Arbie Baguios

Arbie is a PhD in International Development candidate at the London School of Economics, where he is writing his dissertation on the political economy of markets in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Drawing from critical development and refugee studies, Arbie is investigating how market institutions (such as property rights and skills training) emerge in refugee camps; how these institutions shape production networks (specifically, the vegetable and AI production networks) inside the camp; and how refugees’ incorporation into these networks, in turn, shape refugees’ self-reliance. Outside the PhD, Arbie has extensive experience in the humanitarian sector, and is the Director of Aid Re-imagined, an initiative that advocates for a more just aid system focused on aid ethics/effectiveness, localisation and decolonisation of aid.

Research at ODID

While at ODID’s Refugee Studies Centre, I plan to write a chapter for my dissertation on self-reliance. Specifically, I will be critiquing the idea of self-reliance, including by bringing in concepts from critical development studies – specifically, dependency (i.e., wage dependence). I will argue that institutions governing value chains could either foster a positive dependence (e.g., inter-dependence) highlighting collective relations among refugees and between refugees and other actors; or a negative dependence (e.g., wage dependence) that makes refugees’ lives more precarious.