Suspended Spaces–Contesting Sovereignties in a Refugee Camp

Turner, Simon

doi:10.1515/9781400826698.312

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…7 Drawing from the arguments of Agamben (1998Agamben ( , 2005 and Arendt (1951) in recent years scholars have investigated camps as ''spaces of exception'' (Hanafi, 2008;Ramadan, 2009;Turner, 2005) that offer refugees a form of protection which ensures their powerlessness (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr, 2004;Fassin, 2005;Papastergiadis, 2006). The camp has also been approached as a space of intense regulation organized for the bureaucratic management of life and the convenience of humanitarian providers (Hyndman, 2000 The word (camp), as I believe, does not necessarily mean a place where refugees are living under tents, and I do not think it means such a sort of place in the Host countries.…”

Section: The Camp As a Humanitarian Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement

Feldman

2015

Geoforum

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Section: The Camp As a Humanitarian Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement

Feldman

2015

Geoforum

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“…To begin with, there are big differences in the numbers of refugees and also in the ways in which refugee status is recognized 1 . They have political lives that lie at the intersections between various sovereigns including the UN, the host state, local political parties, NGOs and so forth as has been demonstrated through the works of numerous scholars (Hanafi and Long 2010; Peteet 2005; Sayigh 1978; Turner 2005). Communities form, even if somewhat tenuously in these spaces as people come together to build, support and socialize with each other.…”

Section: The Camp As a Bio‐political Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Refugees and the City: An Urban Discussion

Sanyal¹

2012

Geography Compass

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There has been resurgence in interest in both popular media and academic research on refugees as subjects of incarceration in camps and as a growing population in cities. While the urbanization of refugees is not new, it has become a growing concern for policy‐makers, aid agencies and scholars as the numbers of refugees moving to cities have accelerated. There has been debate over the urbanity of camps due to protracted refugee crises and increasingly, there is recognition that despite the efforts of host governments, self‐ settlement of refugees is taking place in cities. The two issues therefore make the city an important framework to interrogate the spaces of refugees. This paper attempts to show the complexity of refugee politics and socializing in camps and in cities by showing a variety of refugee spaces and practices in different parts of the world and using urban debates‐particularly urban informality to draw links between refugee spaces and cities. The aim is to debunk universalizing myths about refugees and refugee camps as subjects and spaces of bare life and bio‐politics alone. Instead it draws parallels between the urban poor and refugees to offer a perspective on the close and complex relationship cities, refugee spaces and their residents have with each other.

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“…Agamben's (1998) theorization of the management of "bare life" in the study of development and humanitarianism has increasingly pushed such critiques to engage with the "biopolitics" of these forms of global governance. "Bare life" is life that is reduced to its most basic biological functions or mere existence, and is maintained through humanitarian action outside of the polis of national citizenry, for instance through the archetypical spatial enclosure of the refugee camp (Turner, 2005). Some would argue that such biopolitics have, in turn, precipitated general shifts in a global humanitarian agenda away from targeted interventions for the preservation of individualized human life in the context of "disasters," to analyses of risk that increasingly focus on species survival and the adaptation (or mal-adaptation) of certain crisis-prone regions to recurring emergencies (Reid, 2010).…”

Section: Decoding the Memes: Aid And Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry

Chonka

2019

Social Media + Society

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In 2015, a series of memes appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #HumanitarianStarWars. Combining still images from the original Star Wars movies with ironic references to humanitarian/development jargon and institutions, the memes presented a humorous reflection on the modern aid industry. While memetic content has become an increasingly scrutinized area in digital culture studies-particularly with regard to unbounded and anonymous online communities, and popular discursive contestation-this article examines #HumanitarianStarWars to shed light on the possibilities and problematics of social media auto-critique undertaken by "insiders" in a particular professional realm. Keeping in mind critiques of the racial and imperial connotations of the (Western) pop-culture mythology itself, the article explores the use of the Star Wars franchise as a vehicle for commentary on an industry at work in the "Global South." It highlights an ambiguous process of meaningmaking that can be traced through the memes' generation, circulation, and re-mediation. Although the memes provide a satirical self-reflection on practitioners' experiences and perspectives of power relations in the global development industry, certain tendencies emerge in their remixing of this Hollywood universe that may reinforce some of the dynamics that they ostensibly critique. The article argues that examination of the ideological ambivalence of an institutional micro-meme can yield valuable insights into tensions playing out in professional social media spaces where public/private boundaries are increasingly and irrevocably blurred.

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Suspended Spaces–Contesting Sovereignties in a Refugee Camp

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement

What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement

Refugees and the City: An Urban Discussion

The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry

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