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Urbanizing Refuge: Interrogating Spaces of Displacement

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  • Romola Sanyal

Abstract

Refugee spaces are emerging as quintessential geographies of the modern, yet their intimate and everyday spatialities remain under-explored. Rendered largely through geopolitical discourses, they are seen as biopolitical spaces where the sovereign can reduce the subject to bare life. In conceptualizing refugee spaces some scholars have argued that, although many camps grow and develop over time, they evolve their own unique form of urbanism that is still un-urban. This article challenges this idea of the camp as space of pure biopolitics and explores the politics of space in the refugee camp using urban debates. Using case studies from the Middle East and South Asia, it looks at how the refugee spaces developed and became informalized, and how people recovered their agency through ‘producing spaces’ both physically and politically. In doing so, it draws connections between refugee camps and other spaces of urban marginality, and suggests that refugee spaces can be seen as important sites for articulating new politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Romola Sanyal, 2014. "Urbanizing Refuge: Interrogating Spaces of Displacement," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 558-572, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:38:y:2014:i:2:p:558-572
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12020
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Oren Yiftachel, 2009. "Critical theory and 'gray space’: Mobilization of the colonized," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2-3), pages 246-263, June.
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    1. Ayham Dalal & Amer Darweesh & Philipp Misselwitz & Anna Steigemann, 2018. "Planning the Ideal Refugee Camp? A Critical Interrogation of Recent Planning Innovations in Jordan and Germany," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 64-78.
    2. Hannah Sender, 2022. "Young people’s perspectives of inequitable urban change in Lebanese towns affected by mass displacement," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(2), pages 293-306, April.
    3. Kazi Nazrul Fattah & Peter Walters, 2020. "“A Good Place for the Poor!” Counternarratives to Territorial Stigmatisation from Two Informal Settlements in Dhaka," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 55-65.
    4. Jutta Bakonyi, 2021. "The Political Economy of Displacement: Rent Seeking, Dispossessions and Precarious Mobility in Somali Cities," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(S2), pages 10-22, April.
    5. Amin Y Kamete, 2020. "Neither friend nor enemy: Planning, ambivalence and the invalidation of urban informality in Zimbabwe," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(5), pages 927-943, April.
    6. Thomas Swerts, 2017. "Creating Space For Citizenship: The Liminal Politics of Undocumented Activism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 379-395, May.
    7. Lucas Oesch, 2020. "An Improvised Dispositif: Invisible Urban Planning in the Refugee Camp," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 349-365, March.
    8. Kabakova, Oksana & Plaksenkov, Evgeny, 2018. "Analysis of factors affecting financial inclusion: Ecosystem view," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 198-205.
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