Between vulnerability and assertiveness: Negotiating resettlement in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

African Affairs

Volumn 107, Issue 429, 2008, Pages 569-587

  Jansen, Bram J ^a  

^a WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOR; DIASPORA; HUMAN SETTLEMENT; REFUGEE;

AFRICA; EAST AFRICA; KENYA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 53249125614     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adn044     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Resettlement is sometimes used synonymously with repatriation. Here it refers to resettlement in a third country only.
2. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Statistical Yearbook 2005 (UNHCR, Geneva, 2007).
3. United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees, Resettlement Handbook (UNHCR, Geneva, 2004). p. 10.
4. Monica K. Juma and Peter M. Kagwanja, 'Securing refuge from terror: refugee protection in East Africa after September 11' in Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher (eds), Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, refugees, and human rights (Routledge. New York, 2003). pp. 225-36.
5. For resettlement policies per receiving country, see country chapters of UNHCR, Resettlement Handbook.
6. Based on the accumulation of consecutive statistical year reports: UNHCR, Global Report 2006 (UNHCR, Geneva, 2007)
7. UNHCR, Statistical Yearbook 2005 (UNHCR, Geneva, 2007)
8. UNHCR, Statistical Yearbook 2001 (UNHCR, Geneva, 2002), Accessible on .
9. UNHCR, Resettlement Handbook, p. 10.
10. UNHCR, Statistical Yearbook 2005, p. 38.
11. The flow of remittances also results in more possibilities for informal local integration of refugees in cities such as Nairobi. See Elisabeth H. Campbell, Jean D'Arc Kakusu and Iddy Musyemi, 'Congolese refugee livelihoods in Nairobi and the prospects of legal, local integration'. Refugee Survey Quarterly 25. 2 (2006), p. 103. In the camp I met many refugees, and their family members, who lived in Kenyan cities and towns, and came to the camp occasionally, owing to the availability of remittances.
12. Cindy Horst, 'Buufis among Somalis in Dadaab: The transnational and historical logics behind resettlement dreams'. Journal of Refugee Studies 19, 2 (2006). pp. 143-57.
13. Mark Bixler, The Lost Boys of Sudan: An American story of the refugee experience (University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 2005);
14. Stephanie Riak Akuei, 'Remittances and unforeseen burdens: The livelihoods and social obligations of Sudanese refugees' (Global Migration Perspectives No. 18, Global Commission on International Migration, 2005).
15. Books include Dave Eggers, What is the What: The autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. A Novel (McSweeney's, San Francisco, 2006)
16. among films are The Lost Boy's from Sudan (Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk. 2003)
17. Rain in a Dry Land (Anne Makepeace, 2003)
18. God Grew Tired of Us: The story of Lost Boys of Sudan (Christopher Dillon Quinn, 2006)
19. among websites: and .
20. Interview, Head of Sub-Office IOM, Kakuma, 24 May 2006.
21. Interview, Country Director of Care International in Kenya, Nairobi, 4 September 2006.
22. Interview, Programme Officer JRS, Kakuma, 5 January 2006.
23. Sasha Chanoff, 'After three years: Somali Bantus prepare to come to America', Refugee Reports 23, 8 (2002), pp. 1-11.
24. Simon Turner, 'Under the gaze of the "big nations": Refugees, rumours and the international community in Tanzania', African Affairs 103, 411 (2004), pp. 227-47.
25. The Dinka constitute one of the main southern Sudanese ethnic groups in the camp.
26. Campbell et al., 'Congolese refugee livelihoods in Nairobi'. p. 96;
27. James Schechter, Governing 'Lost Boys': Sudanese refugees in a UNHCR camp (PhD dissertation, University of Colorado, 2004). pp. 125-6.
28. As has been confirmed by an internal evaluation of fraud schemes. UN/ OIOS, 'Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on the investigation into allegations of refugee smuggling at the Nairobi branch office of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UN General Assembly, New York, 2001)
