Weaving the Camp: Refugees' Practices of Spatialization in a Refugee Camp in Uganda

The book explores the socio-spatial dynamics of a refugee camp in southwestern Uganda, highlighting refugees' central role in its operation and development through adaptation and navigation. It challenges static understandings of camps and offers theoretical implications for rethinking agency in such contexts.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 278 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2023
Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

The book titled "Socio-Spatial Analysis of a Refugee Camp in Southwestern Uganda" presents a comprehensive socio-spatial analysis of a refugee camp located in southwestern Uganda. The author employs a multi-method approach, combining qualitative research methods, to explore the role of refugees in the operation and development of the camp. Through extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the author reveals how refugees play a central role in shaping the camp's social, micro-economic, and material aspects. They contribute significantly to the camp's social, micro-economic, and material realization, and they also engage in ongoing adaptation efforts to make the camp work for its inhabitants. The book highlights the importance of social interaction, infrastructuring, translation, movement, and material improvisation in navigating daily life within the semi-constrained and highly precarious space of the refugee protection regime. Through these means, refugees carve out the social and material landscape of the camp, challenging static understandings of camps and restricted conditions. The study also offers theoretical implications for rethinking and reassessing agency in such contexts, emphasizing the need to pay closer attention to ordinary practices.

Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783658416492
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023