Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the meanings, understandings and uses of a particular object by Malian forced migrants living in Burkina Faso – their refugee biometric ID.

Paper long abstract:

Two topics have gained increased attention in recent years: humanitarian and refugeeness' materialities and objects (e.g.: Y. Navaro-Yashin, T. Scott-Smith, J. Darling) on the one side, and the development of (biometric) identity documents in the African continent on the other side. My work operates at their intersection, by addressing the meanings, understandings and uses of a particular object by Malian forced migrants living in Burkina Faso - their refugee biometric IDs (provided by UNHCR and the government of Burkina Faso). My paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork with Malian urban refugees living in Burkina Faso, and this project broadly looks at the 'relations' between the forced migrants and their refugee ID cards. I argue that by analysing how the current use of these refugee ID cards came to be - a 'proof of innocence', according to most of my informants - and why these documents were introduced in the first place, we can shed some lights on broader dynamics concerning representations, interactions with local communities, ideals of refugeeness, the role of intersectionality, citizenship, as well as how the label 'refugee' can be negotiated and strategized upon by the migrants themselves. This project has two aims: firstly, to underline how objects and materiality can be extremely revealing if we are to better understand the variety of experiences forced migrants live; secondly, to explore what can seem a contradictory case, where ID documents are created to prove the non-belonging, the 'non-citizenship' of a person in the country where she/he is currently living.