Abstract Kenya's refugee camps have evoked spectacular imaginaries of terrorism and humanitarian crisis. Drawing on everyday discourses and shared knowledges among camp administrators, this article reveals that these geopolitical narratives are underwritten locally by more generalized concerns about the imagined ‘otherness’ and moral degeneracy of the displaced. Refugees are thus portrayed as criminals and crooks, sexually deviant and idle, as well as ‘mad’ and uncivilized. Together, these tropes constitute a cultural text of encampment that reproduces postcolonial imaginings of difference and engrains the notion that ‘refugeeness’ equates to a state of ‘moral disorder’. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenya's Turkana county. It argues that the discursive production of refugees as immoral subjects not only has practical effects for the actions of government officials and aid workers but rekindles a binary colonial mapping of the world into ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ spaces. These social imaginaries and banal discourses illustrate that the camp has not just a political but also an imaginative geography. Kakuma camp is hereby doubly excluded: from the modernity that humanitarianism ostensibly embodies and from the imagined moral community of Kenya.

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“疯子、好色之徒和小偷”：肯尼亚难民营的道德障碍和文化文本

摘要 肯尼亚的难民营唤起了人们对恐怖主义和人道主义危机的壮观想象。本文利用营地管理人员之间的日常话语和共享知识，揭示了这些地缘政治叙事是由对流离失所者想象中的“他者”和道德堕落的更普遍关注所支持的。因此，难民被描绘成罪犯和骗子，性变态和无所事事，以及“疯狂”和不文明。这些比喻共同构成了一个营地文化文本，它再现了后殖民时代对差异的想象，并根植了“难民”等同于“道德混乱”状态的观念。这篇文章基于在肯尼亚西北部图尔卡纳县的卡库马难民营进行的民族志实地考察。它认为，将难民作为不道德主体的话语生产不仅对政府官员和援助人员的行为具有实际影响，而且重新点燃了将世界划分为“文明”和“未文明”空间的二元殖民映射。这些社会想象和平庸的话语说明，营地不仅有政治而且还有想象的地理。卡库马阵营在此被双重排除在外：与人道主义表面上体现的现代性以及肯尼亚想象中的道德社区无关。这些社会想象和平庸的话语说明，营地不仅有政治而且还有想象的地理。卡库马阵营在此被双重排除在外：与人道主义表面上体现的现代性以及肯尼亚想象中的道德社区无关。这些社会想象和平庸的话语说明，营地不仅有政治而且还有想象的地理。卡库马阵营在此被双重排除在外：与人道主义表面上体现的现代性以及肯尼亚想象中的道德社区无关。