Made to Move: Placemaking and Accumulated Attachments among Palestinian Refugees from Syria
Open Access DepositedMade to Move: Placemaking and Accumulated Attachments among Palestinian Refugees from Syria traces the experiences of Palestinian refugees displaced from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee Camp in Damascus by the Syrian Civil War. Established in 1952 to house Palestinians displaced to Syria in 1948, Yarmouk was besieged and destroyed during the war, meaning those Palestinians who had spent decades living in Yarmouk as refugees suddenly experienced further rounds of displacement. Drawing on ethnographic, digital and archival research methods, the dissertation shows how Yarmouk’s history enabled it to emerge as a place of significance for those who inhabited and moved through it as well as in relations with broader geographies of people and places. It goes onto show how these significances dynamically intersected with experience of new places following displacement from Yarmouk, exploring narratives of community, digital placemaking practices and the daily practices of dwelling in new localities. In doing so, Made to Move demonstrates that for people on the move, practices in and oriented around one place also shape the numerous other places, across space and time, to which people have built ties and attachments—what I call the iterative simultaneity of place. This iterative simultaneity of place illuminates how Yarmouk, Palestine and other past, present and aspirational future places of residence and significance are dynamically co-constituted through ongoing practices. Made to Move therefore demonstrates that place is produced as much through movement as through situatedness in a specific locality. That is, people and the places to which they claim belonging are reciprocally constituted through mobility, both experienced and intergenerational, across a constellation of spatially and temporally distributed localities.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.