Hostipitalité, pouvoir et appropriation de l’espace dans l’habitat des réfugiés : le cas des réfugiés syriens au Liban

With 80 million people uprooted around the world, refuge spaces are coming to be the most visible urban transformations of modern times. These spaces, whose primary function is to shelter, often accommodate refugees for decades. Yet, host states, mostly developing countries, continue to host refugees without adopting comprehensive, long-term strategies for their integration, causing acute political, socio-economic, and humanitarian problems. The lack of a long-term solution is explicitly revealed by the conceptions of refugee spaces, often designed as temporary solutions. From a theoretical perspective, while social scientists and geographers have widely documented the geopolitical and anthropological aspects of forced migrations, they have neglected the concept of space appropriation and the production of place identity in refugee spaces. Indeed, their classification of space/place is often based on dichotomous conceptualizations and differs from refugees’ real-life experience.  This research examines refugee spaces through the lenses of power, culture, and space. It provides new evidence on the appropriation of these spaces through refugees’ social, economic, and political practices, their interventions on space, and their perceptions of their new living environment. It also examines the impact of the strategies adopted by the international community, host governments, humanitarian organizations, and local communities.  The research method is qualitative and exploratory; it is based on a multiple case study design. This methodological approach provides an in-depth understanding of refugees' perceptions on the socio-political environment undergirding displacement and on their representations of space. Three space typologies — urban dwellings, informal settlements, and organized camps — are studied with the purpose of assessing the relevance of the space-type in relation to its appropriation. The study uses ethnography as a complementary methodological approach, shedding light on the evolution of refugees’ living conditions over time and the transformation of their spaces from a cultural standpoint.  It specifically focuses on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a country which hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. Overwhelmed by the number of refugees hosted, Lebanon excludes Syrian refugees from formal legal, economic, and urban systems, limiting their access to the territory, reducing the duration of their stay, and preventing the tangible and intangible consolidation of their living spaces. Yet, eight years later, the strategies adopted by the Lebanese government have proven unsuccessful: the number of Syrian refugees is roughly the same as at the beginning of the conflict and most of their spaces have been ghettoized.  Results show that: 1) complex geometries of political, economic, and social powers determine the appropriation of refugee spaces; 2) weak state authority fragments traditional governance systems which leads to the emergence of  informal power structures that control refugees and their spaces; 3) refugees’ exclusion exacerbates their vulnerability, while benefitting local stakeholders, subsequently reducing  their chances of emigration  and leading to the ghettoization of their living spaces; 4) the typology of spaces is not a major variable in relation to their appropriation; 5) the rooting of identity in the place of origin is an idea based on anti-migration political viewpoints; refugee spaces can evolve along a continuum between temporary non-places and socio-cultural places of life depending on the opportunities and challenges in the host context.   Transcending the stigmatization, marginalization, and homogenization of refugee spaces, this research reveals the intimate reality of these spaces. It shows that they often become places of everyday life for refugees who form culturally dissimilar and economically hierarchical social groups.   From a theoretical point of view, this research shows that hosting policies are often based on hostipitality, or a hostile form of hospitality which exacerbate refugees’ vulnerability and facilitates their exploitation. It shows that refugees’ appropriation and control of their living spaces increase proportionally with their legal inclusion and their socio-economic empowerment by the host state, inciting the rhizomic reproducibility of their individual and collective identity in their new habitat. From a practical point of view, the research shows that hosting policies adopted on the pretext of shortening the duration of refugees’ settlement are in fact in the interest of state and private actors. With the purpose of achieving spatial justice, the study recommends a change of paradigm in refugee policies with approaches that are more inclusive towards refugees leading to their self-management and their development, and adapted to the use and duration of their living spaces.

Keyphrases: Exclusion, Camps, Refugee spaces, Space appropriation, Power geometries, Hostipitality, Non-places, Place identity, Syrian refugees, Lebanon