Reconstructing Exclusion: State-Humanitarian Crime and Practices of Land Resistance in Post-Disaster Haiti

PhD ThesisThis thesis examines the criminogenic political economy surrounding Haiti’s earthquake reconstruction process. It uses eleven months of qualitative fieldwork in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to analyse the actions and decision-making processes of the Haitian state and humanitarian organisations in the urban housing sector, and traces their effects on the everyday lives of earthquake-affected Haitians. Despite organisational claims of victory in ‘ending displacement’ in Haiti, my thesis reveals the collusion between states and humanitarian organisations in reproducing urban exclusion and violating human rights. As evidence, this thesis presents a continuum of harms committed by humanitarian organisations and their complicity in state organisational deviance. The thesis also examines the ways in which earthquake victims have applied sanctions to the illegitimate acts of states and humanitarian organisations. Engaging with state crime theory, this thesis considers the extent to which humanitarian acts and omissions in Haiti’s housing sector may be considered criminal. In doing so, it develops a concept of state-humanitarian crime that refocuses attention on humanitarian organisations as important subjects of criminological inquiry