Through the Eyes of Refugees: Exploring Thriving Concepts in Protracted Camps

The United Nations estimates that there are over 82 million displaced people around the world, 22 million of whom are housed in numerous camps across the Global South, with unknown numbers living in informal settlements. Even though camps are systems designed only for emergency phases, many end up entering a protracted state, confining refugees, controlling their movements, separating them from surrounding communities, and, in many cases, providing dire long-term living conditions. With this in mind, social theorists seek to understand camps as spaces of control, stasis, and exclusion, while describing refugees as passive victims whose livelihood has been reduced to living a bare life. Under these circumstances, refugees have taken matters into their own hands over time, challenging their living conditions and trying to build a thriving future for themselves in spite of the many challenges they face. They redefine spaces and their use of time in camps by independently building permanent housing structures, redefining their camps’ social infrastructures and boundaries, setting up businesses, employing other refugees, and reviving their economic livelihoods. These activities focus on the thriving of refugees. Although social theorists’ narratives reflect a reality of these camps, they don’t consider refugees’ pursuits of thriving over time. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to understand refugee camps from the perspective of camp residents’ thriving views and practices. In this study, refugees living in a protracted state in the Shatila camp of Lebanon discuss their views on thriving, photograph intimate details of everyday life, and document how they practice thriving concepts within the time-space of the camp. The outcome of this research will use refugees’ practices in camps as an impetus for policy change concerning camp design and operation. By giving voices to refugees and supporting potential policy changes, this research may contribute to the improvement of quality of life for refugees in camps and encourage the building of better encampment environments. Thriving, according to Shatila’s residents, is understood to occur through three overlapping practices: a state of being, acts of connecting, and the process of progressing. Thriving practices take three forms – evolving, enterprising, and expressing – each of which is comprised of several sub-themes highlighting the multidimensionality of refugees’ thriving practices. These views and practices can shape the way camps are managed, conceptualised, and built