Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp

Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp
Author: Melissa Gatter
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2023-03-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1617970980

The politics and governance of Jordan’s Azraq camp for Syrian refugees Azraq refugee camp, built in 2014 and host to forty thousand refugees, is one of two official humanitarian refugee camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp investigates the relationship between time and power in Azraq, asking how a politics of time shapes, limits, or enables everyday life for the displaced and for aid workers. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, carried out during 2017–2018, the book challenges the perceptions of Azraq as the ‘ideal’ refugee camp. Melissa Gatter argues that the camp operates as a ‘nine-to-five emergency’ where mundane bureaucratic procedures serve to sustain a power system in which refugees are socialized to endure a cynical wait—both for everyday services and for their return—without expectations for a better outcome. Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp also explores how refugees navigate this system, both in the day-to-day and over years, by evaluating various layers of waiting as they affect refugee perceptions of time in the camp—not only in the present, but the past, near future, and far future. Far from an ‘ideal’ camp, Azraq and its politics of time constitute a cruel reality in which a power system meant to aid refugees is one that suppresses, foreclosing futures that it is supposed to preserve.

Fragments of Home

Fragments of Home
Author: Tom Scott-Smith
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2024-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1503640299

Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of glinting metal. Others have hosted them in renovated office blocks and disused warehouses. They often end up in prefabricated shelters flown in from abroad. This book focuses on seven examples of emergency shelter, from Germany to Jordan, which emerged after the great "summer of migration" in 2015. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research into these shelters, the book reflects on their political implications and opens up much bigger questions about humanitarian action. By exploring how aid agencies and architects approached this basic human need, Tom Scott-Smith demonstrates how shelter has many elements that are hard to reconcile or combine; shelter is always partial and incomplete, producing mere fragments of home. Ultimately, he argues that current approaches to emergency shelter have led to destructive forms of paternalism and concludes that the principle of autonomy can offer a more fruitful approach to sensitive and inclusive housing.

Governing Migration Through Paperwork

Governing Migration Through Paperwork
Author: Sophie Andreetta
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805396226

To better understand migration governance and the concrete, daily practices of civil servants tasked with enforcing state laws and policies, it is important to focus on documents, which are core artefacts of bureaucratic work. These can include certificates, letters, reports, case files, decisions, internal guidelines and judgements in both digital and paper form. Based on ethnographic studies in various geographical and bureaucratic contexts, this collection shows how civil servants produce statehood, restrict migrants’ movements and engage with migrants’ strategies to make themselves legible. It contributes to the study of the state as documentary practice and highlights the role of paperwork as a powerful practice of migration control.

Urban Displacement

Urban Displacement
Author: Are John Knudsen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2024-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805393022

Syria’s massive displacement (from 2012 onwards) is one of the largest, most complex and intractable humanitarian emergencies of today. More than 5.7 million Syrian refugees live mainly in cities and urban areas throughout the Middle East. Urban Displacement examines multiple dimensions of this crisis from political and socioeconomic predicaments to questions of social belonging, the complexity of the international, regional and national responses and how they affect urban spaces. The volume brings together experts in the field of forced migration studies and displacement in the Middle East and presents a range of in-depth ethnographic data, cross-sectional surveys and policy analyses.

Palestinian Music in Exile

Palestinian Music in Exile
Author: Louis Brehony
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1649033052

A historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate locations Palestinian Music in Exile is a historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate and undocumented locations. The stories taking center stage show creatively divergent and revolutionary performance springing from conditions of colonialism, repression, and underdevelopment. What role does music play in the social spaces of Palestinian exile? How are the routes and roadblocks to musical success impacted by regional and international power structures? And how are questions of style, genre, or national tradition navigated by Palestinian musicians? Based on seven years of research in Europe and the Middle East, this timely and inspiring collection of musical ethnographies is the first oral history of contemporary Palestinian musicianship to appear in book form, and the only study to encompass such a broad range of experiences of the ghurba, or place of exile.

