Worldmaking in the margins
There are those of us trying to rip out the weeds of injustice and oppression from the ecology of our world. In the development and humanitarian sector, this is manifest in collective efforts towards anti-racism, localisation and decolonisation. But in the wake of these, what comes next? In the dying garden of old ideas, what grows after?
A student activist from the University of Edinburgh, Liam Wheeler, wrote a poem at the height of his and his peers’ global protest against the genocide in Gaza: “Remember, beloved, that power does not live in the halls of our governments, in the senates, parliaments, congresses and councils…it does not live in corporate offices….in the newsrooms….in the academic institutions…It lives in a tent, in Rafah, in Columbia.”
There are weeds that remain, but the the seeds of an alternative future have started to take root. These seeds — I, like Wheeler, have found— can germinate in a camp.
For the last three years, I’ve stepped back from my work in the aid sector to focus on my doctoral research. Motivated by my awe of people’s agency even in crises, I thought: if I wanted to learn from ordinary people’s actions, where should I look? I came up with an idea to study refugee camp economies: after all, what is more “locally-led” than an economy that emerges out of refugees’ own efforts despite official restrictions in the camp? In pursuit of this academic impulse, I spent most of this year living just outside a refugee camp somewhere in East Africa. As my fieldwork comes to an end, and my final year of the PhD begins, I thought it would be opportune to share my insights thus far.
My research is informed by the idea of institutions, usually understood as the “rules of the game” of human interaction. Whether or not a society is oppressive and unjust depends on the rules — both formal (like laws) and informal (like norms) — by which it is governed. Rules change — especially in historical junctures like crises or displacement. So, I set to investigate how rules are reconfigured in refugee camps — a process made more complex (but theoretically rewarding) by the presence of a hyper-diverse community of people from all kinds of backgrounds, ethnicities, tribes and nationalities (where I am, people come from at least 19 different countries).
I was interested in a particular set of rules — that of the market. Revered by liberals and vilified by progressives, I was dissatisfied by the lack of nuance most scholars and practitioners talked about the market. Here is a set of rules, common among nearly all human societies across time and space, and configured just as diversely as the people whose interactions it governs — yet often discussed in broad black-and-white strokes. In refugee camps, markets — and “market-based interventions” — are touted either as a win-win solution or else a harbinger of neoliberalism. Between these extremes, I thought, lies the truth. (My research, though situated in critical theory, is grounded in empirical realities: I looked at the rules of two specific markets in the refugee camp — the vegetable value chain and the digital value chain. I’ll write more about markets and these value chains in the future.)
And what did I find? In refugee camp markets, I saw rules that differed from elsewhere, especially in the West. For example, property rights operate in unexpected ways; the informal labour regime has unusual dynamics. Their divergence from Western “best practice” institutions did not always lead to virtuous results (power inequalities are a stubborn scourge), but they did give more than a glimpse of how society’s rules could be re-imagined — especially in ways that, in the context of their unfreedoms, enhanced refugees’ self-determination.
Inspired by the oeuvre of the late James C. Scott, I theorise that these new rules/institutions arise out of refugees’ everyday resistance: whether they survive — and thrive — in protracted displacement depends on their disobedience of unjust laws and policies imposed upon them. But more importantly, beyond resistance, what they’re doing can be understood as worldmaking in the margins.
Adom Getachew, in her book Worldmaking After Empire, shows us what happens after decolonisation. Drawing from Black radical intellectual scholarship, she argues that, after the violent decolonisation movements of the 20th century, (Black) leaders from the Global South sought to remake the world: one where their new nations would be recognised as sovereign and equal members of the international community. They did this primarily via formal institutions, such as through state- and nation-building as well as within the UN. The results are partial, though the project is far from complete: today, Global Majority leaders continue to struggle against the relegation of their people to the bottom of what W. E. B. DuBois terms as the “global colour line.”
Getachew’s groundbreaking work informs my analysis of refugee camps. While she looked at worldmaking from the top (by Global South elites and through formal institutions), I argue that refugees’ everyday resistance can be interpreted as worldmaking in the margins. Their refusal to be bound by unjust restrictions ushers new rules, which, in turn, lead to material benefits (such as improved livelihoods), but also alter social relations that disrupts what Michael Barnett, borrowing from DuBois, calls the “global humanitarian colour line.” Refugees are not merely resisting, they are creating; and this creative (re)construction (as opposed to creative destruction) is an emergent phenomenon. In the vegetable value chain, refugees plant seeds; produce grows — but, inadvertently, so do novel institutions.
This has important implications. Firstly within the aid sector, plagued by a “monoculture” of interventions, without sufficient regard for the agency of people in crises. If aid actors were to take the idea of worldmaking in the margins seriously, this could to lead to an ontological shift: the solution to crises becomes not merely (aid workers’) response, but (people’s) resistance. (Whether or not I/NGOs can operationalise “resistance” is another question; whether such operationalisation is desirable is yet another.) And secondly, in our understanding of “development” more broadly. Beyond the “monoculture” of West-is-best institutions, the concept of worldmaking in the margins enables us to ask: how can we re-imagine our societies’ social, economic and political rules that could lead to more just and equitable outcomes and, ultimately, that could guarantee the sovereignty and self-determination of people and communities within the Global Majority?
I am excited to explore these questions not just in academia (through my PhD research), but also in practice (as I re-engage with my work via Aid Re-imagined). It is my sincere belief that by taking seriously the idea of worldmaking in the margins, the shoots of a new — more just, more equal, more convivial, more free — world can be birthed from the ruins of our old one.
If you or your organisation are interested in exploring these questions, or are keen to undertake research or a project with similar themes, let’s have a chat.
