Karen Büscher

Borderlands, Identity and Urban Development: The Case of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

This paper challenges traditional studies that explore border sites from a central or capital city perspective. Focusing on expressions of identity in the border city of Goma, it illustrates how the struggle for political, social and economic control affects local urban life and has broader implications for regional relationships and realities. The paper suggests that Goma must be understood as a site of change and fluidity rather than (as borders are commonly depicted) a static and dependent environment, whose increasing sense of autonomy is directly linked to state decline and to the dynamics of regional conflict. Goma has become an area of military rebellion, political struggle and economic competition, as well as a city of flourishing transborder trade and economic opportunity. The paper highlights the need to follow closely the increasing national and regional role that Goma, and other emerging urban centres on the periphery, are playing. This analysis was concluded early 2012 and does not include recent developments related to the M23 rebellion.

Moving Onward?: Secondary Movers on the Fringes of Refugee Mobility in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

This article examines the migration-asylum nexus in the microcosm of Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya by focusing on refugees and asylum seekers who move onward from a first refuge, in Central-East Africa. By drawing on qualitative ethnographic field research in Kakuma, the article outlines how such “secondary movements” cause many anxieties, as the distinction between refugees and migrants is blurred by motivations that are not exclusively protection related. Based on a Foucauldian analysis of power and discourse, we arguethat this creates a contested social and semantic space wherein all actors struggle to uphold the rigid distinction. Additionally, by combining the strengths of migration studies’ consideration for policy categories and mobility studies’ holistic perspective toward migration, the article aims to further deepen academic interaction between two literature traditions in order to enhance our understanding of how mobility is “shaped” and “lived” by people in wartime situations.

Reading Urban Landscapes of War and Peace: The Case of Goma, DRC

Over the past 20 years the city of Goma, the administrative capital of the Congolese North Kivu Province located at the Congo-Rwanda border, has become a regional urban symbol of violent conflict dynamics in eastern DRC, as well as of peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. The city’s position in the conflict-ridden Kivu, its economic significance in the regional political economy of war and its security position as a destination of internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as hundreds of humanitarian, development aid and peacebuilding agencies all make Goma a point of ‘central marginality’. Situated in the borderlands far from the national political centre at the violent margins of the state, Goma developed into a booming economic and humanitarian hub with a strong political and military position in the Great Lakes Region (Vlassenroot and Buscher 2013).

Navigating the Urban “In-Between Space”: Local Livelihood and Identity Strategies in Exploiting the Goma/Gisenyi Border

This chapter starts from an ethnographic study of the urban borderland of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)-Gisenyi (Rwanda), and more specifically the border district Birere. This Congolese urban district is situated right upon the border with Rwanda, and it partly occupies the zone neutre or zone tampon, the natural buffer strip that runs along the border separating the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from Rwanda. In Birere, the geographic space connecting Goma to Gisenyi, two distinct political, economic and cultural worlds come together. Although they were created almost at the same moment, the evolution of these two cities (and two nations) has followed a different path.

Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity: Indexical appropriations of Lingala in the Congolese border town Goma

This article describes discursive processes by which inhabitants of the Congolese border town Goma attribute new indexical values to Lingala, a language exogenous to the area of which most Goma inhabitants only possess limited knowledge. This creative reconfiguration of indexicalities results in the emergence of three “indexicalities of the second order”: the indexing of (i) being a true Congolese, (ii) toughness (based on Lingalas association with the military), and (iii) urban sophistication (based on its association with the capital Kinshasa). While the last two second-order reinterpretations are also widespread in other parts of the Congolese territory, the first one, resulting in the emergence of a Lingala as an “indexical icon” of a corresponding “language community,” deeply reflects local circumstances and concerns, in particular the sociopolitical volatility of the Rwandan-Congolese borderland that renders publicly affirming ones status as an “autochthonous” Congolese pivotal for assuring a livelihood and at times even personal security. (Lingala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Goma, orders of indexicality, language community, autochthony, Kiswahili) *

Humanitarian urbanism in a post-conflict aid town: aid agencies and urbanization in Gulu, Northern Uganda

