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Paper short abstract:

Governance in Kakuma Refugee Camp is derived from the colonial logic of ‘divide and rule’. In this paper, we discuss the role of refugee community leaders in defying and complying with the colonial logic of the camp.

Paper long abstract:

In Kakuma, the UNHCR and the Kenyan state bestow governance positions to a select few refugee “community leaders”. As of 2024, Kakuma has a population of over 250,000 registered persons from East Africa and beyond. Since the camp’s creation in 1992, the UNHCR and Kenyan state have consistently attempted to control the camp’s diverse population, eventually institutionalising ethnic and religious community leaders in 1996. Community leaders became intermediaries between the camp’s residents and governing agencies, carving out niches of authority for themselves (Jansen 2016) while simultaneously competing with other communities to access the increasingly limited humanitarian resources within the camp (Millar 2022). This form of ‘divide and rule’, we argue, not only has foundations in British colonial governance, but was actively instigated by a select few refugee elites, before being institutionalised by the UNHCR and the Kenyan state. Based on Millar’s twelve months of ethnographic research and Majok’s personal experiences of living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, we explore how governance in Kakuma is derived from the British colonial logic by both refugees and the camps governing agencies. Taking inspiration from critical works that examine the colonial legacies of humanitarianism (Massoud 2013), we intend to complicate the coloniser/colonised binary, by demonstrating how community leaders themselves are complicit with, and at times, in defiance of, the colonial logic of ‘divide and rule’ within the camp. In doing so, we hope to find new ways to de-colonise humanitarianism through critically examining humanitarian mechanisms of governance (Aloudat & Khan, 2022).

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Paper short abstract:

In India, binary relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is being increasingly mobilized under the current regime under the discourse of decolonization. By considering the remnants of French colonialism in India, I rethink the binaries between the colonizer/colonized.

Paper long abstract:

In India, the binary relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is being increasingly mobilized under the current Hindu ethnonationalist regime under the discourse of decolonization, to abet a Hindu nationalist narrative. With British colonization of India, ‘Muslim invasion’, and anti-secular sentiments are mobilized to produce a national imaginary in line with Hindu culture and heritage. However, India has also been a land of competing European colonial interests and occupations, such as the French, retained their minor holdings years after the formations of the state of India in 1947. These minor colonial spaces remain in ambiguity, neither completely appropriated nor rejected by the state (Jørgensen 2019; Namakkal 2021). In my research, I engage with the Franco-Pondicherrian community of Puducherry, natives who renounced their communal identity to become French citizens in the former capital of French India. The renouncers came from the lowest castes, and obtaining French citizenship became an act of subverting caste oppressions. Majority of the renouncers served the colonial army, forming a distinct Soldat subculture in Puducherry and are dispersed in a migratory circuit between France, its former colonies and India. Through the ethnography of French national day celebrations by this community in Puducherry which takes place every year, I examine how collective identities and memories emerging out of post/colonial entanglements problematize the binaries of colonial/colonized. Do they challenge the dominant narrative of national identity in the current political project of subject-making? How do we think of decolonization through such identity claims and ‘multidirectionality of memory’ (Rothberg 2013)?

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Paper short abstract:

The enlargement of the roles of the army in French overseas dependencies couples with the expansion of market-oriented civic-educational offers aimed at disciplining marginal categories of citizens. These patterns are eagerly embraced by local actors and unsettle the dualism of colonizer/colonized.

