Professor Tom Scott-Smith (RSC Director) has a new book published this month titled Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter (Stanford University Press).
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.
In reviewing the book, Professor Miriam Ticktin (Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center) said “A brilliant, expansive, and original book about the nature of humanitarian shelter. Bringing together beautifully written ethnographic accounts of refugee shelter from France and Greece to Lebanon and Germany, this book is an unparalleled account of how to address basic human need. Even in times of emergency, not all shelter is equal; Scott-Smith takes emotion, dignity, aesthetics and politics seriously, and courageously argues for the principle of autonomy as the most important factor in creating a home. A must-read for those who want to both understand and improve today's world.”
In his review, Professor Peter Redfield (Robert F. Erburu Chair in Ethics, Globalization and Development, University of Southern California) said “Fragments of Home offers a highly original and timely account of all that shelter entails. In a wide-ranging study of varied efforts to provide refugee housing, Tom Scott-Smith shows how they collectively reflect the political and ethical ambiguities of displacement in built form. The result is comprehensive yet concise, at once incisive, engaging, and illuminating.”