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Navigating Patchwork Governance: Somalis in Kenya, National Security, and Refugee Resettlement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2020

Sophia Balakian Open the ORCID record for Sophia Balakian [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract:

Refugee resettlement is accomplished through the intersecting administration of state and non-state actors with competing claims and interests. These competing claims are caught between humanitarian imperatives to rescue the most vulnerable refugees on one hand and security demands to protect national borders from those deemed undesirable and undeserving on the other. Based on ethnographic research with Somali refugees in Nairobi from 2013 to 2015, Balakian examines the ways in which refugees maneuver through an unsynchronized assemblage of institutions to which they are subject; she brings this assemblage into relief through ethnographic accounts of Somali refugees as they attempt to navigate the resettlement system and are simultaneously caught in Kenya’s 2014 anti-refugee security operations. Based on this case, the research demonstrates that being subject to multiple, competing governing bodies is central to the condition of statelessness in twenty-first century Africa.

Résumé:

la réinstallation des réfugiés est réalisée par une administration entrecroisée composée d’acteurs étatiques et non étatiques ayant des revendications et des intérêts contradictoires. Ces revendications concurrentes sont prises entre des impératifs humanitaires de secours aux réfugiés les plus vulnérables d’une part et aux exigences de sécurité visant à protéger les frontières nationales contre ceux qui sont jugés indésirables et non méritoires de l’autre. Basé sur des recherches ethnographiques à long terme menées auprès de réfugiés somaliens à Nairobi de 2013 à 2015, Balakian examine comment les réfugiés manœuvrent à travers un ensemble d’institutions disparates auxquelles ils sont soumis ; elle met en relief cette structure par le biais de récits ethnographiques de réfugiés somaliens alors qu’ils tentent de naviguer le système de réinstallation et les opérations de sécurité anti-réfugiés du Kenya en 2014. Basé sur ces cas, cette recherche démontre que le fait d’être soumis à de multiples organes directeurs concurrents est au cœur de la condition d’apatridie dans L’Afrique du XXIe siècle.

Resumo:

O realojamento de refugiados é levado a cabo através da intervenção simultânea de agentes estatais e não-estatais, como interesses e reivindicações concorrentes. Estas reivindicações concorrentes situam-se entre a exigência humanitária de socorrer os refugiados mais vulneráveis, por um lado, e as necessidades securitárias para proteger as fronteiras nacionais daqueles que são considerados indesejáveis ou indignos, por outro. Partindo de uma investigação etnográfica de longo termo realizada junto dos refugiados somalis em Nairobi entre 2013 e 2015, Balakian analisa os modos segundo os quais os refugiados lidam com um conjunto desarticulado de instituições a que estão sujeitos; a autora evidencia este conjunto de instituições através dos testemunhos etnográficos de refugiados somalis que tinham simultaneamente de lidar com o sistema de realojamento e com as operações de segurança antirrefugiados levadas a cabo no Quénia em 2014. Com base neste caso, a investigação demonstra que a sujeição a organismos reguladores múltiplos e concorrentes é central para a condição apátrida na África do século XXI.

Keywords

refugeesresettlementbureaucracyhumanitarianismsecurityKenyaSomalia
Type
Forum: Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Somali Refugee and Migrant Experience
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 43 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2020 

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