"Matter Out of Place": Humanitarianism and The Construction of National Identities. The Cases of Palestinian and Sahrawi Refugees

“Matter out of place”
Humanitarianism and the construction of national

identities: the cases of Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees
Author: Leticia Álvarez Álvarez

Supervisor: Dr. Anna Baral, PhD, Uppsala University
May 2021
This thesis is submitted for obtaining the Master’s Degree in International Humanitarian
Action and Conflict. By submitting the thesis, the author certifies that the text is from
his/her hand, does not include the work of someone else unless clearly indicated, and that
the thesis has been produced in accordance with proper academic practices.
Leticia Álvarez Álvarez Uppsala University
Humanitarian Action and Conflict
I. ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the tension between humanitarianism and nationalism by

focusing on the Sahrawi and Palestinian refugee cases. These cases represent a challenge
to both nationalism, which presupposes national identity as being congruent with the
established political borders and rooted within their limits, and the claim of neutrality, as
not favoring any side in an armed conflict or dispute and bearing no national allegiance.
Firstly, Palestinians and Sahrawis, while claiming a nation without land, have created a
national identity in up-rootedness, and express political fights that are nurtured by the
very humanitarianism. Secondly, the refugee camp, as a humanitarian product, has been
accused of depoliticizing and reducing life to mere survival, and I will explore how it has
paradoxically become a hyper-politicized space providing the grounds for national
identities and national claims to develop. For Palestinians and Sahrawis, I will argue,
humanitarian interventions are in fact the very reason for politicized identities to arise.
Keywords:
Refugeehood, humanitarianism, nationalism, neutrality, Palestine, Western Sahara,
refugee camp
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II. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ICJ – International Court of Justice
MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières
MINURSO – United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara
PLO – Palestinian Liberation Front
POLISARIO – Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and Wadi Dahab
SADR – Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
UNGA – United Nations General Assembly
UNHCR – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNRWA – United Nations Relief Agency and Works for Palestinian Refugees
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................ 2
II. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................ 3
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 5
1.2. Relevance to the field ....................................................................................... 6
1.3. Methodology ..................................................................................................... 6
1.4. Limitations ........................................................................................................ 8
1.5. Thesis outline .................................................................................................... 8
2. Theoretical background ..................................................................................... 9
2.1. Nationalism ....................................................................................................... 9
2.2. Mobility Studies ............................................................................................. 11
2.3. Identity ............................................................................................................ 12
2.4. Refugeehood ................................................................................................... 13
2.5. New localities: The refugee camp as a permanent experience ....................... 14
2.6. Humanitarianism ............................................................................................ 15
3. Palestine & Western Sahara: A comparative approach ............................... 17
3.1. Humanitarian crises follow colonial trails ...................................................... 17
3.2. Up-rootedness as a flag: nationalism and refugeehood .................................. 19
3.2.1. Palestine: exile made nation....................................................................... 21
3.2.2. Western Sahara – a nation in exile ............................................................. 22
4. Stretching borders: humanitarianism, neutrality and (de)politicization .... 24
4.1. Neutrality ........................................................................................................ 24
4.1.1. Humanitarianism made ad hoc: UNRWA ................................................... 24
4.1.2. The building of the Sahrawi nation: “a humanitarian state” .................... 27
4.2. (De)politicization ............................................................................................ 28
4.3. The humanitarian intervention as a national signifier .................................... 30
5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 32
6. Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 34
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1. Introduction
This thesis challenges the humanitarian claim of “bearing no national allegiance” (Dromi,
2019) by showing how humanitarian interventions are indeed deeply embedded in the
national logic and maintain a paradoxical relationship with it. It will do so by focusing on
the cases of Saharawi and Palestinians, whose national identities are peculiarly
intersected with the condition of refugeehood and thus with the absence, or the distance,
from a homeland.
Nationalist ideologies, as they first developed in Europe (Eriksen, 2010), are
based on the concept of the nation-state, which presupposes that ethnic, religious, and
political borders naturally coincide with the territorial ones (Herzog, 2009). However,
when borders were set in the Near East and North Africa, as a result of decolonization
processes, they did not reflect the complexities of an extremely heterogeneous region.
These new nation-states were challenged with the creation of their own national identity,
and to create it, they relied mostly on religion (Kuramaswamy, 2006). The case of
Palestinians and Sahrawis differ, however, as they have national and territorial aspirations
in which Islam, despite holding an important position, is not the main element in their
identity construction.
Palestinian and Sahrawi national identities, this thesis will argue, are profoundly
interwoven with humanitarian action. For humanitarianism, the will to “transcend
borders” is embedded in the belief that nations are the root of the issues humanitarianism
aims to solve (Dromi, 2019). Moreover, humanitarian organizations are the most
prominent NGOs providing relief to refugees whose vulnerability is rooted in the national
logic in which they don’t fit, as their identity is not attached to any nation-state (Herzog,
2009). In providing help, humanitarian NGOs comply with the humanitarian principles,
regardless of boundaries, politics, or cultural specificities, thus submitting to a sense of
universal and primordial humanity. While this claim has been accused of depersonalizing
refugees by erasing their individual and collective identities, the logic of a depoliticized
and neutral humanitarian morality is at odds with the empirical experience of groups such
as those on which this thesis is focused. For Palestinians and Sahrawis, I will argue,
humanitarian interventions are in fact the very reason for politicized identities to arise:
their condition of refugeehood thus challenges both classical ideas of nationalism (since
Palestinian and Sahrawi nationalisms arise without a land/country to be rooted in), and
the humanitarian ideal of neutrality.
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1.1.Research questions
- In which terms has the condition of refugeehood shaped the definition of national
identity of the Palestinian and Sahrawi people?
- How has humanitarian action affected the national identity construction
processes for both?
- In such contexts, can humanitarianism’s claims of neutrality and “bearing no
national allegiance” remain valid?
- Are the accusations verted on humanitarian action of silencing the political
biographies of the recipients applicable to the Sahrawi and Palestinian cases?
1.2.Relevance to the field

The refugee question has been one of the milestones in the history of relief aid,
refugees being one of the main target populations for humanitarian interventions. On the
other hand, humanitarian agencies are constantly under scrutiny, both for their ethics in
terms of their compliance with humanitarian principles, and for the consequences of the
implementation of their projects. The long-term impact a humanitarian intervention can
have is extremely relevant, as it affects different domains, not only in developmental
terms but also on political and identity levels that can have unintended consequences.
Moreover, humanitarianism cannot pretend to be “depoliticized” or “bearing no national
allegiance” when humanitarian interventions usually engage in conflict settings rooted
and engaged with the imaginary of the nation. Given these premises, my thesis offers an
analysis of the role of humanitarian aid with the processes of national identity
construction and nation-building, and the unintended effects and challenges this
engagement poses for the humanitarian principles.
1.3.Methodology
This thesis will aim at providing answers to the research questions by using two
different qualitative methodologies. Firstly, the literature review will provide an
understanding of the concepts, theories relevant to the subject and already produced
material. Through the theoretical framework, I will explore the interaction between
concepts such as identity, refugeehood, and nationalism through the lenses of postcolonial
theory. The literature review provides a critical analysis of the already produced material
and creates the basis of the following analysis. Secondly, this thesis will use a
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comparative approach to deepen into the case studies of Palestinian and Sahrawi
questions. In both cases, it will show how refugeehood as a prolonged or permanent
experience shapes the identities of the two populations, together with humanitarian
interventions.
The research design is based on a review of interdisciplinary literature, coherently

