Designed to be Gone
by Theo Deutinger and Tomasz Świetlik
The political formalization of our planet’s surface through nation-building processes assigned every human to a specific territory. This rationalized and brought order to the world while granting the people within the territories specific rights. Yet every year millions of people are forced out of these assigned territories by catastrophes, famine, or war, fleeing into foreign territories where they find themselves refugees. In 25% of these cases (about 8.1 million people) they end up in refugee camps.
Refugee camps are instant cities, which have to be rapidly built in states of emergency. In July 2012, al-Za’atari in Jordan first opened, and three years later it is one of world’s largest refugee camps, counting 150,000 inhabitants. If acknowledged, it would be the host country’s fifth-largest city. In order to cope with these extreme situations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published its Handbook for Emergencies, with 11 pages on planning strategies for refugee camps. The handbook is an attempt to organize an unpredictable situation. For example, the handbook states, “As it is difficult to predict the life-span of a refugee camp, it is best to plan on a cost-effective, long-term basis,” (239). This is contradicted by most host countries’ demands that no permanent house or fixed structure is allowed to be built, in order to prevent the camp from turning into a city. This results in many tent structures that have to be replaced twice a year, if not more.
Consequently, refugee camps throughout the world have become arenas of political struggle. With the help of planning instruments, their life is suspended, sometimes for years. Self-settled camps (B1–B5) tend to be fashioned within or adjacent to existing human settlements in order to use their infrastructure, while planned camps are positioned far from cities to avoid conflicts, allow easier expansion of camp perimeters, limit visibility and, most importantly, ease often militaristic supervision over refugees. Following the instructions of UNHCR, to avoid camps bigger than 20,000 inhabitants, multiple camps (A1 & A4) are built together to create clusters. Ethnic groups are divided into different parts of the camp to decrease possible conflicts. The internal zoning of planned camps follows safety regulations that reflect the dual position of refugees both as victims and possible threats to each other. Peacekeepers’ quarters and service buildings are located at the periphery to allow easier connection with the external world, but also to secure the camp.
As anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu once observed, there is a great similarity between the structure of camps and suburban typologies; but refugee camps are cities without a future. It’s all there — people, structures, schools, markets, and shops — but it is all designed to be gone.
