The Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) is hosting Prof Tom Scott-Smith to introduce and discuss his new book - Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter. Registration is required, via https://fragments-of-home.eventbrite.co.uk
ABOUT THE BOOK
Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of glinting metal. Others have hosted them in renovated office blocks and disused warehouses. They often end up in prefabricated shelters flown in from abroad.
This book focuses on seven examples of emergency shelter, from Germany to Jordan, which emerged after the great "summer of migration" in 2015. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research into these shelters, the book reflects on their political implications and opens up much bigger questions about humanitarian action. By exploring how aid agencies and architects approached this basic human need, Tom Scott-Smith demonstrates how shelter has many elements that are hard to reconcile or combine; shelter is always partial and incomplete, producing mere fragments of home. Ultimately, he argues that current approaches to emergency shelter have led to destructive forms of paternalism and concludes that the principle of autonomy can offer a more fruitful approach to sensitive and inclusive housing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Scott-Smith is the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, Associate Professor of Forced Migration, and fellow of St. Cross College, Oxford.
Tom specialises in the ethnographic and historical study of humanitarian relief. He is a BBC New Generation Thinker, and his book on the history of humanitarian nutrition, On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief (published by Cornell University Press), won the Association for the Study of Food and Society book award in 2020. His latest book, Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter, will be published by Stanford University Press in 2024.
Staff page: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/people/tom-scott-smith
ABOUT HCRI
We are a leading global centre for the study of humanitarianism and conflict response, global health, international disaster management and peacebuilding, based at University of Manchester.
Our work is driven by a desire to inform and support policy and decision makers, to optimise collaborations between partner organisations, and to foster increased understanding and debate within the field.
Bringing together disciplines from medicine to the humanities, we research questions and issues related to what the United Nations calls the ‘triple nexus’ – humanitarian response, development and peace. Our aim is to facilitate improvements in crisis response on a global scale.
Webpage: https://www.hcri.manchester.ac.uk/about/