with the interdisciplinary nature of studies of humanitarianism. Firstly, scholarship on
nationalism and mobility (Anderson, 2019; Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Glick Schiller,
2007; Papastergiadis, 2005; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Wimmer and Schiller, 2002) points
at how the nation-state paradigm has traditionally represented the privileged unit of
analysis for social sciences and to the challenges its rigidity has posed when regarding
the study of uprooted and displaced populations. Literature on identity formation (Bilge
2018; Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Golubović, 2010; Kebede 2010, Kumaraswamy, 2006)
will help me to locate the different theories relevant to this subject. This literature points
mainly at trends claiming identity as being bond to a nation-state and others that affirm it
goes beyond spatial rootedness. Literature on refugeehood and forced migration (Colson,
2003; Malkki, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2002; Owens, 2009) will allow me to problematize the
figure of the refugee and the refugee camp, as a humanitarian intervention. In the past
two decades, anthropology of humanitarianism (Herzog, 2009; Fassin, 2011; Redfield,
2006) has tackled fundamental issues about the applicability of the humanitarian
principles and the tension between humanitarianism and nations, thus it will be relevant
for me to analyze the humanitarian intervention in such politicized conflict-settings such
as the ones this thesis is devoted to.
Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and the impossibility to conduct fieldwork, this thesis
remains based on secondary sources. Nevertheless, it takes on the analysis of
ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in the Palestinian territories and/or
with the Palestinian diaspora (Gabiam, 2006; Hammer, 2005; Feldman, 2008; Farah,
2008), and Western Sahara and the refugee camps in Algeria (Wilson, 2012; Cozza, 2003;
San Martin, 2007, 2010). Moreover, surveys and reports such as the ones carried out by
Badil (the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights) and UNRWA
have been analyzed to acquire a general view on the magnitude of the phenomenon of
forced displacement and diaspora.
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1.4.Limitations
Time and reach are among the main limitations and restrictions in the completion of
this thesis. The issue tackled in this thesis is extremely complex both chronologically and
geographically. Being protracted crises and as the events at the time of writing show, the
humanitarian intervention (and humanitarian crisis) has been ongoing during the more
than 70 years that the Palestinian refugee question remains unresolved, and more than 40
in the Sahrawi one. The complexity of the humanitarian intervention, especially in the
Palestinian case, stems both from the timeline of the conflict and the different
geographical settings in which humanitarianism has met Palestinians. Thus, this thesis
will focus on certain elements that have remained a constant throughout both case studies.
On the other hand, as mentioned, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the
subsequent impossibility of ethnographic fieldwork, research material is limited to
academic papers and humanitarian agencies reports. Moreover, the number of academic
papers and relief agencies reports regarding the Sahrawi question is surprisingly (or not)
much less numerous compared to the literature around the Palestinian question, which
also opens lines for reflection on the visibility of both conflicts.
1.5.Thesis outline
This thesis is structured around five main chapters. After this first introductory
chapter, I will move on to the theoretical framework regarding mobility studies, identity
construction, refugeehood, and the controversial relationship between humanitarianism
and nationalism. The third chapter provides a comparative historical background and
focuses on the role of refugeehood in the construction of national identity of both peoples.
The fourth chapter conducts the comparative analysis on humanitarianism in terms of
neutrality in the Sahrawi and Palestinian questions. The fifth and last chapter will fold the
thesis with the final reflections and answers to the research questions.
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2. Theoretical background
In order to prepare my comparative analysis, in this chapter I will dive into the core
concepts of the thesis: identity, refugeehood, humanitarianism, and nationalism through
the lenses of postcolonial theory.
2.1.Nationalism
At the same time that the nation has represented for a long time the privileged unit of
analysis for social sciences, nationalism, as “the ideology of the modern nation-state”
(Eriksen 2010:118) is key to understanding issues such as the decolonization processes
and the subsequent configuration of the international map and migratory policies. Taken
as such, nationalism is based on the idea of the configuration of the modern world as
being comprised by autonomous, united, and ethnically homogenous societies, embodied
in the nation-states, separated from other units by virtually natural borders, and
representing the basic unit for social and comparative research (Gellner in Eriksen, 2010;
Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002). Gellner (see Malkki, 1992) compares the
international political map to a Modigliani painting where the nation-states are flat
surfaces distinctively separated from each other, without any ambiguity or overlap.
According to Anderson (1983), nation-states are a social construct where the nation
becomes an “imagined community” of members who, despite the fact that they will never
personally know most of their fellow members, keep in their minds the mental image of
their affinity and belonging to the same supra-structure. Gellner stresses the ethnic
homogeneity of nationalism: the nation or “imagined community” should be congruent
and submitted to the political boundaries (1983). This argument infers there is a link
between ethnicity and the state. Nationalism, through the use of ethnic symbols, intends
to stimulate reflection on one’s own cultural distinctiveness and thus create a feeling of
nationhood, enabling people to talk about their culture as though it was a constant
(Eriksen, 2010). As we will see in the next chapter, the Palestinian and Sahrawi cases
challenge these premises.
Moreover, according to the metaphor of the nation-state as a corporeal being, the

territorial borders, symbolized by the outer skin, regulate the movements of people and
have become an essential reference to national identity (Khosravi, 2007). In fact, they
draw the line between the “us” (members of the nation), and “them” (the outsiders). This
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is especially relevant when the access to rights is restricted to the members of that
community: borders are the limits to which citizenship and rights are circumscribed. In
this logic, the refugee, the undocumented, and the transnational migrant are configured
as a disturbing element in the conventional “identity between man and citizen”
(Agamben, 1996:24-25 in Friese and Mezzadra, 2010:304).
The rigidity of the nation-state analysis framework has been challenged by many
factors. First, the advent of globalization transformed it in a fluid and complex “network
of networks” (Eriksen, 2010:206) and diminished its power through the rise of
transnational corporations and supranational organizations. Globalization and the new
technologies facilitated the circulation of cultural and material goods and services and
increased mobility and migration (Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Glick Schiller and
Wimmer, 2002). Secondly, the polyethnic component of many societies raised questions
on the feasibility and success of the implementation of such a homogenously conceived
paradigm. This issue is especially visible in the post-colonial state-building processes
which either lacked a pre-colonial state or “imagined community” before colonization
that could be revived, or those whose societies had a strong multi-ethnic component
(Eriksen, 2010).
Nevertheless, decolonization, according to some scholars, could be compatible with

certain kinds of nationalism and territorialism (Anderson, 2019). Leela Gandhi recalls
how numerous decolonization processes have paradoxically resorted to nationalism to
define themselves through its vocabulary in opposition to the colonial European powers
(1998). Some of the nationalist movements relied on a nascent concept of national
membership, often one that had been either received from or imposed by the colonizing
country, or one that is indigenously developed, yet through the use of conceptual tools
gained from the colonizing country such as the education of indigenous elites by
institutions in the métropole (Schaffer, 2007). An example is the négritude movement,
that glorified the African culture and which was developed by intellectuals, originally
from several French colonies, in Paris who had never been to Africa. In this line, Frantz
Fanon applauded nationalism for its essential role in the healing process of the
psychological wounds inflicted by colonialism, which reduced the colonized subject to
an invisible, barely human existence (see Gandhi, 1998), unheard, and unseen.
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2.2. Mobility Studies

