The question of citizenship in the camps arises from this conceptualisation. (2018) describe this as homemaking, the actions and aspirations of camp residents to imbue their dwellings with a sense of home.

Furthermore, the role of spaces in refugee camps reflect small cities with the same spaces of education, worship, security and healthcare. Blackwell Publishers, Malden, Lintelo DT, Lakshman R, Mansour W et al (2018) Wellbeing and Protracted Urban Displacement: Refugees and Hosts in Jordan and Lebanon. This can be linked to issues surrounding power, contestation and conflict. The interviews were conducted with the intention of understanding the refugees perspective on the current way of managing the spatial response to their needs as understood by international organizations. Designing refugees camps: temporary emergency solutions, or contemporary paradigms of incomplete urban citizenship? The location and locale refer to the where and shape of a place. On one side, an argument is made that the refugee camp is a temporary space intended for transition. Young people comprised 57% while 19.9% under 5years old (UNHCR, 2018, 2019). Therefore, such changes are unwelcome from the perspective of host states and donors, and sometimes as Paszkiewicz and Fosas (2019) explain, refugees themselves, as this may be seen as undermining their claims for long term solutions to displacement. Place is broadly understood as spaces that people are attached to or spaces that have particular meaning to people (Lombard 2014; Sampson and Gifford 2010; Brown et al. Although, the grid layout established new sectors and caravans were placed in rows that took into consideration the provision of adequate access to services. In this case, the entanglements of power express a reciprocal rather than oppositional or binary relation. The urban feature of the refugees camps recalls the concept of building communities and making sense of the space between buildings and related social ties. They initially had a planned capacity of 20,000 refugees but reached 45,000 by the end of that year (Fig. (2000) which suggests an entangled layering of power that is an amalgamation of forces, processes, practices and relations. The caravans had the same informal layout and organized in U shapes to be close to relatives and friends in courtyards and gathering spaces. 2012; Livingston et al. A semi-ethnographic approach was considered the most suitable to allow a thorough examination of a comprehensive dataset of evidence and spending considerable time in the field of the Al Zaatari camp allowed exploring culture and social practices. The camp dwellings increased from 2400 in September 2012 to 26,000 dwellings in April 2020 (Ledwith 2014; REACH 2014). It connects to a secondary road to the highway near to the military border and is at the crossroads toSyriato the north. For example, having friends associated with spaces, or running memory-making experiences, such as going to school, regularly conducting social activities such as social gathering, singing, going to the market, etc. Refuge Can Period Refugees 24:119, Flyvbjerg B (2006) Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Some refugee camps may be setup as a genuine temporary solution requiring a provisional accommodation for a limited time, and in fact some of them do no longer exist, especially those related to natural disasters, as earthquakes in Japan or Chile (technically IDP). This could be physical environments or even less static locations such as public transport and markets. Jordan is presently experiencing an increase in the flow of refugees. The high cost of livelihood means that refugees have to rent and buy items for at costly (resale) prices. 10 semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts and architects and NGOs. Turun yliopiston maantieteen ja geologian laitoksen julkaisuja 10, Kennedy J, Ashmore J, Babister E et al (2008) The Meaning of Build Back Better: evidence From Post-Tsunami Aceh and Sri Lanka. He also complained that they were eating, drinking, sleeping, and using bathrooms in the same area. Albeit this is not an explicit strategy, and this comes perhaps as an unintended consequence of a decision made on purely functional and financial grounds. The population in the Al Zaatari camp and livelihoods have expanded to different extents as shown in Table1. Third World Quart 23:729, Sharp JP, Philo C, Paddison R et al (2000) Entanglements of power: geographies of domination/resistance. Each node includes a number of child nodes that the researcher coded whilst recording interviewees and this allows maximum flexibility of interview input. 2004). J Contingen Crisis Manage 16:2436, Knox P, Mayer H (2013) Small town sustainability: economic, social, and environmental innovation.

