Refugee camps are imbued in the public imagination with assumptions of anarchy, danger and refugee passivity. Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism challenges such assumptions, arguing that refugee camps should be recognized as spaces where social capital can not only survive, but thrive.

This book examines camp management and the administration of justice in refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border. Emphasising the work of refugees themselves in coping with and adapting to encampment, it considers themes of agency, sovereignty and legal pluralism in an analysis of local governance and the production of order beyond the state.

Governing Refugees will appeal to anyone with relevant interests in law, anthropology and criminology, as well as those working in the area of refugee studies.

Kirsten McConnachie is Joyce Pearce Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall and the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Her research continues to study self-reliance and self-governance strategies among refugees from Burma.

Chapter 1: Agency, Sovereignty and Legal Pluralism; Chapter 2: Our Karen people are not lucky': A history of the Karen in Burma; Chapter 3: The Camp Community; Chapter 4: The Karen in Burma: State, Law and the Production of Order; Chapter 5: Sovereigns and Denizens; Chapter 6: Legal Pluralism and Asymmetries of Power; Chapter 7: Enacting Interlegality: Human Rights and Local Justice; Chapter 8: Beyond Encampment