Overview

This book focuses on the spatial forms and urban consequences of forced migration. The presence of the refugee in the contemporary metropolis is marked by precarity, a quality that has become a characteristic feature of the neoliberal urban milieu. Bringing together essays from diverse disciplines, from architectural history to cultural anthropology and urban planning, this collection sheds light on both the specificities of the contemporary urban condition that affects the refugees and the multi-dimensional impact that the refugees have on the city. The authors propose investigating this connection through three interlinked themes: identity (informality, imagination, and belonging); place (transnational homemaking practices); and site (the navigation of urban space). In recent years, there has been a significant growth in scholarship on forced migration, particularly on the relationship between displacement and the built environment. Scholars have focused on spatial practices and forms that arise under conditions of displacement, with much attention given to refugee camps and the social and political aspects of temporariness. While these issues are important, the essays in this volume aim to contribute to a less explored aspect of displacement, namely the interaction between refugees and the cities they inhabit. In this respect, the volume underlines the specificity of the urban refugee as well as their spatial agency and investigates the irreversible effect they have on the contemporary urban condition.

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9781789389005

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Reviews

‘This book redefines the urban as a phenomenon of refugeehood, a circumstance of people simultaneously in and out of place, where logic or logistic of control coalesces with the unrestraint experiential quality of the urban. Batuman and Kilinc have brought together contributors committed to take seriously the agency and subjectivity of refugees in the co-production of urban space and in claiming the rights to the city. Together, they engage significant research materials with critical concepts in urban studies that cut across the North-South divide. They have made us aware that the global urban present and future is unthinkable without recognizing the phenomena of refugeehood that mediate the consequences of built environments and complex strategies of place-making.’ -- Abidin Kusno, York University, Canada ‘This superbly illustrated collection narrates rich stories that transport us across Somali malls, Parisian homes, Saida’s shelters, Denizli’s informal areas, Houston’s community centres, Beirut’s playgrounds, and Izmir’s old hotel district. With great insight, authors show how the new urban condition should be theorized not solely through the violent structures of the neoliberalism-migration nexus, but also through centring the spatial agency of urban refugees who are actively and resourcefully labouring and inhabiting cities.’  -- Mona Harb, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

‘This book redefines the urban as a phenomenon of refugeehood, a circumstance of people simultaneously in and out of place, where logic or logistic of control coalesces with the unrestraint experiential quality of the urban. Batuman and Kilinc have brought together contributors committed to take seriously the agency and subjectivity of refugees in the co-production of urban space and in claiming the rights to the city. Together, they engage significant research materials with critical concepts in urban studies that cut across the North-South divide. They have made us aware that the global urban present and future is unthinkable without recognizing the phenomena of refugeehood that mediate the consequences of built environments and complex strategies of place-making.’ -- Abidin Kusno, York University, Canada

Author Information

Bülent Batuman is an associate professor of architecture at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He studied at the Middle East Technical University and received his Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art and Architecture from Binghamton University, SUNY, USA. His recent work focuses on the relationship between Islamism and the built environment. Kıvanç Kılınç is associate professor at Izmir Institute of Technology (IYTE), Turkey. He received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture Graduate Program at Binghamton University, SUNY, USA. His current research focuses on the transnational cultural and material exchanges, and their consequences, which shaped contemporary social housing practices in Turkey and the Middle East.

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