In reality, refugees experience electricity cuts several times a month due to the illegal use of energy and lack of official supervision. Build Res Inform 32:368378, Montanari M, Mehrotra S, Venkatasubramanian N (2007) Architecture for an automatic customized warning system. I added a second door in the backyard of the shelter to get more privacy (a man). It therefore leads to the realisation and re-imagining of refugee spaces as places for sociality and living, going beyond just the basic needs. However, the materiality and structure of these places are also influenced by peoples activities and agency (Cresswell 2004). 2012). It is demonstrated that concepts such as temporary or human needs can be misleading while applied to spatial configuration which should allow for rebuilding the social glue of temporarily permanent communities. At this goal, concepts related to these four themes have been identified through concepts coding, then counted (frequency analysis of concepts) and their mutual relationship analyzed (themes analysis). It exists only in a relational sense, as exercised by some on others (Lombard 2014). The analysis of the texts has been conducted by using the NVivo software. This has occurred to the point that the camp has taken on the appearance of a sort of informal city. Cite this article. International discourse has given increasing attention to the unique form of human habitation lived by internally displaced persons in refugee camps (Agier 2008, 2002; Alnsour and Meaton 2014; Ashmore et al. The layout of the Al Zaatari camp began as a grid organization and evolved through social organization into a more informal layout (Fig. 3, bottom left). The following sentences were considered linked personal memories associated to places in the camp: I like my block of caravans because I like to spend the night with relatives talking in darkness (a lady, adding that insect and rodents create an issue). Thus, revealing the agency of residents in refugee camps to improve their surroundings and conduct normative social relations, such as in informal cities (Hart et al. This recognition is often unrecognised despite the value in place-making. Related to the theme of place the researchers have identified concepts related to place-making, giving social meaning and purpose to the space. Front Architect Res 9:216235, Article Residents have added extra units to shelters although financial constraints play a role in determining the number of huts, tents, constructed brick or clay houses and the upgrading of residential units. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria?id=176, UNHCR Innovation (2015) Innovating for GoodTemporary Shelter Design. Forced displacement in 2018. Indeed, as one of the largest camps in the world, the population numbers in Al Zaatari over the years are not linear and do fluctuate due to several factors such as war and political stability (Lintelo et al. Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria. Terms and Conditions, Overall, the analysis showed that all refugees mentioned experiences related to the perception of the camp as a place for living (i.e., associating the camp places to memorable events, lifechanging experiences, etc. Towards an urban anthropology of refugee camps.

Social Responsibil J 5:257264, Skretteberg R (2019) Trapped in the worlds largest refugee camp. In urban planning, place is often depicted as a socio-spatial construct combining two main elements: firstly, the spatial location and locale and secondly, the sense of place. This way of spontaneous urban organization had an influence on the quality of services provided to refugees. (Top) Areas created by refugees for social gathering and washing in the Al Zaatari camp-North of Jordan, (bottom) Modified and planted garden besides a shelter (Source: Authors photo). Ledwith (2014) indicates that the Al Zaatari camp costs 500,000 USD per day. Part of Different groups with different needs and aspirations will have different values, meanings and uses of a place. Many are in the middle column that distributes their responses in two directions. However, this is also a limitation of this study. The Al Zaatari camp includes 31 schools, 58 community centres, 2hospitals, 9health care centres, 1delivery unit and 120 community health volunteers (UNHCR 2018). The west side was located first and is called the old side. International encyclopedia of housing and home, pp 183188, Brun C (2001) Reterritorilizing the relationship between people and place in refugee studies. This persistent narrative assumes that, permitting refugees to improve their environment and add meaning to a space will influence their decision to stay in the camp for longer. Using the concept of place articulated in the section above, illuminates elements of power within refugee camps (Fbos and Kibreab 2009; Mah and Rivers 2016; Lombard 2014). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. Indeed, the findings revealed that the spatial configuration of the Al Zaatari camp reflects social fabric, habits and organization of the refugees community. Lars Muller, Basel, Jabr H (1989) Housing conditions in the refugee camps of the West Bank. Architecture, as socially engaged discipline, can contribute to the consolidation of common values such as identity, awareness and appropriation. Focusing the discourse on the making of a place, moves away from a developmentalist perspective that views refugee camps in a continuous emergency state of temporary-ness, and instead focuses on the ordinary and everyday nature of refugee camps. Ethnography 3:317341, Agier M (2008) On the margins of the world : the refugee experience today. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. New Metropolitan Perspectives Springer, Berlin, pp 422432, Aburamadan R, Trillo C (2020) Applying design science approach to architectural design development. The following sentences were associated to functional aspect of the camp, i.e. But an unfair distribution of water happens in the camp and refugees are complaining regarding shortage and polluted water. Busisiwe Chikomborero Ncube Makore. Under this discourse, the rigid dichotomy between temporariness and permanency persists, facilitating an easier management of possible returns, the preferred UNHCR durable solution to refugee crisis. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-020-00120-z, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-020-00120-z. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Jordan, UNHCR (2020a) JordanZaatari Refugee Camp.

