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Published in:
Entrapping Asylum Seekers: Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Seeking Asylum in Neoliberal Cairo: Refugee Protests and the Securitization of Humanitarianism

Author : Elisa Pascucci

Published in: Entrapping Asylum Seekers

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

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Abstract

The spatialities and materialities of humanitarianism are important sites in which the politics of refugee protection and refugee aid are contested and re-negotiated. As such, they are emerging as a significant field of research in development and international studies. Following this body of work, and drawing on extensive fieldwork in Cairo, Egypt, this chapter explores how the spatial practices of international humanitarian organizations influence their relations with asylum seekers and refugees, and how these relations intersect with broader urban dynamics of social exclusion. Located in a ‘satellite city’ and guarded by United Nations (UN) security and CCTV cameras, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Cairo office provides an interesting example of the impact of securitization on both asylum seekers and humanitarians. The chapter shows how asylum seekers contest the growing contradictions of the local system of urban refugee governance through sit-ins and daily acts of ‘encroachment’ and spatialized resistance.

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previous chapter Beyond the Border Spectacle: Migration Across the Mediterranean Sea
next chapter Contesting Entrapment: Women Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong
Footnotes
1
In this chapter, I use ‘securitization’ in a manner akin to the original definition by the Copenhagen school of international relations (Bouzan et al. 1998), namely, the reframing of a specific subjectivity or relation (refugees expressing frustration and protesting, and their interactions with aid workers) as a security problem. However, I maintain a rather broad definition of the term, encompassing the organization of the physical environment in which aid is delivered and the ways in which issues are problematized in security training, aid workers’ narratives and refugees’ claims.
 
2
The agency was renamed ‘Homeland Security’ after the 2011 uprising.
 
3
Although the majority of the people involved were men, during my ethnography I did meet women who were actively participating in protests—particularly Ethiopian-Oromo and Sudanese women. In the case of the person quoted here, an Arab-Iraqi woman, not only gender but also national belonging and chances for improving her legal status might have played a role in explaining why she had never taken part in mobilizations. As highlighted by the quote, in 2011–12, Iraqis, like all other categories of asylum seekers, had to endure prolonged waiting times for the completion of legal procedures. However, access to refugee status and resettlement was much easier for them than for other nationalities, which might explain their general lack of engagement with asylum seeker mobilization.
 
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Metadata
Title
Seeking Asylum in Neoliberal Cairo: Refugee Protests and the Securitization of Humanitarianism
Author
Elisa Pascucci
Copyright Year
2017
Book
Entrapping Asylum Seekers

Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58738-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-58739-8

Copyright Year: 2017

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58739-8_4