The refugee camp as urban housing

Abstract

This paper is a call to examine refugee camps and urban housing as interlinked phenomena. By comparatively examining the spatial-material arrangements of three Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, it suggests that the ‘how’ question (or how to plan refugee camps) has invited the housing agenda to appear spatially. In the Jordanian case, this has led to the production of three distinctive models of camps-housing namely a ghetto, a gated community and a mass housing project. In the German context, it has led to the production of camps phased into permanent and hybrid models of housing. Finally, and by underlying that the camp is first and foremost a form of urban housing, it suggests that the concepts, themes and analytical tools developed in housing studies has the potential to unpack the complexity of the camp and how it interlinks with our cities and urban realities today.

Keywords:

• Refugee camps; housing agenda; urban planning; housing typology; dwelling; humanitarianism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). 

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful for the comments of the reviewers that helped sharpen the argument and the structure of the paper. I would also like to thank Nina Gribat, Shaimaa Aboulmaged, Salma Khamis and Jakub Glauzska, and the colleagues at the French Institute of Research in the Middle East (Ifpo) for their comments on the earliest draft on this paper. Finally, the author would like to thank the colleagues and fellow researchers at the Collaborative Research Center ‘Re-Figurations of Space’ (SFB1265) for providing a thriving intellectual environment for this paper to develop. The writing of this paper was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (German Research Foundation) – Project Number 290045248 – SFB 1265 for the subproject ‘Architectures of Asylum’.

Notes

1 Some relief organizations reported about 1000 refugees crossing the borders every day, mostly transferred to Zaatari (JRC and IFRC, 2012; UNHCR, 2013d).

2 During this period, tents were not the only shelter typology in Zaatari camp. Prefabs (or caravans) were entering the camp as donations by different actors.

3 For a detailed description of the planned and unplanned parts of the camp check: (Dalal, 2014, pp. 59–62).

4 In 2015, a structuring plan has taken place. This implied families to have an address and remain ‘fixed’ in place in order to construct a sewage system (UNHCR, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is published with the support of the German Research Society (DFG) and through the Collaborative Research Center ‘Re-Figuration of Space’ (SFB1265).

Notes on contributors

Ayham Dalal

Ayham Dalal is an architect and urban planner based in Berlin. He works at the research project ‘Architectures of Asylum’ at the Collaborative Research Center ‘Re-Figurations of Space’ (SFB1265). He holds a PhD in Architecture from the Technische Universität Berlin, and is a research associate at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Amman and Beirut.