Africa in the Global History of Refugee Camps (1940s to 1950s)

Abstract

Abstract

Refugee camps have become a key instrument in the global governance of migration: Today, they are one of the main forms in which refugees are administrated, sheltered, and assisted. However, most actors involved in camp management (including states, international aid organizations and refugee communities) agree that putting refugees into camps eventually brings more problems than it solves (health and environmental problems, stress on the local labor market, spread of violence). This raises the question, how have refugee camps become the dominant refugee management tool in Africa?
Refugee camps are mobile devices for the care and control of mobile people. Despite well-established criticism of such encampments from both scholars and humanitarian practitioners, these camps are still key instruments in managing refugee (im)mobility. Inspired by mobility studies, this project will ask why and how refugee camps emerge and what knowledge, personnel, and things must be mobilized to ‘make’ a camp. The common narrative of refugee camp history portrays them as a device that emerged in the 1940s in Europe and was transferred to Africa in the 1960s. However, we argue that there is a longer and globally entangled history of encampment in Africa. Therefore, we take a closer look into the history of refugee encampment in Africa, focusing primarily on the 1940s and 1950s in Eastern and Northern Africa.
This project examines the encampment processes in three interrelated case studies: First, we will examine the transfer of colonial knowledge from Africa to the European post-war refugee administration. We will look into the career paths of former colonial administrators who changed their employment to work for UN refugee aid organizations. Secondly, we will consider the hosting of European refugees in African camps during World War Two, focusing on the work of the UNHCR’s predecessor organizations in Africa. Thirdly, we will analyze the emergence of refugee camps in Uganda in the late 1950s. These camps were established under colonial rule to deal with refugees from Rwanda, Sudan, and Kenya and were only later taken over by international aid organizations.