Conceptualizing Sites of Displacement

Refugee Camps, Holding Centers and Protected Villages? Exploring refugee camp terminology is more than simply theoretical mind-jogging.

Labeling ultimately affects how refugee camps and displaced populations are assisted and protected. The term ‘refugee camp' is used on a daily basis by a variety of actors to describe very diverse situations, ranging from semi-permanent city-like Palestinian camps in Syria or Jordan to temporary shelters set up by migrants in Calais, France. On other occasions the term is replaced by other labels such as ‘protected villages' in northern Uganda or ‘welfare villages' in Sri Lanka. In the European context, we talk not of refugee camps, but of ‘holding centers'.

But what are we talking about when we refer to these sites? Can we identify any clear criteria when determining whether an arrangement shall be labeled a refugee camp?

While international law lacks a legal definition, the broader social sciences have identified parameters which could be used as building blocks in such a definition. These parameters concern, for example, modes of assistance, freedom of movement, governance and power structures, and temporal and geographic factors.

The overall objective of this seminar is to stimulate to multi-disciplinary dialogue among scholars and practitioners in the field of forced migration. The seminar will provide an opportunity to revisit the issue of refugee camps and to discuss contemporary structures of displacement maintenance.

The seminar comes at a particularly opportune time for reflection on sites of displacement and confinement, not the least due to recent developments within the EU as regards to conditions within ‘holding centres' for asylum seekers.

At this open seminar scholars will present research on these questions through an inter-disciplinary approach. The target-audience of the seminar will include researchers, policy makers, civil society members and the media.

Abstracts of the three presentations

The seminar is organized as part of the seminar series on Democracy and Rule of Law in cooperation with Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Bergen.

For a complementary lunch, please register before noon on Monday, October 3 to: Maja Janmyr (maja.janmyr@jur.uib.no)

Agenda

10:00 Introduction and Welcome
Maja Janmyr, Doctoral Candidate in International Law, Faculty of Law, UiB

10:15 Conceptualizing Camps and Settlements: from Anathema to Standard Operating Procedure
Merrill Smith
Independent Consultant and Lawyer, former editor of the World Refugee Survey and originator of the international civil society campaign to end the human 'warehousing' of refugees

Intervention by Jessica Schultz, Doctoral Candidate in International Law, Faculty of Law, UiB

11:30 - 11:45 Break

11:45 Opening up the Camp: Historical and Functional Dimensions to the European Detention Regime
Martin Lemberg Pedersen
Doctoral Candidate, Center for the Study of Equality and Multiculturalism (CESEM), Institute for Media, Cognition and Communication
University of Copenhagen

Intervention by Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Geography, UiB

12:45 Lunch

13:15 Reconstructing Oxymorons: Nahr el Bared & Palestinian Refugee Camps
Ismael Sheikh Hassan
Architect, Urban Planner, and Doctoral Candidate
Leuven University

Intervention by Kjersti Gravelsaeter Berg, Doctoral Candidate, AHKR, UiB

14:15 Closing Remarks
Dr. Arne Strand
Deputy Director
Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI)