Expanding the Campscape - En antropologisk studie av palestinska flyktingläger i Libanon

This Bachelor’s thesis aims to understand how symbolic boundaries between Palestinian refugee camps and neighbouring urban neighbourhoods are constructed and maintained. It builds on secondary sources in the form of mostly anthropological studies on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Palestine. The study examines how the urban refugee camp Shatila, in the outskirts of Beirut, is constructed by political, emotional and gendered borders and how the camps remains distinct within the Lebanese community. I argue that by analyzing how a physical place is constructed into a social space we are introduced to a broader perspective upon the refugee camp. I will discuss Agamben’s definition of ”The State of Exception” in order to have an anthropological discussion concerning refugee camps as a distinct space within host societies. In this paper I introduce the concept campscape - a term that incorporates the fluid and elastic boundaries between camp and city. This thesis aims to expand the campscape by introducing a gendered campscape. My findings point at an understanding of the importance of regarding gender as an important aspect of maintaining the refugee camps and that gender is an inevitable aspect of understanding refugee camps as a place within society