A female volunteer mentioned how scared she was on the first night at the camp when she lost her family. As anticipated in the previous sections, the empirical dataset of interviews with refugees have been analyzed with the aim to detect their perception about the camp. Made even harsher by the climate change and related desertification, the demand from this increasing population is a critical concern and additional needs of dwellings and services must be provided to meet this demand. Women represented 40% of participants and most of them are housemothers except a few who were working with NGOs as volunteers. Cambridge: Cambridge : Polity, Alnsour J, Meaton J (2014) Housing conditions in Palestinian refugee camps, Jordan. Shelter Centre, United Nations, Cresswell T (2004) Place: a short introduction. Refuge: Canadas Periodical on Refugees 28:137148, UNHCR (2013) UNHCR Global Trends 2012: displacement the new 21st century challenge. However, they have become more than a simple temporary solution, with refugees spending significantly longer than they should. Interviews with refugees considered the age, social status, gender and educational level and other attributes. Indeed, people construct places and places construct people (Brown et al. Al Zaatari has grown out of a desert area and become the second largest camp in the world after the Dadaab camp in Kenya which houses 329,811 refugees (Ledwith 2014).

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It is the social element of place also described as the emotional attachment people have to a certain place. A variety of intermediate conditions may occur between the two concepts of refugee camp as a permanent VS temporary solution. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Jordan, UNHCR (2020b) Total persons of concern by country of Asylum. I would rather go back to Syria under bombs which is better than humiliating living condition in the camp.

