Politics of Innocence Hutu Identity, Conflict and Camp Life [Hardcover]

Based on thorough ethnographic fieldwork in a refugee camp in Tanzania this book provides a rich account of the benevolent disciplining mechanisms of humanitarian agencies, led by the UNHCR, and of the situated, dynamic, indeterminate, and fluid nature of identity (re)construction in the camp. While the refugees are expected to behave as innocent, helpless victims, the question of victimhood among Burundian Hutu is increasingly challenged, following the 1993 massacres in Burundi and the Rwandan genocide. The book explores how different groups within the camp apply different strategies to cope with these issues and how the question of innocence and victimhood is itself imbued with ambiguity, as young men struggle to recuperate their masculinity and their political subjectivity.

Turners ethnography of camp dynamics offers a detailed analysis of the tension between humanitarian constructions of refugees and refugees own subjectivities. Through the analysis of the politics of innocence, Turner helps to elucidate a familiar debate, and to articulate the dilemmas related to the transformation of identities in exile? ??Journal of Refugee Studies

[This book] an important contribution to studies of forced migration and refugees as it illustrates the application of the complex theoretical underpinnings of refugee studies in ethnographic research. Simon Turner successfully combats the notion that refugees are a homogenous group and, in his compelling text, reveals the complex lived realities of Burundian Hutu refugees in Lukole Refugee Camp ? ?? African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review

Turners book offers fascinating insights into the daily realities in a refugee camp hidden under the bureaucratic model imposed by the relief agencies. In the UNHCR staffs blueprint the camp is an a-political, homogeneous space and refugees are innocent victims who have to be empowered. Turner shows  with the helpl#&