Accommodation as Displacement: Notes from Refugee Camps in Greece in 2016

Since 2015, Greece has been in the midst of the so-called refugee crisis. State authorities and organisations of the national and international humanitarian system responded by providing refugees with accommodation in organised refugee camps that produce spatially isolated and socially marginal living spaces. Based on official data about the expansion and the characteristics of the camp system and on field observations in certain camps, I argue that camps prolong and expand displacement and thus place human suffering at a distance from which suffering tends to appear as normal.