He did not want his children to grow up in a camp and everyday see just desert and white shelters everywhere, he believes the camp leads to bad ethics and he insisted that he will go to back to Syria, even if they will die. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the concept of permanence should be embedded in the spatial configuration of a refugees camp, or whether the concept of transient and temporary community would better reflect the aspirations of the users. School of the Built Environment. This overcomes the one-size-fits-all approach currently underpinned in international guidelines and documents. Initially in this area, the refugees were settled haphazardly, close to relatives and water sources. The dataset of this study relies on the following primary sources: 147 structured interviews (questionnaires) with refugees. 1998), that everyday practices in urban places can provide an analytical focus for understanding the city, giving attention to the everyday sociality of refugee camps promotes a focus on the importance of people as autonomous actors who creatively engage with, and shape, their surroundings. Data presentation section presents the data findings which are further discussed in Data analysis and discussion section. The focus on activities as a significant influence on the socio-spatial structure of place disrupts the conception of place as fixed and static. He argued flies eat with them their food due to the bad hygiene condition. to spaces in the camp; I use to sleep outdoors of my shelter in bad climate conditions in summer and winter to allow privacy for my wife and teenager daughter because I have just one shelter (a man, saying that his ethics and beliefs prevented him from sleeping in the same room with his daughter). Accordingly, the paper recommends major changes in the current approach to providing solutions for refugees shelters and camps. Refugees would prefer to stay in poorer conditions with services and shelters rather than leave their families and relatives in the Al Zaatari camp. Comfort at the extremes 2019. Drawing on this conceptualisation of place, allows a holistic understanding of refugee camps and how they are constructed spatially, socially and politically. (Top) informal layout in the Al Zaatari camp (Source: Authors photo), (bottom left) Prefabricated shelters in the Al Zaatari camp (Source: http://www.google.jo), (bottom right) Al Azreq camp in Jordan (Source:http://www.apnews, 2018). Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Geneva, UNHCR (2019) Jordan: Zaatari Refugee Camp - Infrastructure and Facilities, May 2019. This includes the same camp going through multiple socio-spatial stages and phases, thus requiring a flexible strategic approach. This is often related to the determination of international and local political and bureaucratic agendas. Other camps become permanent e.g. Also, he mentioned most men do not work compared with women who work outside and inside the camp in order to provide for the family and to run away from conflict and violence with men who are unemployed. It implies a re-thinking and re-framing of the camp resident in which they are seen as actors/agents in the construction of the refugee camp (Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019). In this context, the everyday activities within a refugee camp are perceived as critical to the construction of the idea of place. The majority of this increase happened between 2012 and 2015 due to the Syrian conflict in 2011. This is based on direct observation pursued through 15 visits to the chosen case and a robust qualitative dataset of interviews, gauging the view of refugees on the camp. Cities 36:6573, Ashmore J, Babister E, Corsellis T et al (2003) Diversity and adaptation of shelters in transitional settlements for IDPs in Afghanistan. A man was a trader of goods and foods, he described the current situation in the camp as bad. The authors would like to acknowledge the refugee participants, the UNHCR organization and the local Jordanian institutions at the Al Za'atari camp. Health Place 16:116131, Scannell L, Gifford R (2010) Defining place attachment: a tripartite organizing framework. Conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan have contributed to this displacement, as well as the massive flow of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017. Faculty of Architecture and Design, Middle East University , Amman, Jordan, School of Science, Engineering and Environment, Salford University, Salford, M5 4WT, UK, Claudia Trillo&Busisiwe Chikomborero Ncube Makore, You can also search for this author in However, these ideological constructions often ignore the understanding of more micro-level and prosaic processes involved in the making of these places. An interdisciplinary debate on project perspectives, City, Territory and Architecture This is hardly surprising given the international political nature of emergency support and the fact that such accounts are frequently motivated by an underlying concern with social justice. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. .

To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Oxfam, Oxford, Corsellis T, Vitale A (2008) Transitional settlement and reconstruction after natural disaster. Following the suggestion of (Lombard 2014; Certeau et al. Syrian Homemaking in Jordanian Refugee Camps. The United Arab Emirates was the donor who established the camp, although different types of units were built to a higher standard than the Al Zaatari camp. NVivo software was used to analyse data of semi-structured while structured interview results were analysed manually and fed the themes by using coding in NVivo analysis.

The camp climate has extreme conditions of hot summers and cold winters with no rainfall from May to September and, occasionally, in October and November. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 83:1525, Certeau Md, Giard L, Mayol P (1998) The practice of everyday life: living and cooking. 2018; Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019). The Al Zaatari camp has grown rapidly out of an empty stretch of desert area resulting in the increase of shops, restaurant, schools, medical care centers and nurseries. Current design, led by a functionalist approach, should be replaced by a new approach based on placemaking principles. This confirm the initial position, i.e. 4. 2018; Schmeidl 2002; Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019).

