Infrastructures of Care Spaces of Refuge and Displacement
Exhibition Catalogue 2019 Huda Tayob Irit Katz Giovanna Astolfo Ela Gok
1
Infrastructures
of
Care
activists,
for and by forced migrants. For example, we understand spaces such
NGOs and spatial practitioners for a discussion on the spaces and
as camps created by humanitarian agencies as well as urban and para-
infrastructures of provision and support relating to forced migration
urban informal and formalised spatial appropriations set up by refugees
and refuge. The project begun as a symposium and exhibition at
themselves, as parts of infrastructures of care for displaced populations.
brings
together
academics,
The Bartlett School of Architecture in February 2019. This exhibition catalogue continues to explore the various spatial, material, human, and
Furthermore, while “care� is often understood as overwhelmingly positive, we
humanitarian entanglements of care created for and by displaced people.
argue for a more nuanced interpretation which acknowledges the associated layers of support, vulnerability, control, and in some cases coercion, related to
Experiences of forced displacement and migration are profoundly
this term (see Casualties of Care, Ticktin 2011). We simultaneously suggest that
shaped by the places where people find refuge and support. While the
certain forms of care and associated sustenance are not necessarily reducible
refugee camp dominates spatial studies, today around 60% of the world’s
to, or exhausted by mechanisms of control (hooks 1990, Hartman 2016)
forcibly displaced live in urban areas and the city has been recognised
and further recognise that the labour of care is often highly gendered,
as a particularly important host to refugees. In addition, as more than
and significantly devalued, while being explicitly imbricated in politics.
80% of refugees live in developing countries, humanitarian concerns of
Infrastructures of care can therefore be understood across scales and
protection and support are closely entangled with the social, political, and
spatial forms, in relation to the intimacies of daily life and at the level of
economic contexts of local populations. The broad array of formalised and
broader legal, economic, humanitarian and state planning systems. In
informal spaces of displacement and refuge along with the ever-changing
referring to infrastructures of care, we are hoping to draw out the systemic
infrastructures of care and provision often destabilise the dichotomy
nature of institutions, mechanisms and agents that facilitate, enable and
between the city and camp and the meaning of concepts such as shelter
hinder relief for forcedly displaced people (Xiang and Lindquist 2014).
and relief. This in turn suggests a re-thinking of how figures such as the forced migrant and the aid worker are understood. While foregrounding the
These projects are brought together to offer theoretical, methodological,
role of space, this initiative takes as a starting point the infrastructures of care
empirical and visual provocations on Infrastructures of Care.
which are varyingly understood as spatial, human, material and institutional mechanisms of support and agency, as well as of control and restriction. While infrastructures are usually conceived as physical and technical systems according to normative and modernist understandings, this has been challenged in recent years with particular reference to the global south. Infrastructures are increasingly understood as part of broader political, economic, social, material and spatial processes, both formal and informal, affected by factors within and beyond national borders (Simone 2004, Gandy 2005, de Boeck 2012,
The initiative is possible thank to a Bartlett Synergy Grant, The Bartlett School
Chattopadhyay 2012, Larkin 2013, Amin 2014, Easterling 2014). Following these
of Architecture, UCL. It is organised by Huda Tayob (Graduate School of
interpretations, we argue for recognising the entanglement of physical, human,
Architecture, University of Johannesburg), Irit Katz (University of Sheffield),
legal, humanitarian, and other infrastructures of care and relief created both
Giovanna Astolfo (DPU) and Ela Gok (BSA). Cover image by Tom Morgan and Darren Dharmadasa, Monash University. Catalogue designed by Ela Gok, September 2019. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, without permission from the authors.
