“You End Up Becoming the Problem”: Informal Practices, Censure, and Corruption among Refugee Camp Workers

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Public and Non-Profit Organizations and Social Enterprise

Abstract

As the number of displaced people swells, social service provision to refugees has become a crucial social problem around the globe. Scholars have emphasized the power and control of humanitarian organizations, yet little is known about the interactions that structure these dynamics on the ground, or the variation across workers. Drawing upon ethnographic observation in a refugee camp and interviews with aid workers in NGOs that assist refugees in Kenya, I argue that in the context of insufficient resources and overwhelming caseloads, field-level workers—workers who directly interact with refugee beneficiaries—try to distance themselves from refugee aid recipients, limiting where, when, how long, and in what ways they interact with these refugees. Workers welcome these informal work practices as useful in reducing emotional fatigue and staving off censure from co-workers and accusations of corruption. Workers at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy, such as refugee incentive workers, are less able to utilize the same work practices as international and national staff. As a result, they fear greater consequences from co-workers and the organizations. When they do adhere to these practices, they face censure from the larger refugee community. By examining the informal work practices that structure worker-client interactions in NGOs and non-profits in a refugee camp, this paper illuminates inequalities in power and autonomy between workers, and particularly the vulnerability of local—in this case, refugee—workers.

Author

• Blair Suzanne Sackett, University of Pennsylvania