Spatialising the refugee camp

Abstract

While the repressive geographies of asylum and refuge in Europe have been the focus of academic attention in recent years, much less work in geography has focused on the refugee camp as a distinctive political space. This paper sets out an analytical strategy for refugee camp space, focusing on the particular case of Palestinian camps in Lebanon. It takes three analytical cuts into the space of the camp: a critical take on Agamben’s ‘space of exception’ that accounts for the complex, multiple and hybrid sovereignties of the camp; an analysis of the camp as an assemblage of people, institutions, organisations, the built environment and the relations between them that produce particular values and practices; and an analysis of the constrained temporality of the camp, its enduring liminality and the particular time‐space from which it draws meaning. This spatial analysis of the camp offers a way of grounding geopolitics, seeing its manifestations and negotiations in the everyday lives and practices of ordinary people. The camp is much more than an anonymous terrain of conflict or a tool of international agencies, and understanding its spatiality is essential for seeing the everyday politics and material practices of refugees.

The Shopping Center of Abnormal Normality: Ethnography of the Distribution Tent in the Refugee Camp in Slavonski Brod

“…The paper focuses on several premises about the eneral and specifi c characteristics of the Slavonski Brod transit camp, more specifi cally its distribution tent, which we will try to illustrate and explain. Followin in the footsteps of authors o erin a critical anthropolo ical refl ection of the role of refu ee camps in the political order, and of types of social, cultural and political life in them -such as Elizabeth Colson (2003), Michel A ier (2011), Adam Ramadan (2012), Simon Turner (2015) and others -we too will attempt to point at the specifi c characteristics of the Slavonski Brod camp, keepin in mind three re imes -the spatial, the temporal and the political.…”

“…Kao etno ra inje i volonterke doživjele smo tranzitni kamp u Slavonskom Brodu kao assemblage (Ramadan 2012) prostora, vremena, praksi i odnosa koji su se tamo odvijali i čiju su dinamiku određivale pravno nejasne procedure "trijažiranja" izbje lica/mi ranata. U središtu je analize distribucijski šator koji se, unatoč nadziranom boravku, pokazao kao jedino mjesto "slobode" u smislu raz ovorne interakcije te upravljanja vremenom i prostorom, kako za izbje lice tako i za volontere.…”

“…However, anthropolo ists caution that fairness is a subjective cate ory, dependent on personal moral concepts and the power asymmetry between recipients and ivers. As humanitarian aid is, in the lon -term, always insu cient to satisfy the needs of the people who are not self-su cient, the person decidin who deserves a meal, a medicine or shoes (the gift) has reat power of decision which is "hi hly seductive and brin s out the best or the worst in us" (Harrell-Bond as cited in Bonis 2016). least two re isters (Ramadan 2012) -the external, macrostructural one, which is political and juridical, mediated by the media and social networks, and the internal, microstructural one where we, alon side other actors, facilitated the e ciency of the camp, measured by the number of trains which came and left, i.e. the number of men, women and children who passed throu h this transit station in the shortest time possible.…”

Forced migration and the city

“…Geographers have explored spaces of off-shore migrant processing (Den Heijer, 2012;Hyndman and Mountz, 2008), and extra-territorial detention (Betts, 2004;Mountz, 2011;Mountz et al, 2012), as illustrative of how border practices are increasingly detached from the territorial framing of the nation-state and reterritorialized in exterior spaces (see Collyer and King, 2015). Similarly, asylum and refugee geographies have sought to understand the production and maintenance of refugee camps as technologies of regulatory provision (Agier, 2002;Bulley, 2014), which may support fragile forms of community and political activism (Ramadan, 2013;Rygiel, 2012).…”

Between Bare Life and Everyday Life: Spatializing Europe’s Migrant Camps

“…12 In contrast to the quasimilitary camp facilities, the spaces that are mostly analysed by these scholars are camps created or altered by their dwellers according to their available resources, the needs of their everyday life, and their political objectives. However, what seems to be a binary opposition between the spaces of "bare life" and "everyday life" is, in fact, a much more complicated reality in which the camps' spatial conformations undergo constant transformations within their respective, complex political landscapes.…”