Wen schützen Flüchtlingslager? "Care and Control" im jordanischen Lager Azraq

Abstract

The Middle East has a long history of integrating refugee populations, which today is being transformed by a newly arising large international humanitarian sector. This article considers how humanitarian knowledge and practice is shaping the social environment available to Syrian refugees in Jordan via an investigation of the recently opened Azraq refugee camp. Arguing that the concept and form of Azraq can be explained in part by international refugee aid’s political underpinnings of nationalism, the article focuses on the question of humanitarianism’s security logic. Azraq’s order is shaped by three security concerns: the security of the refugees, the security of the Jordanian state, and the security of the aid workers themselves. At the same time, this order constitutes refugees as vulnerable and as a security risk that needs to be controlled and managed.