Placemaking under circumstances of forced displacement

The case of a community centre in the Syrian neighbourhood in Tarsus

Bibliographic Data

ID24233647
AuthorsEsengül Danişan Artan (0000-0003-4143-3104, Tarsus University), Halil Kanadikirik (0000-0002-7215-1073, Tarsus University), Bülent Şen (0009-0004-4436-7506, Tarsus University, Mersin)
Year2026
Publication date2026-10-14
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning C Politics and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2399-6544 • E-ISSN: 2399-6552
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/23996544261493353
OpenAlexW7221835249
LanguageEN
References cited61

This article examines refugee placemaking as a relational and politically embedded process through an ethnographic study of a community centre established in a Syrian tented neighbourhood in Tarsus, Turkey. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Syrian refugees, local residents, and public actors, the paper analyses how placemaking emerges through everyday practices, religious brokerage, and negotiations with local authorities under conditions of legal precarity and spatial informality. Rather than approaching placemaking solely as a phenomenological experience, the article conceptualises it as a power-laden and uneven process through which refugees establish contingent claims to presence while forming attachments and social relations over time. The findings show that placemaking can be politically enabling without being politically transformative: it facilitates social relations and forms of attachment while simultaneously reproducing gendered exclusions, moral hierarchies, and delegated modes of refugee governance. This article demonstrates how placemaking is organised in a semi-permanent tent settlement that develops outside of formal camp management, shaped by informal land use, agricultural labour relations, local mediation, and delegation of authority. It contributes to human-geographical debates by showing how place is made in an informal tented settlement—through religious brokerage and delegated governance rather than humanitarian design—moving beyond the conventional camp–city binary.

community centers · gender exclusion · Informal settlements · legal precarity · refugee governance · Syrian refugees · tarsus · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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