Hospitality relations and overlapping displacements in refugee camps (capes) in Lebanon

• Autor(a) principal: Ceola, Francesca
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/47173
• topic: Campscape; Shatila; Migrant infrastructure; Refugee humanitarianism; Refugee agency; Assemblage; Geografia

The ambiguous position of the Lebanese authorities towards the recognition of refugees and their formulation of the Syrian diaspora in de-politicised terms has produced a heterogeneous geography of dwelling and emplacement, where many displaced by the current Syrian conflict – including Palestinian, Iraqi and Kurdish refugees – have resorted to different informal strategies to cope with re-territorialisation in Lebanon. This dispersed refugee geography speaks to a pre-existing cartography of Palestinian refugee camps, whose complex social ecology and materiality are encapsulated by the spatial model of analysis of the campscape (Martin, 2015) and informed by Deleuzian assemblage theory. Through ethnographic research in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila (Beirut) and the collective creation of critical mapping accounts with residents of the camp, this thesis investigates Shatila’s residents’ understandings of the campscape as a collective space animated by a multiplicity of actors. By opening a fissure through the residents’ discourses on the micro- and macro-politics of the camp, it was possible to cast a light on local responses, refugee-led initiatives of hospitality, and sites of friction emerging from the overlapping of displaced groups. Thus, the dynamics of refugee host and refugee guest relations were illuminated as they are performed and reproduced, from the everyday encounters of the street to the institutional confrontations over refugee benefits’ eligibility. These sites of encounter and friction simultaneously highlight how refugees are not only victims of their exile but also resourceful agents producing alternative infrastructures in contexts of state withdrawal. Considering the complexity of agencies, meanings, and materials that inflect the relations moulding the irregular shapes of Shatila’s campscape enhances our understanding of refugee spaces and refugee relationships. It also forces us to question how economic and social relations of marginal urban places reformulate the sense of cityness through an interplay of subordination, resistance and alternativity that collective mapping experiences can harness, catalyse, and empower.