Paper details

Paper authors	Melissa Gatter
In panel on	“Humanitarian borders” between care and control
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Azraq refugee camp in Jordan hosts 40,000 Syrian refugees and is operated by 22 humanitarian organisations. While much of the literature on humanitarian care and control focuses on states and systems, few scholars have primarily examined the everyday politics within which humanitarian staff operate. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Azraq (2017-18), this paper critically examines the role of local aid workers within the camp’s securitised environment, conceptualising Azraq as a ‘border’ within Jordan’s refugee response. It explores how local aid workers are needed by refugees from ‘below’ and aid agencies from ‘above’, arguing that they exhibit a ‘need to be needed’, a suggested variant of a ‘need to help’ (Malkki 2015). Azraq aid worker motivations are tied not to professionalism but to self-fulfilment, achieved through assessments of vulnerability and need. Complicating their need to be needed from ‘below’ is aid workers’ responsibility to their humanitarian employers from ‘above’, who expect them to assume the role of a cultural bridge. Their ambiguous position empowers the camp’s security apparatus and contrasts their self-perceptions as carers. This paper ultimately argues that local aid workers are both carers and border agents of humanitarianism.

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