Paper long abstract:

« Le Polynésien peux devenir président! » exclaimed Noa to the amazed-looking class sitting in front of him. He continued by praising the Service Militaire Adapté (SMA), saying that through this vocational military program they – the young and disoriented newly enrolled soldiers attending the class – could become, one day, successful men like him. The SMA, founded in the 1960s to overcome imperial anxieties and to foster French territorial cohesion in the overseas dependencies, is today renowned for offering a second chance to struggling youth and boosting everyone’s capacity by teaching specific professionalizing skills. Such an enlargement of the roles and functions carried out by the army in French overseas dependencies coupled with the expansion of market-oriented civic-educational offers aimed at regimenting and disciplining marginal categories of citizens. These patterns of neoliberal paternalism in the management of poor and marginalized categories are eagerly embraced by local actors, as the example of Noa shows. Joining the army allows Polynesian social actors to express their will to succeed given the limited aspirations available to them and sets the base for the creation of asymmetrical relations of power not only among French metropolitans and Polynesians but also among Polynesians who join the army and obtain privileges (while reproducing colonial patterns and behaviors) and those who decide not to enter the corps. Such a paradoxical positioning, being both of and against the empire, unsettles the dualism of colonizer and colonized showing the coloniality inscribed in the system itself.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the role of Pakistan’s Military as a neo-colonial hireling by unsettling the coloniser/colonised binary. Most of the research on Pakistan’s Military is framed through these binaries, downplaying the remnants of colonialism & restricting the space to redefine decolonization

Paper long abstract:

Pakistan Army is the continuation of the British Royal Indian Army. The logic of these armies is constructed upon the logic of colonialism: extraction of surplus from the indigenous population through the monopolisation of means of force and coercion on the one hand and the means of production on the other: It should not be surprising to see that the Pakistan Army is the largest capitalist empire in the country that produces cornflakes, cement, fertilisers, insurance companies, real estate etc,. It is a simple case of a monopoly over the means of violence transforming into a monopoly on politics and economics.

Most of the research on Pakistan’s military is analysed through coloniser/colonised binary.Furthermore, it overlooks the persistent 'divide and rule' project evident in the governance system, with Pakistan's military serving as the ultimate arbiter in the country's politics. As Gramsci emphasises- long term system of domination survives because its ideological roots become so powerful that it replicates itself. Then how change is possible? This research also focuses on exploring how the system of domination is replicated by Pakistan’s military through creating a new monolithic Pakistani identity. Can we pursue indigenous development as long as we operate within the confines of that colonial logic of binaries? This research paper is a mini ethnography that draws data from secondary sources (historical accounts), interviews, and lived experiences (having worked with Pakistan’s Military for a brief period). It aims to contribute to a more nuanced decolonization debate by analysing the role of Pakistan’s Military.

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Paper short abstract:

I explore the history of Mehmet Aziz's interpersonal relations across locations in the British Colonial period in Cyprus in his quest to eradicate malaria from the island and the contemporary situation and implications.

Paper long abstract:

In the late 1940's a Cypriot physician, Mehmet Aziz, designed and led the Anopheles Eradication Programme (AEP) leading to Cyprus becoming the first country to eradicate malaria. The programme was designed and led by 'a local' on behalf of intersecting colonial interests within a colonially occupied country. In addition, this curiously successful case predates the failed WHO global programme despite ostensibly using related methods with the addition of computer modelling in the WHO case. What role did Cyprus regional and Aziz's 'local' positionality contribute to the success of the AEP programme? How did the techniques of Aziz contrast with those used by the WHO?

In the 21st century Cyprus is facing the horizon of new and forgotten mosquito-associated-diseases, with old and new mosquito programmes embroiled in relationships that muddy the distinction between coloniser and colonized. Based on archival research and ethnography, this paper draws on the work of Green (2005, 2022) and D'Souza (2009) to explore the connections and disconnections that have and are defining and configuring mosquito-relations in Cyprus and the logics that underpin them.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research I will elaborate on how the memoryscape of Białowieża, once Tsarist's private property, is perceived. Who relates to the Tsar's time in Białowieża as oppressive, and who recalls the opposite? How is this linked to contemporary control of resources and discourse?

Paper long abstract:

There has been discussion on defining the situation of East-Central Europe as a postcolonial condition (Cervinkova 2012, Chari, Verdery 2009). Much of it covers the imperialism of Tsarist Russia, which led to the research project on how institutional actors and local communities dealt with heritage/s from tsarist times in various parts of Poland.

