Games without frontiers - Covid living in refugee camps

Mark Taylor and Iris Levin Refugee camps house displaced people for whom notions of home, security, stability and safety no longer apply, or are difficult to realize. They are one group that seems to lie outside Gaston Bachelard’s poetic reimaging of the home as ‘our corner of the world’ and ‘our first universe’ (Bachelard 1958: 4) . Such nostalgic prose does not apply to those sheltering in place due to a migrant crisis or a pandemic, particularly when in an unfamiliar location controlled by government departments, aid agencies and security forces. The insecurity of migrant living in camps, or under temporary protection orders, often marks out difference and reinforces notions of alienation. Under such conditions, and within the enclosed camp where homes are closely packed together and privacy is at a premium, spatial boundaries are often transgressed by both outside agents, like aid workers and camp residents.