The Protracted Refugee Camp and the Consolidation of a ‘Humanitarian Urbanism’

Abstract

In long-term and large-scale refugee camps in Kenya, Jordan, Thailand and other places, a particular form of humanitarian urbanism has evolved as the product of socio-spatial negotiation processes between the humanitarian regime and refugees. This makes for an intriguing ambiguity: on the one hand, camps exist under an increasingly permanent humanitarian bio-political governance, and on the other hand, inhabitants organise themselves in such ways that they create room for manoeuvre to build their lives and livelihoods inside them. In the past few years, academics have increasingly associated the development of long term refugee camps with urbanization (Oka 2011, Turner 2011, Herz 2012, Agier 2014, Dalal 2015, Jansen 2015, Picker and Pasquetti 2015). This perspective brought forward how in camps, although envisaged as temporary humanitarian constructions, a particular sociospatial organization materialized that bears resemblance to forms of urban life (Montclos and Kagwanja 2000, Agier 2002), as a response to approaches to the camp as anomalies, exceptions and violations (Bauman 2004, Verdirame and Pobjoy 2013).