From Crises to Ordinary Precarity: Palestinian Youth as New Practitioners of Humanitarian Governance in Amman, Jordan

Abstract

Displaced in both 1948 and 1967, Palestinian refugees in the Middle East now number over 5 million and have lived in exile for decades with no sign of a permanent solution. Despite the duration of their displacement, Palestinian refugees remain marginal to prevailing literature on long-term displacement. Deemed exceptional within much of the relevant discourse on refugees, their placement under UNRWA has exacerbated their status as a “unique” case of protracted refugeeism. However, given that protracted refugee situations have become normative globally, the Palestinians are paradigmatic. As a community of refugees living in exile for decades, Palestinians have been forced to adapt to the diminishing availability of aid, to shifts in humanitarian governance, and to conditions of precarity in urbanized camps which are increasingly incorporating new refugees. This dissertation examines localized humanitarian practices in the Palestinian refugee camps of Jordan and focuses particularly upon a repertoire of care known locally as ʿamal fityani (boys’ work). It traces the history of this repertoire, analyzes the contested memories of its origins, examines its intercamp and gendered youth networks, and investigates how its notions of care are negotiated on the ground and have then been re-negotiated in the context of the Syrian refugee response and localization agendas. Drawing on mixed qualitative methodologies such as archival research, participant observation, interviews over two-and-a-half years in multiple associations across the refugee camps of Jordan, it argues that young refugees strive to overcome their precarity and find the tools for this in the community and in relation to one another, defying the governing structures of INGOs that treat them as market-oriented humanitarian objects. Relatedly, it demonstrates the complexities facing camp-based aid organizations, such as navigating social, economic, and religious norms and factors of their camps, and shows how taxonomies of religion and secularity do not account for the complexity of these negotiations. By considering intersectional factors like overlapping displacement, histories of care, and an evolving and gendered camp identity, my findings contribute to many fields including Refugee Studies, studies on humanitarianism in the Global South, and the anthropology of youth in the Middle East and North Africa.