Rogério Haesbaert
If in the townships of Johannesburg the discussions and reflections focused on the home, that most intimate of social spaces, in the immensity of the refugee camp at Kakuma, where the Deslocamentos [Displacements] project took me next, the issues shifted to the collective sphere. Created in the northeast of Kenya in 1992 to house refugees from Sudan, by 2003 the camp “provisionally” held nearly one hundred thousand people of fourteen nationalities. ¶ In the city, the refugees manipulated multiple identities in order to insert themselves within the new social context. At the camp, however, there seemed to be other territorialization strategies at play, such as those of reinforcing a collective identity—ethnic, tribal, religious—or even adopting the “refugee” stereotype. At Kakuma, I challenged the group of thirteen youths participating in our audiovisual workshop to use fiction and multiple media to arrive at a new perception of their own individual identities and that of the camp around them. ¶ Sharing in the local routine, I gradually realized that, despite the restricted and “controlled” context of Kakuma, the camp was still a forum for negotiation, political debate, and resistance. Even “living on the edge,” the camp dwellers were able to territorialize in the multiple, relational, and symbolic sense of appropriating their space, in the molds suggested by the geographer Rogério Haesbaert. ¶ It was with great relief, some time later, that I familiarized myself with Rogério’s work and his concepts of multi-territoriality and “network territories.” Formulated from a human and critical approach, they echoed my perception that such multi-territoriality is only possible if predicated upon “minimal territoriality, shelter, and comfort, the prerequisites for the stimulation of individuality and the promotion of solidary cohabitation among multiplicities” (Haesbaert, 2004). ¶ People pursuing this minimal space—whether refugees or migrants—contest the prevailing order, which, though “globalized,” continues to criminalize mobility and impose borders. However, as the geographer points out in the text that follows, this fencing-in does not prevent new routes from being opened or the flow of people from continuing. ¶ The issue of borders took on a new dimension when I returned to Europe and found myself confronted with the harsh reality faced by the thousands of “foreigners” who lose their lives trying to cross the walls created by Fortress Europe. This situation was my motivation for creating In-Flux, seen here accompanying Haesbaert’s text. The work questions the European “humanitarian” discourse, which endeavors to mitigate the issue of migration, treating it as a domestic social problem as opposed to a direct result of its own economic policies and controls. [mab]