Abstract
In the wake of the Syrian war, camps appeared both in the Middle East and in Europe to house refugees from Syria. Among those refugees were Palestinian Syrians, most of whom had been living in spaces recognized as “camps” in Syria. The camp is a space that continues to have close association to Palestinian refugee identity. Existing studies have shown that the Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East need to be understood not just spatially and infrastructurally, but also politically, and emotionally. They also show that despite the constraints and hardships associated with them, Palestinian inhabitants have been able to turn their camps into homes and into spaces of political agency. This paper further examines the relationship between “camp” and “home” by focusing on the housing and homemaking experiences of Palestinian Syrians displaced to other parts of the Middle East and to Europe by the war in Syria. It draws on two complementary field sites, Turkey and Germany, and focuses on the 2015-2017 period, a period that coincides with Europe’s “Refugee Crisis” and the appearance of camps on the European continent in response to this “crisis.” In contrast to Germany, where most refugees from Syria had to live in initial reception centers, also known as “camps” upon arrival, Turkey has only hosted about 10% of refugees from Syria in camps, with the rest self-settled in urban areas. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with Palestinian Syrians who were self-settled in urban areas in Turkey and Palestinian Syrians who experienced encampment in Germany, I reflect how the experiences of secondary displacement of Palestinian refugees impact our understanding of encampment, home, and homemaking.
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