The fraudulent family: US refugee admissions, moral economies of kinship, and DNA testing in Africa

Abstract

In 2012 the US government began requiring DNA testing in its Refugee Family Reunification Program, which was primarily used by refugees from African countries. The policy was established to allay concerns that refugees were committing “family-composition fraud,” or including people outside their families in their resettlement and reunification cases. In humanitarian contexts “fraud” has often been understood as resulting from scarcity, corruption, and mistrust, but it misnames practices embedded in distinct moral and social worlds. For Somali communities in Kenya, incorporating nieces, nephews, or unrelated orphans as sons and daughters is part of remaking social worlds in places of refuge. By examining how displaced people grapple with DNA testing, we can see that their practices, sometimes labeled “fraud,” emerge from moral economies of kinship. Moreover, the family emerges as a contested category, one that is essential to the work of the US and global refugee regimes.