The paradox of violent sanctuary: rethinking the concept of sanctuary in protracted refugee camp contexts

Refugee camps have been depicted as spaces that adversely affect refugees by, among other things, exposing them to psychosocial problems, violence, exploitation, and material deprivation. In Kakuma, the prevalence of violence inside and around the camp, which involves serious injuries, is high. Yet, with all its challenges, the camp is a near-cosmopolitan site where multiple cultures interact, generate livelihoods, and find protection from conflicts and hardships that forced their displacement. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2023 in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, this article challenges that binary by developing the concept of a violent sanctuary to explain the camp’s paradoxical character. It argues that the camp simultaneously offers refuge from external violence and generates new forms of struggle within its boundaries. This article makes a theoretical as well as empirical contribution by extending sanctuary scholarship into camp studies and showing how sanctuary can be understood as a relational and uneven condition.