In my presentation, I will focus on Białowieża - a big village settled in the heart of the Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF) with a multi-ethnic and multi-religious community. Based on discourse analyses, 20 IDI, and ethnographic observations I will elaborate on how the memoryscape of Białowieża (whose dominant layout originated when Białowieża Forrest was a Tsarist's private property with the palace in the centre) has been treated and is variously remembered.

Not only the complexity of state and ethnic heritage but also the presence of a powerful symbolic resource as the last primeval forest make Białowieża not a typical village (Franklin 2000; Niedziałkowski et al. 2012; Winiarski et. al. 2012). During my research, I mapped vital sources of divisions and a sense of oppression among part incumbents related to the establishment of Polish statehood in 1918 and the arrival of the uniformed services of State Forest and National Park, which complicate the identities of colonisers. Thus I will provocatively propose the application of the perspective of “green colonialism” (Kwashirai 2009; Normann, 2020; Kartveit 2021) coined in reference to former colonies in Africa, and put it on the discussion about this case study.

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Paper short abstract:

Malta, colony turned neocolonial EU border, is rife for an ethnographic study of borders, colonial remnants & competing dynamics. The paper posits a continuum between colonial & contemporary borders; it argues that decolonization cannot be an aesthetic maneuver but a fundamental transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic research conducted with several noncitizens who have crossed Malta’s regime of borders in different ways and whose everyday border experiences differ due to a diversity of circumstances – as well as data collected around the investigation of several noncitizens, whose bodies were recovered in the Mediterranean and are now buried in Malta, I will build the case the EUropean regime of borders is a remnant of colonialism.

Using border ethnography as a tool to define both physical and conceptual spaces of engagement, this paper addresses the construction and enforcement of border structures – how those structures are experienced and negotiated to better understand their function, purpose and consequences. Furthermore, I will establish links between colonial borders (physical, institutional and conceptual) and contemporary categorizations at borders, which impact physical mobilities, experiences of borders and establish differentiated practices and perceptions of mobile individuals. Current borders are not ‘new’ inventions, but rather contemporary iterations of older, imperial projects.

This paper aims to shake up fixed notions of what borders are and where they can be found, to problematize the clear inside-outside of the EU and its regime of borders and turn upside-down the rigidity of notions of colonizer-colonized relations/practices. Given the continuum between colonial and contemporary borders, it pessimistically posits that decolonization is not an exercise of re-naming, discourse or aesthetics, but of fundamental – and especially, conceptual and emotional – deconstruction and reprogramming.

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Paper short abstract:

International oligarchs seeking Maltese passports have occupied ruined imperial infrastructures and revived economies and expectations established during British rule. Requiring local compliance, their presence unsettles the colonial/post-colonial dichotomy on which Maltese historiography relies.

Paper long abstract:

In 2019, a prominent Maltese human-rights NGO urged compatriots direct their anger not at harmless sub-Saharan migrants, but at international oligarchs, whose quest for Maltese (and thus EU) passports required them to buy expensive apartments in newly-constructed gated-communities. The legal and construction industries servicing these elites provided newfound wealth for Malta’s landowners. The NGO feared, however, that they were jeopardising Malta’s reputation and making the island inaccessible and inhospitable to upcoming generations. These cosmopolitan elites were thus likened to “White Walkers” from ‘Game of Thrones’; otherworldly necromancers whose presence zombifies humans and kills the land.

“White walkers” are perceived as a disruptive unprecedented product of late capitalism. This paper instead argues they have snugly occupied ruined imperial infrastructures and re-activated dormant colonial relations and expectations established during British rule. Their presence unsettles the dichotomies (coloniser/colonised; colonial/post-colonial) on which Maltese historiography and conceptions of sovereignty are built. In Malta, British authorities differentiated between “civil” and “military” affairs. All military business took placed in fortified enclaves, barred to the natives. Following “independence”, these enclaves fell into ruin, being unsuitable for industrial or residential development. “Heterotopias” par excellence, they now house global elites, whose ivory towers mushroom atop their foundations.

