Bare Shelter: The layered spatial politics of inhabiting displacement

Abstract

This chapter theoretically analyses the meaning of the transformations and re-appropriations of prefabricated and makeshift emergency shelters by their inhabitants. In their initial conditions, these shelters are conceptualised as minimal ‘bare shelters’ where displaced people are accommodated as objects of control and precarious provision, stripped of adequate amenities and privacy while being detached from everyday human environments. By critically engaging with the work of Hannah Arendt on politics and space, particularly in relation to the political meaning of the private and public realm and of stateless people, the chapter reflects on the spatial processes of inhabitation of bare shelters as politically meaningful, impacting not only the space of the shelters themselves but also the political subjectivities of their inhabitants.