Seeing Like a Refugee Agency: A Short History of UNHCR Classifications in Central Africa (1961–2015)

Abstract

This article looks at the evolution of international refugee protection, using the refugee classifications of UNHCR as an entry point. It is argued that, since the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), access to refugee aid has been globalized but has also become more and more stratified. The UNHCR has expanded its activities beyond the frontiers of Europe, but has also tailored aid for specific groups. This is because protection work increasingly articulates different modes of classifying refugees. Three modes of ordering are explored here in the Central African case: the legal approach, the labour (or developmental) approach and the basic needs (or vulnerability) approach. These modes refer to different regimes of action, different actors of protection and eventually different subjectivities. Each mode of classification, it is argued, is the product of a specific period of the UNHCR’s history.