Protection Amid Chaos: The Creation of Property Rights in Palestinian Refugee Camps (Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics)

The right to own property is something we generally take for granted. For refugees living in camps, in some cases for as long as generations, the link between citizenship and property ownership becomes strained. How do refugees protect these assets and preserve communal ties? How do they maintain a sense of identity and belonging within chaotic settings? Protection Amid Chaos follows people as they develop binding claims on assets and resources in challenging political and economic spaces. Focusing on Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, it shows how the first to arrive developed flexible though legitimate property rights claims based on legal knowledge retained from their homeland, subsequently adapted to the restrictions of refugee life. As camps increased in complexity, refugees merged their informal institutions with the formal rules of political outsiders, devising a broader, stronger system for protecting their assets and culture from predation and state incorporation. For this book, Nadya Hajj conducted interviews with two hundred refugees. She consults memoirs, legal documents, and findings in the United Nations Relief Works Agency archives. Her work reveals the strategies Palestinian refugees have used to navigate their precarious conditions while under continuous assault and situates their struggle within the larger context of communities living in transitional spaces. "How do communities find protection in chaotic political economic settings? This book endeavors to show how normal people placed in extraordinarily difficult conditions created protections for their assets and buffered against outsider predation through property rights. The research project focuses on Palestinians living in seven refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Using interviews with 200 Palestinian refugees, legal title documents, memoirs, and United Nations Relief Works Agency archives the author traces the evolution of property rights from informal understandings of ownership to formal legal claims of assets and resources to shed light on how communities thrive in challenging political economic spaces. Initially, Palestinians deployed bits and pieces of their pre-refugee life to craft property rights that met the challenges of living in refugee camps. Later, as the camps increased in complexity with expanding markets and new outsiders entering the political fray, then Palestinians strategically melded their informal institutional practices with the formal rules of political outsiders. Palestinian refugees, to varying degrees of success, managed to protect their assets and community from predation and state incorporation"--Publisher's website. Intro -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures, Maps, and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations and Translations -- Note on Arabic Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1. A Theory of Property Right Formation in Palestinian Refugee Camps -- 2. Crafting Informal Property Rights in Fawdah -- 3. Formal Property Rights in Refugee Camps in Jordan -- 4. Formal Property Rights in Refugee Camps in Lebanon -- 5. Renegotiating Property Rights in Nahr al-Bared Camp -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Titles from NBC and Beddawi in Arabic with English Translations -- Appendix B: Research Methods -- Notes -- References -- Index A theory of property rights formation in Palestinian refugee camps Crafting informal property rights in Fawdah Formal property rights in refugee camps in Jordan Formal property rights in refugee camps in Lebanon Renegotiating property rights in Nahr al-Bared camp Conclusion Appendix A. Titles from NBC and Beddawi in Arabic with English translations Appendix B. Research methods. Protection Amid Chaos follows Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan as they develop binding claims on assets and resources in challenging spaces. Nadya Hajj shows how they adapt flexible though legitimate property rights claims based on legal knowledge retained from their homeland to the restrictions of refugee life.