
The urgent, temporary and seemingly ahistorical character of refugee camps overshadows the histories of camps as devices for the care and control of mobile people. In this panel we will interrogate the history of encampment of refugees and others in colonial and post-colonial Africa.
Long Abstract:
Hosting refugees in camps has significant impacts, not only on the refugees themselves, but also on the constitution and evolution of post-colonial African nation-states. Refugees - the outcasts in a world of nation-states - occupy an important role in the construction of national belonging. Following decolonization, procedures, techniques and methods of refugee encampment were transferred by international aid agencies from the European post-WWII context to Africa. But there is a longer history of encampment in Africa: concentration camps in southern Africa, camps for war refugees, internees and prisoners of war, isolation camps for sick people, labour camps for tax defaulters and anti-colonial insurgents, to name but a few. In the African post-colonial situation these experiences intersected and developed into new forms of control and care for itinerant populations. What were the differences and commonalities in the treatment, perception and experience of camp inmates around the shift from the colonial to the post-colonial era? Refugee camps are not only a device of migration management, but also a site where diverse actors come into contact. Representatives of international organisations, government officials, refugees and members of the host population all interact and 'make' the camp. What social dynamics were evolving within the camps? What hierarchies, cleavages, categorizations and identifications did multiple actors within camps experience?
In this panel we want to interrogate the transfers of camp expertise and the interactions of actors within camps. We welcome case studies or conceptual papers engaging with the history of encampment in Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Federica Guazzini (University for Foreigners of Perugia)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the policies of encampment determined by the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the following five year resistance war (1936-1941), analysing the impact of different encampment policies on Ethiopian refugees and their interactions with larger political dynamics.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses the policies of encampment determined by the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the following five year resistance war (1936-1941). By examining forced migrations induced by protracted warfare, the paper will focus on internment camps for deserters as well as on camps for war refugees set up along the borders of Italian East Africa, requiring forms of surveillance never experienced before that challenged colonial gouvernmentality. Before humanitarianism, Ethiopian refugees became pawns in local and regional relationships, with differentiated treatments according to the neighbouring receiving country. Thus, recurring to unpublished and archive sources, the paper will provide a critical appraisal of these camps in a regional perspectives, questioning a) the strategies of neighbouring host colonial countries and the number of different actors involved in the encampment policies; b) the impact of the broader pattern of bureaucracy and control on the internees; c) their individual stories within the social life in the camps and their interactions with the larger political dynamics.
Jolien Tegenbos (Ghent University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation is concerned with the creation of a refugee camp history. I present in this paper my ongoing research on conflict mobilities, refugee and camp histories with a focus on Uganda's Nakivale Refugee Settlement, established as a refuge in 1958.
Paper long abstract:
What are the meanings, values and dangers of writing history in/for a place characterized by a permanent temporariness; by many as "nothingness"; where people aim to hide a variety of activities, trajectories, personal histories, and identities; and where many are found to be preoccupied with forgetting rather than remembering? How would the writing of such a history take shape? For whom would it be written and which ethics would be involved in such a process?
By looking into refugee and camp histories, circular return migration and its temporalities, I try to understand how refugee mobility is connected to a broader migration history of Central-East Africa. Further, as camps are slowly growing their own histories through protracted existence, their interplay with the (inter)national polities beyond its boundaries changes. This paper looks at a world that connects many refugee-settings in countries across Central-East Africa, but of which most people were ignorant of its particularities until they entered the reception centers. At the same time however, refugee trajectories also indicate that it is a world out of which many people seem not to be able to get out (easily). In addition, the in many ways hidden and protracted character of refugee camps leaves internal dynamics (entangled with national, regional, international dynamics) generating complex mobilities, realities and histories invisible. This paper asks what meanings, values and dangers could lie in recognizing or ignoring these histories.
Joanna Mormul (Jagiellonian University)
Paper short abstract:
Over the years the question of Sahrawi refugees in Algeria has become a highly politicized issue. Once a temporary solution, it became one of the most protracted refugee situations, perceived as a product of the unfinished colonization process of Western Sahara.
Paper long abstract:
Since 1975 the successive generations of Sahrawi people have lived in refugee camps located on the Algerian territory, struggling with difficult living conditions and hot desert climate. Over the years the question of Sahrawi refugees has become highly politicized, especially regarding their number and how it may influence the planned referendum (that has never taken place). Their refugeedom, once a temporary solution, became one of the most protracted refugee situations, perceived as a product of the unfinished colonization process of Western Sahara.
The paper will take a closer look on how, over the years, the purpose of the Sahrawi refugee encampment broadened and what impact it has on the Algerian society. Over forty years' presence of the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria created a space where a set of diverse actors meet while helping the population in the camps: Sahrawi camp administration, NGOs, Algerian authorities, international organizations providing humanitarian aid, as well as the members of the host population which for years have been showing support and solidarity with the Sahrawi people. The camps seem to have multiple purposes, from caring for the Sahrawi population to becoming a functionality test of the Sahrawi state in practice. The administrative camp Rabouni is in fact the informal capital of the SADR - the de facto state represented politically and militarily by the Polisario Front.
The paper is based to a great extent on the qualitative data gathered during field research in Algeria and in the Sahrawi camps on Algerian territory.