Refugee camps, slums, mobility and time
While theories of mobility, nomadism and flow continue to capture the imagination of intellectuals, I try to remember that mobility may only be freeing when it is freely chosen. An increasingly common critique is that nomadic ways of life have always been difficult, and the kinds of forced or compelled mobility experienced by exiles, refugees and migrant labourers are very different from the mobility chosen by tourists or privileged by academics and professionals who routinely travel the world.
Liberian Refugees Yearn to End a Life of Fleeing (via plep)
“Over the course of 13 years of civil war, approximately 340,000 Liberians fled their country seeking refuge in other West African nations. Among those who fled are some 4,000 Liberians who live in a refugee camp in Oru, Nigeria … The experiences of the Liberians - who share the camp with Sierra Leoneans, Rwandans, and Sudanese - vary. While some arrived as the Liberian civil war climaxed in mid-2003, others have been living in Oru for over 10 years.”
I find it difficult to grasp spending ten years on the move and never leaving this one place. In Oru are one room dwellings shared by multiple families, schools and training facilities, shops and restaurants, and young men say “We have nothing here for our minds to do… We’re all getting older. I’m getting older…”
I’m thinking of Chantal Mouffe’s comments in Hope about how our current preoccupation with mobility suffers for not acknowleding how important our sense of belonging is. I’m thinking about slums and squatters, and Neuwirth’s suggestion in Shadow Cities that these ways of living are challenging our assumptions about community and property.
In Oru, residents build with donated materials; it is state-sanctioned space. It’s temporary, always trying to both get home and be at home, to belong there and not-there. In Brazilian favelas, people construct buildings of self-procured materials; settlements are opposed by the state. A slum constantly works towards permanency but is under constant threat of erasure. It is home trying to belong even more, home resisting mobility.
How can we understand tensions between mobility and stability? Can they be reduced to agency and structure? What kind of flow would this be?
How does time play out?