An Improvised Dispositif: Invisible Urban Planning in the Refugee Camp

Abstract

How does a refugee camp urbanize? Up to now, camps have been considered as either urban assemblages made by dwellers’ improvised tactics or spaces governed by disjointed urban planning policies. I demonstrate that there is another side to the urbanism of the refugee camp. A form of coherent institutional urban planning exists as well. It takes the shape of an improvised dispositif (apparatus). One of its main effects is to render the very process of urban planning invisible. I investigate this type of urbanism on the basis of fieldwork conducted in the Al‐Hussein Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. I argue that this improvised dispositif of urban planning—of which state and non‐state institutions are part—is the result of a balancing act that ensures the temporary character of the camp, while allowing the implementation of a form of urban development that leads toward a material homogenization between the camp and the surrounding urban space. It does this by rendering its own processes invisible and being officially referred to as ‘improvement’. By emphasizing the key features of heterogeneity, invention and provisionality, I explain that the notion of a dispositif, coined by Foucault (1980), allows us to examine how institutions improvise away from more conventional urban planning. My analysis also complements Jeffrey's examination (2013) of institutional improvisation in the production of space, by showing that improvisation can be a form of strategic elaboration.

Arrival or Return? Temporality and Materiality of Transit Sites in Overlapping Displacement Context in Border Cities of the Lake Chad Basin Region

“…Both incentivization and encampment policies are targeted towards a common goal to make the displaced persons invisible in border cities such that they become indistinguishable from other marginalized groups whose socioeconomic characteristics overlap at the margin of the city. This resonates Oesch's (2020) argument that the state often improvises incoherent urban planning policies to achieve 'a material homogenization between the camp and surrounding urban space. '…”

Shape grammars and self-built refugee communities: The transformation from tent shelter to customized structure in Irbid Camp

“…There is insufficient information available regarding the planning standards for refugee camps in the 1950s. Some researchers, like Oesch, 13 have described the types of dwellings and plot sizes that contributed to the establishment of Al-Hussein Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, shedding light on the camp's informal, invisible urban planning. Similarly, Aburamadan 14 presents a case study of Al-Zaatari camp in Jordan, arguing that refugee camps can evolve into enduring organizations of everyday life to challenge the perception of camps as temporary solutions.…”

Ethically (un)bounding camp research: Life histories within and beyond camp boundaries

“…Both uses refer to imperfect, incomplete processes, rather than natural, absolute demarcations (Jones, 2009; Paasi, 1998). For example, camp scholars highlight their permeability, the changing nature of camps' locational boundaries over time (Abourahme, 2015; Jansen, 2016; Martin, 2015, Oesch, 2020), and the deficiencies of entwined legal and humanitarian categories bound up with the state‐centric management of displacement (Bakewell, 2008; Fresia, 2007; Hyndman & Giles, 2017; Ikanda, 2018). Nevertheless, in the context of many camps these porous “lines” still have significant performative power (Turner, 2016).…”