Seminar 7 in a series on ‘Race, Borders, and Global (Im)mobility’, convened by Dr Hanno Brankamp
Seminar abstract: This talk aims to centre refugee survival in global capitalism between the camp and the city. Drawing on fieldwork data from Paris and Nairobi between 2017-2019, I examine refugee survival on three prongs: shelter, income, and political belonging. With the ever-increasing presence of refugees in major urban centres due to the dismantling of certain camps, trafficking, economically motivated migration and other conflict-related causes, the interconnections between camps and cities like Paris and Nairobi have become more apparent in recent years. In placing refugees in global capitalism, I argue that refugees comprise a disposable population in the global economy along the lines of Kanyal Sanyal and Gargi Bhattacharya’s conception of the ‘edge’. With this in mind, I speak to the material and ideological dimensions of disposability and pay attention to the urban dimensions of racial exclusion amidst logics of capital accumulation.
