The Refugee Camp as Warscape: Violent Cosmologies, “Rebelization,” and Humanitarian Governance in Kakuma, Kenya

This paper approaches Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya as a “warscape” and explores the role that multiple understandings and experiences with violence play in the everyday organization of the camp. The dynamics of war-related imageries and various forms of past, present and symbolic violence translate into power processes and forms of spatial and social ordering that are explored as processes of place making. Rather than seeing violence as something exceptional, this paper explores how over the years of its existence since 1992 the camp was shaped by the narratives, experiences and understandings of violence and rebel histories, and the associations between refugees and armed movements.