Contents 8
The Madafah: Who is Hosting Whom? Aya Musmar
12
Walking with Purpose Bence Komlosi, Mary Rojas and Architecture for Refugees Schweiz
14
Informal Tented Settlements Diala Makki, Mona Harb, and Mona Fawaz,
18
Passage Variations (Greece/UK 2019, 18 min) Ektoras Arkomanis
20
Integrating the Walls, Transcending our Tiredness (Berlin/Barcelona) Ged Ribas Goody
22
48
Design Methods as a Form of Self-Determination , Al Azraq Refugee Camp Melina Phillippou, Azra Aksamija, and Zeid Madi
50
The Right To Seek Asylum Melina Phillippou
54
A ‘Strange Village’: The Squatted Plaza Hotel in Athens Nikolaos Kanavaris, Symeon Makaronas, and Stellatou Dimitra
56
Objects Removed for Study Rafael Guendelman Hales
60
Infrastructure of Control Giovanna Astolfo, Camillo Boano, Keyvan Karimi, Ed Manley, Ricardo Marten and Falli Palaiologou
Border/Camps - The Jungle, Calais Ricardo Marten
62
BlackSites Tom Morgan and Darren Dharmadasa
24
Collective Care and Care for the Collective (Lebanon) Hanna Baumann, Andrea Rigon, Joana Dabaj and Riccardo Luca Conti
64
Tempohomes in Berlin Viktoria Pues
26
Black Markets: Cape Town and Minneapolis Huda Tayob
28
En Route Camps in Northern France Irit Katz
32
Infrastructures of Caring Citizenship Isabel Gutierrez Sanchez
34
Afro-Christian Churches as Care-Takers in/of the City Luce Beeckmans
36
“Welcome to the Green Hotel”: Reclaiming Care at the Calais Border Maria Hagan
40
Architectures of Displacement Mark E Breeze and Tom Scott-Smith
44
Material and Immaterial Infrastructures of Care in Jordan Melissa Gatter The Spatial Aesthetics of a Refugee-guided Tour Michal Huss
46
Infrastructures of Care Spaces of Refuge and Displacement 1st-8th February 2019, University College London
The Madafah: Who is Hosting Whom? Aya Musmar, University of Sheffield ‘The Madafah: Who is hosting whom?’, is an interrogation of how the power dynamics of the ‘host’ and the ‘guest’ play out between refugees and NGO representatives (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000, Graham and McFarlane 2014) in Za’atri camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan. The research follows a feminist/practice-based approach (Hyndman 2000), aimed at offering a critical reading of the Madafah as a space where refugees exercise political agency. Exploring the spatiality of the camp from the position of Jordanian NGO representatives working in the field, Musmar suggests that the Madafah emerged (in a certain phase) as a dwelling space to achieve everyday duties. For Jordanian NGO workers, the Madafah became the site of an intimate entanglement between humanitarian infrastructures of aid and development, and social/communal infrastructures of relations (Graham and McFarlane 2014). In questioning the positioning of the host (refugees) and the guest (NGO representatives) the project challenges the image of the refugee in conventional humanitarian discourses as a figure stripped of agency (Agamben 1998).
8
9
Aya Musmar, University of Sheffield
10
11
Walking with Purpose Bence Komlosi, Mary Rojas and Architecture for Refugees Schweiz The guided city tour is a space of gathering different people and a learning platform for all involved. In ZĂźrich, these walking tours become a network generator, bringing together people, ideas and initiatives. The tour has a dual focus: on the one hand it acts as a tour to new-arrivals and their immediate needs such as access to language learning possibilities, education, working, social life and free time. It introduces newly arrived refugees to city infrastructures of public libraries, parks, free language and educational spaces for the participants. Secondly, the tour raises awareness on the living conditions of refugees in the city. This second aspect leads into spatial and socio-cultural questions on housing, provisions, and urban segregation. For active participants, the tour becomes a platform for introductions, in the face of significant insecurities and exclusion faced by refugees. This turns the gathering into a much more enriching encounter, a “walk with purposeâ€?.
12
13
Informal Tented Settlements Diala Makki, Mona Harb, and Mona Fawaz, American University of Beirut
The Syrian conflict from 2011 to the present, has resulted one million Syrian refugees seeking refuge in Lebanon. This led to concern over a repeat of the ‘Palestinian experience’ and “tawteen” (permanent residency) as well as fears over the potential militarization of camps. As a result, the Lebanese government refused to establish formal camps for Syrian refugees. In response, Syrians formed what are called informal tented settlements (ITSs) that were mainly established on private agricultural lands in rural areas in the North and the Bekaa. ITSs are “camp looking” sites developed through transactions between refugees and private landlords. A major concern is the inadequate provision of basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity (Ahlers et.al, 2014). The modes through which Syrian refugees access these services reveals a fragmented and “hybridized” yet creative provision. ITSs rely on an assemblage of systems and actors who vary from reluctant local public authorities, international organizations typically operating in “crisis/relief” mode, refugees and local landowners. In order to respond to this reality, it is important to acknowledge the potentials of informality, investigate ways to learn from existing hybrid systems and integrate them into policy making.
