Since John F.C. Turner proposed that housing
should be considered more as a verb or process than as a noun (Turner
1972) and since the seminal book by Ian
Davis (Davis
1978), ‘shelter after disaster ‘ has become
much more than the provision of a roof. The legal, economic and social dimensions of the
provision of a safe and adequate home, demand a heightened understanding of the
needs of those who have suffered the loss of their homes due to conflict or
environmental disasters. Likewise, a community includes the people that live
there and the diverse layered complexities that shape the identity of a place,
as proffered by Jane Jacobs (Jacobs
1961), the manifestation of which are
public spaces.
This study examines the role that
public spaces in urban areas can play in the social aspects of integration of
refugees and IDPs and how they can create a sense of belonging that leads to
better social cohesion and which, combined with the economic and legal
dimensions, are seen as the keys to successful integration and the provision of
a secure space.
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| Bedouin children play nearby a reappropriated van which serves as a library for their community in Um Al Kahir in the South Hebron Hills, Palestine. |
Integration
in Meeting Durable Solutions
The traditional refugee camps are
widely considered to be temporary solutions in the face of severe problems of
conflict or disaster but under circumstances of protracted conflict or disaster
situations, displacement can become prolonged, exacerbating the problems that
many refugees face, putting strain on host nations and in the worst cases
refugee camps can become political tools.
Integration into a host community is a
common response when return is not a viable option for safety reasons. It is a
complex and slow process that aims to gradually integrate displaced people
legally, economically and socially. The ultimate goal is that a person or group
become self-sufficient and contribute to the host society converting
potentially disruptive displacement into an asset with the newly integrated
group contributing as well as benefiting. The cooperation of host governments
and communities is essential for the success of integration strategies (UNHCR
2012a).
Resettlement in a third country or
city is the third durable solution of the UNHCR and is an option when return to
the place of origin is seen as unsafe and when their needs cannot be met by the
place or country in which they have sought refuge. The place of resettlement,
if a third country, provides legal and physical protection and grants civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights on par with citizens of that
country. There are difficulties in the social and cultural integration within a
new society which must be overcome for successful resettlement. While 800,000
refugees are in need of resettlement worldwide only 10% of these will access
this solution (UNHCR
2011).
Cities and
towns play an important role in receiving a large number of displaced people
and in meeting these durable solutions. The UNHCR has recognised this fact
through the provision of a new document released in 2009 that outlines an
updated policy on refugees in urban areas and which commits the organisation to
providing secure protection spaces for refugees in urban areas (UNHCR
2009a). While there is no definition of protection space, there
is a recognition that this concept is fluid and includes more than physical
protection.
Freedom of movement, association and
expression, access to livelihoods and the labour market, adequate shelter and
living conditions, legal and secure residency rights, access to public and
private services and harmonious relationships with the host population, other
refugees and migrant communities are just some of the indicators outlined in
the report by which successful protection space is assessed. The following
sections will show how public spaces in urban areas can serve to secure and
provide these conditions.
Identity
Spaces
Often refugees or displaced people are
identified in relation to Kunz’s (Kunz
1973) typology of groups. Categorised in
relation to the political conflict in the place from which refugees are
displaced and divisions, regionalism and territorial fragmentation within
groups which is brought from a prior place are said to be maintained and
transformed in sites of displacement. Identity within these often large groups
can play a significant role in the use and formation of spaces and all aspects
of identity.
Fairchild (Fairchld
1927) observed that it is not just the
political background of the refugee that forms his identity but the entirety of
the physical and human environment that gives coherence, unity and character to
a human group. The refugee’s race, culture and motives for emigrating are what
dictates his future as a settler. The refugee is torn away from both the
physical and the social environments and it is the social adaptation that is
most difficult and is generally done within the group which she has spent her
time prior to migration. For this reason the cultivation of group identity is
essential in adaptation to a new environment.
Place identity is the building of
meaning through cultural, political and religious representation of a
collective community demand through the built environment in the form of
imagery, the physical environment and activities carried out in urban spaces
which are the physical manifestation of human agency. Identity is encoded in
the built environment and evolves and morphs under varying challenges, altering
the meaning, perception and reproduction of identity over time (Handal
2006).
Haim Yacobi (Yacobi
2010) argues that In Tel Aviv, Israel, the
relatively new phenomenon of non-Jewish, non-white asylum seekers crossing the
border from Egypt in seek of protection due to war in East Africa has had the
influence of challenging the ethnocratic context of Israel’s immigration
policies where the 1952 Law of Nationality and the 1950 Law of Return gives
Jews the unique right to nationality and to immigrate. Israel is said to use
this policy as its main normative reference point instead of the Geneva
Convention and subsequent international refugee laws which has the effect of
excluding asylum seekers from legal and political order and from social life.
 |
| Worshippers on Church Row, Tel Aviv. |
Tel Aviv has recently seen the
creation of a type of slum in the south of the city where an estimated 1,000
African asylum seekers live in temporary shelters in inadequate conditions but
has resulted in the creation of social, economic and cultural networks, with
“Church Row” in the Neve Shanan district. Levanda Street is the centre of the
Christian community where African music can be heard emanating from a mix of
churches which sit alongside bars, social clubs, African hair salons and food
markets. The migrants, who have been labelled as “infiltrators” by the Israeli
Prime Minister (Post
2008), are routinely discriminated against
by the locals, but all nationalities come together in this area under the
collective umbrella of refugees.
Gyasi-Baaye, a church pastor said "It wasn't just spiritual support or
a place where you go to pray, it was a social gathering, an economic meeting
point, it was used for political manifestation both inward and outward. ... It
was really everything for them and was really an anchor an isle, a safe
haven" (Hartman 2012). While the refugee
community has not become integrated or even accepted in the city or the
country, the ability to organise as a group with collective interests and to
collaborate with NGOs in Israel has led to a collective cultural discourse
rooted in the Israeli ethnocratic context.
In the Old City of Hebron, Palestine
the HRC, a group of architects and engineers, strives to rebuild and regenerate
heritage buildings and public spaces that hold significant cultural meaning as
a means of resisting the Israeli occupation which has been seen to target such
buildings as a means of cultural violence. The organisation aims to attract
people who have been displaced from the Old City to re-inhabit this area of the
city and thus increase social and community coherence and strength by reuniting
families and reinvigorating commerce in the area. The collective resistance
against a force that most feel they have no means of combatting, fosters what
the locals of Hebron have labelled ‘sumud’ or the idea of steadfastliness,
helping the people to remain in the Old City under the pressures of occupation
by symbolically re-occupying spaces, giving social sense to captured spaces and
by keeping alive the traditional uses of certain public spaces. (Piquard
2009)
Political
Spaces
The political power of public spaces
has been well documented by some of the greatest thinkers in both politics and
architecture. As far back as Plato’s Republic, we can see the link between the
city and politics and more recently political commentators such as Margaret
Kohn have identified the reciprocal links between the creation of ‘radical’
public spaces and radical political groups outlining how space can provide the
arena for political movements and inversely political movements can drastically
change the physical and symbolic significance of a space (Kohn
2003). Tianemen Square in China and Tahrir
square in Cairo are two well-known examples of this.
Steven Gold notes that the lack of
community organization and the trend of segmentation and fragmentation are common
features of refugee communities (Gold
1992)
and can impact on the mobilisation of political strategies whether the
aim is for return home or to integrate into a new community and even though
there can be ethnic and political fragmentation within refugee groups from the
same areas or countries, community organisations have the ability to articulate
communal interests.
In sites of displacement where
political representation is often lacking for the displaced people, public
spaces can become a realm in which they can project their identity and create a
locus of community that can serve to unite and strengthen social bonds,
building group and individual capacities. When either returning from a place of
refuge or becoming integrated into a new community, alongside formal measures
for integration, often informal ways are found of expressing identity and
culture which can display their worth to the receiving community and make them
visible in local politics.
Somali refugees in Tower Hamlets,
London reported a sense of invisibility prior to the creation of the Somali
London Community Cultural Association (SLCCA) in the late 1970s, and while this
can be attributed to various factors such as lack of education or language
barriers, a major factor was the negligence of the local authority and their
lack of engagement with the Somali community, which was seen by the Somalis as
being dominated in the locality by Bengali refugees who outnumbered them. This
was in part due to the absence of public spaces being established by the
original Somali migrant sailors that were present before the civil war and the
lack of cultural participation that came from this. Clanship and internal
divisions within the SLCCA led to the disbanding of the association. (Griffiths
2000)
In stark contrast, the Kurdish
community in the same area of London is highly organised and politically active
with a range of public and collective spaces such as cafés, bookshops and
recreational and drama spaces. Drama plays a key role in the preservation of
Kurdish identity and in preserving awareness of the reason why the Kurds
arrived in London to begin with. At the KWA, a cultural night was organised to
celebrate the First Year of Kurdish Culture during which a theatrical
performance highlighted the difficulties of newly arrived refugees in London
who find themselves under pressure to conform to ‘foreign’ culture. Also notable
is the use of iconography and images of ‘home’ within the buildings of the KWA
and the celebration of cultural events that solidify the community by reminding
what it means to be a Kurd (Griffiths
2000).
Chantall Mouffe has aligned public
spaces with democracy describing how the political order can become normalised
and hegemonic and materialised in the use and representation within a public
space. She also describes how this political order can be challenged and reveal
the fact that other political practices are possible. She outlines how art and
architecture can serve as criticisms of these political orders by intervening
directly in social spaces (Mouffe
2008).
Negative
Impacts
The traditional perception of refugees
is of the expansive camps with rows of tents but the current reality is that
two-thirds of the global refugee community live in urban areas. For example 80%
of the Syrian refugees in Jordan are accommodated in urban areas while only 20%
are in camps (Roger
Zetter 2014). While the city offers the opportunity for them to work,
stay anonymous and integrate which may not be possible in a camp setting
displaced people in cities are often forced to live in overcrowded,
sub-standard housing with limited access to health and social services.
Large numbers of displaced people
arriving in an urban area can often put additional stress on already strained
resources, infrastructure and markets resulting in tension between hosting
communities and displaced communities. As can be seen in the case of Israel,
there is great resentment among the host community to receive refugees from the
political elite and from the communities, with refugees being routinely
discriminated against. This can be in part due to the appropriation of certain
spaces within the city. While the cultural activities witnessed on ‘Church Row’
can shift the discourse on the issues, inversely the creation of ‘slum’ areas
can damage the success of any attempts at integration. These slum areas are
often the result of discrimination in housing allocation and access to services
but can be considered by host communities to be representative of the ethnic or
cultural differences and barriers.
Displaced people can experience
discrimination and exploitation culminating in physical sexual violence where
difficulties in registration, break-down in social networks and a lack of
understanding of legal procedures and systems result in increased
vulnerabilities. 48% of displaced women in Colombia, where 11.6% of the urban
population is displaced, reported being victims of sexual violence, in contrast
to 39% of the general population (Carrillo
2009).
Conclusions
The ability for public spaces to unite
communities and as a platform for cultural expression is a powerful tool in the
integration of refugee communities whether returning or emigrating to a second
or even third country. The place identity that can be fostered through the use
of spaces in urban areas can lead to a true sense of belonging that is so
important following the dislocation of social bonds often experienced by
refugees and IDPs. The political power that this can represent and cultivate is
one that has the local, national and international range essential in uniting
refugees in securing their rights and their representation as individual
communities and as a group as a whole.
As can be seen from the examples
presented, a wide range of typologies of spaces have been adopted and utilised
by refugee communities from religious buildings, to bars and cafes, heritage
buildings, schools and public squares, epitomising the indomitable and
innovative spirit and resolve of refugees that is too often overlooked. This creativity is an underutilised tool that
could be applied in the creation and planning of camps which can sometimes lack
the social cohesion and sense of belonging that many refugees seek. Perhaps
further investigation into the application of strategies used in urban areas
could benefit camp management practitioners in offering a more sustainable and
dignified protective space while avoiding issues of permanence.
Ultimately, with the growing number of
refugees in urban areas and the widespread consensus that camps are not a
long-term solution, a focus on the provision of adequate and dignified
protective space and housing within urban areas should be considered that
involves an examination of these spaces from a social perspective, adapting and
applying lessons and strategies from urban planning, architecture, sociology
and politics.
References
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