Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship

Against the backdrop of the global refugee crisis, Unsettled Families investigates the parameters that Global North governments and international humanitarian organizations use to classify most displaced families—more than 99% globally—as ineligible for resettlement, and often as fraudulent. But "fraud" as a category is not as self-evident as it may first appear. Nor is "the family." Based on long-term fieldwork between Nairobi, Kenya and Columbus, Ohio, Sophia Balakian tells stories of Som...