14
15
Diala Makki, Mona Harb, and Mona Fawaz, American University of Beirut
16
17
Passage Variations (Greece/UK 2019, 18 min) Ektoras Arkomanis, London Metropolitan University Passage Variations was filmed on Christmas Eve 2017 in the Eleonas refugee camp, in Athens. The film looks at the camp as both a governmentrun institution in which the idea of exception of the refugee is ingrained, and a setting where a semblance of natural life is slowly reconstituted. Central to both interpretations of the camp are its spatial attributes — the grid of prefabricated containers and passageways — and the temporality experienced by refugees: life in a state of temporary suspension or perpetual deferment. In the passages between the trailers the sound of the film ceases and is replaced by captions of oral testimonies by refugees, literary excerpts, and historical accounts of earlier migrations in the area of Eleonas. This elliptical history, narrated by many voices — past and present, in poetry or prose — underlays the subtle play of human emotions, behaviours and concerns that unfolds in front of the camera.
18
19
Integrating the Walls, Transcending Our Tiredness (Berlin/ Barcelona) Ged Ribas Goody, UCL This film is a an autoethnographic exploration of trans infrastructures of belonging: those spaces, networks, platforms, communities, resources and rituals that we make use of on a daily basis in order to facilitate our navigation of the internal and the external, or in other words, of our selves and of the city. Their function is to ensure our comfort, safety and survivability: networks that exist for the benefit of sharing and dispersing information and resources amongst the trans populace. The footage is composed of a mixture of the author’s own shots as well as clips that have been shared with her by different trans friends for the purpose of this project. Some film clips have been taken by the author in Berlin and Barcelona (2017-2018). Other clips sources: Casio Cowboy, taken in Berlin (2017-2019) Roey Victoria, taken in her studio in Berlin (07/12/2018)
20
21
Infrastructure of Control Giovanna Astolfo, Camillo Boano, Keyvan Karimi, Ed Manley, Ricardo Marten, Falli Palaiologou, UCL From humanitarian calls for action to warnings of impending collapse, Europe thinks of itself under a crisis, at a political breaking point that justifies extreme discourses and measures. The Refugee Spaces data project aims to stimulate and demystify the phenomena through examining the evidence rather than speculating on the so-called crisis. Through mapping and analysis of the openly available data provided by institutional and governmental sources, the platform spatialises the political and security measures designed to contain migration and the mobility of refugees. In the maps, the project shows a cartographical analysis of spatial responses and the administrative infrastructure brought by migration and refugees, stressing on the territorial relationships that associate mass movement with urban hotspots in four selected countries: France, Germany, Greece and Italy. Refugee Spaces has been funded by the 2016 Bartlett (UCL) Materialisation Grant. The project is a collaboration between the Development Planning Unit (DPU), Space Syntax Laboratory (the Bartlett School of Architecture), and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). http://refugeespaces.org
22
23
Collective Care and Care for the Collective (Lebanon) Hanna Baumann and Andrea Rigon, UCL, Joana Dabaj and Riccardo Luca Conti, CatalyticAction This film depicts a participatory spatial research project in the Lebanese town of Bar Elias – home to 30,000 Lebanese citizens and approximately 60,000 refugees. The project is part of an effort to construct an infrastructure of care on the basis of the long-term engagement between the Bar Elias community and the UK charity and design studio Catalytic Action, a team from the Institute for Global Prosperity and Development Planning Unit. This team worked with Citizen Scientists and other residents (from the Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian communities and ranging from 19 to 65 years of age) in a seven-day participatory planning workshop. Jointly, the team explored the underlying causes of local infrastructural vulnerabilities and began formulating potential solutions that would address them through small-scale interventions in urban space. The initial phase of the process was captured in the film, which explains how residents analysed their context, discussed their aspirations and vision for the town and identified interventions.
24
25
Black Markets: Cape Town and Minneapolis Huda Tayob, GSA, University of Johannesburg Post-Apartheid South Africa is host to a large number of asylum seekers, many of whom are from other parts of the African continent. In Cape Town, the spaces of inhabitation are in many cases within multi-storey mixeduse informal arcades. This project suggest that one of the emerging and yet contingent spatial typologies is the Somali Mall, hosting primarily east African and Somali refugees and asylum seekers. These spaces offer vital services and accommodation to those fleeing violent conflicts and economic collapse. While these informal arcades and associated urban changes are seemingly local and small-scale, through the research it emerged that similar types of spaces exist in other places, all catering to similar population groups. These images depict two Somali malls established by and largely hosting Somali refugees in Cape Town, South Africa and Minneapolis, U.S.A. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, this project points to the interconnectedness and transnational networks of support between these seemingly disparate sites at both an architectural and urban scale.