The rise and naturalization of the nation-state model permeated academia in the social
studies through what has been defined as “methodological nationalism” (Glick Schiller
and Wimmer, 2002). Scholars have analyzed and criticized the methodological
nationalism paradigm in two main aspects. Firstly, the deep naturalization of a world
divided in autonomous nation-states has made us regard global interconnections as
problematic (Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002) and fueled the understanding of certain
kinds of human movements as a “problem” to be solved (Anderson, 2019). Secondly, this
theoretical framework essentializes natives and foreigners, differentiating them as
socially, essentially, and culturally distinct, homogenizing their complexities by inserting
them in two static categories (Glick Schiller, 2007). Other authors, such as Malkki (1996;
1995), have heatedly opposed this Manichean structure that spills over the study of forced
displacement, as it will be discussed in following sections.
As previously mentioned, academia had traditionally marginalized migration due to

its deep internalization of the “metaphysical sedentarism” that, in words of Malkki,
carries “an expectation of roots, of a stable, territorialized existence” (1992:29). In the
context of forced displacement and refugeehood, Malkki criticizes how the naturalization
of the nation-state paradigm is reproduced by anthropology and refugee studies, when
presenting a paradigmatic “refugee experience” going through different fixed stages: the
threat that triggers the decision to flee; the migration route; the permanence in the refugee
camp; the permanent relocation to the host country; the subsequent integration; and the
transformations in behavior produced by this process (1995).
The critique of this framework has allowed the study of de-territorialization, by

focusing on migration, diasporas, and transnational citizenship. This new approach
focuses on the migrant subjectivity and identity and it has taken over the analysis and
formulation of the acts of “homing” and “re-grounding” of displaced populations. These
processes can be defined as the act of reconfiguring and recreating the place of arrival
into a new “home”, both figuratively and imaginatively. This can be done by assembling
materials carried from home such as textures, colors, scents, souvenirs, or anything
relevant to the displaced when remembering the place of origin (Sheller and Urry, 2006),
something which will be considered in the following paragraphs.
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2.3.Identity
The essentialist theories tie belonging and identification in terms of adherence to a
nation-state and to the notion of a socio-cultural bonding of people to a territory (Friese
and Mezzadra, 2010). In the same line, according to Malkki, “people are often thought
of, and think of themselves as being rooted in place and as deriving their identity from
that rootedness” (1992:27). On the other hand, the analysis of identity construction in
uprooted settings can no longer be grounded to the concept of territory, as it no longer
applies. Papastergiadis stresses the need of regarding spatial belonging also from a
diasporic perspective (2005), extremely relevant in the cases analyzed in this thesis, being
Palestinians and Sahrawis largely diasporic populations.
In a different perspective, constructionist theories view the national identities as a

human product of imagination (Anderson, 1983) and a historical construction (Foucault,
1980 in Kebede, 2010). Malkki follows this view stressing that the social world is not
confined to a particular place or limited to territorial boundaries (1995). Instead, it is the
relations among people which act as a grounding element, and not just the physical
rooting of a person and a group to a particular territory (Warner, 1994).
In this context, ethnicity may be essential in defining identity in displacement. Bilge

understands ethnicity as a cultural identifier and communicative process, arguing that in
absence of defined or concrete borders, the emergence, preservation, and continuity of
identity depends on communication (2018). Culture, as a social construct, survives
because it is communicated within the group, generation after generation, unifying and
forging the group’s identity and supporting its survival (ibid).
Importantly for the aim of this thesis is the existence of “common historical events,
political struggles or a common fate” which play an essential role in the emergence of
ethnic identity (Bilge, 2018:228). The existence of a shared tragedy does not establish
identity by itself, but it necessitates communication, and the way the struggle or tragedy
is communicated is what establishes, shapes, and maintains the identity and the
connections between the past, the present, and the future (Bilge, 2010).
This is especially visible in the Palestinian and Sahrawi diasporas, where

communication of the culture and the tragedy of the loss of the nation has been essential
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in maintaining the question visible within the generations born in exile, as I will discuss
later.
2.4.Refugeehood
The legal definition of the refugee status by the Geneva Convention applies “to any
person who[,]…owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is
outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to
avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being
outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable
or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it” (see Malkki, 1995:502). As evident in
the quote, the political meaning of this definition is deeply embedded in the hegemonic
national logic discussed in the previous sections. Refugees, then, are the result of the
divergence between territory and identity, and of the assumption that all peoples must be
protected by a state (Herzog, 2009). According to Malkki, this conception of society as a
territorially based organism assumes that being uprooted from the national community
implies necessarily to lose one’s identity, culture, and traditions (1995).
The definition of refugee, and what this status entails, has been object of thorough
analysis by authors interested in the way mobility and displacement play out in the
postcolonial world. Redfield and Agamben coincide in the notion of refugee as someone
deprived of agency and limited to zoë, defined as “bare life” (Redfield, 2005:340).
According to them, the refugee’s limited existence resembles to that of an animal without
speech and political freedom, confined within the boundaries of the refugee camp
(Owens, 2009). Following the same argument, Davis and Isakjee use Mbembe’s account
of “necropolitics”, originally conceived to capture colonial violence, to describe new
forms of social existence related to refugees. Refugees would endure such extreme living
conditions that they would become “living dead” or “in a state of injury’ (see Davis and
Isakjee, 2018:214). Krzyżanowska states that quite often, refugees are believed to live in
“a condition of social limbo, passively waiting for return” (2013:22).
The above description of the refugee agrees on a person who has been extremely
diminished, weakened, and stripped from sociality and agency. Appadurai links this state
of losing the ability to exist beyond survival to the permanence in the long-term refugee
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camp (1996). Yet, the camp as a long-term or permanent experience also acquires new
meanings and sets the foundations for the recreation and revival of the homeland.
2.5.New localities: The refugee camp as a permanent experience

The end of World War II witnessed the emergence of the refugee camp as a
standardized technology of power in the management of mass displacement. This
management was a bureaucratic and administrative process that reached all levels: from
medical and hygienic programs, accumulation of documentation of the inhabitants of the
camp, the control of their movements, to the law enforcement, inter alia (Malkki, 1995).
The refugee camp is originally structured as a temporary solution to an emergency or
crisis that should be dismantled when the crisis that originated the displacement in the
first place is resolved. However, the issue arises when crisis becomes context, rather than
an “an isolated period of time in which lives are shattered” (Vigh, 2008:5), and thus a
routinized experience, translated into a permanent state of refugeehood in a temporary-
conceived structure.
Due to the protracted staying, the refugee camp ends up taking upon itself meanings
of the “grief of the lost home” (see Colson, 2005:9), belonging, and “re-grounding”
(Sheller and Urry, 2006:21). The process of de-territorialization developed as an
important field of analysis in postcolonial academia, in a time where more and more
people, chronically displaced, are categorized or identify themselves with “de-
territorialized homelands”. Such people find their homelands in the absence of the
territorial one, “through memories and claims on places that they can or will no longer
corporeally inhabit” (Malkki, 1992:24). In relation to this, Krzyżanowska introduces the
notion of “mediated locality” as “feeling territorialized in a place that acts as a symbolic
representation of another site, to which individuals or groups feel attached” (2013:21).
The nature of the refugee camp as a temporary solution to a temporary emergency is

deeply challenged by crisis as a prolonged or permanent experience, where social life
needs to be made sense of despite the crisis. The camp and the elements that constitute
the past are essential to creating life in exile, becoming stable references for refugees
inhabiting these structures, as crisis usually destabilizes the way one has constituted and
constructed oneself as part of larger entities. The camp remains the bridge to the lost
homeland, where the myth of exile is recreated. It does not only maintain but also
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reinforces the emotional bond generation after generation and acts as a living reminder
of the lost motherland, a connection between the space of origin and exile (Colson, 2003)
and provides new ways of political expression, while keeping the question of the return
alive in the coming generations.
Either as a “de-territorialized homeland”, where life can be made sense of or as a

