“Finding housing was an illness”: The Experience of Continued Displacement during Refugees’ Housing Trajectories
Housing is a key empirical entry-point into the life worlds of refugees in host societies. To date, scholarly work has mainly focused on the first phase of arrival, that of asylum accommodation. Here I extend the scope of post-arrival housing research by looking into the housing trajectories of refugees after having received protection status. At this stage refugees typically enter the regular housing market which exposes them to inaccessibility and exclusion. This contribution reveals the lived experiences through narratives of housing struggles to understand how these structural conditions are experienced. Based on interviews with twenty households who received refugee status after 2015 in Belgium, the article puts the urban studies notion of displacement into dialogue with the notion of precariousness in housing studies, arguing that refugees develop a sense of continued displacement as they struggle to secure housing. The analysis captures how post-arrival housing trajectories make refugees relive the exclusionary nature of forced displacement, uncertainty, and loss of home.
Hala is a PhD researcher with a background in Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research investigates patterns of settlement of refugees in the city following their housing strategies and trajectories. Following the case of newly arriving Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Brussels, she explores the role of arrival neighbourhoods, as well as support networks (mainly the ones during and after the Maximiliaan Refugee Camp in Brussels), in determining these patterns.
Her research interests extend to the understanding of informal networks and practices, and she has worked during her masters’ studies on informal public transport in Beirut and Naples, and their relation to notions of the Right to the City, appropriation, and Autogestion. She also continues to closely follow and participate in questions of urban activism and urban change in Beirut.