From ‘Migrants’ to ‘Refugees’: Identity, AId, and Decolonization in Ngara District, Tanzania

This article argues that international aid to Rwandan refugees in Ngara district during decolonization unfolded as part of a broader project of nation-state formation and regulation – one that deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging. While there is an extensive scholarship on decolonization and nationalism, we know less about the history of the nation-state as a refugee-generating project, and the role of international aid agencies therein. The history of Rwandan refugees in Ngara district, Tanzania, reveals the constitutive relationship between nation-building and refugee experiences, illustrating that during decolonization local political imaginations congealed around internationally-reified categorizations of the ‘refugee’ and the ‘citizen’.