“warehouse” where inhabitants are subjected to a “minimal existence”, the nature of the
camp is responsibility of humanitarian agencies, as it is planned and administered by the
humanitarian system (Appadurai, 1996).
2.6.Humanitarianism
The humanitarian discourse on the refugee issue has been traditionally constructed on
the impartial and neutral assistance of victims of forced displacement throughout the
world, according to which, aid must be provided solely on the basis on need and without
favoring any side in an armed conflict or dispute (ECHO, 2021). It stems from the concept
of humanity understood as the collective of human beings as equal members of a moral
community, where every human life is of equal value (Fassin, 2011). Because of this,
saving lives becomes an ethical question that transcends borders, according to the
humanitarian logic. In a similar fashion, humanitarianism has adopted as imperative the
assistance of all victims of conflict, regardless their political, ideological, or religious
affiliations (Herzog, 2009). In doing so, it theoretically opposes the differences
established by paradigms that stress distinctions between human beings, among which is
nationalism (Fassin, 2007), embodied in borders.
The nature of the relationship between humanitarianism and nations is extremely

paradoxical for different reasons. Firstly, humanitarianism embraces the idea of a
borderless space (Redfield, 2005). This is embedded in its belief, as already mentioned,
that usually nations are the root causes of the problems humanitarian agencies try to solve
(Dromi, 2019). On the other hand, although proclaiming the equivalence of all lives,
humanitarian agencies have been heavily criticized for discriminating local staff from
expats (Fassin, 2011), usually and paradoxically, on the basis of their very nationality.
Secondly, the postwar formulation of international rights drew the possibility of

superseding the national order, allowing to imagine a world truly beyond nations, in the
15
terms of internationalism and universal values (Malkki, 1995). Paradoxically, however,

the international organizations manage refugee populations in a way not to undermine the
framework on which the nation-state rests as the very idea of a refugee, by belonging
neither here or there, challenges the presupposed link between citizen, nation, and state.
In order to contain, in words of Mary Douglas, this “matter out of place” (see Malkki,
1992), the three main solutions are repatriation, integration in the society to which they
have escaped, or relocation to a third country. In this process, the idea of
nation/state/territory is deeply embedded. Refugees must either return “home” or be
naturalized in another place (Owens, 2009).
Thirdly, humanitarian organizations are central to the management of forced

displaced populations. As previously mentioned, they do so solely on the basis of needs
regardless national or political affiliation or any other distinction. According to some
authors, this causes the essentialization of the victim by creating a paradigmatic recipient
of humanitarian aid (Fassin, 2011). The recipients must be purely human and defined by
their need of assistance, stripped from a historical biography and lacking any kind of
national attachment, as if they were “ahistorical universal human subjects” (Malkki,
1996:377). This is especially visible in the refugee camp as the emergency humanitarian
response, conceived as a depoliticized place where recipients see their biological needs
met, but are also expected not to make any political demands (Turner, 2015).
The notion of a universal refugee, deprived of political speech and national

affiliations, is contradicted by the Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences. Both peoples
have resorted to humanitarian assistance, exemplified in the refugee camp, to recreate
their national identity and to reinforce their political demands. This apparent paradox will
be addressed in the following chapters.
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3. Palestine & Western Sahara: A comparative approach
3.1.Humanitarian crises follow colonial trails
After the World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the British
Mandate assumed power over the historical region of Palestine and acknowledged
through the Balfour Declaration in 1917 its support to Zionist immigration to Palestine.
This was met with a wave of protests and general resistance among the native Palestinian
population. While religious figures were essential in mobilizing the resistance
movements, they did so resorting to Pan-Arabism (Khalidi, 1997), an anti-colonial,
national, and secular movement motivated not only by the need for national independence
but also by the fact of sharing language, set of traditions, and history with other Arab
nations (Schaffer, 2007).
At this point in history, the Saharan region located in north-west Africa inhabited
by a hassanophone population that would later be known as Sahrawis had been delineated
as a Spanish colony for about half a century. Both Sahrawis in West Africa and Arabs in
Palestine contested foreign rule, and, in the Palestinian case, the Zionist maneuvers.
Hence, the Arabs revolted against British domination for three years 1936-1939 (Khalidi,
1997). On the Sahrawi front, the resistance to foreign rule came later, although signs of
tensions were visible before. In 1973 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-
Hamra and Wadi Dahab (Polisario), rose and initiated guerrilla warfare against the
Spanish rule (Mundy, 2007). These waves of resistance, even if chronologically apart,
managed to draw successfully European responses. Facing both internal and external
pressure, Europeans resorted to diplomatic resolutions to both conflicts.
In the advent of the Arab revolt, the British Mandate favored Arab demands to
restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases. However, the following World War II
and the genocide of Jews impacted the future of Palestinians. The British turned to the
newly created United Nations: the Partition Plan for Palestine issued in 1947 in the 181
Resolution recommended the foundation of independent Arab and Jewish states. Britain
terminated its mandate one day after the Provisional State Council in Tel Aviv issued the
Proclamation of Independence of the Israeli state in 1948, which would be known in the
Palestinian imaginary as the Nakba or “Catastrophe” to describe the forced displacement
of more than half of the members of the Palestinian society and its dismemberment
(Gabiam, 2016:9).
17
Few years after the Partition Plan that set the stage for future conflicts around the
right of Palestinians to independence and territorial integrity, similar rights were claimed
in the Western Sahara region. In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)
passed a resolution pressuring Spain to withdraw its colonial domination over Western
Sahara and recognizing its right to self-determination. However, though hesitantly and
meanwhile dealing with rival claims on the territory from Morocco and Mauritania, Spain
finally gave in UN pressure and accepted UN demands in 1974 to hold a referendum on
independence and completed its withdrawal of the territory in 1976, one day before
Polisario founded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
Morocco and Mauritania’s claims on the land where rejected by the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) (see Wilson, 2012:3). However, regardless of this verdict, both
countries annexed part of the territory in 1975; Mauritania would withdraw in 1979 after
Polisario’s insurgency, while Morocco annexed its part and constructed a militarized sand
wall, often referred to as “the berm”, that consequently and effectively partitioned the
territory between areas under its control and those under the authority of SADR (on the
Eastern side of the “berm”). The SADR’s governmental apparatus doesn’t reside
paradoxically within its territories in Western Sahara, but in the Algerian town of Tindouf
under the auspices of the Algerian state, who has hosted until this very day the SADR’s
headquarters and the displaced population caused by the Moroccan annexation, residing
in refugee camps (Mundy, 2007).
This brief summary shows how, despite geographic and historical specificities,
both cases central to this thesis went through a similar post-colonial process of
dispossession, losing their land and having their people forced to exile: as Palestinians
had lost the land mandated to them by the international community to Israel, so did the
Sahrawis to Morocco. Moreover, the immediate outcome of these occupations is shared
by both conflicts: as a result of the territorial losses undergone and the expulsion of its
inhabitants, the epithet of refugees populations applies irrefutably to both Sahrawis and
Palestinians . In fact, the war following the establishment of the Israeli state, in the period
of 1948-1949, caused the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians who sought refuge
in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. This number was increased by the
Six Day War in 1967 when Israel occupied the remaining Palestine: the West Bank and
the Gaza strip. The current 5.55 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants
residing in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are registered by
18
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA). However, the total number of Palestinian forcibly displaced persons
worldwide is estimated to be 8.7 million (Badil, 2018). In the case of Sahrawi refugees,
numbers remain unknown and contested, but humanitarian agencies estimate that around
173,600 people are residing in the Tindouf camps (UNHCR, 2018). Polisario has
authority over the areas located in Western Sahara (on the east of the ‘sand berm’) and
the refugee camps in Algerian territory. The population residing in exile stands in contrast
to the annexed population, who lives under Moroccan jurisdiction. According to UN
estimations, the number of Sahrawis residing under Morocco’s control could be more
numerous than those living in exile (Wilson, 2012).
The differences between the Sahrawi and Palestinian diasporas stem both from
the magnitude and the geographic scale of the displacement. Whereas Palestinians
became a people scattered and dispersed among different host countries, Sahrawis found
refuge in a delimited space: the Algerian desert around the town of Tindouf. The conflict
remained active and violent between Sahrawis and Morocco until 1991, when a ceasefire
was brokered by the UN between Morocco and Polisario. From that moment onwards,
the United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) has led the
conflict resolution efforts. The calling of a referendum could have opened a way to enact
the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people (Mundy, 2006), however, it never
happened.
These conflicts generated extremely harsh living conditions for both the refugee
camps’ residents of both populations, who, until this day, remain to a great extent highly
dependent on humanitarian aid with meager prospects of improvement, as both
populations face political stalemates.
3.2.Up-rootedness as a flag: nationalism and refugeehood

