Coping with the Refugee Wait: The Role of Consumption, Normalcy, and Dignity in Refugee Lives at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Abstract

The relief discourse has long treated refugee camp economies and the resulting black markets and commercial consumption as detrimental for the relief process and the refugees. The consumption of "luxuries and comforts" is regarded as costly, trivial, unreasonable, and nonessential. However, despite the negative effects and the high costs of consumption, refugees make strenuous efforts to participate in these commercial economies. I analyze refugee commercial consumption at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, to argue that, despite its problems, the consumption is important, reasonable, and even essential. Using ethnographic data collected between 2008 and 2011, I suggest that this consumption has tangible benefits beyond the ability to fill relief gaps. It provides a forum whereby refugees can feel "normal" and gain "dignity," and cope with the long wait and the static transience of refugee life. Attaining normalcy and dignity through consumption may even enable structural stability amid the dangerous and volatile conditions of refugee settlements as well as mitigate the long-term effects of relief-induced agonism. Given these benefits, I stress the importance of further research into the complexities of refugee commerce and consumption for policy makers and relief workers. [refugee camp economies, commercial consumption, normalcy and dignity, relief and aid, Somali refugees, Kakuma] MUHTASARI Mazungumzo na maandishi yanayohusu uchumi, biashara, magendo, and ufisadi kati kampi za wakimbizi mara nyingi kujadiliwa hadharani. Inaaminika kwamba mambo na vitimbi vinayoendeshwa katika kampi za wakimbizi vikijulikana huenda yakazorotesha hali na maisha ya wakimbizi. Hata hivyo, ni wazi kwamba maisha ya wakimbizi ni ya ghali na mara nyingi imeonelewa kwamba hawana haki kutamani vitu ama vifaa wasivyohitaji. Hata hivyo ukweli ni kwamba wakimbizi ni wanadamu na wana haki ya kutamani vitu kama watu wengine. Makala hii inaripoti matokeo ya utafiti niliofanya katika kampi ya wakimbizi inayoitwa Kakuma kati Jamhuti ya Kenya mnama miaka 2008 hadi 2011. Utafiti huu umedokeza waziwazi kwamba biashara ya aina nyingi inaendeshwa katika kampi ya wakimbizi. Uchumi huo unaotokana na biashara ya vyakula vya wakimbizi umetia fora. Utafiti huu waonyesha ni wazi kwamba maisha ya wakimbizi hawako tofauti na watu wwa kawaida. Pia hali yao ya kimaisha yanaweza kubadilishwa yakawa mema na yenye heshima wakati wanangojea uamuzi wa makazi yao ya kudumu. Kutokana na utafiti huu, ni wazi kwamba biashara inayoendeshwa katika kampi za wakimbizi yaweza kurekebishwa iwapa wakimbizi pamjoa ma wale wanaosimamia kampi hizi watakubali mambo yalivyo na kujaribu kutafuita suluhisho.[Uchumi katika kampi za wakimbizi, biashara ya vyakula, kawaida and heshima, msaada and usaidizi, wakimbizi wa Kisomalia wa Kakuma]

The Ends of Anthropology: 2014 in U.S. Sociocultural Anthropology

“…Much of the work of this past year examined the practices that make possible a sense of shared qualities across collective subjects. From issues of citizenship contorted by contestations around ethnicity, immigration, and displacement (Byrd 2014;Oka 2014;Shneiderman 2014;Thiranagama 2014) and revised understandings of relatedness across borders, through ancestral homes, and via fictive kin terms (Bovensiepen 2014;Cole 2014a;Nakassis 2014) to renegotiations of race and indigenous recognition within settler colonial contexts (Ives 2014a; Jacobsen-Bia 2014; Merlan 2014;Sturm 2014;Wroblewski 2014) and science as authority in ethnic belonging (Tamarkin 2014), as well as practice through which reflexive identity might be assembled (Droney 2014), articles this past year show the myriad ways a sense of communal immediacy might be built, be contested, or fail. Here too of note is a Current Anthropology special issue on Christianity, showcasing a variety of situations in which Christianity becomes the idiom through which immediacy across groups is expressed and contested (Robbins 2014).…”

Sociality of Enforced Waiting in Rwanda's Postgenocide Legal Architecture

“…That is, what can be made of Odile and Alice's intimacy as distinct from their hostility the week earlier? Anthropologists have recently pointed to how the waiting produced by bureaucracies creates new possibilities for social and political action (Harms , 347–57; Kwon ; Oka ). For example, Mathur () argues that “waiting” for state services did not render residents in the Indian Himalaya powerless or voiceless, but rather those residents “became the state's strongest and most articulate critics” (150).…”

“…For some during the gacaca process, waiting emphasized the future, involving a “de‐realisation of the present” in which “the only meaning lies in the future” (Crapanzano ,44); anticipatory, as Das (, 79–107) described about India; or full of promise as Hetherington (, 195) described about Paraguay. For others, waiting was more negative, characterized by “uncertainty, ambiguity and contradiction,” as Harms (, 346) described about Vietnam; “boredom” as O'Neill () described about Romania; or a “long, hard slog,” as Abramowitz (, 186)) described about Liberia (see also Oka ). Anxiety generated by waiting in Rwanda could coexist, as Mathur () described about India, with “anger, fear, dark humour, along with politicized commentaries on the ‘value of life’ and the structural inequities” (150).…”

Introducing an Inquiry into the Social Economies of Greed and Excess

“…Such phenomena have also been observed within contemporary communities of refugees displaced by disasters (Agier, 2011;Jacobsen, 2005). Most refugees make strenuous efforts to consume surplus through the informal economy despite high costs, attritional indebtedness, and accusations of greed and excess by relief and development workers (Oka, 2011(Oka, , 2014Werker, 2007). Aid workers experienced in refugee issues know that the refugees' consumption of surplus is a primary factor in ensuring their survival until repatriation or resettlement (Jacobsen, 2005;Lischer, 2005).…”

“…The third section, Who Shares the Surplus, "Greedy" subsistence producers in transitioning economies, addresses the issues and accusations of greed and excess faced by small-scale societies as they deal with global markets and consumer demands. The epithet of "The Undeserving Poor" is usually leveled at groups considered unproductive within mainstream contemporary social economies (Oka, 2014). Thus, small-scale subsistence farmers, pastoralists, fishermen, and artisans have frequently been accused of greed and excessive desire when they claim some of the surplus that they have produced or from which they have been structurally excluded.…”