Michel Agier argues his hypothesis “from refuge the ghetto is born” by investigating types of encampments through the eyes of Foucault’s heterotopias. Algier coins the term “off places” or informal encampments established in most cases to seek refuge from violent conditions. Often times asylums offer a contained sense of safety and security for the refugees seeking refuge –but at what price? Agier argues “hospitality favors sharing the city as a common space, whereas refuge is shelter that one creates for oneself in the absence of hospitality.”[1]
Living in a refuge, Algier runs through a series of cases studies. One of which, the self-settled encampments are developed in extreme cases of refuge, hostility and in many cases after a long dangerous journey. Once established along with humanitarian efforts, the local militia can no longer dismantle the ‘undesirables’ and they remain “informal, possibly illegal, and yet tolerated.”[2] In the northwest of Kenya a humanitarian zone of roughly 170,000 sheltered inhabitants since 1991 do not have the right to be recorded on the map of Kenya. Because the zone is not under the country’s control, it therefore does not exist and is what Algier calls “humanitarian government of the undesirables.”[3] The way of life is “stigmatized by the prejudice and stigma associated with the physical border between a fantasized interior and exterior between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Douglas 1971, 271).[4] Heightened tension occurs between those of the outcasts who receive assistance through constrained living and those who volunteer or are in the category of national citizens. Even more, the identity of the encampment is in constant turmoil from the mirage occurring beyond its borders.
However, transformation of the camps happen overtime and the environment of shared experiences and diverse cultures is the foundation of “new contours of identity and multiple forms of expression.” [5]
In closing, while these thoughts remain scattered, one common thread still remains, investigating “spaces of banishment” for the other or the undesirable in the context of the nonother.[6]
1] Agier, Michel. “From Refuge the Ghetto Is Born: Contemporary Figures of Heterotopias.” Cambridge: Polity Press, (2011): 266.
[2] Algier: 268.
[3] Algier: 274.
[4] Algier: 271.
[5] Algier: 284.
[6] Algier: 285.