experienced UNHCR field officer in Ghana told me that making Buduburam a fee-based camp had led to (or had created) ‘a strong drive for refugees to make a living on their own’.3 But for the majority of Liberian exiles, it was a major source of frustration or even distress to have to meet their own basic living expenses (see also Hardgrove 2009: 489). Many refugees asked me whether it was normal for refugees to pay for everything in other refugee camps outside Ghana.
The fee-based camp life had inevitably created disparities among refugees in their ability to access services. For example, households with limited financial capacity could not provide even primary education for their children and were unable to receive necessary medical treatment. Chapter 3 will provide a detailed quantitative analysis of how fee-based camp management burdened refugees and forced them to compromise on their fundamental needs.
Freedom of Movement and Access to the Camp
Host governments in the Global South often shackle refugees’ mobility outside camps to prevent them from melting into the host economy and fuelling competition with locals or taking away employment opportunities from them (Werker 2007: 471). However, unlike many refugee-receiving countries in Africa where refugees’ mobility is constrained, the Ghanaian government in principle respected the freedom of movement for refugees as enshrined in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Liberian refugees could go virtually anywhere in Ghana without restrictions. There was a local police station right next to the camp entrance but the police officers paid little attention to people’s entry to and exit from the camp.
The open-entry character of Buduburam camp made the camp accessible to people other than Liberian refugees, such as non-refugee Liberians, Ivorians, Sierra Leoneans, Nigerians and, of course, Ghanaians. I occasionally met non-refugee Liberians who were visiting their relatives or friends living in the camp. According to my interviews with camp-based Liberian refugees, after the resumption of the repatriation programme in April 2008, the influx of non-Liberian refugees, and particularly Ghanaians, intensified. These Ghanaians were coming into the camp and occupying vacant homesteads where repatriated Liberian refugee families used to live.
Buduburam: A Transit Point?
Buduburam camp was often referred to as a ‘transit point’ by both refugees and non-refugee actors. Whilst the term could be interpreted in several different ways, one of the meanings was related to trading activities carried out by Liberians. Taking advantage of freedom of movement, there were some Liberian business people who were using the camp as a transit centre for their sub-regional businesses.
The other, perhaps the most common, use of this expression was mainly among non-refugee stakeholders. The staff members of UNHCR tended towards the view that Liberian refugees in Buduburam camp chose to come to Ghana only for third-country resettlement rather than as a result of fleeing war or persecution. When Dick interviewed a UNHCR representative in 2000, the representative said to her, ‘Liberians are staying in Ghana because of the resettlement programme’ (Dick 2002a: 48). These types of simplistic interpretation of the reasons why remaining refugees continue to stay in Ghana apparently remained consistent over the years. In one of my interviews with a UNHCR programme officer, she explained: ‘Liberian refugees came to Ghana for resettlement purposes. But now there is no resettlement opportunity for them. I don’t understand why they are still staying in Buduburam camp’.4
From this point of view, the camp was perceived as a ‘springboard’ to a better life in developed countries in the North. During my research, indeed, I interviewed a good number of Liberian refugees who did come to Ghana for the purpose of resettlement. Because of the historical affiliation with the United States, in particular, the sentiment towards this ‘dreamland’ had spread into the Buduburam refugee population, and many Liberians thus saw the United States as a destination or the best place to live. Although UNHCR repeatedly emphasized that an avenue to resettlement had been closed for Liberian refugees, a considerable number of refugees, especially young people, still believed that the door for travelling to the Global North would open up again in the future.5
While I certainly acknowledged the popularity of resettlement among the camp’s residents, at the same time I remained uncomfortable generalizing about 18,000 refugees in the camp as simply ‘resettlement seekers’. I was also uncomfortable with the implication that these refugees had not experienced persecution or exposure to violence in Liberia. As I shall show in this book, however, there were many Liberians who had to flee to Ghana to escape threats to their physical security and dignity.
The Importance of Networks in Buduburam Daily Life
Life in Buduburam camp was governed by a complicated web of human relations and social institutions. From these interactions, personal connections beyond immediate kinship often emerged as an important source of resilience in the daily economic life of refugees.
The Virtue of Sharing: Mutual Support Networks
During my fieldwork, whenever I came back from interviews to my shared house in the evening, I almost always found some refugees in our small living space. They came to meet my co-resident, Philip, one of the respected refugee community leaders. Almost always they invited me to eat with them, and I usually joined them. After eating, these visitors normally stayed to chat and watch TV for about an hour. Then they returned to their own homes at around 8 or 9 p.m. Some of Philip’s long-term friends came to eat at our place virtually every day. Their visits were very naturally accommodated – as if they were expected to come and eat there. Philip once explained to me that he always told Sam, his housekeeper, to prepare some extra food for these guests. I soon realized that these informal social activities had economic implications as well.
In the conventional definition, a household is a group of co-residents who draw upon a common pool of resources and function as a basic economic unit. However, a household often becomes fluid in a mobile population such as refugees, where people are often attached to several groups at the same time and are accustomed to sharing various resources with non-family members (Clark 2006: 3).
The household among the Buduburam refugee population certainly went beyond a group of co-residents. Inside the camp, the sharing, lending and borrowing of resources such as food, water and petty cash frequently took place between different households or between individuals linked through various connections such as kinship, clan, school and church membership. Whilst kinship was still a common element that cut across many refugee households, non-biological members were also accommodated as part of a household in some cases. As I shall show throughout this book, the transfer and exchange of resources between these refugees, especially underprivileged ones, were embedded in their daily survival strategies.
Religious Life: Churches as Spaces for Network-Building
In Buduburam camp, Christianity was the predominant religion, although Islam and traditional beliefs were also present on a smaller scale. According to statistics assembled by the LRWC in 2009, there were seventy-eight churches and one mosque in the camp. During fieldwork, I normally did not set up interviews with refugees on Sundays because going to church was almost a customary practice for many refugee households. There were also a certain number of refugees who commuted to Ghanaian churches outside Buduburam camp. After church prayers in the camp, ‘social hours’ always followed and the church served as an arena for people’s social life as well. Refugees
