IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/aaechp/978-3-030-03721-5_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Forging Associations Across Multiple Spaces: How Somali Kinship Practices Sustain the Existence of the Dadaab Camps in Kenya

In: Refugees and Forced Migration in the Horn and Eastern Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Fred Nyongesa Ikanda

    (Maseno University)

Abstract

Scholars increasingly have challenged the idea that camps as social worlds can only be visualized in terms of helplessness, immobility, and isolation. Similarly, this contribution demonstrates that Somali kinship practices of scattering family members to simultaneously exploit the potential offered by multiple places generated social networks that helped in sustaining the continued existence of Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. Drawing on the segmentary lineage logic and on camp-based ethnographic research, it argues that humanitarian policies did not reflect the realities on the ground. The severity of camp conditions inspired Somalis to improvise on kinship to maneuver bureaucratic hurdles, which did not cohere with vulnerability understandings of humanitarianism. Forming and breaking up of groups positively transformed refugees’ lives, though it also institutionalized tensions in social relations.

Suggested Citation

  • Fred Nyongesa Ikanda, 2019. "Forging Associations Across Multiple Spaces: How Somali Kinship Practices Sustain the Existence of the Dadaab Camps in Kenya," Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development, in: Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt & Leah Kimathi & Michael Omondi Owiso (ed.), Refugees and Forced Migration in the Horn and Eastern Africa, pages 287-304, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-030-03721-5_15
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-03721-5_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-030-03721-5_15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.