Paper short abstract:

This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable long-term solution to displacement in the context of Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso. It eventually shows that such tendency can end up reinforcing inequalities among refugees.

Paper long abstract:

This paper critically explores the current tendency within the refugee regime of seeing employment as a durable long-term solution to displacement in the context of Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso. After briefly explaining how these recent trends (ideologically) differ from self-sufficiency programmes that were implemented by humanitarian agencies on the African continent in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper focuses on these projects' outcomes as observed through ethnographic research in Burkina Faso. These programmes supposedly aim for long-term impact on the lives of refugees, and not just short-term relief. However, by discussing the projects implemented - and not implemented - in the country, analysing who can access them and what they stand for conceptually, this paper highlights the consequence of this new "economic ethos" (or developmental goals?) of UNHCR. These consequences are quite straightforward: inequalities among forced migrants can increase, in this case particularly those linked with accessing opportunities and assistance. The aim of this paper is obviously not to criticise actual desires and aspirations of refugees to be economically self-sufficient, rather, I analyse and question the broader macro-economically fashioned humanitarianism, making explicit why it is problematic at the conceptual level, and anchoring that critique in the local context, practices, and discourses that I studied. In sum, this paper explores the (unintended) consequences of long-term planning getting into humanitarianism, and asks whether the increase of inequalities and hierarchies among Malian refugees in Burkina Faso can be analysed as traces left by recent - developmental-like - programmes implemented by aid agencies.