RC21 CONFERENCE 2013
Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology
Urban camps from a global perspective: resources, livelihoods and governance
At the turn of the twenty-first century, camps constitute an increasingly prominent feature of urban landscapes across the world. There are refugee camps in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia; there are camps and ‘villages’ for Roma/Travellers in Europe; and there are camps and centres for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in Europe, the United States, and Australia. These are but some examples of urban sites, which, although planned as emergency devices for the management of displaced or unwanted people, have become enduring socio-spatial formations. The aim of this session is to explore how camps interact with the broader structure and infrastructure of the city, how they are governed, and how they operate as sites of everyday life. To this end, we seek papers that look at urban camps: (1) from above, by focusing on the ruling agencies and exploring forms of urban and international governance; and (2) from below, by examining strategies of access to material and symbolic resources among camp inhabitants. We welcome papers addressing questions such as: are camps shaping an emerging type of urban social order? What type of resources and what kind of discourses do ruling agencies mobilize in planning and managing urban camps? Under what conditions do camps from emergency devices permute into permanent socio-spatial formations? What types of subjectivities, understandings of citizenship, and forms of politics emerge in these camps? We particularly welcome papers that look at camps in minor or large cities, thus generating new insights, questions and perspectives for comparative urban research.
Session Organizers
Dr. Giovanni Picker, Higher School of Economics, 125319, Moscow, Russia, 3 Kochnovsky proezd, T: +79265722896, E: gpicker@hse.ru
Dr. Silvia Pasquetti, University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, UK, T: +447585257339, E: sp638@cam.ac.uk
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