Refugee Camps as Co-Produced Urban Systems: Governance, Spatial Violence, and Grassroots Agency in Protracted Displacement
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Refugee camps have evolved from temporary shelters into permanent, complex urban systems, yet policy models often fail to address their long-term systemic marginality. To bridge this gap, this study conducts a comparative qualitative analysis of three protracted cases in the Middle East: Shatila (Lebanon), Yarmouk (Syria), and Jabalia (Gaza). Using a directed qualitative content analysis, the study evaluates secondary data, spatial reports, and institutional archives across five core System Pillars: Governance Configurations, Legal Regimes, Humanitarian Mediation, Spatial Violence, and Grassroots Agency. Findings show that conditions of urban exception are sustained by a self-reinforcing nexus of these processes. Furthermore, a dual-process model of refugee agency emerges, distinguishing short-term adaptive survival tactics (e.g., informal DIY utility grids) from constitutive practices of urban citizenship that reconfigure institutional aid protocols. In post-conflict contexts, physical destruction is systematically coupled with state-led property legislation to enforce permanent displacement. We conclude that protracted camps must be recognized as dynamic, co-produced urban systems rather than static zones of exception. Effectively breaking cycles of socio-spatial marginalization requires international actors to transition from short-term emergency assistance to rights-based metabolic planning, legal tenure protection, and formalized institutional co-production frameworks.
Source: Urban Science
Author: Majida Yakhlef
Institution: Applied Science Private University
Language: English
Topic: Migration and Exile Studies
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,930
OpenAlex ID: W7204148959