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Digital Humanitarianism and the Visual Politics of the Refugee Camp: (Un)Seeing Control
[journal article]
Abstract Digital visual technologies have become an important tool of humanitarian governance. They allow the monitoring of crises from afar, making it possible to detect human rights violations and refugee movements, despite a crisis area being inaccessible. However, the political effects of such "digital h... view more
Digital visual technologies have become an important tool of humanitarian governance. They allow the monitoring of crises from afar, making it possible to detect human rights violations and refugee movements, despite a crisis area being inaccessible. However, the political effects of such "digital humanitarianism" are understudied. This article aims to amend this gap by analyzing which forms of seeing, showing, and governing refugee camps are enabled by digital technologies. To this end, the article combines scholarship on the politics of the refugee camp with the emerging body of work on digital humanitarianism. It proposes the notion of a "visual assemblage of the refugee camp" to conceptualize the increasing adoption of visual technologies in refugee camp governance. Using the two paradigmatic cases of Zaatari and Azraq, two refugee camps for displaced Syrians in Jordan, the text outlines how this visual assemblage enacts the refugee camp in different ways - thus bringing about different versions of the camp. The case study reveals three such enactments of the refugee camp - as a technology of care and control; as a political space; and, as a governmental laboratory - and discusses how these interact and clash in everyday camp life.... view less
Keywords
non-governmental organization; society; Middle East; visualization; digitalization; Jordan; steering; regulation; Israel; information technology; aid agency; humanitarian aid; governance; communication technology; international organization; migration; refugee
Classification
Migration, Sociology of Migration
Technology Assessment
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 41-62
Journal
International Political Sociology, 15 (2021) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaa021
ISSN
1749-5687
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed