'Min Al-Mukhayyam' ('From the Camp'): Discourses of Difference and the Boundaries of Exile amongst Palestinian Refugees in Jordan. Issue 1 (1st June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pérez, Michael
• Is Part Of: Anthropology of the Middle East. Volume 16:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 9
• Page End: 31
• Publication Date: 2021-06-01
• Subjects: exile -- identity -- Jordan -- Palestinian refugees -- protracted displacement -- refugee camps; Ethnology -- Middle East -- Periodicals; Middle East -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; 306.0956
• DOI: 10.3167/ame.2021.160102
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1746-0727

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the implications of long-term encampment and exile for the meaning of Palestinian identity amongst refugees. It shows how the conditions of Palestinian camps in Jordan function as a key marker of social difference between refugees of the camps and the city. Whereas camp refugees see the hardships of camp life as conditions to be confronted, urban refugees take them as constitutive features of a socially distinct refugee. As I argue, the distinctions between camp and city refugees illustrate how the refugee category and the humanitarian camp exceed the ideology and function of humanitarianism. They demonstrate how, in protracted refugee situations, the refugee label and the historical context of the camp can become socially significant and contested features of identity.