Political space in refugee camps

Refugee camps are frequently perceived as aberrant spaces of emergency, misery and social breakdown. Based on the identified instances of political mobilization, this chapter examines how host government policies, humanitarian aid practices and forms of refugee organization create enabling or constraining conditions for political space and refugee agency. Based on case studies of refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh, it examines the conditions for political participation for refugees living in camps. The analysis demonstrates that political mobilization among refugees in camps frequently meets with scepticism or hostility from, and repression by, humanitarian aid agencies, as well as host governments. In humanitarian policy and practice, refugee communities are regularly assumed to be traditional societies where norms and ideas such as democracy and human rights are unfamiliar. It is therefore essential to fundamentally challenge and transform dominant humanitarian approaches to aid in order to enable meaningful political participation and self-governance in refugee camp contexts.