The obscured racialisation of humanitarian design: imagined problem, imagined participation and imagined human

Humanitarian design as a technological and aesthetic endeavour that has become part and parcel of contemporary humanitarianism promises to improve lives and bring dignity in the name of universal humanity through a wide spectrum of approaches, from expert-oriented problem solving to participatory and collaborative initiatives. However, decolonial thinkers who have questioned the universal positioning of the human, argue that the universal human of Western liberalism, human rights and ultimately humanitarianism, has always been and remains a Western white man. Against this background, I pose an important yet rarely considered question: Who is the human in humanitarian design? How is this human imagined by designers and their design solutions? How does the imagined human participate in the design process? Based on interviews with designers in Europe who work with humanitarian design projects for and with refugees in the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia, I characterise and problematise three imaginary dimensions of humanitarian design: the imagined problem, the imagined participation, and the imagined human. I argue that designers reimagine these three dimensions in a way that feeds from and extends the existing racial injustices which leads to the obscuration of racialisation in and by humanitarian design.