Cities of Refuge: Syrian Displacement, Colonial Logics, and the Politics of Homemaking in Beirut and Berlin
- Date & time
- –
- Speaker
- Myriam Cherti, Maureen Abi Ghanem
- Series
- COMPAS
- Location
- Organisation
- Oxford
Topics
About this talk
Syrian displacement after 2011 became the first major test of UNHCR’s 2009 policy extending protection to refugees in cities. This research follows that displacement from Beirut, its nearest, most precarious refuge, to Berlin, its furthest, imagined most protective, reading the cities in dialogue, not comparison. Drawing on five rounds of fieldwork (2021–2025) and a postcolonial lens, it argues that humanitarian logic continues colonial governance in the name of care. Urban protection did not free refugees from the camp; it carried the camp’s logic into the city, marking displaced people as exceptional, not yet eligible for ordinary urban life. In Lebanon, Syrians are needed by the economy yet refused by the polity; in Germany, integration masks the management of racialised difference.
Add to Calendar