From Partitions

Abstract

Chapter One, “From Partitions,” explores the argument foundational to the book: that underlying a refugee camp is a partition. Two forms of partition are central to understanding the Dadaab refugee camps' history: the partition of land, a colonial practice that entrenches territorial contestations, and the partition of the self, a humanitarian practice that stratifies the lives of persons. Through a dialogue between the author and Alishine Osman, a former Dadaab resident,the architectural and political divide created by the camps provides an opening onto the construction of a humanitarian borderland. It examines humanitarian settlement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the partition of the Somali Jubaland in the twentieth century to study how emergency intervention entangled discourses on human rights with those of territory. Learning from the refugee camp thus enables a conceptual reorientation toward it.