If territorial markers of modern-nation states are meant to distinguish citizens from
“foreigners” and to foster “national belonging” within their territories, as I have explored
in the previous chapter, the Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences challenge this view as
they have engaged in national identity construction in the absence of territorial
sovereignty. What is interesting is that prior to colonialism, the native communities in
these regions displayed a range of different forms of organization, residing in nomadic
and tribal communities (Mundy, 2006) that defy the basis of the territorial expression of
19
identity, so central to the discourse of sovereign statehood. However, they resorted to the
language of nationalism to define belonging and thus challenging those same colonial
powers were statehood was born.
The direction of the refugee trajectories had a determining role in the shaping of the
political activism and identity construction processes of these peoples and has been a
thoroughly analyzed subject within academia. Whereas some scholars locate the incipient
identities previous to the conflicts that led to massive displacement, others identify the
resistance to the occupier force as the trigger of the national identity formation.
In the case of Palestinians, some scholars such as Khalidi (1997) and Said (see
Hammer, 2005) oppose the view of a national identity solely originated from the
opposition to the external aggression. Khalidi identifies the 1917-1923 period as the
formative years. The author, drawing from Anderson’s “imagined community”, affirms
“the Arab residents of the country increasingly started to ‘imagine’ themselves as part of
a single community” (see Hammer, 2005:32). Some recognize other patterns in this
process such as the rise of Arab nationalism as a main factor in this construction. Nakhleh
(see Hammer, 2005) argues that an Arab identity was already present, stemming from
Palestinians’ common language whereas the territorial component of their identity group
started as a reaction to the loss of the land in 1948 and the specificity of the Palestinian
experience produced their differentiation from the rest of the Arabs.
In the case of Sahrawis, a similar pattern in research was developed. Suarez identifies
three trends within literature: one that stressed ethnic distinctiveness rooted in history and
in Sahrawi’s nature as a nomadic people with tribal structures; one that emphasizes
Sahrawi identity as an extension of the anti-colonial struggle; and finally an
instrumentalist approach that claims that the Saharawi identity was “crafted” as a means
of political power, namely by Polisario (2016:12).
20
3.2.1. Palestine: exile made nation
During the decolonization processes that gave rise to the current Arab nation-
states, Palestinians were the only ones not endowed with a territorial state at the time of
the independence. If the rise of these polyethnic new states already confronted the
traditional perception on nationalism that presupposes ethnic homogeneity delimited by
established borders (Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002), the case of the Palestinians is
especially relevant in questioning this approach.
Whereas the neighboring countries started from the 1940s their state-building
processes and did so before nation-building (or identity building), Palestinians did quite
the opposite: they forged a national identity in absence of a state. However, the traditional
nationalistic view on territorial grounds can be partially applicable to Palestinians, whose
identity, even if created and fueled by exile, maintained its foundations on a land claim,
the motherland, with specific geographic features and borders. The Right to Return
represents this tension: it is the demand that has remained present along generations who
still long for return, even if the youngest have never seen the actual Palestine. The idea
of “return” as a national claim shows there is a territorially based homeland.
The case of Palestine also challenges the traditional assertion of theorists of

modern nationalism such as Ernest Gellner (1983) and Benedict Anderson (1983) who,
as seen in chapter 2, allege that the official narratives propagated by the state are the ones
that shape national development, assuming there exists a territorial coincidence of borders
and the state with the nation. Paradoxically, Palestinians have developed a sense of
nationhood as members belonging to the same territorial unit, namely the historic
Palestine. Some of them, those residing in the remaining Palestinian Territories (Gaza
and the West Bank) have managed to build national institutions that don’t coincide with
the territorial borders on which their territorial claim lies, i.e. the whole of Palestine,
nowadays under Israeli’s jurisdiction. The role of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
(PLO) is very relevant in understanding this process. The PLO emerged in 1964, founded
by children of the exile (Shabaneh, 2010) and acted as an umbrella under which the
different factions, often competing among each other, of the resistance movements
generally coalesced and became a national representative institution for the Palestinian
people within Palestine and the diaspora. The PLO developed infrastructure in the fields
of economy, social welfare or health, which made it emerge as a quasi-state (Farah, 2008).
21
However, it was not the only actor that was considered to act as such: UNRWA,
a UN relief organization created ad hoc to respond to the humanitarian emergency, was
created to respond to the massive displacement of the Palestinian population and it
operates in the neighboring countries hosting Palestinian refugees and the occupied
territories. It became a public service provider and even a “non-territorial administration
without coercive power” (Bocco, 2010:234). The facilities and services provided by the
Agency united Palestinians in the absence of a state and promoted the sense of “imagined
community” among refugees (Shabaneh, 2018). As I have shown in previous sections,
humanitarian organizations have traditionally vindicated the supersession of the national
order in favor of internationalism and universal values while, at the same time, managing
refugee populations in a way not to undermine the nation-state paradigm. My argument
is therefore that this tense and paradoxical relationship between humanitarianism and
nations is especially evident when analyzing the nature of UNRWA as a humanitarian
services provider. While, even if unintendedly, UNRWA has provided the grounds for
Palestinian nationalism to grow, it has followed its mandate which clearly supports the
permanent resettlement in the host country as the only feasible solution to the Palestinian
question, as it will be further analyzed in chapter 4.
3.2.2. Western Sahara – a nation in exile
Spanish “pacification” of tribes in 1934 and the instauration of an effective

colonial power intensified in the 1950s the sedentarization of an originally nomadic
people with tribal structures and caused a number of migration movements where
Sahrawis were dispersed in southern Morocco. For certain scholars, Sahrawi nationalism
predates the Moroccan annexation: these authors locate it in the 1960s, identifying it as
an anti-colonial movement against the Spanish colonial rule that along with the increasing
urbanization (see Wilson, 2012) provided the grounds for an “imagined community”
whose members recognized themselves as a colonized people. In the same line, Castellino
and Domínguez-Redondo locate the emergence of a national identity as a result of
colonialism: the very term “Sahrawi” derives from the Spanish Sahara and wouldn’t have
existed before the mid-twentieth century (2013). In this process, the emergence of an
educated political leadership (some of whom had attended Moroccan universities) was
extremely relevant. All these factors resulted in the constitution of the Polisario in 1973.
The annexation of 1975 that led to thousands of Sahrawi refugees seeking exile in Algeria
sedimented this incipient national identity adding a new dimension to it. The crisis of
22
annexation and the displacement of thousands of refugees to Algeria created the space for
a new political identity that extended the horizons for the Sahrawi nationalism by creating
the Sahrawi citizen, where refugeehood, embodied in the Tindouf refugee camps, had an
essential role.
Both the meaning and structure of the refugee camps were connected to a series
of traditional narratives that stemmed from the spatial organization of the nomadic camps;
these were run mainly by women, as men were usually in the battlefield. The mythical
narrative of the old raids was re-inscribed in the incipient nationalist imaginary
symbolizing Sahrawi resistance against domination and eased the integration of the
dramatic circumstances of the exile into a new historical chapter, built around the idea of
the Sahrawi nation as threatened and violated by colonial powers. The environment where
the refugee camps were set was extremely hostile and its resources scant. In such a
deprived milieu, everything had to be done from scratch (San Martin, 2010). The refugee
camps, then, gave a new space for a new historical narrative that was based on the desire
of an independent nation-state, with a future-oriented vision. Moreover, they have
become a unique phenomenon in the world of forced migration: although they are
completely dependent on international humanitarian aid, they are entirely self-
administered (Mundy, 2007) as I will further explain in chapter 4.
As in the Palestinian case, this draws lines for reflection on humanitarianism

