Syrian heritage and time in Azraq refugee camp, Jordan

Girls queue for sha'r al-binat at a Syrian-style carnival for World Refugee Day

Project summary

This project originally set out to understand the complexity of nostalgia and time in Azraq refugee camp. The CBRL travel grant enabled the second stage of my ethnographic fieldwork which focused on the refugee community’s conceptualisation of time in Azraq, building on the first stage which centred on aid workers’ perspectives on time.

Project details

Location: Jordan

Year(s): 2019

Project director(s): Melissa Gatter (University of Cambridge)

Lead institutions and funding:

  • CBRL

Project description

This project originally set out to understand the complexity of  nostalgia and time in Azraq refugee camp. The CBRL travel grant enabled the second stage of my ethnographic fieldwork which focused on the refugee community’s conceptualisation of time in Azraq, building on the first stage which centred on aid workers’ perspectives on time.

From discussions with refugees in which they reflected on time in the camp and their nostalgia for a Syrian past, I came to realise how much their thoughts on the past, present, and future are shaped by the power apparatus of the camp. Within the humanitarian-development nexus, refugees are living out a temporary present in which humanitarian organisations must encourage them to conceive of future lives elsewhere. However, the same aid regime has undermined refugees’ hope for a future return to Syria through an oppressive and disempowering bureaucratic environment. I argue in my resulting PhD dissertation that the Azraq community has become cynical, waiting as if a better future exists but discouraged by the unkept promises of the
Syria they remember and long for and by a camp that is meant to provide refuge but has instead become something of an ‘open air prison.’

This research owes much to the CBRL travel grant, which allowed me the time to become close with camp residents, providing vital contrasting views of Azraq to those of its aid workers.

Project bibliography

Gatter, Melissa. 2020. Syrian heritage and time in Azraq refugee camp, Jordan . Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 21.

Published:26 November 2021

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