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The Refugee Camp as Site of Multiple Encounters and Realizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2021

Ayham Dalal
Ayham Dalal*
Affiliation:
Technische Universität Berlin
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Abstract

Literature in Human Geography has given much attention to “encounters” and their impact on negotiating difference in everyday life. These studies, however, have focused solely on cities, while “other” spaces like refugee camps have received little attention to date. In this paper, I highlight the significance of “encounters” in camps by exposing three main types: the “refugee-refugee,” the “refugee-humanitarian,” and the “refugee-more-than-human” encounters. Using empirical examples from Zaatari camp in Jordan, I show that the “refugee-refugee” encounters cannot be fully understood without taking refugees’ culture, background, and urban identities into consideration. I also explain how the “refugee-humanitarian” encounters result in new types of behaviors and might harden the boundaries between both groups. And lastly, I demonstrate how the “refugee-more-than-human” encounters can inform us about refugees’ unique experiences with shelters, space, and materiality. Building on the examples given for each type, this article suggests that “encounters” have the ability to generate knowledge and learnings, which contributes to shaping the space of the camp by either enforcing boundaries between different groups and/or by allowing new and hybrid spatialities to emerge. This not only confirms that “encounters” are an important entry point in understanding the socio-spatial and material composition of refugee camps, but also that further studies in this regard are direly needed. It also suggests that architects and planners need to allow for the “new” to emerge as a result of these encounters and, therefore, to enable flexibility and adaptability within camps’ design and planning.

Keywords

EncountersRefugeesCampsCultureSpaceMateriality
Type
Special Focus: Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es in the Middle East and North Africa
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 215 - 233
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc.

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Footnotes

1

Ayham Dalal is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, New York), and a Research Assistant at the Collaborative Research Center “Re-Figurations of Space” (SFB1265) at the Technische Universität Berlin where he is currently based. His research interests include architecture, migration, mobility and displacement, with publications in various journals such as Housing Studies, Urban Planning, Town Planning Review, and ARCH+. His first book From Shelters to Dwellings: Dismantling and Reassembling the Planned Refugee Camp is to be published by Transcript Verlag in 2021. Ayham is also a research associate at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Amman and Beirut.

References

2 Wilson, Helen F., “On Geography and Encounter: Bodies, Borders, and Difference,” Progress in Human Geography 41.4 (2017): 451–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid., 451.

4 Ibid., 452.

5 Ibid., 454, emphasis in the original.

6 Ibid., 453, emphasis in the original.

7 See for instance: Malkki, Liisa, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Hyndman, Jennifer, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

9 Stavinoha, Ludĕk and Ramakrishnan, Kavita, “Beyond Humanitarian Logics: Volunteer-Refugee Encounters in Chios and Paris,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 11, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Ibid., 182, emphasis in original.

11 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, “Refugees hosting refugees,” Forced Migration Review 53 (2016): 26Google Scholar.

12 See also: Ramadan, Adam & Fregonese, Sara, “Hybrid Sovereignty and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107.4 (2017): 949–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Peteet, Julie, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile.

15 Hyndman, Jennifer, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

16 Swanton, Dan, “Encountering Keighley: More-than-Human Geographies of Difference in a Former Mill Town,” in Encountering the City, eds. Darling, Jonathan and Wilson, Helen F. (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016), 111–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Wilson, “On Geography and Encounter,” 451–71.

18 Al-Sabouni, Marwa, The Battle for Home: A Memoir of a Syrian Architect (London: Thames and Hudson, 2016)Google Scholar.

19 Further reflections on the topic were possible through my experience in other camps like Azraq in Jordan and Tempohomes in Berlin, which was possible through the research project “Architectures of Asylum” hosted at the Collaborative Research Centre “Re-Figurations of Space” (SFB1265) and funded by the German Research Society (DFG).

20 UNHCR and REACH, Zaatari Camp Population Count: A Summary of Findings, Report (Amman: UNHCR and REACH, 2015).

21 Malkki, Liisa H., “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization,” Cultural Anthropology 11.3 (1996): 377–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Wilson, “On Geography and Encounter,” 452.

23 The term Ibn, which translates into son in Arabic, is used to make reference to a territory. An addition to the one used in the quote here would be: Ibn al-Madīna (a city dweller) and Ibn al-Rīf (a villager).

24 It should be noted here that refugees cannot be employed by the NGOs but are offered “volunteering” positions that are often “rotational,” so that these positions can be filled by as many refugees as possible. Also, these positions are offered for one member per family.

25 Amal Khaleefa, “Les langues au cœur de l'exil : apprentissage, représentations, pratiques. L'exemple des Syriens dans le camp de Zaatari” (PhD diss., Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, 2020).

26 Agier, Michel, Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and the Humanitarian Government (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 149Google Scholar.

27 United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Za'atari Refugee Camp Safety and Security Report (Amman: UNHCR, 2013).

28 For more information, see: Ayham Dalal, “Camp Cities between Planning and Practice: Mapping the Urbanisation of Zaatari Camp” (Master's thesis, Stuttgart University and Ain Shams University, 2014), 121–33.

29 Swanton, “Encountering Keighley,” 114.

30 Ayham Dalal, “From Shelters to Dwellings: On the Construction of Dwellings in Zaatari Camp Jordan” (PhD diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2020).

31 Swanton, “Encountering Keighley,” 111–32.

32 Wilson, “On geography and encounter,” 462.

33 Ḥaḍar originates from the word Ḥaḍara, which means civilization. In old times, it was used to distinguish settled groups from nomadic tribes.

34 Agier, Michel, “Between War and the City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of the Refugee Camp,” Ethnography 3.3 (September 2002), 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Schewel, Kerilyn, “Understanding Immobility: Moving Beyond the Mobility Bias in Migration Studies,” International Migration Review 54.2 (2020): 328–355CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 See: Dalal, Ayham, “Why ‘Now’ is an Important Moment in History: Coronavirus and the Refigured Mobility of the World,” Town Planning Review 92.1 (2021): 97–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.