Sufficiently visible/invisibly self-sufficient: recognition in displacement agriculture in north-western Tanzania

Boeyink, Clayton

doi:10.5040/9781350225510.ch.004

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…While it is possible to map the actors and providers along this continuum, the lived realities of refugees show that the distinction between the state and humanitarian governance is a blurred one. For instance, Boeyink’s (2020) case study of migrant and refugee agricultural labourers and renters in western Tanzania illustrates a complexity in how refugees manage the ‘boundaries’ between state and humanitarian governance and provision. He shows that refugees strive towards being ‘sufficiently visible’ towards humanitarian and state authorities to receive assistance, while remaining ‘invisible enough’ to avoid the gaze of these institutional actors upon their quasi-legal agricultural practices outside the confines of the humanitarian encampment.…”

Section: Beyond (In)formal Approaches To Social Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond rights-based social protection for refugees

Zaman¹,

Collyer

Sabates‐Wheeler³

et al. 2023

Global Social Policy

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The use of social protection measures has garnered increasing attention in recent years from academics and policymakers aspiring to unite the humanitarian origins and development ambitions of displacement governance regimes. Much of this attention has been focused on establishing and strengthening national systems of social protection provision. Analysis of policy approaches to social protection has become increasingly detailed, but typically does not extend beyond formal rights-based provision. This article seeks to address the paucity of literature on how refugees strategise around access to social assistance beyond Northern-mandated approaches. We review existing research on Syrian displacement in Lebanon to interrogate assumptions that refugees automatically seek institutionalised assistance. Drawing on postcolonial literature, we explore why modalities of social and humanitarian assistance offered through a rights-based approach represent only a partial mapping of the social protection that refugees avail themselves of. In doing so, we signal a move beyond the narrow and restrictive binary of formal/informal and attempt to consider the range of social protection opportunities from the perspective of refugees. Though unequal, we argue that both national systems of social protection provision and alternative approaches identified by displaced people are currently necessary, although a language of rights is only applicable to the former. Ultimately, greater coordination between the two is required. In conclusion, this article describes directions for future research aimed at a holistic understanding of how social protection is accessed in displacement and a more explicit interrogation of the impact of social protection measures in displacement settings.

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Section: Beyond (In)formal Approaches To Social Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond rights-based social protection for refugees

Zaman¹,

Collyer

Sabates‐Wheeler³

et al. 2023

Global Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite this prohibition, people sell these rations openly at WFP distribution centres, at the Common Market before it was shut down, and throughout the camp. Apart from random performative harassments or scattering of sellers, the police allow this system to continue because it is lucrative for them to do so, much like the policing of illicit ‘displacement agriculture’ whereby migrants and refugees rent and work on farms near the camp (Boeyink, 2020: 71–72). Unlike patrols on nearby farms, where police are looking to extract bribes from cultivators, the secondary ration market is enabled by a coordinated system of rent collection in which the police and a group of some five to eight individuals, who call themselves ‘supervisors’, collude.…”

Section: Food Aid Resale Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Food Aid Resale Economy of Tanzanian Refugee Camps 975 When Victor arrived in Nyarugusu, he had no access to capital to start a business, nor did he have the human capital or skills to be employed by international organizations or other refugees. At 56, he felt he was too old and in too poor health to take the risk of leaving the camp to be an agricultural labourer, as many with no access to capital do (Boeyink, 2020). His solution was simply to ask for a job from a Congolese camp dalali in a similar position to Dalia: 'I found I did not have enough money for business, so without even knowing her, I asked for help'.…”

Section: Madalalimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Congolese refugees make up just over half of Nyarugusu's population of nearly 140,000 people and have built a strong economy as a result of living in the camp for more than 20 years. Most Burundians arrived with very little in Nyarugusu and two other nearby camps, Nduta and Mtendeli, and had to rebuild their livelihoods from scratch (Boeyink, 2020). Despite the impressive scale of the camp economy, since the 1990s, Tanzania has had one of the most restrictive refugee policies in the world, which requires refugees to live in camps without rights to movement or employment outside the camp.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Broker Exploitation and Violence: FromMadalalito Cartel Bosses in the Food Aid Resale Economy of Tanzanian Refugee Camps

Boeyink¹

2021

Development and Change

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It is a poorly kept humanitarian secret that wherever food aid is given, it is also sold, as recipients seek to vary their diets to include culturally desired food, start businesses, or deal with economic shocks. This holds true in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania, the site of this research. While this article addresses the supply side of the World Food Programme resale system, its main focus is the demand side, providing one of the first in-depth studies on what happens after the sale. Engaging with the political and development anthropology literature on brokers, the author introduces the intermediaries who make up this system, including low-level madalali brokers and refugee and Tanzanian 'bosses'. There is agreement within brokerage research of the moral 'ambiguity' or 'ambivalence' of these figures, a nebulous quality that is heightened by the seemingly innumerable different types of brokers. This article contends that a Marxian conceptualization of social class, beyond Bourdieu's widely applied social capital theory, is productive in understanding the threat of violence that a small cartel of bosses has set up in collusion with Tanzanian police to maintain the exploitative food aid resale pyramid. Members of this elite class are, in turn, 'products and producers' of a structurally violent encampment and aid system.

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Class in camps or the camped class? The making and reshaping of socio-economic inequalities in the refugee camps of north-western Tanzania

Boeyink

Falisse

2022

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Sufficiently visible/invisibly self-sufficient: recognition in displacement agriculture in north-western Tanzania

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Beyond rights-based social protection for refugees

Beyond rights-based social protection for refugees

On Broker Exploitation and Violence: FromMadalalito Cartel Bosses in the Food Aid Resale Economy of Tanzanian Refugee Camps

Class in camps or the camped class? The making and reshaping of socio-economic inequalities in the refugee camps of north-western Tanzania

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