Les camps de réfugiés palestiniens à Amman et Beyrouth : réinterprétation d’espaces d’exceptions, ou la permanence du provisoire

Abstract

The Palestinian refugee camps have been created 70 years ago to address an emergency situation by providing shelter and protection to the Palestinians displaced since the beginning of the conflict in 194. But the prolongation of this exile calls into question the humanitarian and temporary nature of the camps, which developed a specific relation to their host space. Over the years, camps integrated the cities where they were established, to the point that they are now part of the urban landscape. Nonetheless, they are still considered as extraterritorial spaces on the margins of the society. Although most of the descriptions and studies about the Palestinian camps focus on their state of exception and marginalization, a reinterpretation of these spaces is relevant. Indeed such an interpretation does not take into account the very complex and specific nature of the development of the camps within their urban environment or the particularity of their governance. Comparing the situation of the camps in Amman, Jordan, and in Beirut, Lebanon brings out the different logics of this issue and the way the two cases differ according to the host country and its policies. While camps in Amman are more and more integrated, socially, economically and politically speaking, camps in Beirut remain spaces of relegation and exclusion, even though some forms of integration can be observed. Because Palestinian camps hesitate between logics of differentiation and logics of integration, it is thus difficult to categorize them. The aim of this thesis is to establish the multidimensional nature of Palestinian refugee camps in Amman and Beirut, as well as the similarities and the differences between these two situations.