“They Have Overstayed Their Welcome”: the Discursive Construction of Collective Identities in Kenya’s Quest to Close the Dadaab Refugee Camp

AbstractDadaab refugee camp, located in the northern part of Kenya, is currently the world ’s largest refugee camp in both size and population. Having been in existence for more than 25 years since the outbreak of civil war in Somalia and the subsequent disintegration and demise of the Somali state, since its inception, the camp has been a home to refugees fleeing from war and famine, not only from Somalia but also from Uganda, Ethiopia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Eretrea and Sudan. This paper analyses the news articles on the quest to close Dadaab refugee camp by the Kenyan Government. Applying the analytic and conceptual tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA), the pa per argues that underlying the openly stated reasons for proposing a closure of the camp by the Government of Kenya are subtle and latent geopolitical and economic arguments which are majorly tangential to the refugee question itself; and also explicates how the identities of the refugees at Dadaab were constructed, reconstructed, contested, negotiated, enacted and reproduced through language as both the government of Kenya and the international community advanced their various positions with regard to the proposed closure. It emerges that the refugees themselves were reduced to mere passive o bservers in a process that was inherently meant to define and decide their destiny.
Source: Global Social Welfare - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research