involvement in national issues as supporting, even if unintendedly, state-building and
nationalism, and challenges the feasibility of its principle of neutrality and its capacity to
maintain itself independent from the national logic. Thus, it is to these challenges and
paradoxes that the next chapter is devoted.
23
4. Stretching borders: humanitarianism, neutrality and (de)politicization
In the previous chapter, I have shown how the Palestinian and Sahrawi
experiences challenge the traditional conceptions of nationalist ideologies, at the same
time as problematizing the assumption that the only feasible solution for refugees is the
permanent resettlement in the host society and the subsequent integration in it. I have also
described the extreme politicization of both contexts object of this thesis, where processes
of identity construction intersect with colonialism and decolonial processes.
What is the role of humanitarianism in these contexts? I have already suggested
how humanitarian aid and relief agencies play a determining role in supporting these
populations. Given the high politicization of these contexts, I will argue in this chapter,
the principle of neutrality is questionable. At the same time, and for the same reason, the
Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences also challenge the critiques verted on
humanitarianism when it is accused of reducing refugees to speechless figures and passive
agents.
The following two sections are devoted to the concepts of neutrality and de-
politicization. Firstly, I will analyze the limitations on the scope of neutrality. In the
Palestinian case, I will delimit the research to UNRWA, being the backbone of the refugee
experience of the Palestinian, both chronologically and geographically. Secondly, I will
engage with the notion of de-politicization through the examples of Sahrawis and
Palestinians. I will question the accusations on humanitarianism, arguing that relief aid
has supported, rather than silenced, the emergence of political voices and narratives.
Finally, I will fold the section by stressing the role of the refugee camp, as a humanitarian
instrument, in their national struggle.
4.1.Neutrality
4.1.1. Humanitarianism made ad hoc: UNRWA
Palestinians have always held a special status within the humanitarian landscape,
and are in fact excluded from many of the main bodies of post-war humanitarianism, such
as the 1951 Convention and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
This is also because Arab host countries refused that Palestinian refugees fell into the
generic category of refugees, as this would dissipate the will to find a political solution
to the refugees’ right to return. Palestinians have found themselves in a tension between
24
being recognized as refugees and accepting to resettle permanently, thus benefiting from
international protections and assistance, or being recognized as Palestinian nationals,
therefore distinct in their needs and rights (Feldman, 2007).
On December 8, 1949, the UNGA passed Resolution 302 (IV) that established the
creation of UNRWA as a temporary humanitarian agency with the mission of responding
to the substantial exodus living within the UNRWA area of operations: Gaza, West Bank,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (Feldman, 2008). Its mandate was twofold: to collaborate
with host governments in the provision of relief aid and to consult with the local
governments concerning measures to be taken to prepare for the cessation of the
humanitarian assistance and works (Shabaneh, 2010). This would theoretically happen
without prejudice to the provisions of the paragraph 11 of the UNGA Resolution 194 that
acknowledged the Right to Return and the rights of compensation to those choosing not
to return for the losses and damages caused by the establishment of the state of Israel.
Although the meaning of assistance in the mandate was never truly defined, during
the first decades after its foundation, the services provided by UNRWA included rations,
clothing, education, housing, and healthcare. After the political opposition faced in the
1950s to the plan of implementing large-scale developmental programs, UNRWA turned
into the provision of solely humanitarian aid or “essential services” (Bocco, 2010).
Nowadays, UNRWA provides primarily education and healthcare, along with sanitation
and certain social services (UNRWA, 2021)
Since its very inception, the Agency has faced certain contradictions and ambiguities
that stem from two main factors:
a) UNRWA was originally conceived as temporary and its mandate renewed every three
years, as it was meant to be dissolved within a few years after its foundation.
However, after more than 70 years operating, it symbolizes the failure of the
international community to solve the Palestinian question.
b) The funding system shows the fragility of the agency: it depends solely on voluntary
contributions of donor countries, which has set limits to UNRWA’s initiatives and
has jeopardized its autonomy from donor’s political interests (Bocco, 2010).
25
The independence of the agency has been remarkably questioned regarding the
refugees’ resettlement outside historic Palestine. As it will be discussed later, this issue
has casted doubts on the willingness of the International Community to implement
UNGA resolution 194, which was a guarantee for Palestinians of their Right to Return.
Officially a non-political organization, UNRWA has been involved in an

extremely politicized context since its origins. Permanent resettlement of Palestinian
refugees in the host countries has been considered a non-negotiable condition by the State
of Israel, who has refused to consider any return according to the provision of the
resolution 194, and as “the magic solution” likely to solve the Palestinian refugee issue
by Western stakeholders (Al Husseini and Bocco, 2010:142). These policies are reflected
on the funding side, being UNRWA mostly funded by UN member states and the
European Union (90,04% of the funding) (UNRWA, 2021). Furthermore, the Agency has
been considered a “peace servicing” factor in the Near East (Al Husseini and Bocco,
2010), accrued by the implementation of developmental programs which aimed at
fulfilling the part of its mandate to encourage refugees to become self-sufficient
(Shabaneh, 2010). Furthermore, UNRWA itself has openly and publicly acknowledged
its role as a pacifying actor in the region as it became evident when the Trump
administration decided to curtail its yearly donation of $300 million in 2017. The Agency,
then, accused Trump of “jeopardizing stability and safety, and opportunities for a
peaceful, just, and durable future” (UNRWA USA National Committee, 2019:4).
The difficulties in carrying out such a massive resettlement stemmed from both
political considerations and structural constraints (Feldman, 2008). On the one hand,
refugees, being originally skeptical towards the Agency’s mandate, resisted plans to
reintegrate them into host societies, as in the early years after the Nakba they assumed
the Resolution 194 would be shortly implemented. Witnessing the political impasse, those
“realistic” expectations had turned into hopes, but nonetheless unwavering hopes. This
resistance was shared by the host countries and enhanced by the limits of the capacity of
these states to absorb populations that were supposed to be just “temporary” residents
(Farah, 2008).
The humanitarian experience, according to Feldman, always entails contestation

between the structure of the aid system and the desires and demands of recipients (2017).
26
After the immediate crisis of dispossession where Palestinians’ concerns were to meet
their most basic needs, by the 1960s, observers commented on the widely shared
“ideology against any kind of individual solution to the refugee problem. The problem
has to be solved for everybody and at the same time, or for nobody at all. Nobody should
be paid off by compensation or individual settlement” (see Feldman, 2008: 502).
In these lines, we find a translation of the paradoxical nature of UNRWA. By the