26
27
En Route Camps in Northern France Irit Katz, University of Sheffield The en-route border camps in Northern France, from which refugees and irregular migrants have attempted to cross to the United Kingdom, have created between 2015-2016 a multifaceted and rapidly-evolving spatial constellation. ‘The Jungle’ makeshift camp in Calais, which was probably the most known, has hosted at its peak around 10,000 people as a precarious space of institutional abandonment which was also a complex environment of solidarity and support created by camp residents and volunteers from both sides of the English Channel. Within a few months, with its makeshift shelters, informal businesses, and self-built institutions, the Jungle has developed into a city-like environment forming part of the material and human infrastructures of care which sustain ‘people on the move’ in the most uncertain conditions. These ever-changing infrastructures create the other side of our formal systems of transnational mobility which allow the movement of some while blocking the movement of many others.
28
29
Irit Katz, University of Sheffield
30
31
Infrastructures of Caring Citizenship Isabel Gutierrez Sanchez, UCL In Southern European countries, where the prospects of a functional welfare state in the long term are fading away, struggles around social reproduction, have brought together groups that are organising the provision of welfare and everyday needs in their own terms. These initiatives are named Infrastructures of Caring Citizenship (ICCs) as self-organised initiatives of provision of welfare and enactment of citizenship at the same time. They fight for citizen and migrant rights, including access to housing, healthcare, social care, and free education among others. The series of hand-drawings and accompanying notes gathered show everyday scenes in four ICCs, which cater for both locals Ě and migrants Ě needs. They are O Allos Anthropos (The Other Person) Social Kitchen, Athens Community Polyclinic and Pharmacy, City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Centre and Khora Community Centre. The latter two were set up in Athens as citizen-led responses to the largescale arrival of asylum seekers in the country since 2015, and as an alternative to the state-led camps.
32
33
Afro-Christian Churches as Care-Takers in/of the City Luce Beeckmans, Ghent University These images focus on a couple of Afro-Christian churches in the mid-sized city of Ghent. As elsewhere in Europe, the arrival of African migrants in Ghent has resulted in the rise of Afro-Christian churches, particularly Pentecostal churches. In Ghent, through the occupation and appropriation of ordinary houses, warehouses, shops, garages, railway infrastructure, temporary structures, they have transformed existing non-religious buildings into places of worship. This project argues that these Afro-Christian churches, as part of a globe-spanning transnational network, form important places where African migrants take care of themselves, as they provide much more than just religious services. Indeed, they are important nodes of selforganization and often function as a kind of arrival infrastructure. Additionally, by reinvigorating the gaps in the post- industrial city, African migrants, also take care of the city. While African practices of place-making in European cities may be highly unstable and precarious, forming spaces of incapacity and marginality, they may at the same time form new sites of empowerment and so become cautious nodes of what is often called ‘urban commoning’.
Luce Beeckmans in collaboration with Bostoen Handrik, Friant Aiko and Nijs Joachim
Luce Beeckmans in collaboration with Bostoen Handrik / Friant Aiko / Nijs Joachim
34
35
“Welcome to the Green Hotel”: Reclaiming Care at the Calais Border Maria Hagan, University of Cambridge Just three months after the demolition of the ‘Jungle’ in late 2016, asylum seekers began to return to the border in their hundreds. Despite this growing presence there is no physical camp in Calais. Instead, newcomers play an absurd game of cat and mouse with the authorities, constantly rebuilding scattered and hidden makeshift shelters that are systematically destroyed by police. These attacks on even the most basic protective infrastructure compromise the very possibility of survival. In this hostile post- camp context spaces of care emerge ephemerally, through social practice and performance. Humanitarians (most often volunteers) have adapted their aid provision to be mobile, reclaiming the act of care-giving, and challenging the ways in which the migrant is criminalised by the French and UK governments. The exhibited collection of photographs, fieldwork extracts and interview snippets illustrate everyday life for asylum seekers living at the post-camp border in 2016 and 2017. This highlights how the hostile governance of asylum seekers at the border encourages them to self-invisibilise, concealing their violent dispossession from the public eye.
