This project seeks to challenge colonial narratives that depict refugee camps as spaces of exception, dispossession, and waiting. Drawing on my lived experience as a stateless Palestinian refugee born and raised in Bourj Albarajenah camp in Beirut, the research redefines refugee camps not as sites of suffering but as dynamic places of care, solidarity, and community development. It advances critical studies that dismantle the portrayal of refugees as dependent aid recipients, offering a decolonial framework that acknowledges their agency and resourcefulness.

The project uses a range of qualitative methods, including autoethnography, in-depth interviews, and spatial analysis, to explore the intricate networks of solidarity, sisterhood, and food-sharing that sustain refugee communities. Drawing on post-development theory and frameworks of place, assemblage, and care networks, it examines how refugees navigate and transform protracted camps, where access to state infrastructure and services is severely limited. The book highlights the role of relationalities between human and non-human elements—such as memory, land, statelessness, and food—in shaping the camp’s cosmology and political ontology.

In addition to a detailed analysis of the refugee camp as a space of care and cooperation, the research will extend to Palestinian refugees in Europe. It explores how these displaced populations establish new networks of solidarity and cultural production in host societies, challenging the notion of refugees as passive victims. The work ultimately argues that refugee-led initiatives, grounded in community cooperation and non-capitalistic forms of growth, offer valuable lessons for the world on alternative modes of development, care, and collective action.

This project seeks to contribute not only to the academic fields of geography, refugee studies, and decolonial theory but also to inform policies on forced migration by highlighting the post-development mechanisms and agencies that shape refugee communities.