Community work and identity in refugee camps

Life in a refugee camp is life in a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps generally develop in an impromptu fashion to meet basic human needs for only a short time.

2 articles, 1 book · about 42 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   life in a refugee camp · Wikipedia · 37 min read

   In the Calais refugee camp, a therapeutic support project built spaces for collectivity and community, such as youth groups, to challenge the individualization of distress and trauma. It encouraged discussion of refugees' small acts of resistance and activities from migrants' cultural roots to develop a positive conception of identity. In bigger camps such as Dadaab and Kakuma, settlements and markets are often arranged according to inhabitants' nationalities, ethnicities, tribes, and clans, shaping how displaced people form communities. Some refugee camps grow into permanent settlements and even merge with nearby older communities, such as Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon and Deir al-Balah, Palestine. People may stay in these camps, receiving emergency food and medical aid, for many years and possibly even for their whole life.

2. Read
   

   The cartography of control: Mapping the Calais refugee camp · Quartz · 5 min read

   Life in the Calais refugee camp includes a reluctant micro-society with its own economy, comprised of various communities on the border of two developed nations. Mapmaker Saleem says the process has begun to have "its own permanence, counter to any kind of political plan."

3. Book
   

   What Is the What · Bookshop.org

   What Is the What by Dave Eggers describes how, after resettlement in the United States, life holds promise alongside heartache and myriad new challenges.

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