Jennifer Hyndman's Managing Displacement, 25 years on

March 2025 marked 25 years since the publication of Jennifer Hyndman's Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (2000), a landmark book which has shaped critical research on forced migration and humanitarian politics, and political geography more broadly. In Managing Displacement, Hyndman drew both on her professional experience in humanitarian settings in eastern Africa, and on ethnographic research in aid offices from Geneva to the Dadaab camp complex in Kenya, to scrutinize the taken-for-granted ways that states and aid organizations sought to manage displacement at a variety of scales. Her descriptions of refugee camps, analyses of the humanitarian regime, and reflections on positionality, ethics, and the practicalities of research in the aid landscapes of eastern Africa have resonated with scholars working in displacement contexts around the world.