AMMAN’S TRANSITION FROM TENTS TO CONCRETE: BUILDING IDENTITIES OF OLD AND NEW IN AMMAN’S ‘SETTLEMENT CITY’ THROUGH ITS PALESTINIAN AND SYRIAN INHABITANTS
Date
2019-05
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The last century has seen massive movements of Palestinian refugees seeking harbor in
the ‘Transjordan region’—initially an area created in 1921 under the British Mandate
system, the area is a crossroads of migration and settlement where Palestinians sought
refuge for more than 70 years. More recently, over the past two decades, Amman, the
capital city of Jordan, has experienced a massive influx of 660,393 Syrian migrants to
date, seeking refuge and settling in both similar and different ways (UNHCR 2019).
This thesis looks at the process of how communities become what they are to migrants
and locates how their settlement patterns connect back to their identities as refugee
settlers. The more permanent the experience of settlement structures become in Jordan
for Palestinian and Syrian refugees, the more permanent their past national identities
become. The presence of these refugee-settlers is ultimately shaping Amman, through
the gradual shift in permanence of their dwellings, that start with tents and end with
concrete buildings that make up small commercial/residential hubs, but are still living
in a state of flux. Based on 6 months of participant observation in Jordan and primarily
conducting in-depth interviews with architects, activists, and the city’s migrant
inhabitants, it is possible to look at how Palestinian and Syrian migrants share related
experiences in the shared ways they develop infrastructure, social relations, and in turn
affirm their identities through and within these spaces, shaping Amman, Jordan, into a
‘Settlement City.’
Description
Keywords
Political science, Amman, Palestinian,Syrian