Permanent temporariness

The urbanisation process of the Jabal al-Hussein refugee camp

Student report (2021)

Authors

K. Klein Gunnewiek Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

G. Schwake Teachers of Practice / A - Architecture and the Built Environment (mentor)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment, Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2021 Kato Klein Gunnewiek
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Published Date

15-04-2021

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

Refugee camps are considered temporal places, outside of the normal juridical order, in which people are waiting to restart their lives in a new place or return to their original homes. The Palestinian refugee camps, which have existed for almost 70 years now, challenges these conceptions. The development of the Jabal al-Hussein camp, one of the Palestinian refugee camps in Amman, Jordan, from tent camp to neighbourhood, its governmentality by both the Jordan government and URNWA, and the new social structures combined show in this case study that the camp is a very paradoxical and ambiguous spatial form in terms of temporality, exclusion and stagnation. Or in other words, in its permanence, inclusion and identity. Therefore, we must reconsider the theories on refugee camps and shift our focus from the symbolic-political to the material-lived.