Abstract
This book provides a concise but provocative analysis of the multilayered precarious temporality of Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia. It offers an incisive anthropological analysis of the lived experiences of Eritrean refugees in different Ethiopian refugee camps. Riggan and Poole fiercely demonstrate how international humanitarian policies and programmes implemented in Ethiopia by state and non-state actors have often failed to deliver positive results especially those aimed at halting the onward migration of the refugees to the Global North countries. They argue that several international programmes designed to ensure that Eritrean refugees are sustainably integrated into the local Ethiopian society to stop them from onward migration to Europe and America are highly incongruous, and pathologically disordered, thereby engendering temporal violence on the refugees.
The book further unpacks the dual precarious placement of Eritrean male refugees, who, first, at home, before their flight to Ethiopia, encounter the horrors of state-sanctioned national military service. This unending compulsory national service denies them the opportunity of a planned life, denying many youths access to education, freedom, and a good life. Second, upon their flight to Ethiopia, the refugees encounter mountainous challenges of encampment, and denial of rights including work permits, employment, economic ventures, and education. Riggan and Poole note that policies designed for refugees particularly those on education and economic empowerment, though well-intentioned, often end up creating conditions that expose the refugees to harm or what they called teleological violence. Teleological violence describes “how and why policies and projects that seem so aligned with refugee aspirations, such as education and work opportunities, may not only fail to meet intended outcomes but also put refugees in harm's way” (p. 13). This contradiction clearly plays out when Eritrean refugees upon completion of their studies in Ethiopia through local and international scholarships are unable to work due to denial of work permits and other internal employment policies that discriminate against refugees.
This book contributes to the growing literature on refugee and youth studies including international humanitarianism, security, and development studies by recovering African voices and illuminating the place of African refugee agencies in the global migration and humanitarian management discourses. It unpacks the internal contradictions associated with the implementation of Western-centric migration programmes in Africa. Through their analysis of the Ethiopian migration policy paradox, Riggan and Poole provide a Global South perspective that de-provincialises the global discourse on refugee management by acknowledging the need for local contextual dynamics and differences.
However, it is important to add that the book is silent on how history and painful memories of Ethiopia–Eritrean relations could be positively mobilised and transformed to enhance sustainable local integration of refugees in different Ethiopian camps. Further research is required to understand what culturally and historically driven, bottom-up strategies could be deployed to support international development partners and the Ethiopian government in managing its Eritrean guests. Through a special focus on temporality, the authors offer a rich perspective on the neglected place of time and place-making in global migration management.
The book is schematically divided into five chapters. Chapter one focuses on the interconnected scholarly and policy discourses and debates on migration deterrence and the nexus of humanitarianism, development, and security. Drawing from the Global Compact on Refugees, Riggan and Poole argue that the quest to outsource and warehouse migrants in home, host, and corridor countries in the Global South including Ethiopia, emerged following the global migrant crisis in Europe and America that undermined their development and national security. The Global Compact on Refugees and Other Policies of the UNHCR in Ethiopia were implemented to curtail onward migration through local integration and development initiatives. In chapter two, the book traces the conflictual political history of inter-state relations, asserting how such painful memories continue to create paradoxical hospitality conditions that continue to undermine sustainable host–guest relations. They aver that in the case of the Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, the concept and practice of hospitality have become too bureaucratised, thereby making transition to citizenship and local integration extremely impossible. In chapter three, the authors explain how teleological violence and the pain of progress are manifested through education. To Riggan and Poole, refugee education and schools create conditions that harm or poison the refugees. For Eritrean refugees in Ethiopian camps, education opens up their minds but equally exposes them to the sad reality that they cannot work with their certificates because of employment laws that discriminate against the refugees thereby reifying hopelessness and regrets. They conclude that “there is no purpose for education if the Ethiopian government does not guarantee rights for refugees such as right to work” (p. 86). Chapters four and five provide further evidentiary explanations of the hopeless nexus between temporal caretaking and suffering in refugee camps demonstrating how refugee agencies are mobilised and appropriated through caretaking, waiting, and place-making. The book challenges us to rethink some assumptions in humanitarian management about the place-making activities of refugees such as building a business, going to school, growing food, starting a tutorial programme, or establishing a religious community. It argues that these physical and immaterial adaptation activities do not, in any way create a true sense of belonging and identity for refugees. Instead, they constitute painful ways of killing empty time. In fact, by joining religious cults, trading in bitcoins and attempting scientific inventions, Eritrean refugees seek to imagine, make, and appropriate both futuristic and prophetic times.
In sum, this book makes a bold contribution not just to the global literature but also to the practice and theory of refugee and international humanitarian management by providing a bottom-up approach that inserts temporality and not just spatiality in planning and managing migration from the Global South. The book holds immense potential in catalysing progressive policy and programmatic reforms in international migration cum humanitarian management.
