Out of Africa: Built-in security for outsiders on Lamu Island

Summary

Lamu island is an international travel destination and safe haven in the midst of a space of insecurity where violent extremism, land disputes, displacement, ethnic tensions, resource scarcity, ambitious development plans and international military presence destabilize the region. Desires for security have crucially shaped the island’s material identity reflected in a long history of insider-outsider relations and settler-colonialism. Designed to protect outsiders who newly settled on the island, Lamu’s architecture illustrates how security has helped produce cultural identities and belonging by turning outsiders into insiders. Contemporary Western development and security discourses continue to prioritize outsider’s security interests while simultaneously challenging notions of outsiderness and insiderness in Lamu. As a place of elsewhereness, Lamu transgresses the outsider-insider binary, and gives interesting insights into life-making and -unmaking through spatial reconfigurations. Furthermore, Lamu’s islandness furthers not only imaginaries of security but also complicates the production of identities in and belonging to Africa.…