Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania

“While some theorize fragmentation as an essential condition of migrant-hood (Sayad and Bourdieu 2004), others emphasize that its salience and implications are socially and institutionally embedded (Bialas 2023, 126–150; Crawley and Jones 2021; Malkki 1995; Menjívar 2000).”

“Urban displaced are no exception: all displaced populations in Tanzania use strategies of invisibility (Malkki 1995) to widen their choice of jobs.”

“It also reveals, as Wen-Ching argues, that ‘displacement and mobility are dynamic processes of “reterritorialization” which imply not only moving “out of place” (Malkki 1995; Den Boer 2015), but also processes laying out a place as home in uncertain, insecure and unstable settings’ (2018: 391–392).”

“Similarly, Malkki (1995) applies the idea of belonging to refugees in Tanzania, who, like the farm workers in the proposed GAENP area, have been stripped of the specifics of culture, place and identity.”

“According to Brankamp (2019), cases of violence perpetrated by government and humanitarian workers against refugees are not surprising, but are a common feature of humanitarian activities in spaces controlled and cared for like refugee camps (Branch 2012; Malkki 1995).”

“This meant prioritizing the interests and concerns of my participants and not being solely fi xated on gathering data (Malkki, 1995, p. 51).”

“…and border security, economic disruption, and, in some cases, the threat of political instability (Zolberg et al., 1989: 260; Loescher, 1993; Malkki, 1995: 505), making them the target of humiliating conditions such as poverty, discrimination, exclusion, abuse, violence, and arbitrary…”

“After a collective critical event begins to wane (or one has removed themselves from it), collective processes often come into play to repress, memorialise, remember or strategically revise the time of turmoil (Cole 2001; Malkki 1995).”

“Under this arrangement, refu-gees were removed from the border and placed in rural ‘settlements’ – first of all in Ulyankulu, Tabora region, in 1972, followed by Katumba (in 1973) and eventually the remote Mishamo, Rukwa region, from 1979 (Malkki, 1995: 38–39).”

“Competition between refugee communities can become ethnicized (Malkki 1995; Moro 2004).”

“Although they are prone to negotiate ideas of identity, belonging, and home on the move (see Clifford 1994; Malkki 1995b), their attitudes towards return are utterly ambivalent.”

“Malkki (1995) souligne que les réfugiés hutus qui vivent dans des camps en Tanzanie ont un sentiment identitaire ethnique beaucoup plus fort que leurs compatriotes qui ont réussi à s’installer en ville.”

“Harrell-Bond (1986); Kaiser (2006); Malkki (1995).”

“Malkki (1995) makes this clear in her argument on the way the “basic blueprint” of military camps was expropriated for the control of people in refugee camps.”

“Extensive research also explores processes of socio-cultural-moral transformation due to displacement (Abduramadan 2022; Ciabarri 2008; Feldman 2012), and specifically among Burundian refugees (Malkki 1995; Sommers 2001; Turner 2001).”

“They are more readily observed in nonformal and refugee-led schools globally (Aden, 2023a; Dryden-Peterson, 2006; Malkki, 1995), especially when teachers and students share identities as, for example, Syrian students taught by Syrian teachers in non-formal schools in Lebanon (Adelman, 2019; Greaves…”

“Humanitarianism is based upon the “national order of things,” that not only positions refugees as “matter out of place” (Malkki, 1995a,b), but also as burdens themselves.”

“To clarify terminology, I start from an epistemological position that considers being ‘undocumented’ as a socio-political condition that only acquires meaning in relation to the state and law (De Genova 2002, 422; Malkki 1995).”

“One is the storied literature in anthropology and history on the ways that conceptions of time and causality define the sensibilities of particular groups (e.g., Anderson 2006; Evans-Pritchard 1969; Durkheim and Mauss 1967; Geertz 1973; Malkki 1995; Spiegel 2002; Yerushalami 1996).”

“…predominantly examines single population groups or conducts comparative analyses across different geographical locations (Lyytinen, 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2012, 2013; Malkki, 1995; Sanyal, 2014), with limited attention to how borderland contexts specifically shape integration processes.”

“Early scholarship often portrayed refugees as passive recipients of aid (Harrell-Bond 1986), but subsequent work has emphasised refugees’ active strategies for survival, resistance, and community-building (Horst 2006; Malkki 1995).”

“Malkki (1995) points out that the imagery of the mother and child is a recurring trope, that advances the holy mother theme: “Having looked at photographs of refugees over several years, one becomes aware of the perennial resonance of the woman with her child.”

“This shift has (re)assembled rights to mobility, presence and protection around the vulnerable and suffering body (Johnson 2011; Malkki 1995; Ticktin 2011).”

“…of refugees and other migrants (Abrego and Lakhani 2015; Menjívar 2006), as well as their liminal position in state-controlled spaces, particularly detention centres (Mountz 2011), asylum reception (Gold 2019; Haas 2017; Hynes 2011; O’Reilly 2020), and refugee camps (Malkki 1995; Ramadan 2013).”

“On the other hand, refugees and migrants who are routinely denied legal inclusion within national citizenship frameworks, are in fact agentive social actors who participate in the production of the cities they live in (Caglar and Glick-Schiller 2018; Malkki 1995; Nyers 2006; Sassen 2005).”

“In this way, expelled things and substances often become metaphors in the construction of identity categories, particularly to justify the exclusion of ‘ out of place ’ people (Daly 2022; Bailkin 2018; Anderson 2005; 1995; Mbembe 2004; Malkki 1995).”

“The narrations of the past and aspirations for the future were clearly conceived in the context of (more or less evident) societal exclusion (cf. Malkki 1995).”

“Yet they are insufficient for understanding populations whose mobility is deeply entangled with war, state violence, ethnic marginalisation, historical memory, and the geopolitical ordering of mobility (Zolberg et al. 1989; Malkki 1995b; Ullah 2025; Ullah and Chattoraj 2025; M. Vang 2020).”

“Malkki critically examines the concept of “sedentarism,” which emphasises territorial rootedness as a moral boundary: Only those who have an intrinsic connection to the land are inherently entitled to care, whereas displaced individuals are frequently regarded as out of place (Malkki, 1995).”

“Malkki (1995) notes that physical separation limits refugees’ access to education, employment, and social services.”

“Lisa Malkki (1995) notes that her politically charged fieldwork was successful because she was willing to “…leave some stones unturned, to listen to what my interlocutors deemed important, and to demonstrate my trustworthiness by not pryi ng where I was not wanted” (51).”

“…studies offer insights on how identities are framed and manipulated at the policy level through bureaucratic practices, and on the risk of projecting on migrants ‘crisis-imposed identities’ and pre-determined migration types (Koser and Martin, 2011; Malkki, 1995; Richmond, 1993; Zetter, 1991: 61).”

“Malkki suggests that children have become the ideal representation of the refugee because they embody a ‘powerless being with no connections to history, traditions, culture or nationality’ (Malkki 1995, 11).”

“6 Despite its reference to a different context (Hutu refugees in Tanzania), I employ Liisa Malkki ’ s concept of mythico-history as a heuristic framework for examining Devendra collective self-making (Malkki 1995).”