Inhabiting Displacement

Seethaler-Wari, Shahd; Chitchian, Somayeh; Momić, Maja

doi:10.1515/9783035623710

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Importantly, homemaking from below operates in critical interaction with the infrastructural characteristics of the built environment and with the ways in which it is designed, maintained and managed over time. It is no coincidence that the study of refugee accommodations "from below" has been paralleled with a burgeoning debate in architecture, urban planning and design on the ways to improve refugee housing, both functionally and aesthetically, for different resident targets and purposes (Kuhl & Behrens, 2018;Willems et al, 2020;Beeckmans et al, 2022;Seethaler-Wari et al, 2022). This perspective, of course, is not without constraints and dilemmas, particularly for dwelling in refugee camps and shelters (Scott-Smith, 2019).…”

Section: Ethnographies Of/in Camps: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking and the Negotiation of Space in an Asylum Centre

Boccagni

2023

IMISCOE Research Series

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Reception centres for asylum seekers, and “camps” more broadly, are a subject of increasing interest in refugee, housing and border studies. Only a fraction of this literature, however, draws on proper ethnographic fieldwork within these infrastructures. A case in point is a recent study I have conducted in an asylum centre in northern Italy. My research focus was on the lived experience of the built environment and on the spatial and temporal boundary-making among residents, and between the latter and service providers. Within rooms and shared kitchens that operate as proxies of a domestic space, people do not simply “wait”. They engage in forms of space appropriation (and to a lesser extent, attachment) that illustrate the significance of homemaking in temporary and unhomely settings. Moreover, the social and material inner space of an asylum centre is far from homogeneous. Against accounts of undifferentiated ghettos or non-places, the chapter illustrates the thresholds and layers of domesticity that refugees as guests negotiate, and that an ethnographer as their guest can capture. Without dismissing the attendant dilemmas, I show the contribution of a “being in” approach to co-produce knowledge on inner domestic routines and cultures, on the ways to (re)present oneself, on the traces of past dwelling. A refugee room gives little of an external view, as long as someone gets stuck in. Yet, it provides a uniquely internal view on their everyday life experience and prospects.

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Section: Ethnographies Of/in Camps: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking and the Negotiation of Space in an Asylum Centre

Boccagni

2023

IMISCOE Research Series

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“…His findings indeed accentuate that their spatial agency harness the material power of the provided and develop innovative practices to subvert their abstract image of victims that surrounds their lives. The camp spaces, after all, are patchworks of these forms of resistance: minimum standard designed spaces where the recollection of the 'remnants of what used to be and [the creation] what could be' (p. 207) is authored by refugees themselves (Musmar, 2021;Seethaler-Wari, Chitchian, & Momic, 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Book Review - From Shelters To Dwelling: The Zaatari Refugee Camp by Ayham Dalal, 2022

Zibar¹

2023

RHJ

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Ayham Dalal offers us a spatial repertoire on the radicality of the ‘housing’ question regarding refugees and their built environments. By focusing on the ‘tension between the shelter and the dwelling’, this book offers an exceptional reading of the imposed temporary materiality of the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Dalal introduces ‘dwelling’ as a spatial practice, highlighting refugees' spatial agency in resisting and subverting the idea of liminality and, as Malaki (1992) proposes, falling outside the ‘natural order of things’. Through detailed case studies and visual representation, this book brings to the fore the dismantling and reassembling of given temporary structures to describe Syrian refugees' spatial agency in transforming the tent-furnished desert into ‘the third largest city in Jordan’.

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People First, Data Second: A Humanitarian Research Framework for Fieldwork with Refugees by War Zones

Fisher

2022

Comput Supported Coop Work

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War begets crises that are among the most urgent areas requiring help from the international HCI/CSCW community; yet too few scientists address it using context-based, participatory field methods and by engaging in country and regionally based, longitudinal partnerships. Drawing on the author's ongoing eight-year engagement as a design ethnographer with UNHCR Jordan and region for the Syrian War, this paper discusses Humanitarian Research as a framework for guiding HCI/CSCW research in conflict zones with displaced persons. Based on the principle of "People First, Data Second," Humanitarian Research is explained with illustrative examples along with the nature of war and UNHCR's protection mandate, the research challenges and ethical roles of HCI scientists in conflict zones and how these roles entwine with refugee stakeholders, NGOs, country actors, and university IRBs.

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Inhabiting Displacement

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking and the Negotiation of Space in an Asylum Centre

Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking and the Negotiation of Space in an Asylum Centre

Book Review - From Shelters To Dwelling: The Zaatari Refugee Camp by Ayham Dalal, 2022

People First, Data Second: A Humanitarian Research Framework for Fieldwork with Refugees by War Zones

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