Constructing “purgatory”: How refugee camp architecture inscribes refugees into the a-political, a-historical, and moveable

Abstract

Recent studies in the field of Performance Studies have examined the performativity and spatial practices in refugee camps with particular attention to the political consequences of these psycho-social performances on refugees. This article complements such scholarship by: first, providing a more performance-centric definition of the term “refugee” with recourse to the idea of “transience”; second, by concretizing this (re)definition via analyzes of the socio-political consequences of the architecture of one of the most recently established refugee camps located in Jordan, namely Azraq. The article concludes by framing refugee camps more broadly as biopolitical environments that deprive refugees of their political agency; by homogenizing their inhabitants, they inscribe individuals into a state of perpetual transience.