Giving Aid Inside the Home

Abstract

Through a hospitality lens, the article looks at an Evangelical grassroots organization’s practice of house visits to Syrian refugees in Mafraq, Jordan. It begins by situating the hosting practices of European volunteers in the context of Mafraq’s multi-layered NGO environment and within the emerging literature on the role of transnational support networks in faith-based humanitarianism. A review of philosophical and anthropological literatures reveals how power dynamics and bordering practices shape the hospitality encounter. Its function as a scale-shifter between the local and the national makes “hospitality” well-suited for the study of displacement. Subsequent parts of the article explore volunteers’ acts of infringement on Syrians’ hospitality code that allow them to “contain” refugees’ demands for aid. The final section revisits Boltanski’s theory of a “politics of pity” in communicating distant suffering. The set-up of house visits forces refugees to perform “suffering” which provides the raw material for volunteers’ moving testimonies back home.

8 Refugees and the Urban Fabric: Palestinian and Syrian Settlement Patterns in Jordan

“…For example, Mafraq, the city close to where Zaatari camp is located, has been deeply transformed by the nearby population of Syrian refugees. It is estimated that between eighty and a hundred thousand Syrians live in Mafraq, and that constitutes around half of the city's total population (Wagner 2018). Other cities such as Ramtha, close to the Syrian border, or Irbid have also witnessed important influxes of Syrians.…”

“…We are witnessing a transformation of the city quite similar to those seen in the Zaatari camp with the emergence of shopping streets, which play an economic role but also a role in the reconfiguration of modes of sociability in exile. These urban practices tend to make the presence of refugees in the city visible, although it should be noted that certain categories of refugees, such as young men without a work permit, often adopt strategies of being invisible in the public space because they risk deportation to one of the Jordanian refugee camps or to Syria (Wagner 2017).…”

Confronting gendered constructions of refugee deservingness and representations: Syrian refugee women strategising for humanitarian aid in Turkey

“…The lack of a procedural approach to seeking aid means that proving vulnerability through the narration of victimhood emerges as a gendered practice in response to the trope of deservingness. A 'politics of pity' invoked to access aid (Wagner 2018) lends to the power hierarchy that emerges as refugee women express themselves in a 'plaintive and helpless manner' while 'humanitarian experts voice authority and solutions' (Rajaram 2002, 261). Participants in this study also commented on how they appeal by expressing their desperation.…”