36
37
Maria Hagan, University of Cambridge
38
39
Architectures of Displacement Mark E Breeze, University of Cambridge and Tom Scott-Smith, University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre
Architectures of Displacement explores the lived experience of temporary accommodation for refugees in the Middle East and Europe. The three images presented were originally part of a six piece series, they tease some of the more abstract and overlapping aspects of such sheltering - the remaking of identities, spaces, and communities through the satisfaction of ongoing basic needs. Architectures of Displacement is an ESRC and AHRC funded collaboration between Professor Tom Scott-Smith at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre and Dr Mark E Breeze at St.John’s College, Cambridge.
40
41
Mark E Breeze, University of Cambridge and Tom Scott-Smith, University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre
42
43
Material and Immaterial Infrastructures of Care in Jordan Melissa Gatter, University of Cambridge Za’tari was built over the course of a few weeks in 2012, responding to thousands of Syrians fleeing government crackdowns in Dar’a, while Azraq was planned, prepared, and built in 2014 before refugees from all over Syria were brought to the camp. Azraq, with a hosting capacity of 120,000, was created to be the ‘ideal’ refugee camp for Jordan and the humanitarian world. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Za’tari and Azraq between 2016 and 2018, this project analyzes the humanitarian politics and compares the physical and immaterial infrastructures of the two camps to explore how ‘lessons learned’ from Za’tari were implemented in Azraq’s governance. The project argues that Azraq’s bureaucratic politics undermines any sense of urgency in the camp, obscuring the concept of ‘care’ in layers of waiting, immobility, and a culture of fear. The positive aspects of Za’tari and its humanitarian system, assert that what makes the camp work is everything that Azraq’s system chose to prevent from the start: organic growth, economic opportunity, and a sense of community.
44
45
The Spatial Aesthetics of a Refugee-guided Tour Michal Huss, University of Cambridge This series of photographs are part of a visual ‘walk along’, an ethnographic study of walking tours guided by activists and NGOs in the impoverished neighbourhoods of South Tel Aviv. South Tel Aviv has a long history of institutional neglect and marginalization. Since 2005, it has become the home of the majority of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers. Through walking and looking, the tours address the contested presence of asylum seekers, and mark resistance to institutionalized neglect and marginalization; they point participants’ gazes to restaurants, rooms converted to churches, and community hangouts: how improvised initiatives by local activists and asylum seekers have transformed the area. In addition, the growing number of families has forced the local council to act by building schools and playgrounds. The tours reflect the duality of south Tel Aviv, as a site of liveability, hospitality, and opportunity for refugees on the one hand, and risk, illegality and marginalization on the other. Within this collusion, they emphasis refugees’ self-resilience and agency.
46
47
Design Methods as a Form of Self-Determination, Al Azraq Refugee Camp Melina Phillippou, Azra Aksamija, and Zeid Madi, Future Heritage Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
These
projects
investigate
design
methodologies
for
autonomous
interventions in refugee camps as a means to reconstitute the ontological deprivation of displaced communities in spaces of containment based on the case study of the Al Azraq refugee camp, Jordan. In the absence of effective citizenship and institutions able to enforce international laws, refugees exist within extraterritorial spaces such as Refugee Camps. Design is seen as an act of self-determination in environments of ontological deprivation. Operating in the boundaries of organized design, emerging from the bottom up and with the use of limited resources, Bricolage, Hacking and Tactical Design transform and question the existing humanitarian design system in a creative way to structure a new type of design for refugees that depart from life as bios and reflects collective identity. Examples span from cultural artifacts assembled with found objects (Bricolage) to Do It Yourself devices playfully overcoming camp regulations on accessing the electricity grid (Hacking) and camp regulation adaptations regarding collective open spaces, a result of demonstration projects by displaced Syrians (Tactical Design). Design examples draw from the Future Heritage Lab photographic survey at the Al Azraq refugee camp conducted the Summer of 2017. Zeid Madi led the survey as part of the Design for a Nomadic World multiannual project in collaboration with the Al Azraq Journal team and CARE, Jordan.
48
49
The Right To Seek Asylum Melina Phillippou, Massachusetts Institute of Technology International concern over displacement has increased dramatically after the mass influx of refugees to Europe during 2015. While the number of stateless people is increasing, the usual framework for providing humanitarian help is proving inadequate. When it comes to the inclusion of stateless people to a political community, only 21 percent of all asylum applications in the European Union were accepted in 2015, leaving more than 800,000 people in a stateless limbo 2. This project investigates the Refugee Crisis in the framework of the European continent, specifically the East Mediterranean Refugee Route, as a medium to identify opportunities for the sustainable future of stateless people in the twenty-first century departing from the dysfunctional medium of admissions and the failed paradigm of camps.
