Refugees in uniform: community policing as a technology of government in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya

Community policing has been a popular paradigm for local anti-crime activities in Africa since the 1990s and spread rapidly across the continent. Humanitarian agencies have increasingly embraced versions of the framework to administer refugee camps and ostensibly foster security, protection and peac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Eastern African studies Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 270 - 290
Main Author Brankamp, Hanno
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Nairobi Routledge 02.04.2020
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Community policing
Counterterrorism
Crime
Deployment
Ethnography
Governance
governmentality
Humanitarianism
Kakuma
Kenya
local protection
National security
Peace
refugee camp
Refugee camps
Refugees
Residents
Securitization
Social networks
Teams
Technology
Terrorism
Uniforms
Kenya
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Summary:Community policing has been a popular paradigm for local anti-crime activities in Africa since the 1990s and spread rapidly across the continent. Humanitarian agencies have increasingly embraced versions of the framework to administer refugee camps and ostensibly foster security, protection and peaceful co-existence among residents. This article demonstrates that the deployment of community policing in Kakuma camp in north-western Kenya has been far more contested. Aid organisations and Kenyan authorities have competed in determining the orientation and implementation of community policing at a time when the government was intensifying both securitisation of refugees and counter-terrorism measures. Kakuma's Community Peace and Protection Teams (CPPTs) were therefore torn between humanitarian conceptions of localised refugee protection and more illiberal forms of security work which bound them closer to the Kenyan state. The permanent negotiation between these parallel 'technologies of government' was reflected in contestations over uniforms, trainings and everyday practices. Powerful institutions attempted to script refugee conduct and thus discipline the camp's pluralistic social networks and forms of counter-organisation embedded in a 'deep community'. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article illustrates that governing refugees through community policing blurs the lines between humanitarian protection, domesticating local systems of governance, and expanding the security state.
ISSN:1753-1055
1753-1063
DOI:10.1080/17531055.2020.1725318