Refugees in abject spaces, protracted ‘waiting’ and spatialities of abjection during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This paper engages with a reinterpretation of the concept of abject space situating it within abjection theory and the concept of ‘waiting’. It develops further the term of ‘spatialities of abjection’ and discusses how the complex relationality occurring in abjection manifests in various spaces, through porous, changing, invisible boundaries but also specific temporal conditions. Doing so allows us to unpack the transformations of the abject space alternatively and simultaneously considered as a refuge and as a place of danger, factor of contamination. More importantly, the paper situates the reading of spatial abjection through a temporal lens, denoting how abject subjects are spatialized in a context of ‘political waiting’ but more importantly in a situation where active ‘waiting’ re-shifted to passive ‘waiting’ because of the pandemic implications. To do so, we focus on the spatialities of abjection affecting Syrian refugees living in informal tented settlements (ITSs) in Lebanon during the COVID-19 crisis. While abjection, stigma and xenophobia were already occurring prior to 2019, ITSs as abject spaces and refugees as abject subjects were targeted by supplemented rules and control. Those led to more controlled encampments and immobilization, increasing their dependency and reliance on international aid.