29. Juma and Kagwanja, 'Securing refuge from terror'. p. 231
30. European Committee on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), 'Responding to the asylum and access challenge: An agenda for comprehensive engagement in protracted refugee situations' (ECRE, London, 2003).
31. A surprising note in the Report of the Office of International Oversight Services states that the evaluation team was not able to visit the camps in person, instead, 'it did interview numbers of refugees assigned to those camps and heard anecdotal but consistent reports from them, as well as from non-governmental organizations, UNHCR staff and embassy personnel, regarding the lifestyle at the camps', UN/OIOS, 'Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services', p. 7.
32. Juma and Kagwanja, 'Securing refuge from terror', footnote 20, p. 324.
33. Monique Nuiten and Gerhard Anders, 'Corruption and the secret of law: An introduction' in Monique Nuiten and Gerhard Anders (eds.), Corruption and the Secret of Law: A legal anthropological perspective (Ashgate Publishing Company, Burlington, VT, 2007), pp. 1-24.
34. This is also noted by Lammers about the resettlement process in Kampala. Ellen Lammers, War, Refuge and Self: Soldiers, students and artists in Kampala, Uganda (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2006), p. 24.
35. Gaim Kibreab. 'Pulling the wool over the eyes of the strangers: Refugee deceit and trickery in institutionalized settings', Journal of Refugee Studies 17, 1 (2004), pp. 1-26.
36. Karen Jacobsen and Loren B. Landau, 'The dual imperative in refugee research: Some methodological and ethical considerations in social science on forced migration', Disasters 27, 3 (2003), pp. 185-206.
37. Many international aid workers commented that their frustrations go unrecognized at the expense of moral politeness, fundraising, and political and bureaucratic correctness. It was mentioned as a reason for high staff turnover that has to do with the perception that 'all the refugees are lying'. Without judgement on the truthfulness of that statement, comments on drafts of this article from a variety of (former) aid workers, showed similar sentiments in private communications.
38. UNHCR, 'Annual protection report Kenya 2005' (UNHCR, unpublished document, 2005).
39. Cindy Horst, Transnational Nomads: How Somalis cope with refugee life in the Dadaab camps of Kenya (Berghahn Books, New York, 2006), passim.
40. Katharina Inhetveen, '"Because we are refugees": Utilizing a legal label' (New Issues in Refugee Research, research paper No. 130, UNHCR, 2006).
41. Kibreab, 'Pulling the wool over the eyes of the strangers'.
42. Martha Kuwee Kumsa, '"No! I'm not a refugee!": The poetics of be-longing among, young Oromos in Toronto', Journal of Refugee Studies 19, 2 (2006), pp. 230-55.
43. Horst, 'Buufis among Somalis in Dadaab', p. 144.
44. Schechter, Governing 'Lost Boys' p. 138.
45. Barbara Harrell-Bond, 'Response to Kibreab', Journal of Refugee Studies 17, 1 (2004), pp. 27-8.
46. Kibreab, 'Pulling the wool over the eyes of the strangers', p. 12.
47. Simon Turner, The Barriers of Innocence: Humanitarian intervention and political imagination in a refugee camp for Burundians in Tanzania (PhD dissertation, Roskilde University, 2001);
48. Simon Turner, 'Suspended spaces - contesting sovereignties in a refugee camp' in Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (eds), Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, migrants, and states in the postcolonial world (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2005), pp. 312-32.
49. Dorothea Hilhorst, The Real World of NGOs: Discourses, diversity and development (Zed Books, London, 2003).
50. See also Jeff Crisp, 'No solutions in sight: The problem of protracted refugee situations in Africa' (Working, paper 68, CCIS, University of California, 2002), pp. 17-18.
51. Several communications with the Director of Joint Voluntary Agency (JVA), Nairobi, April 2006.