Design to Live

Design to Live
Author: Azra Aksamija
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262542870

The power of design to create a life worth living even in a refugee camp: designs, inventions, and artworks from the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. This book shows how, even in the most difficult conditions--forced displacement, trauma, and struggle--design can help create a life worth living. Design to Live documents designs, inventions, and artworks created by Syrian refugees living in the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. Through these ingenious and creative innovations--including the vertical garden, an arrangement necessitated by regulations that forbid planting in the ground; a front hall, fashioned to protect privacy; a baby swing made from recycled desks; and a chess set carved from a broomstick--refugees defy the material scarcity, unforgiving desert climate, and cultural isolation of the camp. Written in close collaboration with the residents of the camp, with text in both English and Arabic, Design to Live, reflects two perspectives on the camp: people living and working in Azraq and designers reflecting on humanitarian architecture within the broader field of socially engaged art and design. Architectural drawings, illustrations, photographs, narratives, and stories offer vivid testimony to the imaginative and artful ways that residents alter and reconstruct the standardized humanitarian design of the camp--and provide models that can be replicated elsewhere. The book is the product of a three-year project undertaken by MIT Future Heritage Lab, researchers and students with Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp, CARE, Jordan, and the German-Jordanian University. Copublication with Future Heritage Lab, MIT

Displacement, Environments, and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean

Displacement, Environments, and Photo-Politics in the Mediterranean
Author: Parvati Nair
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2024-10-31
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 100018255X

Focusing on the Mediterranean region from 2015 onwards, this volume explores photography’s engagement with displacement, a process that denotes the environmental and social breakdown of places and the forced mobility of people. The ongoing proliferation of photography of the displaced plays a crucial role in shaping opinions, by sensitising the public to the despair of displacement and hardening them to the trope through repeated exposure. Through a range of images by both established and amateur photographers, as well as ethnographic notes that draw from interviews with actors who are either displaced or working with the displaced, Parvati Nair questions the extent to which photography opens a space of possibility for the displaced in the face of globally dominant ideological drives that lead to the Anthropocene. Chapters focus on key aspects of this mass phenomenon, such as the question of crises no longer as exception but as historical process, the lived experiences of protracted relegation to borders and exposure to possible death, the prevalence of domicide and the spread of encampments, and the question of hope for the future. The book will be of interest to scholars in photography theory, migration and refugee studies, art history, Mediterranean studies, and political science.

The Fallout of War

The Fallout of War
Author: The World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-10-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464816158

The people of the Mashreq have seen more than their share of deaths, economic losses, and instability over the past decade. As the decade-long conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic created new challenges and worsened the existing ones, economic activity declined, labor markets deteriorated, and poverty increased. These trends would overwhelm even the most advanced economies in the world. The Fallout of War: The Regional Consequences of the Conflict in Syria identifies the impact of the Syrian conflict on economic and social outcomes in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. It combines a large number of data sources, statistical approaches, and a suite of economic models to isolate the specific impact of the Syrian conflict from that of global and regional factors, and it explicitly analyzes the mechanisms through which such an impact is manifested. The analysis suggests that a persistent short-termism in policy making has so far propagated the shock emanating from the Syrian conflict, which led to costly and ineffective service provision, lost economic opportunities, and underfunded programs. The report advocates for a fundamental shift from the short-term mitigation policies to a medium-term regional strategy to address pertinent structural problems. Moreover, as the countries in the Mashreq look toward recovery, a policy approach that takes into account the region’s interconnectedness and seeks to build on it provides better prospects for the people. Such a regional approach that addresses cross-boundary issues—including migration, trade, and infrastructure—will require local, regional, and international commitments.

The Mobility of Displaced Syrians

The Mobility of Displaced Syrians
Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2020-01-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464814023

The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, continues to take its toll on the Syrian people. More than half of the population of Syria remains displaced; 5.6 million persons are registered as refugees outside of the country and another 6.2 million are displaced within Syria's borders. The internally displaced persons include 2 million school-age children; of these, less than half attend school. Another 739,000 Syrian children are out of school in the five neighborhood countries that host Syria's refugees. The loss of human capital is staggering, and it will create permanent hardships for generations of Syrians going forward. Despite the tragic prospects for renewed fighting in certain parts of the country, an overall reduction in armed conflict is possible going forward. However, international experience shows that the absence of fighting is rarely a singular trigger for the return of displaced people. Numerous other factors—including improved security and socioeconomic conditions in origin states, access to property and assets, the availability of key services, and restitution in home areas—play important roles in shaping the scale and composition of the returns. Overall, refugees have their own calculus of return that considers all of these factors and assesses available options. The Mobility of Displaced Syrians: An Economic and Social Analysis sheds light on the 'mobility calculus' of Syrian refugees. While dismissing any policies that imply wrongful practices involving forced repatriation, the study analyzes factors that may be considered by refugees in their own decisions to relocate. It provides a conceptual framework, supported by data and analysis, to facilitate an impartial conversation about refugees and their mobility choices. It also explores the diversified policy toolkit that the international community has available—and the most effective ways in which the toolkit can be adapted—to maximize the well-being of refugees, host countries, and the people in Syria.