50
51
Melina Phillippou, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
52
53
A ‘Strange Village’: The Squatted Plaza Hotel in Athens Nikolaos Kanavaris, Symeon Makaronas, and Stellatou Dimitra NTUA and UCL
The EU-Turkey agreement on refugees in 2016 had widely visible results in Greece. This coincided with the squatting of the City Plaza Hotel by citizens and refugees. Through ethnographic research, this project explored the articulation of this new community as enunciated in the realm of a common dwelling. The iterative practices of daily life appropriate the spaces of the former hotel. The reconceptualization of space goes beyond the dichotomies of public and private. In the process of collective identity-making, the project traces how the new community reconfigures concepts like security, organization, food, encounters, game, integration, neighborhood, threshold, home. This constant negotiation of self, otherness and everyday practices, shapes the space and shifts its meaning. In this initiative that we read as an infrastructure of care, space is perceived as a complex nexus of spatialities and group relations which can give content and depth to a genealogy of ‘intermediate’ and inclusionary spaces.
54
55
Objects Removed for Study Rafael Guendelman Hales, UCL ‘Objects removed for study’ consists of the recreation of a fraction of the Library of Ashurbanipal by a group of women from the ‘Iraqi Community Association’ in London. The Library, originally located in Nineveh (presentday Mosul) is comprised of a series of ceramic books and artefacts, and is the oldest preserved Library in the world. The initial aim of the Library was to serve as a guide for the King Ashurbanipal. The content largely related to omens, divinatory texts and astrological interpretation. It is currently in The Middle East collection in the British Museum. The project asked members of the Iraqi Community Association to rewrite the books with messages and commentaries that respond to contemporary Iraq. Producing the pieces within the community centre is a mechanism to envisage the library beyond the confines of the British museum. This brings about an opportunity for the community to explore their own heritage and multiple forms of displacement through the pieces.
56
57
Rafael Guendelman Hales, UCL
58
59
Border/Camps - The Jungle, Calais Ricardo Marten, UCL The Jungle, Calais has been one of the most mediatised camps in northern Europe for many reasons, to the point where its semantic value has been stretched and tied into multiple narratives. On the one hand, it serves antiimmigration supporters as the perfect example of a problem exploding beyond control, with the implicit suggestion that European values (whatever those may be) stand before a cultural clash that may break them apart for good. On the other, it has raised awareness on the transformative wave of migration that currently crosses the continent; people fleeing their countries searching for a better life and the illusion of opportunity. The urban, spatial responses appear to be always one step behind, reactionary instead of thoughtful, punitive instead of engaging. The video is part of a small preliminary research supported by the Urban Transformations and the Diversity, Social Complexity & Planned Intervention research clusters at DPU, UCL (2016).
60
61
BlackSites Tom Morgan and Darren Dharmadasa, Monash University Australia’s chequered and complex relationship with ‘illegal’ maritime arrivals has led to the expansive open-data resources of the Nauru Files, the Detention Logs and the Australian Border Deaths Database. However, there is a dearth of information relating to spatial impacts. The 30 + years of detention policy has resulted in an archipelago of contested camps and centres scattered across the wide arc of Australia’s northern coastline, and colonising neighbouring sovereign nations. Taken collectively they contribute to a kind of urbanism and a model for understanding our history as well as our possible futures. This project is the first part of building an atlas of internment for Australia. The design and structure of the centres range from the initial centres designed for policies of mandatory detention and processing, to the slow-burn, hardened centres that have emerged following the implied ‘success’ of the Pacific Solution. The construction of this network stretches the definition of care, although the register has always danced between a performative punitive aspect, and an implied ‘care’ for the welfare of those making the dangerous crossing of the Timor Sea. http://blacksites.org
62
63
Tempohomes in Berlin Viktoria Pues, LSE This contribution explores temporary container accommodations for refugees in Berlin. Tempohomes are the outcome of a double movement of integration and exclusion which results from a negotiation of variables shaping a political strategy that follows different objectives including social integration, prevention of homelessness, and an imperative for austerity. The outcome of such a strategy is a short-term in-between design solution within a legal space of exception (temporary accommodation) for a structural challenge (an increase in the number of people in need for housing without secure residential statuses in a city with an increasing housing shortage). The double movement of incorporation and exclusion creates a highly ambiguous living space characterised by a power imbalance between residents on the one side and management, security and volunteers on the other. The border between city and camp does not run along the straight line of the Tempohome’s fence. It is a topological border space in which the camp is both in- and outside the city.
64
65