Rethinking the Architectural History of Refugee Camps in Dadaab

• Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s book, Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement, challenges the perception of refugee camps as merely provisional, emergency-driven spaces lacking historical or aesthetic depth.
• The book examines the complex ecologies and material aesthetics of the Dadaab camps in Kenya, revealing them as sites of African, Muslim, and Afro-Asian cultural production.

Historical and Research Context

• Focused on the Ifo, Dagahaley, and Hagadera camps, established in 1991 by the Kenyan government and UNHCR.
• Based on 14 years of feminist and critical research, the book highlights how refugees actively shape their environments through social and ecological worldmaking.
• Interviews with camp residents—including Isnina Ali Rage, Shamso Abdullahi Farah, and Maganai Saddiq Hassan—provide a bottom-up perspective on the built environment.

Theoretical Foundations

• The work is anchored in anti-colonial thought (Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney) and global Black feminisms.
• It draws on scholars like Sylvia Tamale and Saba Mahmood to decolonize master narratives and resist universalizing epistemologies.
• Mabel O. Wilson’s scholarship on spatial agency and the intersection of racial thought with architectural history informs the author’s critique of the humanitarian environment.

Humanitarian Environments and Partition

• The author argues that refugee camps should not be viewed teleologically as temporary shelters, but as spaces predicated on foundational partitions.
• Using Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar’s conceptualization of "the long partition," the book suggests that camps are tools of bureaucratic shaping used by states to manage political uncertainty.
• By analyzing the historical development of borders and settlement policies, the book promotes a "straddling collectivity" that seeks to overcome the partitioning principles imposed on migrant lives.