Book Review: Occupied Refuge: Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya by Brankamp, Hanno

Citation

Crawford NJW (2026) Book Review: Occupied Refuge: Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya by Brankamp, Hanno. International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183261480620

Abstract
First paragraph: In Occupied Refuge: Humanitarian Colonization and the Camp in Kenya, Hanno Brankamp opens with a Christmas raid by police on a bar in Kakuma camp, in which revelers were beaten, jailed, and ransomed for their release. Brankamp's central claim is that humanitarian protection in Kakuma, one of Kenya's two main refugee camp complexes, is inseparable from militarized policing and extraction. He calls this humanitarian colonization, meaning it literally as a contemporary reworking of colonial techniques of rule, jointly produced by international aid agencies and a postcolonial Kenyan state still consolidating control over its own northern frontier. It is a bold claim, substantiated with unusual rigor, though its reach beyond Kakuma is more limited.

Journal
International Migration Review