“Safe but Frozen Camps”: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees around a Football Field in Beirut

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-251
Author(s):  
Stefano Fogliata
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Football Field ◽  
Syrian Conflict

AbstractPalestinian camps in Lebanon have turned once more into “transitional zones of emplacement” for thousands of people recently fleeing the Syrian conflict. In this context, the plural subjectivities emerging within the camps highlight a further connection between spatial marginalization and precarious legal statuses. My research hinges on the interconnectivities evolving around the Palestinian Bourj el Barajneh camp and Hezbollah-controlled Beirut southern suburbs moving from an ethnographic insight of the Palestinian football society. Inside the “Refugee Football Leagues,” Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese players find a space in leagues whose matches are mostly disputed within the numerous refugee camps scattered throughout the national territory. Moving from newcomers’ strategies for protection, the essay investigates how refugees living in camps experience different scales of mobility and develop a wide range of practices that extend beyond the camp's boundaries, exploring how imperceptible and hyper-mobile tactics of existence re-elaborate Palestinian refugee camps into meaningful places of elusive contestation.

Linking women-led community kitchens to school food programmes: lessons learned from the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Children intervention in Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 914-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hala Ghattas ◽  
Jowel Choufani ◽  
Zeina Jamaluddine ◽  
Amelia Reese Masterson ◽  
Nadine R Sahyoun
Keyword(s):  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Healthy Children ◽  
Sustainable Livelihood ◽  
School Food ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Community Kitchens ◽  
The Impact

AbstractObjective:Decades of marginalization have led Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon to experience multigenerational poverty and food insecurity. The Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Children programme implemented and examined the impact of a two-pronged intervention that employed women through community kitchens to deliver a subsidized healthy daily school snack to elementary-school children in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. We describe the rationale, study design, theorized impact pathways, and discuss lessons learned.Design:The programme was quasi-experimental. We conducted formative and process evaluation of both components of the intervention to elucidate the pathways to programme impact.Setting:Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.Participants:Thirty-three women participated in the kitchens and provided subsidized snacks to 714 children.Results:Snacks were healthy, traditional Palestinian recipes designed by women and a nutritionist. Participation fluctuated but eventually increased after modifying the meals to ensure acceptability by children. The main challenges to sustainability related to the need for subsidization of the meals and the lack of school policies around the regulation of sales of school food, which together led to fluctuations in programme participation.Conclusions:The study provides lessons learned on the potential of this model to improve the human capital of two generations of protracted refugees. The availability of schools as a constant market for these social enterprises offers an opportunity for sustainable livelihood generation and food security gains. Challenges to sustainability remain and could be addressed through social (subsidies to support the programme) and structural (policies to restrict unhealthy food sales) measures.

scholarly journals Palestinian Refugee Identity: Marginalization And Resistance In Refugee Camps In Lebanon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Sabarini
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
A Site

Through a review of theoretical literature on the topics of space, power, and identity as well as literature on the Palestinian refugee situation in Lebanon, this research paper uses a critical approach to space in order to examine how Palestinian identity is formed within the specific context of refugee camps in Lebanon. The refugee camp has been used by the Lebanese state as a disciplinary tool to contain identities, but it has also served as a site for the displaced Palestinians to construct meaningful lives and create new places and identities. This paper will specifically examine the way in which a marginalized collective identity as well as an identity of resistance has been formed and renegotiated using culture, memory, and militancy by displaced Palestinian refugees living within the boundaries of camps in Lebanon.

Making home in exile: Everyday practices and belongings in Palestinian refugee camps

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Erin Cory
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Palestinians share a history of exile oriented towards the loss and reclamation of a homeland, often expressed through a shared visual lexicon and mythos. In the context of refugee camps, however, local visual culture and everyday practices demonstrate how Palestinian lives are also grounded in local stories and experiences. How do Palestinian refugees deploy everyday practices to create their home spaces? What can these practices reveal about refugees’ myriad belongings? And, in thinking about these practices, what can be said about how a feeling of home can be articulated in exile, which is at its heart the forced removal/dislocation from home? This article uses a comparative ethnographic analysis of two Palestinian camps in Lebanon to challenge overarching narratives of ‘Palestinianness’ by calling attention to the rich multiplicity of Palestinian refugee identities. In focusing the analysis on everyday practices – specifically street art and walking – by which residents make and experience home in the camps, the article grapples with the seeming contradictions between ‘home’ and ‘exile’ that colour the experiences of not only Palestinians, but also refugees and asylum seekers in other circumstances of protracted uncertainty, as they attempt to migrate and make home in new countries.

Palestine at the UN: The PLO and UNRWA in the 1970s

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Irfan
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Near East ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
International Issue ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) during the 1970s, the period when the PLO reached the zenith of its power in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the Levant. Based on archival United Nations (UN) and UNRWA documents, as well as the PLO's own communications and publications, the article argues that the organization approached its relationship with UNRWA as part of a broader strategy to gain international legitimacy at the UN. That approach resulted in a complex set of tensions, specifically over which of the two institutions truly served and represented Palestinian refugees. In exploring these tensions, this article also demonstrates how the “question of Palestine” was in many ways an international issue.

