1In the late 1980s, demographers and geographers began to develop an interest in the relationships between migrations and development. Then in the 1990s, African crises resulted in the emergence of refugee camps. Researchers showed that these closed structures, managed by non-governmental organisations, had effects on the environment as well as on the local economy, as neighbouring villages indirectly benefit from international aid. Because these were new structures – settlements with a population ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands, growing and changing in a confined environment – anthropologists undertook to study their internal dynamics from 2000 to 2008.

Wood supply in a refugee camp, Kenya.

2They made it clear that these rough-hewn towns could have positive effects, notably by encouraging children’s schooling or multilingualism, habitat conversion or the emergence of new forms of sociability. They also raised issues about the long-term outcome of confined populations. How can one grow, study or project oneself into the world if one cannot leave the camp? How to envisage a return after such an ordeal?

3These questions led the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to create, in the early 2010s, a commission working on alternatives to refugee camps. Camps can be seen as emergency solutions adopted by the States or the international community pending other sustainable solutions, which however seldom materialise. With “encamped” populations left hanging for years, if not decades, marginal forms of urbanisation, politicisation or “ghettoisation” can stem from this confinement. The social, urban and political recognition of the rights of these populations would help open up the camps and improve the integration of the 15 million refugees and displaced persons currently living there.

Somali children, Saint-Annes camp, Kenya.