In the case of Al Zaatari, it was evident that the situation generating the emergency went beyond a quick and simple resolution. In 2013 a second camp (Al Azreq) was built 20km from Zarqa city and opened to transfer Syrian refugees to it (Fig. Dubai, Picker G, Pasquetti S (2015) Durable camps: the state, the urban, the everyday. The main stakeholders of the refugee camps in Jordan are refugees, governments and non-government organizations (NGOs) (UNHCR 2019). This is based on refugees experiences and aspiration to modify their lived space and even provide environmental improvements such as such as tree planting (Hart et al. He also complained about medical care where he mentioned that doctors used to give patients painkillers for all kinds of illnesses. An example of this is through the use of language and labels such as person of concern or displaced population from the UNHCR handbook. The Jordanian government allowed Syrian refugees access to governmental services and settled in the Al Zaatari camp from 2012. There is agreement with 94.26% refugees on the idea that humanitarian organizations provided them with space for a temporary solution, whilst 5.74% agreed on the idea that the camp is a permanent situation. Around 400.000 Syrian individuals were dispersed around non-camp settings and urban areas, predominantly in the north of Jordan but those who decided to settle in urban and rural areas were not supported by the UNHCR (WHO 2013). This argument is often made by international organisations and NGOs. Modifications to the shelter to facilitate social activities has been a large part of the socio-spatial transformation of the camp to suit their needs and express their values (Knox and Mayer 2013). Crit Inquiry 8:777795, Hadafi F, Fallahi A (2010) Temporary-housing-respond-to-disasters-in-developing-countriescase-study-iran-ardabil-and-lorestan-province-earthquakes. This section explores if refugees living in camps are just temporarily transient communities as so often depicted by NGOs and international organisations or if these refugee communities are living in a hybrid ephemeral place that embeds the temporary qualities of an environment and eventually evolves into a permanent urban and social fabric, an informal city. As far as services, three boreholes provide 3.3 million liters of water per day distributed by 82 trucks delivering water to public and private water tanks. Findings from the empirical data allow demonstrating that refugees prioritization of what is important in the camp is highly connected to the spatial configuration of the camp and shelters and the social interaction that such spatial configuration enables. On the other hand, 84.42% is recorded by refugees, they transferred to the camp as a temporary solution, and 15.58% noted the camp as a place in good condition and permanent condition. The camp is surrounded by rural areas and the topography is slightly flat and sandy. 4 illustrates a number of refugees who are struggling between a temporary situation and a permanent situation in the camp. 2008). An alternative conceptualisation is offered by Sharp et al. 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews with refugees. According to Foucault (1982: 789), power is a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action. In fact, prominent depictions have tended to conceptualise refugee camps as spaces of transition and impermanence.

The motivation beyond the construction of Al Zaatari influences the transferability of findings and conclusions. 1998; Simadi and Nahar 2009).

Related to the theme of permanence the researchers have identified concepts related to key-events in life, such as marriages and births, happening in the camp. I cannot live without (bahra), it feels I am in my home again. Google Scholar, Agier M (2002) Between war and city. In this case, this is particularly between international and national states and organisations and the community of refugees. Refugees stories and responses indicated a general desire and aspiration to better places, not just better functional spaces. Intelligence and Security Informatics, 2007 IEEE. Table4 reveals the refugees responses which have an unclear connection between the camp as a place for living and other variables. To achieve this, the research methodology rests on a single case study strategy, in order to allow for an in depth understanding of the intertwined and complex socio-economic dynamics happening inside the camp and across different stakeholders. Everyday practices and customs such as attending to the creation of dedicated space for receiving guests shape the residents ideals of home in combination with the constraints imposed by institutions responsible for funding, hosting, and managing the camps. In focusing on the protection and survival of inhabitants, the international agencies that run these camps rarely empower residents to act as citizens of them (Stevenson and Sutton 2011). Hum Organ 77:371380, Herz M (2012) From camp to city: refugee camps of the Western Sahara. Insights from Al Zaatari, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-020-00120-z, Refugees camps: no longer a temporary solution, not yet a city, https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria?id=176, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. She can adapt to the temporary situation of the camp but she wanted to finish her educational journey as she has a scholarship to finish her bachelor degree. The urban fabric of shelters is more organic and meets peoples desire to connect and stay near relatives and friends. Camps therefore transform to a more informal and fluid layout than a grid layout where the limitations of the camp become less obvious.