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Book Cover
Book
Author Agier, Michel, 1953-

Title Managing the undesirables : refugee camps and humanitarian government / Michel Agier, translated by David Fernbach
Edition English edition
Published Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, [2011]
©2011

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  362.87526 Agi/Mtu  AVAILABLE
Description x, 268 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
Contents Introduction : from vulnerable to undesirable -- Refugees, displaced, rejected : the itinerary of the stateless -- Encampment today : an attempted inventory -- An ethnologist in the refugee camps -- The interminable insomnia of exile : the camp as an ordinary exceptionalism -- Experiences of wandering, borders and camps : Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea -- Surviving, reviving, leaving, remaining : the long life of Angola refugees in Zambia -- Camp-towns : Somalia in Kenya -- In the name of refugees : political representation and action in the camps -- Who will speak out in the camp? A study of refugees' testimony -- 'If this is a town...' -- 'If this is a world...' --- 'If this is a government...'
Summary A radical critique of the foundations, contexts and political effects of humanitarian action. --Book Jacket
After seven years of study in the refugee camps, chiefly in Africa, Michel Agier reveals their ̀disquieting ambiguity' and stresses the imperative need to take into account forms of improvisation and challenge that are currently transforming the camps, sometimes making them into towns and heralding the emergence of political subjects. --
Official figures classify some 50 million of the world's people as ̀victims of forced displacement'. Refugees, asylum seekers, disaster victims, the internally displaced and the temporarily tolerated -- categories of the excluded proliferate, but many more are left out of the count: detained, rejected, illegal or expelled. In the face of this tragedy, humanitarian action increasingly seems the only possible response. On the ground, however, the ̀facilities' put in place are more reminiscent of the logic of totalitarianism. In a situation of permanent catastrophe and endless emergency, ̀undesirables' are kept apart and out of sight, while the care dispensed is designed to control, filter and confine. How should we interpret the disturbing symbiosis between the hand that cares and the hand that strikes? --
Àn impassioned and tireless explorer of "useless" and hence "undesirable" populations, Michel Agier asks here about their future: how can they be returned to the human family, brought back from non-existence into the social world, from the camp to the town, from a life without time into history? How can they rediscover a place on the map of the world, and pass from the status of reject to that of subject? Urgent and indispensable reading for all who reflect on action to be taken, or are called on to take such action.' Zygmunt Bauman --
Analysis Africa
Anecdotes
Humanitarian aid
Humanitarian intervention
Management
Refugee camps
Refugee policy
Refugees
UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Notes Formerly CIP. Uk
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes First published in French as Gérer les indésirables in 2008
Subject Humanitarian assistance -- Political aspects.
Political refugees.
Refugee camps.
Refugees -- Government policy.
Refugees -- International cooperation.
Refugees.
Author Fernbach, David.
ISBN 0745649017 (hbk.)
0745649025 (paperback)
9780745649016 (hbk.)
9780745649023 (paperback)
Other Titles Gérer les indésirables. English