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- Convenors:
-
Sabine Hess
(Institute for Cultural AnthropologyEuropean Ethnology)
Hatice Pinar Senoguz Ovayolu (University of Göttingen)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Stream:
- Migration
- Location:
- KWZ 0.609
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel invites papers that bring forward ethnographic accounts of the vast variety of dwelling practices by refugees and of the attempts of state and private actors to build up spaces of containment all over Europe and the Middle East.
Long Abstract:
The mass movements of refugees in recent years have brought back the question of flight and migration with great urgency on the public and academic agenda. Following Michel Agiers approach to study these (new) places of encampment and shelter not only as places of humanitarian government but also as sites of agency and protest, the panel invites papers that bring forward ethnographic accounts of the vast variety of dwelling practices by refugees and the attempts of state and private actors to build up spaces of containment. "Idomeini", self-constructed tent camp at the border between Greece and Macedonia got an iconographic metaphor for the precariousness and creativity at the same time of the refugees on the move along the (new) routes through Europe. Various types of more or less temporary shelter-constructions in urban as well rural settings can be observed alongside the proliferation of camps and more or less prison like facilities by state and private actors bringing back Giorgio Agamben's thesis of "naked live" in spreading "spaces of exceptions".
But, as many critics showed this thesis is too one-dimensional as it misses to take into consideration in what ways the refugees and local communities, creatively appropriate the urban/rural landscapes to make a living. We especially encourage papers that pay attention to this aspect and shed light on the creative, subversive practices by the refugee and locals. We also welcome work that look at the role of the expanding field of humanitarian actors in both types of places.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper explores politics in Calais refugee camp, thus questionning how forms of dwelling shape practices of power and agency. State institutions, NGO, independant volunteers and refugee community leaders are involved in the governance of a city not recognised as such.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores politics in Calais refugee camp, thus questionning how forms of dwelling shape practices of power and agency.
Located in northern France, Calais camp became in 2015-2016 the largest slum in Europe with up to 10 000 people living in it. Its inhabitants are initially migrants attempting to cross the border and enter England but are prevented to do so by controls on the French side. With the increasing number of refugees entering Europe and the strenghening of these controls in 2015, the population of informal camp sites in Calais increased and the authorities decided to gather migrants on one site located outside of the city. Equipments were minimal and very soon a shanty town emerged. Local and international volunteers intervened massively from Fall 2015 to improve squalid living conditions in the camp. French authorities were also compelled to do so, but provided only undersized equipments, such as a camp for women and children (capacity : 400) and a container camp (capacity : 1500). In the meantime, volunteers and NGOs set up alternative public services, and designed forms of participation of refugees in the daily governance of the camp. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (Feb-Oct. 2016) this paper aims at showing how the diverse forms of dwelling in Calais and their fundamental precariousness shape peculiar forms of political participation, legitimacy and recognition, constraints and opportunities. These games of power in a city that is not recognised as such exemplify the condition of refugees.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork among Syrian refugees in Piraeus, Greece the paper reflects on home-making in contemporary conditions of fleeing and refugeeness and argues that everyday camp sociality is a form of resistance which subverts hegemonic idioms of care and humanitarian governmentality.
Paper long abstract:
The present paper wishes to discuss the meaning of home in conditions of fleeing and refugeeness. Perceptions of home as the stable physical centre of someone's universe have already been theoretically and empirically challenged. Fieldwork among refugees in Piraeus in 2016 led us to ethnographically reflect on processes of home-making in transitory conditions. Our analytical attempt to acknowledge the importance of home-making in transition employs the concept of dwelling, which allows us to focus on the use of material culture, everyday rituals and cultural etiquette as important aspects of camp sociality. We record and discuss how the makeshift and official refugee camps in Greece were not only spaces and states of exception, but also sites for the recreation of 'home' as dwelling. Refugee dwellings in the camps were not comfortable or pleasant but they marked the dynamic manner in which people managed to organise life in transition and to resist and subvert the hegemonic idioms of care and humanitarian management. Refugee life projects were consistently propelled by the politics of hope and produced in conditions of way-finding. Our paper will look at the importance of understanding the intricate connections between home-making, resistance, subversion and sociality and it will contribute to debates around shelter, humanitarian governmentality and forms of sociality in so-called 'emergency' contexts
Paper short abstract:
This presentation deals with a camp form that usually falls out of common notions of refugee camps which are Italian authorised Roma camps, ethnically defined spaces that indeed served as ‘reception’ facilities. I analyse how women negotiate this space, as being both a space of bare life and agency.
Paper long abstract:
Agamben's philosophical elaboration of the camp has been widely discussed within migration studies and camp literature, even though he refers to the camp as paradigmatic example for modern sovereignty and is not being concerned with an empirical study of camps. Yet, Agamben's notions of the camp as materialization of the state of exception and the camp dweller as reduced to bare life are still widely discussed and have also lead to widespread criticism as these conceptualizations would not account for the variety of camps and the camp dwellers' agency.
In my presentation that draws on my research in camps for Romani people in Italy I would like to suggest to go beyond this dichotomous approach, of bare life on the one side and agency on the other, as both dimensions can co-exist. As I will show the concept of bare life is useful to conceive of the structural violence that is inherent in camps for Romani people - the 'nomad camp' established as a space for the protection of 'Roma culture' is a space of marginalisation and disenfranchisement with camp dwellers life expectancy lower than the average. At the same time, people live there: people that act and re-act, people that appropriate the space of the camp and make it a space of sociality. Drawing on interviews I conducted with alone living women in different authorised 'nomad camps' in Rome, I want to show how everyday life between structural violence and constraints and molecular movements of escape are being negotiated.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores mechanisms of self-governance in three protracted refugee camps in the West Bank. It shows how the institution building and self-organization efforts have transformed the camps into strong local communities and elevated their position in the Palestinian politics.
Paper long abstract:
Following the work of Giorgio Agamben, refugee camps have often been conceptualized as spatial tools of biopolitical control placed outside the normal judicial order, designed to guard off the displaced from host populations and silence any forms of political expression. Such model is challenged by the reality of protracted camps that become sites of long-term residency, where new forms of social and urban order emerge and various networks develop between refugees and the neighboring communities. While most studies on protracted encampment focus on identity politics and memory practices, this paper explores self-governance projects in long-term camps. Based on the case of three West Bank refugee camps established in late 1940s, I investigate mechanisms of institution building and self-organization that transformed these places from provisional sites of shelter into strong local communities of high political mobilization. In particular, I focus on the example of youth centers that have over past six decades emerged as important platforms of self-governance and political participation in the studied camps, surpassing their official profile as sport, cultural and social institutions for local youth. Through the analyzes of politics in and around the youth centers, the paper shows how the seemingly marginal and unregulated status of West Bank camps have rendered them spaces of political mobilization against the status quo.