provision of relief assistance to Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of the Nakba and its
response to the acute humanitarian crisis, UNRWA provided the grounds for Palestinians
to refocus on the definition of their political and national demands regarding the Right to
Return. The witnessing of the reiterated violation of Resolution 194, the stagnation of
their refugee situation, and UNRWA’s attempts to implement long-term projects resulted
in a growing skepticism towards the Agency. Palestinians inferred through UNRWA’s
ongoing presence a limitless continuation of their stay in the host countries and even a
permanent resettlement, which accrued their resistance and fueled the strengthening of
their national demands.
4.1.2. The building of the Sahrawi nation: “a humanitarian state”
Although lacking a UN agency to respond to the humanitarian emergency of the

mass displacement that the Moroccan annexation caused, the Sahrawis have been
supplied with humanitarian assistance since their displacement, especially by
international agencies such as UNHCR and the World Food Program, the European
Union and a large number of European NGOs (Cozza, 2003).
Nonetheless, what makes the Sahrawi case exceptional is that, unlike many other
refugee situations multi and non-governmental organizations do not play a direct role in
the management of the camp, nor in the implementation of relief projects or the
distribution of aid. SADR has controlled the resources provided by other states, but also
managed all humanitarian goods and services directed to the refugee camps. In this
context, the Sahrawi Red Crescent has been essential in gathering international
humanitarian resources and putting them at the service of the Front since the very
beginning. It was the first official “Sahrawi” organization, established in 1975 and a
foundation of the future state in exile (Cozza, 2003). Humanitarian agencies must work
through the Sahrawi Red Crescent or the relevant SADR ministry (Mundy, 2007), and
27
the very same recipients play an active role in aid distribution. For example, beyond
securing bare survival, humanitarian organizations also supported education and medical
services in the camps; however, they were not established by Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF) or Oxfam, but by the Sahrawis themselves (Herz, 2013). They are organized in
committees charged with education, health/sanitation, justice or food provision, and every
member is assigned to one of these committees to carry out the daily tasks of camp
management (Mundy, 2007).
The SADR, born out of a humanitarian emergency, has built itself without other
wealth than the lives of the refugees, the internationally recognized right to self-
determination, and with the resources spontaneously made available by international
organizations and NGOs. It remains constantly dependent upon the support of the
international system of humanitarian assistance (OXFAM, 2020) which, indeed has,
albeit unintendedly, supported the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s claims and
legitimized it as a rightful actor. Through aid provision that is solely managed by SADR’s
ministries and the Sahrawi Red Crescent, humanitarian organizations recognize, even if
silently, the legitimacy of the Sahrawi governmental institutions.
4.2.(De) politicization
The Palestinian and Sahrawi cases challenge the belief that humanitarian processes
disempower refugees and reduces them to “speechless figures” (Malkki, 1996) or “bare
life” (Redfield, 2005), as it has been discussed in chapter 2.
Palestinian refugees, like Arab host states, have been historically concerned that the
refugee camps keep the appearance natural to their temporariness. In that sense, the
conditions of the refugees’ daily lives articulate both the desire to return home and their
forced displacement (Feldman, 2008) reaffirming their commitment to the Right to
Return. In fact, they have actively resisted improvement efforts to the extent of organizing
strikes in Lebanon and Syria to protest UNRWA’s efforts to improve camp conditions,
as they feared they would lead to permanent resettlement (Gabiam, 2016). This happened
both in the host countries as in Gaza, where refugees expressed concerns “about
maintaining the camps as visible symbols of displacement” (Feldman, 2008:508).
Similarly, resistance to improvements have been recorded in the Tindouf camps.
Humanitarian organizations noticed that the older generations were extremely wary of
28
interventions that could be seen as anchoring their presence in the camps, as they still
hope to return soon (Oxfam, 2015).
The accusations verted on humanitarianism as depoliticizing refugees and detaching

them from a political an historical biography have solid grounds. We cannot ignore how
the efforts of humanitarian agencies to improve the conditions in the camps are rooted in
the desire to pacify the camp residents, as it was made evident in UNRWA’s declarations
acknowledging its role as a key factor in the stability of the region (UNRWA USA
National Committee, 2019). These improvement efforts that were to dissuade refugees
from their Right to Return had, paradoxically, the opposite effect. As I have shown so far,
they were met with resistance both by Palestinians and Sahrawis. My argument is
therefore that the camp, originally conceived as a humanitarian structure and therefore
detached from ideological associations, is transformed into an unintended hyper-
politicized lieu. Moreover, the camp is the basis of an identity that has been in place for
more than 70 years and which has configured and constructed a new wave of nationalism
that resulted in the emergence of resistance groups (Colson, 2003). The example of
Yarmouk camp that Gabiam (2016) discusses is especially relevant in this line. He defines
it as a political space where demonstrations and marches by refugees were held over
events connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the Saharan side, humanitarian aid workers have defined Sahrawi refugees as one
of the most politically aware populations in the world. This politicization of the refugee
was made possible through the Sahrawis’ own participation in the “symbolic systems of
national liberation (Polisario) and state-formation (the SADR)” (Mundy, 2007:285).
However, this politicization stems from the permanence in a temporary-conceived
structure with meager prospects of reaching a political solution and the lack of future
prospects for the youth, namely from the condition of refugeeness itself. The permanent
stay and dependence on humanitarian aid has paradoxically crafted a more political
refugee youth who instead of “passively waiting for the return”, as depicted in literature,
has come to question the validity of the peaceful approach that Polisario holds since 1991.
This stance became critical in the congress of the Union for Sahrawi students, where
voices raised asking to reconsider the option of armed combat, given the lack of political
solutions (Oxfam, 2015).
29
According to Farah (2008), the political realities have often compelled Palestinians to
hold a defensive posture by battling to preserve, remember, and reconstruct what has been
and keeps been erased. In order to do so, Palestinians have transformed humanitarian
objects into national iconography. One example, is the ration cards issued by the Agency,
that became a memento which Feldman defines as “both a token of identity and a practical
tool for living” (2008:510). For Palestinians, humanitarian documents, even if they were
envisioned as merely identification of individual beneficiaries eligible to receive
UNRWA’s support and despite the discomfort caused by their necessity for them, had
become the most vital form of documented visibility that corroborated and symbolized
the collective experience of loss (ibid, 2008).
The humanitarian intervention, materialized in the ration card and the refugee camp,
acquired a status such as the old keys of the homes in Palestine that refugees keep. These
keys represent the grief of the lost home but also the hope of return and the claim to their
properties. According to Feldman, living in a camp is the way to “authentically embody
the experience of being Palestinian” (2008:509).
4.3.The humanitarian intervention as a national signifier
SADR acted as a buffer between the external actors and the refugees, which
reinforced a “Sahrawi political identity as opposed to humanitarian status as refugees”
(Farah, 2008:82). Moreover, the refugee camps became the soil where to embark on state-
building and civil institutions. They provided the grounds to experiment with the political
representation and participation of the citizens of the future state by administering the
camps as state provinces or wilayas. They were named after the provinces of the future
state: al-Ayun, Smara, al-Dakhla, Awsard, and a smaller camp under the name of “27
February” that commemorates the date of the founding of the republic. Under the wilayas,
we can find the districts, or dairas, where the popular committees are located and formed
by every refugee older than 16 years old (Mundy, 2007).
The camp has arisen as a unifying fabric that holds identity and national aspirations.
In the case of Palestinians, the camps have been accustomed to recreate both communities
and places of origin. After 1948, many Palestinians fled together, family members and
former neighbors, settling down in proximity. The camp acquired the familiarity of the
places left behind and were commonly named after them (Krzyżanowska, 2013), and
30
provided the grounds for a continuation of the social life in the pre-exilic form, where
individual stories are essential for the collective memory (Colson, 2003).
In both cases, the camp, by retaining the names of the cities and villages of the lost
motherland and acting as a representation of life in pre-exilic form, becomes the bridge
between the lost nation and those born in exile by providing them with the national
references in absence of the actual land. The refugee camp, as a humanitarian
intervention, has had a different impact on the two cases. In the Sahrawi case, it works as
a future-oriented projection: the flow of humanitarian aid and the support of the relief
agencies has provided the resources necessary to experiment the Sahrawis’ future state
and to construct their national identity. For Palestinians, who didn’t have the freedom to
manage the aid and were themselves administered by a relief agency, humanitarian aid
supported the remembrance of the loss while keeping alive the Right to Return along the
new generations.
31
5. Conclusion
In contrast to the presupposed territorial congruency between borders, the state, and the
nation, Palestinians and Sahrawis have developed a sense of nationhood in absence of a
state and in up-rootedness.
In the Palestinian case, the Nakba and the consequent diaspora transformed the
former Arab identity into a Palestinian one. Scattered in exile among different countries,
they remained confined within delimited refugee camps. The isolation from the host
societies and the proximity to neighbors and families who had fled together supported the
recreation of the camps as their communities of origin. The permanence in camps
symbolized their collective loss and kept the claim to the Right to Return alive along
generations, even those who had been born in exile and had become Palestinian through
the memories and references of the camp. In the Sahrawi case, the annexation of Morocco
caused the massive displacement of Sahrawis. Through the establishment of SADR by
Polisario in exile, refugeehood enabled the Sahrawi refugee to become a Sahrawi citizen
and to create and experiment the future Sahrawi society. Equally as in the Palestinian
case, the camps kept cultural references to the places of origin. Sahrawi camps were set
in the fashion of the nomadic camps, which were named after the provinces of the future
Sahrawi state. The return has remained communicated and vindicated as a national
demand, even by those who were born in exile but who identify, nevertheless, as Sahrawi.
In this process, the role of humanitarian action is essential. The very conception
of UNRWA as exclusive for Palestinians is embedded on their national aspirations to
instore a nation-state within established territorial limits. Moreover, its provision of
services made it to rise as a quasi-state, providing the necessary resources for Palestinians
to start thinking of themselves as an “imagined community”. The refugee camp, as a
humanitarian intervention, and the ration cards issued by UNRWA became a proof of
Palestinian identity and represented the condition of refugeehood and the collective loss,
but also the promise to the Right to Return. In contrast, despite not being endowed with
an Agency ad hoc for them, Sahrawis and their governmental institutions remain
completely dependent on humanitarian assistance. However, what is unique about the
Sahrawi experience is the submission of the humanitarian aid flow to SADR’s control
and administration which involved its citizens, the refugees, in the process, thus enabling
them to participate actively in the nation/state-building process.
32
In such politicized contexts, the applicability of the humanitarian principles is

