‘The world we share’: everyday relations and the political consequences of refugee-refugee hosting in Amman, Jordan

Abstract

Male, Sudanese experiences of displacement in Amman, Jordan are characterised by the exclusions of state and international humanitarian response bureaucracies, and compounded by pervasive racial discrimination and violence. As part of their efforts to maintain their presence in the city, the men have created household-level hosting relationships, based on a situated ethics of care developed through shared understandings and experiences of displacement and a recognition of their interdependence. Through these personal relations, the men inhabit the city and offer one another some safety from the uncertain and hostile context of their displacement in Jordan. Hosting arrangements are not merely convenient or functionally necessary in the difficult circumstances of displacement, but produce new ways of being together and serve as sites for the enactment of social rights and claims to presence. As such, refugee-refugee hosting practices hold the potential for lived citizenship, enacted through everyday and ordinary acts of care.