Counter-Mapping and Migrant Infrastructures: Some Critical Reflections from the "Campscape" of Shatila, Beirut

Abstract

This article questions the notions of refugee and migrant spaces’ formulations and representations by considering the complex of elements which constitute the refugee camp of Shatila, Lebanon, as articulated by the camp residents themselves. Counter-mapping as methodology and analytical lens serves to reveal, convey, and decodify the proliferating meaning-makings of social, political, and economic relations that uphold the everyday life of the “camp,” determine the shapes of its spaces, and signify its materiality. A reticulated structure of care emerges, described by the notion of migrant infrastructures, from which emanates an invitation to reconsider “informality” of places such as refugee camps as rather extremely developed forms of being and asserting presence.