Kakuma's Shadows: Everyday Violence in the Lives and Livelihoods of Young People Living at the Turkana-Kakuma Refugee Camp Nexus

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dc.contributor.advisorGiles, Wenona
dc.contributor.authorBishop, Danielle Elizabeth
dc.date.accessioned2020-05-11T12:49:47Z
dc.date.available2020-05-11T12:49:47Z
dc.date.copyright2019-11
dc.date.issued2020-05-11
dc.date.updated2020-05-11T12:49:47Z
dc.degree.disciplineHealth
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation is an ethnographic case study of how everyday violence impacts the lives of refugee and host community young people living in and around Kakuma refugee camp in Turkana County, northwestern Kenya. By engaging with scholarship on structural violence theory and the social determinants of health, this study demonstrates how structural and political exclusions intersect with age, gender and ethnicity to produce insecurity for both refugee and local host young people, and for young mothers in particular. It also demonstrates the complex forms of exploitation that refugee and host young people experience in their efforts to protect themselves against violence in their everyday lives, and how they use their bodies to mitigate the resource, rights and protection deficits that shape their life worlds. Fourteen months of qualitative fieldwork in Kakuma and its environs revealed that informal labour, intermarriages, practices of relocation and, sometimes, rape itself, have become multidimensional strategies used by both refugees and hosts to overcome the rights and protection deficits they face and to access the basic needs the humanitarian regime and the nation state have failed to provide. I argue that these complex forms of exploitation and coping are forced by a continuum of systemic neglect and entrenched refugee-host co-dependency and co-survival. They also rest outside the purview of normative humanitarian policy and practice at global and national levels; they operate in the background of, and are unconsidered within child protection policies, host inclusion policies, and current institutionalized vulnerability categories. As a result, they are normalized, persist unabated, go beyond mere survival, and are not temporary. Yet, they result in only temporary safety nets. In the long term, these strategies lead to increased discrimination, lowered social capital, a lack of access to supportive resources, and further destitution for both refugees and hosts. I conclude that these are the shadows Kakuma casts. Because the shadows are symptomatic of power and of policy deficits, young refugees and hosts are systematically denied the right to dignity, health, education and well-being, the impacts of which are overlooked with grave consequences to human rights.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/37436
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectHealth sciences
dc.subject.keywordsStructural violence
dc.subject.keywordsThe social determinants of health
dc.subject.keywordsEveryday violence
dc.subject.keywordsPolitical and social exclusion
dc.subject.keywordsYoung motherhood
dc.subject.keywordsYoung people
dc.subject.keywordsRefugees
dc.subject.keywordsChild exploitation
dc.subject.keywordsRefugee camps
dc.subject.keywordsHost community
dc.subject.keywordsRefugee-host relations
dc.subject.keywordsTurkana
dc.subject.keywordsKakuma
dc.subject.keywordsUnaccompanied minors
dc.subject.keywordsSurvival sex
dc.subject.keywordsSex work
dc.subject.keywordsForced marriage
dc.subject.keywordsRape
dc.subject.keywordsHumanitarian aid
dc.subject.keywordsHealth equity
dc.subject.keywordsProtracted refugee situations
dc.subject.keywordsGender-based violence
dc.subject.keywordsHuman rights
dc.subject.keywordsSpace of exception
dc.subject.keywordsInformal economies
dc.subject.keywordsRefugee economies
dc.subject.keywordsHumanitarian policy
dc.subject.keywordsChild protection policy
dc.subject.keywordsUNHCR
dc.subject.keywordsChild labour
dc.subject.keywordsClimate change
dc.subject.keywordsDrought
dc.subject.keywordsGender
dc.subject.keywordsSexual health
dc.subject.keywordsReproductive rights
dc.subject.keywordsUnsafe abortion
dc.subject.keywordsInformal marriage
dc.titleKakuma's Shadows: Everyday Violence in the Lives and Livelihoods of Young People Living at the Turkana-Kakuma Refugee Camp Nexus
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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