Introduction

The decolonisation of humanitarianism and refugee-related research represents a critical endeavour, yet its realisation often remains elusive, veiled behind tokenistic gestures and superficial engagements. In this reflective piece, we navigate the complexities surrounding this discourse, drawing from our diverse backgrounds and experiences. As practitioners and scholars, we offer insights into the challenges impeding meaningful transformation and propose pathways for more inclusive and transformative research practices.

We come to the question of the extent to which the decolonisation of humanitarianism and refugee-related research is meaningful or tokenistic, and to what effect,¹ as two co-authors from different backgrounds, contexts and upbringings. We met over ten years ago at Ajuong Thok refugee camp in South Sudan, where Jess, of white British and Nigerian heritage, worked as an aid worker coordinating an education project and Marwan, of Nuba-Achurun heritage, forcibly displaced from the Nuba Mountains to South Sudan, worked as a primary and secondary school teacher. As lifelong learners, we have recently completed postgraduate studies: Marwan in Juba and Jess in London. In this article, we present three points for consideration for practitioners and scholars engaging with critical humanitarian and refugee-related research based on our experiences. As academics, aid practitioners and teachers, we wear multiple hats and put forward ideas to address issues we see in refugee-related research. However, we recognise a need for various voices, contestations and critiques. Our ideas are ever-changing, and we write this to welcome further conversation.

Decolonial Discourse Has Become Co-opted but Remains a Catalyst for More Significant Conversations

In 2020, with the momentum around Black Lives Matter and COVID-19, humanitarian and academic institutions released pledges, conducted unconscious bias training, and re-shuffled their boards; we saw terms like ‘decolonising’, or institutions issuing statements regretting their complicity and upholding of colonial values. However, when we look at humanitarian research more broadly, particularly when connected to international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), it is often positioned to maintain systems and structures with a designated role in ensuring renewed funding. Furthermore, most research processes – an evaluation led by an INGO, a project funded through an institutional grant, a PhD doctoral studies programme, or the application of donors’ pre-set log frame indicators – are often designed without the people most affected by humanitarian crises being in the room. As scholars Tuck and Yang (2012) argue, the broad application of the term ‘decolonising’ dilutes a political term for Indigenous people in settler colonial countries, such as the United States, which, as a political project, is deeply connected to land repatriation. Rarely does refugee research that uses the term ‘decolonial’ focus on redistributing wealth or land.

However, despite the term’s co-option, decolonial discourse can be generative, particularly when tied to social and political action. It calls attention to people’s worldviews, the historical roots of humanitarian aid, and the coloniality continuum that pervades through institutional structures.

Nevertheless, it is far more useful or productive for Jess to think of the next logical step, moving more towards abolitionist thinking and considering the possibilities of critical humanitarian and refugee-related research in dismantling systems and structures that exclude so many people. When research is connected to action, to documenting everyday struggles, or as Gilmore calls it, ‘abolition geographies’ (Gilmore, 2017: 231) – such as the disparity in salaries for teachers in refugee camps due to their status, prompting them to protest against the imposed wages set by agencies, where international and sometimes national staff receive significantly more – we are propelled towards contemplating radical alternative pathways. In doing so, we can stretch the ‘humanitarian imagination’ (Shirazi, 2020: 76).

Most Scholarship That Seeks to Decolonise Aid Is Not Being Generated by People Who Are at the Margins

As Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley note, ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’ are contentious and ‘diversely mobilised terms’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley, 2018: 2). These terms reinforce binary ways of thinking that fail to recognise the heterogeneity of spatial divisions, social inequalities and complex dynamics within and across geopolitical relations. South–South relations, agency and resistance are often hidden, while the ‘epistemic power of the North’ continues to be ‘re-inscribed’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley, 2018: 4). As Saskia Sassen argues, a significant portion of the underprivileged workforce in major cities worldwide comprises women, immigrants and people of colour – both men and women – who may not feel fully represented or included within national boundaries (Sassen, 2005); essentially, the structurally disadvantaged, who do not closely align with how we conceptualise the ‘Global North’. Although we do not seek to put forward an alternative definition for Global South in this article, it is essential to acknowledge how the (mis)application of these terms currently informs discourse and does little to challenge deeply ingrained biases within academia and programmatic policies of humanitarian aid.

There is ample evidence that the academic ivory tower and INGOs positioned in the ‘Global North’ contribute to the social reproduction of inequities (Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly, 2021). As many scholars have pointed out, we recognise that marginality exists in all contexts. However, it is notable that people with lived experience of displacement are often absent from critical humanitarian discourse and knowledge generation. We also know that the people in the room often come from privileged social and economic demographics within their context, and, as such, the people designing these agendas have limited first-hand experience (Oddy, 2023). For Marwan, participating in the ‘Critical Reflections on “Decolonising” Humanitarianism and Refugee-Related Research’ Roundtable Event in 2022 (Southern Responses to Displacement, 2022) was the first time he had been invited to such an event. It is striking that despite the momentum around ‘decolonising’ the academy and aid in recent years, people with the greatest proximity to marginality are absent from discourses that seek to define the field (Oddy, 2023). Why is it that Marwan, who considers himself to have a ‘citizenship in refugeehood’, having spent 13 years in a refugee camp in Kenya and then later in Uganda and South Sudan, is only now getting the opportunity to share his scholarship in forums? To mitigate the reproduction of exclusionary practices in the quest to generate critical humanitarian research, it is imperative to reflect on and redesign how research is conceptualised, who participates in discussions and how knowledge is disseminated.