The indifference of the Maltese to re-enclavisation (and the sale of passports) is dismissed by activists, scholars, and European politicians as a sign of Malta’s failure to fulfil its post-colonial responsibilities. Unwritten household histories, however, suggest acute awareness that survival in a “fragmented ecosystem” requires flirtation and compliance with dangerous forces from oversees.

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Paper short abstract:

I will present my ongoing research on Campesino settlers land tenure engagements in Chiquitanía, as anthropogenic environmental transformations reconfigure livelihoods, knowledges, and the ‘motley’ territorial networks in this agrarian extractive frontier.

Paper long abstract:

The agricultural transformation of the dry-forests of Chiquitanía in the Bolivian lowlands has multi-scalar consequences for ecologies, livelihoods, and rural communities. In the last decade, land fires, commonplace in refashioning and reinvigorating ecologies, have been appropriated, scaled, and run wild, spurring eco-political crises. Campesinos are ‘hybrid’ settlers in this landscape, in frictional relations with extractive processes and local indigenous territorial struggles. Portrayed by agroindustrial elites as Andean colonizers uncaringly spurring fires, these internal settlers stem from impoverished communities across high- and lowlands. They represent a de-territorialized, pluri-national, and market-oriented indigeneity challenging essentialist frameworks for understanding (de)colonization, only uncomfortably aligned with MaS government policies (Fabricant 2012).

Rather than being just destructive ‘aliens’, ‘hybrid’ smallholder settlers across Latin America cultivate ecological ethics through land tenures (Campos 2008). In Bolivia, state exemptions to settler deforestation pave the way for Campesinos to hold land, affording subsistence and economic participative citizenship, but cycles of debt and ecological degradation. and obtuse land titling push them toward maximizing short-term profit. I present my ongoing research on Campesino settlers land tenure engagements in Chiquitanía, as anthropogenic environmental transformations reconfigure livelihoods, knowledges, and the horizons for ‘motley’ territorial networks. I portray how biophysical processes such as anthropogenic (wild)fires gather disparate territorial worlds, shaping territorial spill-overs, contestations, and collaborations. Investigating Campesino territorial entanglements with extractive landscape transformation, I explore how territorialities, situated in livelihoods, ecological knowledges and practices as matters of care (Bellacasa 2017), intersect with regionalist, extractivist, and indigenous politics in the (re)fashioning of (de)colonial territorial projects in Chiquitanía.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the theoretical discussions on the articulation between whiteness, Europeanness and coloniality, this paper analyses how whiteness, as a colonial privilege, can be constructed in one context and sometimes contested in another, in particular through processes of migrantisation.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the perspectives of critical whiteness and post/decoloniality, in particular on the theoretical discussions on the articulation between whiteness, Europeanness and coloniality, this paper analyses how whiteness, as a colonial privilege, can be constructed in one context and sometimes deconstructed or at least contested in another, in particular through migrantisation processes, often synonymous for racialisation.

These perspectives show that whiteness and coloniality are intrinsically linked and (re)produce processes of racialisation. Migration studies drawing on these perspectives show how the combination of whiteness and coloniality produces hierarchical categories of migrants, as in the case of immigration policies differentiating according to people’s ‘origin’. Furthermore, these categories are often used as synonyms for race. And Switzerland is no exception.

Therefore, I propose to put into perspective two national contexts for the construction of whiteness, Chile and Switzerland, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Chileans of European descent who have a migration experience to Switzerland, to examine several spaces in which this whiteness-coloniality nexus operates as a power relationship.

Participants’ life trajectories highlight the colonial construction of whiteness in Chile and, above all, the privileges it confers on people marked as European/white in this context. On the other hand, in the Swiss context, the hierarchical and often racialised categorisations of migration are affecting them at the institutional level and beyond, in their everyday lives, questioning the continuity of their privilege.