Achille Mbembe----- |
| (from: Achille Mbembe, trans. Steven Rendall, "At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality and Sovereignty in Africa," pp. 270 - 271, in Apparduarai, Arjun, guest ed. Globalization, Public Culture: vol. 30/2000) |
The other new form of polarization with regard to culture and identity
is found in the refugee camps, under the combined impact of war, the collapse
of state order and the ensuing forced migrations. The phenomenon is structural
to the extent that first, the map of displaced populations, in addition
to being drawn over a relatively long time, constantly extends to cover
new centers while the number of these displaced populations constantly
increases. Secondly, the forced character of the migrations constantly
assumes new forms. Finally, although we have witnessed sometimes spectacular
cases of refugees returning to their homelands, the time spent in the
camps grows ever longer.  As
a result, the camps cease to be a provisional place, a space of transit
that is inhabited while awaiting a hypothetical return home. From the
legal as well as factual point of view, what was supposed to be an exception
becomes routine and the rule within an organization of space that tends
to become permanent. In these human concentrations with an extraterritorial
status, veritable imaginary nations henceforth live. Under the burden
of constraint and precariousness, new forms of socialization are emerging.
As bits of territory located outside the legal systems of the host countries,
the refugee camps represent places where the complete enjoyment of life
and the rights implicit in it is suspended. A system based on the functional
relationships between territorial settlement and expropriation leaves
millions of people in a position in which the task of physical survival
determines everything else. |
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Still more important, the camp becomes a seedbed for the recruitment
of soldiers and mercenaries. Within the camps, new forms of authority
are also emerging. Nominally administered by international humanitarian
organizations, they are secretly controlled by military leaders who
are either Photo of little girl from: Azerbaijan International: Spring
1997 (5.1) "Azerbaijan's
Refugee Camps: Four Years and Counting." Photo (historic) of Palestinian refugee camp from: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine |
trying
to retake power in their home countries or waging wars in the host country
for the benefit of local factions. These armies composed of adolescents
and refugees are financed in part through diasporic networks set up
in other countries. Child-soldiers are used as supporting forces or
as mercenaries in regional wars. Thus new social formations arise on
the periphery of the refugee camps. Veritable armies without a state,
they often oppose states without armies, which thus find themselves
forced to recruit mercenaries as well, or else to solicit the aid of
their neighbors in order to deal with internal rebellions. This logic,
which involves disconnecting the state from war-making and using substitutes
and mercenaries working for the highest bidder, indicates that complex
social processes are underway and that new political as well as spatial
boundaries are being outlined beyond those inherited from colonization.
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spring 2003 |
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george mason university |
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for additional information, contact lesley smith |