Evidently, humanitarian and refugee-related research is insufficient in connecting with and enabling people in different displacement situations to contribute to discussions around challenging hegemonic norms. However, this is possible and simple to do with today’s technology. Even so, beyond ensuring connectivity, it also calls for examining how people are renumerated for participation and recognising that even being able to afford data to gain access to virtual events is a luxury many people cannot afford.

For humanitarian research to be critical, the process must be as important as the product. Critical research must embrace just methods (Fine, 2018). Just methods represent a transformative research approach that prioritises social justice and equity. Many scholars have long advocated for research practices that go beyond mere data collection and analysis, emphasising the importance of ethical engagement with participants and communities (Rodney, 2019/1969; Weis and Fine, 2012). When we think about just methods in humanitarian studies, we call for research methods rooted in principles of inclusivity, reflexivity and empowerment, seeking to amplify the voices of marginalised individuals and challenge existing power structures. Fine’s work in particular underscores the ethical imperative of conducting research that respects the dignity and agency of participants while acknowledging the broader social, political and historical contexts that shape their lived experiences (Weis and Fine, 2012). By centring the principles of justice and equity, just methods offer a framework for researchers to critically examine systems of oppression and work towards positive social change.

This poignant reflection underscores the profound impact of being othered. To be forcibly displaced is to have a new identity imposed upon you, one of ‘racial ambiguity’ that no longer sees your past. This highlights the urgent need for critical scholarship to engage with these complex dynamics. We see the need for critical scholarship to acknowledge the circuits of racial discrimination and the implications of complex systems of racialisation that permeate humanitarian aid and academia. In this regard, we draw on and direct our readers to the work of Marchais et al. (2020) to unpack the value chains within humanitarian research that contribute to the entrenchment of North/South binaries, inequities in remuneration and the separation between the researched and the researcher. The field of critical humanitarian studies also must pay attention to the situated and interconnected colonial entanglements and continuations, which means heeding multi-sited studies incorporating historical context (Oddy, 2023).

Moving towards Constructive Complicity

Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Laura Connelly advocate for what they conceptualise as ‘constructive complicity’, suggesting that critical, anti-racist praxes are integral for scholars wanting to work in service to communities while recognising a degree of complicity within academia, which is also inherently exclusionary (Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly, 2021: 20). Their work builds upon the late Walter Rodney, who as early as 1969 called for academics to go beyond merely challenging the racist and colonial foundations of bourgeois scholarship on an epistemological level through grounding intellectual inquiry in struggles and pedagogical frameworks that rebuke Eurocentrism (Rodney, 2019/1969). We take heed of Walter Rodney’s call for Black intellectuals to ‘ground’, to sit, listen and learn with disenfranchised groups, to ‘move [our] own discipline’ (Rodney, 2019: 67, 66) and generate knowledge that serves beyond personal gain.

Everyone – whether Jess, a person who has never experienced forced displacement or Marwan, an intellectual who has lived in multiple camps – must ‘ground’ and reflect on our unique privileges and positionalities to leverage and make those tiny pushes for change where possible. This means recognising and making space for people who are not always seen. For Marwan, this translates as having challenging conversations, highlighting the invisibility of teachers living with disabilities, and being a male advocate for girls’ education rights in his community. For Jess, this means fostering environments for mutual learning, embedding critical participatory inquiry into her praxis and, like Pailey (2020), turning the gaze of humanitarian research towards the practitioners and institutions that wield so much power but are rarely held accountable for the social reproduction of inequities through their practices.

For us, we see the opportunity for institutions and those of us within academia to leverage our positions to bridge divides. We know that in most spaces of containment or encampment, whether someone is grappling with a hostile environment in the UK or living in a refugee camp like Yida in South Sudan, people are limited in terms of access to a specific level of formal studies. Therefore, universities have a unique global role in challenging hostile bordering practices by connecting people in camps to further studies, job training, job opportunities and online degrees. As Marwan reflects, to be in a displaced setting you may only be following the pattern of the sun and not what is going on outside, from which you are excluded. Likewise, for those residing outside of spaces of encampment, there is much to be learnt from people living in spaces which are often invisible on world maps, yet which have rich alternative and community-led education initiatives that position displaced individuals as aid providers and political actors.

Fortunately, we have seen and been involved in numerous projects that connect people living in spaces of encampment to higher education institutions. Marwan has taken numerous courses while living in Kakuma, Yida and Ajuong Thok refugee camps and Bidibidi refugee settlement. Now working as a secondary teacher alongside pursuing a master’s in research and public policy management at the University of Juba, Marwan sees his lived experience in camps as critical to informing refugee education policy, and he is writing his dissertation on teachers’ experiences in refugee camps. Jess has worked on access to higher education programmes in the UK (Oddy et al., 2022). More recently, Jess founded a social enterprise, Design for Social Impact, which trains and connects structurally disadvantaged groups to paid research and programme design work (Design for Social Impact, 2023). We do this work as part of our commitments to critical humanitarian and refugee research, grounding our research in acts of solidarity and reciprocity to move beyond tokenistic gestures towards emancipatory scholarship for all.