52. Refugee 'recycling' and re-registration were relatively easy procedures. Digital finger-printing only became available in 2006. UNHCR was now trying to introduce retinal scan machinery, after good experiences with this in Afghanistan. Interview, UNHCR Head of Sub-Office, Kakuma, 5 May 2005.
53. Various interviews with refugees and leaders, Kakuma, 2005-6.
54. See also: Juma and Kagwanja, 'Securing refuge from terror', p. 230.
55. According to UNHCR, between 1,500 and 2,000 Somali Bantus from Tanzania stay in the camp unassisted; their coming to the camp is referred to as 'irregular movement'. UNHCR, 'Annual protection report Kenya 2005', p. 101.
56. See footnote 28.
57. UNHCR, Global Report 2006.
58. UNHCR, 'Annual protection report Kenya 2005', p. 102.
59. Interview, Officer in Charge of Kakuma Police Station, Kakuma, 13 June 2006.
60. Ibid.
61. Interview, National Representative UNHCR Kenya (interim) and Assistant Representative Protection UNHCR Kenya, Nairobi, 29 August 2006.
62. Peter M. Kagwanja, 'Ethnicity, gender and violence in Kenya', Forced Migration Review 9 (2000), pp. 22-5;
63. Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond, Rights in Exile: Janus-faced humanitarianism (Berghahn Books, New York, 2005);
64. Jeff Crisp, 'A state of insecurity: The political economy of violence in refugee-populated areas of Kenya' (New Issues in Refugee Research, UNHCR working paper No. 16, 1999);
65. Linda Bartolomei, Eileen Pittaway and Emma E. Pittaway, 'Who am I? Identity and citizenship in Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya', Development 46, 3 (2003), pp. 87-93;
66. Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the politics of humanitarianism (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2000).
67. Interviews, UNHCR Head of Sub-Office, Kakuma, 5 May 2005 and 19 February 2006.
68. Interview, Programme Officer JRS, Kakuma, 5 January 2006.
69. Hyndman, Managing Displacement, p. 79.
70. See also Ilse Griek, 'Traditional systems of justice in refugee camps: cause for concern?' in Debashree Mukherjee (ed.), Refugee Rights and Issues: Concepts and country experiences (Icfai University Press, Hyderabad, 2007), pp. 118-30.
71. Kagwanja, 'Ethnicity, gender and violence in Kenya'.
72. Hyndman, Managing Displacement, p. 79.
73. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, 'Between victim and agent: Women's ambivalent empowerment in displacement', in Philomena Essed, Georg Frerks, and Joke Schrijvers (eds), Refugees and the Transformation of Societies: Agency, policies, ethics and politics (Berghahn Books, New York, 2004), pp. 151-63.
74. Bram J. Jansen, 'The entitlement machine: The refugee camp as an arena of negotiation' (paper presented at the biannual conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), Cairo, 6-9 January 2008).
75. Interview, Head of Cultural Orientation IOM, Nairobi, 16 March 2006.
76. The former High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers criticized the Dutch government in 2006 for denying resettlement to refugees because they were considered not to have the potential to successfully integrate. 'Resettlement op basis van 'integreerbaarheid', NRC Handelsblad, 24 October 2006.
77. Conversation with Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) Head of Mission, Kakuma, 23 January 2006.
78. Gregor Noll and Joanne van Selm, 'Rediscovering resettlement' (Insight No. 3, Migration Policy Institute, 2003).
79. Marc Sommers, Islands of Education: Schooling, civil war and the Southern Sudanese (1983-2004) (International Institute for Educational Planning/UNESCO, Paris, 2005).
80. See also, Verdirame and Harrell-Bond, Rights in Exile, p. 284.
81. Ibid.
82. David A. Martin, 'A new era for US refugee resettlement' (Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series, University of Virginia Law School, 2005), p. 10.
83. Vincent Cochetel, 'Resettlement', Forced Migration Review, Special Issue (2007), pp. 21-2.
84. Human Rights Watch. 'Last hope: The need for durable solutions for Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and India' (Human Rights Watch report 19 7 (2007), New York, NY)