Refugee Coloniality: An Afrocentric Analysis of Prolonged Encampment in Kenya

This book presents a decolonial and Afrocentric critique of prolonged encampment of refugees, centred on the case study of refugee camps in Kenya, introduced through the author’s decades-long experience of forced displacement. His positionality as a former refugee contributes to a wider discussion on representation, voice, and power within the refugee studies literature. Likewise, the revisiting of the refugee camp as site and tool of power from a colonial perspective, is an important and timely contribution to the literature. This book examines the camp as a colonial innovation and the enduring colonial logics of supposedly ’humanitarian’ extended encampment. Drawing on the anti-colonial theorists such as Fanon, Mbembe, and Nyerere, etc, it argues for an Africa without borders or encampment. The study is interdisciplinary, encompassing forced migration/refugee studies, camp studies, decolonial studies, and African studies. More broadly, it seeks to contribute to the literature on the politics of asylum in Africa through a critical examination of the colonial origins and the practice of encampment in Kenya.

Bosco Opi currently works for the University of South Australia in the Research Office. Prior to that, Bosco worked as Senior Policy Officer with the Australian Department of Home Affairs (2010-2019). His responsibilities encompassed a continuum of policy, legislative, and technical advice relating to Australia’s border protection. Prior to that, he worked for Flinders University of South Australia and tutored in refugee law and human rights law. Bosco holds a PhD in Migration and Refugee Law from Flinders University, faculty of Business, Government, and Law (2021). His PhD thesis provides a decolonial critique of ’prolonged’ refugee encampment in Kenya and Africa by extension. He is a decolonial scholar and the author of ’Borders recolonised - the impacts of the EU externalisation policy in Africa’(2021) published in the Journal of Decolonial Discipline.