THE REFUGEE CAMP AS SITUATION AND RELATION: Yarmouk and the Stakes of Camp Space amid Urban Integration

Abstract

This article intervenes in discussions of the relationship between refugee camp and city by analyzing the now-destroyed Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus and the experiences of its former residents. Based on ethnographic, archival and digital research of Yarmouk, it argues that camp space ought to be understood as arising situationally and relationally—that is, as camps urbanize, those qualities that often characterize refugee camp space, such as legal exception, biopolitical management or humanitarian intervention, may recede. However, even if they slip into abeyance, they do not fully disappear. Rather, as Yarmouk shows, these qualities continue to arise in certain circumstances—with consequences for how the camp is experienced. In taking the refugee camp as situational and relational, this approach accounts for the inevitable dynamism that occurs throughout a single camp’s history and across camps in different contexts, showing how camps oscillate between urban exclusion and integration at different moments. Finally, in parsing the relationship between camp and city and the stakes of refugee camp space, the article demonstrates the need to hold on to camp and city as distinct analytical categories amid ever-broadening theoretical applications of each.