Papers by Clayton Boeyink
African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines, 2010
This article utilizes 40 in-depth interviews of healthcare workers (HCWs) including Kenyan nurses... more This article utilizes 40 in-depth interviews of healthcare workers (HCWs) including Kenyan nurses, medical doctors, psychologists, pharmacists, refugee NGO officers, and others based in Nairobi who come in professional contact with Congolese and Somali refugees on a regular basis. They were asked to describe barriers to healthcare, care seeking behaviors, and pathways to care that refugees experience. These responses are juxtaposed with 60 life-history interviews, exploring the same topics with Congolese and Somali refugees living in Kawangware and Eastleigh estates. In short, this article argues that refugees and HCWs have a shared understanding of the barriers to healthcare for displaced people, such as poverty, refugee documentation issues, and inadequacy of Nairobi's healthcare system for marginalized populations. However, there is a significant disconnect in perspectives for how healthcare integration should take place regarding major causes of ill health, such as malnutrition and poor hygiene. Refugees understand oppression as a primary structural determinant of health, whereas many HCWs take an individualized view, advocating for modifications of knowledge and behaviors of refugees rather than adjusting structural issues. This is reflective of larger processes, whereby refugees are actively "(dis)integrated" by state and society and are observed by many Kenyans as "(mis)integrating," or integrating "wrongly" or "badly," which has major implications for how to shape possible policy interventions. KEYWORDS Nairobi, refugees, Congolese, Somalis, barriers to healthcare, perceptions of health, structural determinants of health, integration 1 For shorthand, we will use the term refugees, despite many displaced many individuals in Nairobi having asylum-seeker status or being undocumented altogether.
Amidst the ever-expanding debates in various academic and policy fields around migrant and refuge... more Amidst the ever-expanding debates in various academic and policy fields around migrant and refugee integration and local integration, we bring these two concepts in conversation with one another. Until very recently, theories of integration have had a state-centric focus in the Global North. This article expands and complicates this literature to focus on displaced Somalis within Somalia and its borderlands living in the cities of Kismayo and Garowe using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in five displacement settlements. Toward this end, we use the often-engaged term "domains of integration" to frame integration. In our conceptualization, however, we incorporate the concept of "local integration" as a durable solution. In brief, we see the domains of integration as a productive concept in the Somali context. However, in Somalia, where clans are interwoven into the state, which lacks resources and power, clan a liation represents social connections domains, yet also influences the state's role in the foundational domain of rights and citizenship and makers and means (employment, housing, education, health). International donors and NGOs, as well as international capitalist urban expansion also have a large role in these processes. As such, we argue that the ten domains of integration (discussed in detail below) intersect and blur to an even greater extent than in European and North American contexts, particularly around crucial issues such as housing, land, and property; a key factor in people's decisions to remain or leave.
Frontiers in human dynamics, Nov 8, 2023
This article explores the link between migration and alienation and its impact on the mental heal... more This article explores the link between migration and alienation and its impact on the mental health and wellbeing of Congolese and Somali asylum seekers and refugees-two of the largest populations of displaced migrants in South Africa. Drawing on ethnographic research in Johannesburg, we highlight the various ways alienation is both imposed upon and experienced by migrants and argue that systemic disintegration, or acts of alienation, can be seen as deliberate and active policies and practices that are instrumental in excluding asylum seekers and refugees from everyday life. The experiences of marginalization and othering narrated by Congolese and Somali migrants highlight ways in which alienation and disintegration from critical social connections including family, community, and familiar contexts fundamentally impact wellbeing and mental health as well as strategies of care-seeking, and other forms of relational resilience. While conceptualizations and metrics of integration may in some ways capture the fallout of disintegration, such as access to livelihoods, housing, education, and healthcare, we suggest that this does not adequately assess the profound damage by acts of alienation on crucial relationships. The alienated psyche of innumerable migrants in South Africa results in the feeling that "when a bad thing happens…you are better only when you are home." This pain, or feelings of alienation, we argue, are a crucial aspect to our understanding of alienation and in turn, highlight the importance of alienation as an apt analytical tool through which experiences of asylum-seeking in South Africa can be understood.
Drawing from historical case studies from Sierra Leone and Tanzania, this article fundamentally a... more Drawing from historical case studies from Sierra Leone and Tanzania, this article fundamentally asks, what constitutes decoloniality? Before answering, we analyze the enduring coloniality of national borders, internal boundaries and identities, and manipulation and coercive imposition of (im)mobility. Th ese colonial logics create "tethered mobilities" moving internal and external migrants in and out of approved spaces to facilitate extraction and racialized categorizations. We explore the impact of these aspects of coloniality on rural-urban migration and law in Sierra Leone and forced migration and containment of citizens and refugees in Tanzania. Conversing with critical migration and abolition literatures, we argue that despite no explicit revolutionary intent, migrants create their own tethered mobilities through everyday life-making in prohibited spaces as "rehearsal" for decolonial futures and mobility justice.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 10, 2023
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Oct 12, 2022
Development and Change, Nov 24, 2021
It is a poorly kept humanitarian secret that wherever food aid is given, it is also sold, as reci... more It is a poorly kept humanitarian secret that wherever food aid is given, it is also sold, as recipients seek to vary their diets to include culturally desired food, start businesses, or deal with economic shocks. This holds true in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania, the site of this research. While this article addresses the supply side of the World Food Programme resale system, its main focus is the demand side, providing one of the first in-depth studies on what happens after the sale. Engaging with the political and development anthropology literature on brokers, the author introduces the intermediaries who make up this system, including low-level madalali brokers and refugee and Tanzanian 'bosses'. There is agreement within brokerage research of the moral 'ambiguity' or 'ambivalence' of these figures, a nebulous quality that is heightened by the seemingly innumerable different types of brokers. This article contends that a Marxian conceptualization of social class, beyond Bourdieu's widely applied social capital theory, is productive in understanding the threat of violence that a small cartel of bosses has set up in collusion with Tanzanian police to maintain the exploitative food aid resale pyramid. Members of this elite class are, in turn, 'products and producers' of a structurally violent encampment and aid system.
