Refugees as Prisoners of The Passage

·       What is the purpose of temporary architectural projects such as a detention refugee centers? Is it to enable its inhabitants or the people on the other side”?

·       How can we inform our structured everyday space by learning from this spontaneous temporality that these camps provide?

On Thursday the 30th of March, a refugee set fire to himself as a way of protesting against his prolonged detention in the Greek island of Lesbos. Three months ago, 60% of a temporary detention refugee center in the island of Mytilene dissolved in flames by refugees, protesting against the authorities’ apathy in validating their asylum application. Great tension then takes place in the core of such monocultural enclosed communities as islands, blurring the boundaries of traditional communities as they were until then perceived, making architecture a containing framework of such diverse experiences. Due to rising numbers, many papers focused on the permanent refugee shelter “regime” mainly found in the shores of Italy, however, within this paper I will not try to emphasize on the simulations of such permanent architecture. On the contrary, as things are changing rapidly based on a necessary adoption to current circumstances, I will shift my focus on the more spontaneously emerged structures of today, structures that interpret “the migrant’s body as a mobile border.”[1]

            According to the Dublin Regulation, any immigrant or refugee who’s found illegally in one of the 28 member states of the European Union is forced/deported to his initial EU country of entry. Thus, a tension is being established within the union, as the greater number of immigrants seeking a better future in the Europe is entering the continent from the south. The concept of the Detention Center has always sparked controversy among people as it presupposed the acceptance of the above law. Hence, such structures’ predominance element of fear for the diverse, always led towards a marginalization or even “invisibility”.

            The island of Lampedusa has for many years been the clearest manifestation of such endeavor. A remote island between Africa’s and Italy’s cost, enabling countries to “store” people within its confined boundaries, solving the problem by simple not confronting it.  However, since the rise of the Arab Spring in late 2010 – early 2011, such facilities could no longer withstand the growing numbers of multiple populations fleeing the war. Thus they could no longer be seen as relevant as in such a small period of time, the immigration map completely changed. I am not going to argue about the architectural significance of camps like Lampedusa, but personally, I believe that these new means of shelter, the temporary camps, could more clearly expose the architectural significance of such unprecedented volumes of temporary architecture and seen as “manifold territories in which bodies are held captive by temporalities and spaces that exorcise external power.”[2]

            No one can deny the profound effect of a populations’ dislocation in such vast numbers. [Figure 2] However, it is critical to understand the process these people undertake in order to pursue a chance in a new way of life, as it holds an architectural significance, even grater for some than the establishment of the temporary detention structures. It has never been easy to define boarders along the sea, but this massive flee of people managed to transform, the very own boats they used as means of escape, into mobile borders. As a result, “The migrant’s boat acts as a lens through which the unseen spaces of immigration detention centers are revealed.”[3] The boat however, has another fascinating element. It is defined by a sense of temporary permanence. Its own enclosure and the lack of context in terms of place and time make this rather ordinary inflatable boat a dwelling in transit. Through the pictures that we see, it could be said that during the trip to the unknown the boat itself represent the temporary detention center. A “center” that could have signs of resemblance with the rubber edges of the boat acting as walls, while the sea gives the sense of a fence, enclosed and confined from the world at the same time.

            Both types of enclosed space deal with an element of deviation from reality. However, the boat, as Foucault wrote about numerous times holds a reserve of action. It has the ability to be “closed in to itself while at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea.”[4] By no means the boat however is a pleasant part of the journey, but opposing to the rest of their odyssey it is a part which is not rarely seen. For these people then, the heterotopic element of Foucault’s ship acquires dystopic characteristics as even if they reach shore safe, by no means that is the end of their journey. Warsan Shire, a British-Somali poet within her poem “Home” managed to convey that very own sense of the journey in an awe-inspiring poem:

“no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city

running as well.

you have to understand,

no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land.”[5]

The detention center will always be a place of interest for architects as it presupposes an element of tension between its members. That tension however, has the capacity to shift our perceived reality of space and place. The lack of prominent infrastructure and the never shifting multicultural identities of inhabitants within the camps alter their sense of perceived reality deviating the “where are you from” question “to where are you between”. It is no secret that during their own dystopian voyage, refugees have a very limited capacity in the formation of their own identity. But, through the medium of the detention center and more importantly the element of temporality within, they are formed from and within this newly developed spatiality, while at the same time shaping their own enclosure as well.

[1] 345

[2] 346

[3] 348

[4] Foucault, M. “Of Other Spaces”, translated by Jay Miskowiec, Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1984.

[5] Shire, Warsan. Teaching my mother how to give birth. London: Mouthmark series, 2011.