Humanizing Data

Abstract

Humanizing Data immerses readers in the day-to-day life of Kakuma, one of the largest refugee camps in Africa. While the media and international organizations often portray refugees in sensationalist terms––as victims, heroes, or villains––we take a different approach, which we call Representative Storytelling. Instead of cherry-picking the most extreme stories of triumph and disaster, whether of the most destitute or the thriving refugee entrepreneur, we adopt a methodology that enables readers to situate individual stories in relation to the wider population. How unique or representative are they? Based on long-term research within the camp, including large-scale quantitative data collection, we work with nine households, located at different points on the camp’s income distribution, from the tenth to the ninetieth percentile, to tell their own stories in their own words. The result is nine in-depth portraits of life in Kakuma, which together represent the full spectrum of living standards within the camp. As our protagonists highlight particular themes—violence, education, health, employment—we draw upon our wider research to explain how representative their experiences are of the wider population. The book offers an immersive understanding of life in Kakuma and an invitation to reflect on how human stories and statistics can be combined to deepen public understanding of the lives of distant strangers.