GLASGOW LAUNCH: Occupied Refuge

EVENT DETAILS:

Join us in the Humanity Lecture Theatre, Gilbert Scott Building, Room 255, West Quad, Room 255, University of Glasgow for the launch of Occupied Refuge: Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya, by Hanno Brankamp. The event takes place on Friday, 6 March 2026, 4-6 PM. All welcome!

The event will feature a talk by the author, Dr Hanno Brankamp, followed by a panel discussion with Prof Loren Landau (University of Oxford), Dr Kamau Wairuri (Edinburgh Napier University), Dr Kate Botterill (University of Glasgow).

HOW TO GET THE BOOK:

The book is published with Duke University Press as part of its Global Insecurities series and is available to order now.

To order the book in the UK, Europe and rest of the world CLICK HERE (Discount code: E26BRNKM)

To order the book in North and South America CLICK HERE (Discount code: E26BRNKM)

You can also read the introduction online for free here.

BOOK ABSTRACT:

In a world shaped by war, climate disaster, and displacement, refugee camps are imagined as indispensable safe havens for millions of people fleeing crises. In Occupied Refuge, Hanno Brankamp challenges the presumed innocence of refugee humanitarianism as a system of civilian protection that can manage global inequalities and forced migration by peaceful means. He shows that although humanitarian missions aim to protect displaced populations in the global South, they often function as militarized occupations that treat camp inhabitants as new colonized subjects. Through ethnographic research in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, Brankamp demonstrates how aid operations rely on a combination of infrastructural expansion, militarized policing, ethno-racial subjugation, indirect rule, and economic extraction. By co-managing these camps with international aid agencies, the Kenyan state becomes not only a willing accomplice in planetary humanitarian containment but seeks to pacify its own peripheral territories, securitize unwanted migrants, and impose national rule. Illuminating how refugee camps serve as key sites where carceral protectionism, postcolonial nation-building, and global mobility control intersect, Brankamp calls for abolitionist futures beyond the violent structures of encampment, borders, and citizenship.

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