Humanitarian Aid - mixed marriage
The humanitarian transition, in the light of conjugal mixes between development workers and local brokers, enables us to identify and analyze the political, social and symbolic stakes of these transcultural intimacies. How do these conjugal sociabilities affect the local social and humanitarian fabric, and influence the areas of intervention of international aid?
This research aims to question humanitarian aid through the prism of intimate relationships, based on empirical research carried out in Niamey in 2016 and 2017. More specifically, it intends to study conjugal mixes between aid professionals and local actors in Niger, by opening an urban ethnography project in Niamey. From a methodological point of view, the chosen ethnographic approach combines participant observation with biographical and socio-anthropological interviews. The originality of our survey lies in the study of mixed unions born in a humanitarian context, less studied than those born in a colonial or tourist context.
With this framework in mind, our project sought to explore the changes brought about by conjugal sociabilities in the lives of humanitarian aid workers and local actors. We explored the ways in which these conjugal sociabilities can contribute to “humanitarian transfer”, a key notion and current challenge in the humanitarian field, which consists in transmitting skills to locals so that they can take over in the field, especially when major security issues are at stake.
We hypothesize that intimate relationships are not merely accidental. On the contrary, they play a part in the implementation and very heart of development projects, and can influence the construction of new practices and discourses in the aid world, particularly in precarious security situations. This is why we have sought to understand the contributions of the mixed union in terms of acquiring skills (in-depth knowledge of social codes, native language) that are profitable on a professional level.
https://youtu.be/Gy2ZXmS2wWA?t=16m38s