Japan Office

Japanese Book Launch “Living Inside a Refugee Camp: Ethnographic Fieldwork in Buduburam Camp in Ghana”

By: Naohiko Omata
Senior Research Officer, Refugee Studies Centre, Department of International Development, University of Oxford

Forced displacement represents one of the most significant global challenges today, garnering international attention due to both the daunting number of refugees and the widespread dissemination of tragic images in the media. However, we rarely have insight into the day-to-day lives of refugees living in camps. Even though refugee camps are established as an ‘exceptional’ space for emergency refuge, over the prolonged period, these camps gradually take on the form of villages or towns. In these artificial spaces, those who have fled their homeland build new communities and seek the means of their survival under numerous constraints.

The African continent hosts more than 100 refugee camps. This book is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork living inside Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, which was home to more than 20,000 Liberian refugees for nearly twenty years. The aim of my research was to investigate the economic lives of people living in the camp. However, this experience also exposed me to the political, social, religious and familial aspects of refugees’ day-to-day lives. While refugees are typically represented as ‘faceless’ victims in the global media, the book focuses on personal accounts of everyday life as a refugee, shedding fresh light on the ‘normality’ inside the camp.

The book will be published on 20 June 2019, World Refugee Day, and copies will be available for purchase on the day.  The special price of the book on the day is JPY1600 (cash only).  The book is also available online (JPY1728).

Thursday 20 June 2019
19:00 – 20:00
Seminar
This presentation is free of charge and will be delivered in Japanese.
UF Hall, Sanbancho UF Building 1F, 6-3 Sanbancho, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo
Map to lecture venue

20:00 – 21:30
Reception   JPY3,500 (payable on the door)
Tony Roma’s, La Mer 1F, 6-4 Sanbancho, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo
Map to the reception venue

Make your booking here