questionable, especially that of neutrality. UNRWA, although officially non-political, has
supported the self-sufficiency of Palestinians and their permanent resettlement in host
countries, which is the principal demand of Israel, the occupier force. Paradoxically, its
very existence and its continuation keeps the question of the Return open, acting as a
reminder that the Palestinian question is far from being resolved. In the same line, the fact
that humanitarian agencies submit the aid to SADR’s management legitimizes it as a
rightful actor with rightful national claims and enables Polisario to continue its national
struggle.
This politicization is also reflected on the refugees themselves, who, contrary to

the classical assumption of the refugee as a speechless figure lacking a political voice,
have resorted to the humanitarian intervention to develop and strengthen their political
claims. The resistance to camp improvements by both populations and the crescent
national movements born in the camps show how the refugee camp, in these cases, has
not diminished the Sahrawi and Palestinian refugee to mere survival but has provided the
grounds for the new refugee generations to actively engage with their nation in absence.
In conclusion, the tension between borders, nationalism, and the humanitarian

principle of neutrality are embodied in the humanitarian intervention at the refugee camp.
Humanitarian action cannot be neutral or transcend borders because humanitarian
intervention takes places within extremely politicized contexts where the conflict is
rooted on the borders themselves. Even if, in the case of Palestinians and Sahrawis, this
intervention happens across borders (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan or Algeria) and
detached from national land settings (the micro-cosmos of the camp as being separated
from the nation-state of the host society), it is rooted in various forms of engagement with
the imaginary of the nation.
The longevity and chronification of these crises may suggest in our imaginary a
certain stability, however an extremely fragile one if so, as the last events at the time of
the writing of these lines show. The complexity of the issue, both chronologically and
geographically, as in terms of actors involved, exceeds the scope of this thesis but opens
many lines for analysis and research. These cases offer humanitarianism a reflection on
its paradoxical engagement with nationalism, and an extremely valuable one in a time
where more and more people are becoming chronically “matter out of place”.
33
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38

"Matter Out of Place": Humanitarianism and The Construction of National Identities. The Cases of Palestinian and Sahrawi Refugees

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“Matter out of place”

Humanitarianism and the construction of national

Author: Leticia Álvarez Álvarez

This thesis examines the tension between humanitarianism and nationalism by

II. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ICJ – International Court of Justice

MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières

MINURSO – United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara

PLO – Palestinian Liberation Front

SADR – Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

UNGA – United Nations General Assembly

UNHCR – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

1.2.Relevance to the field

The research design is based on a review of interdisciplinary literature, coherently

Moreover, according to the metaphor of the nation-state as a corporeal being, the

Nevertheless, decolonization, according to some scholars, could be compatible with

2.2. Mobility Studies

As previously mentioned, academia had traditionally marginalized migration due to

The critique of this framework has allowed the study of de-territorialization, by

In a different perspective, constructionist theories view the national identities as a

In this context, ethnicity may be essential in defining identity in displacement. Bilge

This is especially visible in the Palestinian and Sahrawi diasporas, where

2.5.New localities: The refugee camp as a permanent experience

The nature of the refugee camp as a temporary solution to a temporary emergency is

Either as a “de-territorialized homeland”, where life can be made sense of or as a

The nature of the relationship between humanitarianism and nations is extremely

Secondly, the postwar formulation of international rights drew the possibility of

terms of internationalism and universal values (Malkki, 1995). Paradoxically, however,

Thirdly, humanitarian organizations are central to the management of forced

The notion of a universal refugee, deprived of political speech and national

3. Palestine & Western Sahara: A comparative approach

3.1.Humanitarian crises follow colonial trails

3.2.Up-rootedness as a flag: nationalism and refugeehood

3.2.1. Palestine: exile made nation

The case of Palestine also challenges the traditional assertion of theorists of

3.2.2. Western Sahara – a nation in exile

Spanish “pacification” of tribes in 1934 and the instauration of an effective

As in the Palestinian case, this draws lines for reflection on humanitarianism

4. Stretching borders: humanitarianism, neutrality and (de)politicization

Officially a non-political organization, UNRWA has been involved in an

The humanitarian experience, according to Feldman, always entails contestation

In these lines, we find a translation of the paradoxical nature of UNRWA. By the

4.1.2. The building of the Sahrawi nation: “a humanitarian state”

Although lacking a UN agency to respond to the humanitarian emergency of the

The accusations verted on humanitarianism as depoliticizing refugees and detaching

4.3.The humanitarian intervention as a national signifier

In such politicized contexts, the applicability of the humanitarian principles is

This politicization is also reflected on the refugees themselves, who, contrary to

In conclusion, the tension between borders, nationalism, and the humanitarian

- Al Husseini, J. and Bocco, R. (2010). Dynamics of humanitarian aid, local and

- ECHO (2021). Humanitarian Principles. Available at:

- Vigh, H. (2008). Crisis and Chronicity: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuous

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