Negotiating control

Abstract

Excluded from ‘the national order of things' refugees live under specific forms of control. Similarly, those citizens that the state considers as potential or real ‘enemies of the nation' live under forms of control that do not apply to other citizens. Using the paired comparison of a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank and the Palestinian districts of an Israeli city, this paper argues that a focus on control can help break the strict analytical dichotomy between cities and camps and between citizens and refugees. It draws attention to the role of agencies of control ranging from humanitarian organizations to policing agencies in shaping how marginalized refugees and citizens negotiate access to scarce material and symbolic resources. In the process, it shows how the forms that political engagement takes in the city and the camp challenge fixed notions of citizenship, cities and camps—for example, the notion that citizenship status and cities are inherently politically empowering while refugee status and camps are inherently depoliticizing.