ABSTRACT
In academic and popular sources, refugee camps have been viewed as top-down governed structures associated with prison-like total institutions, ‘warehouses’ and seclusion sites, in which refugees are seen as little more than victims or cunning beneficiaries of aid, with little room to maneuver vis-à-vis the camp authorities (Horst 2006). This image neglects processes of social organization that take place among refugees within refugee camps. One of these developments is the emergence of multiple authorities that seek to contest, adapt or build on humanitarian governance and camp organization. In the past years, a modest emerging genre of refugee camp ethnographies shows how, instead, these humanitarian constructions include a multiplicity of institutions (Agier 2002, Horst 2006, Schechter 2004, Turner 2005, Jansen 2011). This chapter builds on that genre and analyzes the development of institutional multiplicity in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
