Catherine-Lune Grayson-Courtemanche
Postdoctoral fellow in Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
McGill University
Award-winning publication: Le camp de réfugiés de Kakuma, lieu de méfiance et de défiance
Published in: Canadian Journal of Development Studies (online version), London, June 2016
Abstract
Catherine-Lune Grayson-Courtemanche wrote this paper as part of her doctoral thesis, for which she carried out fieldwork at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. By examining the relationships between the refugees and the humanitarian organizations, the research explores the prevalence of mistrust within the camp and the impacts on people's lives and discusses why approaches meant to foster the development of trust relationships have failed. The author suggests that the camp could be studied from the perspective of its moral economy (i.e., the community's political and culture values that aim to defend the interests of group members, specifically in economic terms), which has never been done before. In this respect, the study opens new avenues for reflection and underscores the need to rethink certain ways of working and interacting with the people who live in these refugee camps.