Journal of Migration and Health
A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displac... more A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face. This study focuses on gender-based violence (SGBV), an issue often exacerbated in times of forced displacement, and adds to extant debates by considering the wide range of social connections (pathways and actors) involved in providing care beyond the formal biomedical (and justice) system. This research asks, who do IDPs turn to following SGBV and why? How effective do IDPs perceive these social connections to be? To answer these research questions, the study used 'participatory social mapping' methodology for 31 workshops held with over 200 participants in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2021/2022. Pathways to SGBVrelated care for IDPs appear eclectic and contingent upon not only the availability and accessibility of support resources but also social, cultural and gendered beliefs and practices. 'Physical', mental health, and justice needs are intertwined. They are hard to decouple as many actors cut across need categories, including family, faith and aid organisations, and customary institutions. Comparing Congolese and Somali sites of displaced communities, we see significant similarities and overlaps in pathways to care. While both countries have experienced severe erosions of state capacity, NGOs and parallel faith-based and customary legal, psychological, and health systems have filled the state's weakness to varying degrees of acceptance by IDP participants. A comprehensive understanding of the local milieu, which requires illuminating the logics behind where people actually turn to for care, is crucial for interventions supporting SGBV victims/survivors; indeed, they risk being inefficient if they only address barriers to formal systems.
Postcoloniality and Forced Migration
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies
Development and Change, 2021
It is a poorly kept humanitarian secret that wherever food aid is given, it is also sold, as reci... more It is a poorly kept humanitarian secret that wherever food aid is given, it is also sold, as recipients seek to vary their diets to include culturally desired food, start businesses, or deal with economic shocks. This holds true in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania, the site of this research. While this article addresses the supply side of the World Food Programme resale system, its main focus is the demand side, providing one of the first in-depth studies on what happens after the sale. Engaging with the political and development anthropology literature on brokers, the author introduces the intermediaries who make up this system, including low-level madalali brokers and refugee and Tanzanian 'bosses'. There is agreement within brokerage research of the moral 'ambiguity' or 'ambivalence' of these figures, a nebulous quality that is heightened by the seemingly innumerable different types of brokers. This article contends that a Marxian conceptualization of social class, beyond Bourdieu's widely applied social capital theory, is productive in understanding the threat of violence that a small cartel of bosses has set up in collusion with Tanzanian police to maintain the exploitative food aid resale pyramid. Members of this elite class are, in turn, 'products and producers' of a structurally violent encampment and aid system. 1. Madalali is the plural form, dalali is singular.
Refuge, 2019
The refugee regime structure follows a "xeno-racist" colonial genealogy. In this context, refugee... more The refugee regime structure follows a "xeno-racist" colonial genealogy. In this context, refugee cash transfers represent a biopolitical diagnostic, indicating where refugees are worthy or have the "bio-legitimacy" to reside. This article offers a brief genealogy of different iterations of cash operations, which include cash for repatriation at the end of the Cold War, cash for urban Iraqi refugees in Jordan following the second Gulf War, and the Tanzania government's recent decision to abruptly shut down a cash project in Nyarugusu refugee camp. Simply stated, where cash is allowed to flow, so too are refugees. Résumé La structure du régime des réfugiés suit une généalogie coloniale « xéno-raciste ». Dans ce contexte, les transferts d' argent aux réfugiés représentent un diagnostic biopoli-tique indiquant où les réfugiés sont dignes ou ont la «bio-légitimité» de résider. Cet article propose une brève généa-logie des différentes itérations des opérations de transfert d' argent, dont le rapatriement d' argent à la fin de la Guerre froide; l' aide en espèces pour les réfugiés urbains irakiens en Jordanie suite à la seconde Guerre du Golfe ; et la décision récente du gouvernement tanzanien de brusquement mettre fin à un programme de transfert d' argent dans le camp de réfugiés de Nyarugusu. En bref, là où l' argent est autorisé à circuler, les réfugiés le sont également.
Book chapters by Clayton Boeyink
Bristol University Press, 2022
This chapter is an exploration of the contradictions and dissonances of coloniality exemplified t... more This chapter is an exploration of the contradictions and dissonances of coloniality exemplified through the shared inertias of strict mobility control in three cases transitioning to various degrees from colonialism to nationalism. Joining in conversation with post-colonial thinkers, we foreground the ways in which coloniality continues to permeate the governance of people’s mobility in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African continent, the French department of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean and the state of Tanzania in Eastern Africa. We argue that the racializing hierarchies inherited from colonial rule underpin many of the most repressive dimensions of migration control across different postcolonial settings, albeit differently. Borders created under European colonialism as well as former logics of mobility control continue to shine through in the practices of collective refoulement, massive deportations and large-scale encampment that characterize these three case studies.
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Papers by Clayton Boeyink
Book chapters by Clayton Boeyink