Managing the Undesirables

by Agier, Michel

• ISBN13: 9780745649023
• ISBN10: 0745649025
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-25
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

Official figures classify some fifty million of the world's people as 'victims of forced displacement'. Refugees, asylum seekers, disaster victims, the internally displaced and the temporarily tolerated - categories of the excluded proliferate, but many more are left out of count. In the face of this tragedy, humanitarian action increasingly seems the only possible response. On the ground, however, the 'facilities' put in place are more reminiscent of the logic of totalitarianism. In a situation of permanent catastrophe and endless emergency, 'undesirables' are kept apart and out of sight, while the care dispensed is designed to control, filter and confine. How should we interpret the disturbing symbiosis between the hand that cares and the hand that strikes? After seven years of study in the refugee camps, Michel Agier reveals their 'disquieting ambiguity' and stresses the imperative need to take into account forms of improvisation and challenge that are currently transforming the camps, sometimes making them into towns and heralding the emergence of political subjects. A radical critique of the foundations, contexts, and political effects of humanitarian action.

Author Biography

Michel Agier is an anthropologist, Director of the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and a member of the Centre of African Studies at the EHESS (Paris).

Table of Contents

List of acronyms

Introduction: From Vulnerable to Undesirable

A World of Undesirables, a System of Camps

Refugees, Displaced, Expelled: the Itinerary of the Stateless

Refugee Camps Today. An Attempted Inventory

Everyday Life in the Twenty-First Century's Refugee Camps

An Ethnologist in the Refugee Camps

The Interminable Insomnia of Exile. The Camp as an Ordinary Exceptionalism

Experiences of Wandering, Borders and Camps: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea

Surviving, Reviving, Leaving, Remaining. The Long Life of Angolan Refugees in Zambia

The Camp-Towns. Somalia in Kenya

In the Name of the Refugees. Political Representation and Action in the Camps

Who Will Speak Out in the Camp? A Study of Refugees' Testimony

After the Camps

If this is a town

If this is a world

If this is a government

Conclusion

Bibliography

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