Sands of Sorrow

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Post War ◽  
State Of Israel

In 1950, the American Council for the Relief of Palestinians produced the first international documentary on the Palestinian refugee camps, Sands of Sorrow. Directed primarily at Christian churches and charities, the film’s tone was lightly didactic, its images striking and ethnographically attentive. An early example of the then relatively new genre of humanitarian advocacy, Sands of Sorrow invited its audience to focus on the human consequences of the mass displacement of the Palestinian Arabs, caused by the war and the creation of the State of Israel. That moral injunction came with some authority. The film was introduced by the American journalist, Dorothy Thompson, famous in the war years for her internationalism, anti-Nazi campaigns, and tireless support of Jewish refugees. This chapter discusses the politics of humanitarian compassion through Thompson’s writing and advocacy. One of the first to advocate for the rights of Jewish refugees in the late 1930s, Thompson scandalized U.S. opinion when she campaigned for Palestinian refugees. Refugees, she argued, were not simply one more humanitarian crisis, but the consequence of the failure of the post-war human rights regime to deal with the violence of state formation and the persistence of nationalism.

scholarly journals 72 Years of Homemaking in Waiting Zones: Lebanon's “Permanently Temporary” Palestinian Refugee Camps

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafa El Masri
Keyword(s):  
Coping Mechanisms ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
Home Building ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Family Bonding

The “permanently temporary” Palestinian refugee community, present in Lebanon since 1948 with no solution in sight, has the highest rate of abject poverty within all five areas of operation of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA), and it still occupies the same limited geographic space it did 72 years ago. This harsh reality stems from the refugees' statelessness but is also worsened by the local conditions imposed by the Lebanese legislation and (non)settlement policy aimed at preventing refugees from becoming permanent. Within this situation, we look at practices of agency enacted by camp dwellers to provide lacking life necessities and improve living conditions in the camps. This paper will identify and analyze coping mechanisms and homemaking practices undertaken by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, operating within the framework set by Brun and Fábos (2015), which conceptualized home and homemaking for people in protracted displacement through identifying a refugee's “home, Home and HOME.” Building on Donna Haraway's concept of situated knowledge, this paper uses data collected from participant observations, interviews, ethnographic and autoethnographic recordings analyzed through the lens of my own positioned rationality as a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon. Further, the paper will explore how Palestinian refugees establish camp spaces as a “home-Home-HOME,” despite their uncertain futures, through vertical expansion of buildings, stories and family bonding, in addition to trading and micro-markets. The paper will also deduce how refugees' informal coping mechanisms offer a way of strengthening community bonds, making home in those, otherwise, uncomfortable “waiting zones,” and finally, envisioning new ideas for restructuring the camp beyond the rule of formal institutions.

scholarly journals Understanding and Responding to Substance Use and Abuse in the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon Prior to and During COVID-19 Times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Aaraj ◽  
Patricia Haddad ◽  
Sara Khalife ◽  
Mirna Fawaz ◽  
Marie Claire Van Hout
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Drug Dealing ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Syrian Conflict

Abstract Due to its geographical proximity to the Syrian conflict and the occupied territories, Lebanon has experienced an influx of refugees in recent times. Palestinian refugees are an identified key vulnerable population, with displaced communities increasingly experiencing camp insecurity, vulnerability to drug use and related health harms. A qualitative study consisting of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) was undertaken as part of a regional exercise investigating Palestinian community experiences of substance and drug use in refugee camps. Thematic analysis triangulated the perspectives of 11 professional stakeholders representing United Nations, human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and eight Palestinian community members. Emerging themes centered on the interplay between socio-economic instability, lack of law enforcement and camp governance contributing to concerning levels of familial, drug and camp violence, trafficking and availability of drugs. Transactional sex and the exploitation of women and children in drug dealing, diversification toward drug manufacture and dealing of drugs with the outside community were described. There is a lack of harm reduction and rehabilitation supports for those in need. This study highlights the complexities in tackling drug dealing and related criminal activity within refugee camps and humanitarian settings, and the vulnerabilities of those living within to harmful drug use.

scholarly journals Lectio Praecursoria: Negotiating Futures in Palestinian Refugee Camps: Spatiotemporal Trajectories of a Refugee Nation

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-61
Author(s):  
Tiina Järvi
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Spatiotemporal Trajectories

The seventy-three years of exile have molded the life in Palestinian refugee camps. In my dissertation, I explore the conditions created by this long history in order to discuss the futures that those currently living in the refugee camps envision for themselves. This Lectio Præcursoria is an introduction to both the research process and the ways the futures emerge in the vulnerable conditions of Palestinian exile. Keywords: Palestine, Palestinian refugees, future, refugee camps, multi-sited ethnography

scholarly journals Palestinian Refugee Identity: Marginalization And Resistance In Refugee Camps In Lebanon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Sabarini
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
A Site

Through a review of theoretical literature on the topics of space, power, and identity as well as literature on the Palestinian refugee situation in Lebanon, this research paper uses a critical approach to space in order to examine how Palestinian identity is formed within the specific context of refugee camps in Lebanon. The refugee camp has been used by the Lebanese state as a disciplinary tool to contain identities, but it has also served as a site for the displaced Palestinians to construct meaningful lives and create new places and identities. This paper will specifically examine the way in which a marginalized collective identity as well as an identity of resistance has been formed and renegotiated using culture, memory, and militancy by displaced Palestinian refugees living within the boundaries of camps in Lebanon.

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