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the urban outcomes of protracted humanitarian intervention in Gulu town, Northern Uganda. Using the concept of humanitarian urbanism, we demonstrate how intensive external donor-aid has shaped urbanization in the capital of Northern Uganda. The starting point for our analysis is the recent process of withdrawal of humanitarian NGOs and the shifts from humanitarian to development interventions. This shift was characterized by a special focus on urban development, coordinated by the Ugandan state while largely donor supported. We argue that this shift, instead of introducing an urban involvement of aid agencies in Gulu town, actually reveals a protracted continuum of aid agencies’ interventions in Gulu’s urbanity. The current withdrawal of humanitarian organizations in fact makes the long-term effects of these interventions especially visible. As such, it offers an interesting starting point to investigate processes of humanitarian urbanism and its profound impacts on the urban material, socio-economic and political landscapes. This paper demonstrates how aid agencies, since the armed conflict in Northern Uganda, have been key actors in shaping different dimensions of urban governance. Three case-studies are presented, which variously focus upon the urban educational sector, Gulu’s physical urban planning, and Gulu’s cultural institution. They reveal how today’s reconfigurations of the urban aid-landscape have redrawn the complex relations between urban inhabitants, aid agencies, and the Ugandan state.

Urbanizing Kitchanga: spatial trajectories of the politics of refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo

ABSTRACT This article presents the historical and political trajectory of Kitchanga town in North Kivu, to demonstrate how current processes of urbanization in a context of civil war in Eastern Congo are strongly intertwined with regional politics of refuge. Kitchanga, an urban agglomeration that emerged from the gradual urbanization of IDP and refugee concentrations, has occupied very different positions through different episodes of the wars, ranging from a safe haven of refuge, to a rebel headquarter, to a violent battleground. On the basis of a historical account of Kitchangas development, the paper argues for a spatial reading of broader geographies of war, displacement and ethnic mobilization in North Kivu. It shows that these urban agglomerations as ‘places’ and their urbanization as ‘processes’ are crucial to better understand the spatial politics of refuge in North Kivu. The article builds on original empirical data.

African cities and violent conflict: the urban dimension of conflict and post conflict dynamics in Central and Eastern Africa

ABSTRACT This article forms the introduction of a special issue on the relation between dynamics of violent conflict and urbanisation in Central and Eastern Africa. The aim of this collection of articles is to contribute to a profound understanding of the role of ‘the urban’ in African conflict dynamics in order to seize their future potential as centres of stability, development, peace-building or post-conflict reconstruction. This introduction argues for the need to bridge both the ‘urban gap’ in African conflict studies as well as the ‘political’ gap in African urban studies. Building on empirical and analytical insights from multi-disciplinary research in different African conflict settings, the author presents urban centres in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, South Sudan and Kenya as crucial sites of socio-spatial and political transformations and productions. The main argument running through its analysis is that emerging urbanism in the larger Great-Lakes region and its Eastern neighbours present fascinating lenses to better understand the transformative power of protracted violent conflict. This will be demonstrated by elaborating on the conflict-induced production of urban landscapes, urban governance, and urban identities. Finally, this will lead us to crucial insights on how protracted regional dynamics of political violence, forced displacement, militarised governance and ethnic struggles strongly reinforce the conflictual nature of emerging urbanisation and urbanism.

Brokering research with war-affected people: The tense relationship between opportunities and ethics

This article examines the roles of brokers in conducting research in a (post-)conflict context and uses this analysis as a lens to rethink reflexive ethics in humanitarian research. Drawing on fieldwork in Gulu, northern Uganda, the paper analyses the ambiguous position of brokers, and the complex social space in which they navigate. The paper outlines how brokers, in the pursuit of opportunities and in trying to meet expectations of other players, use strategies such as concealing information for researchers, or actively promoting the research project rather than merely facilitating it. It is further argued that research in northern Uganda may reproduce conceptions of war-affected people as vulnerable and of the war-affected context as problem-fraught and in need of intervention. The paper concludes by seeking ways to rethink a reflexive ethical stance in humanitarian research and encourages researchers to take the role of brokers and other stakeholders into account.