This book offers a socio-spatial analysis of a refugee camp in southwestern Uganda. Based on qualitative research with a multi-method approach the author shows how refugees are central actors in the operation and becoming of a camp. Not only do they crucially contribute to its social, micro-economic, and material realization but they also incrementally rearrange the camp space by acts of constant adaptation in order to make it work for its inhabitants. By means of social interaction, infrastructuring, translation, movement and material improvisation they navigate daily life in the semi-constricted and highly precarious space of the refugee protection regime and carve out its social and material landscape. Thus, this study challenges static understandings of camps and restricted conditions and puts forward theoretical implications for the rethinking and reassessment of agency in such contexts by calling for closer attention to ordinary practices.

Autorentext

About the author Hannah Schmidt is a member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University Osnabrück. Her research is on encampment and refugee regimes in the Global South, as well as social practices, agency and spatial production in the context of humanitarianism.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Theorizing Socio-Spatial Practices.- Research Design.- Humanitarian Patterns of the Camp: Order, Spacing and Protraction in Kyaka II.- Social Fabric: Refugees' Social Practices of Spatialization in Kyaka II.- Material Fabric: Refugees' Material Practices of Spatialization in Kyaka II.- Pulling the Strings: Refugees' Rearranging Practices in Kyaka II.- Conclusion.