Yemeni Refugees Caught Up in Somaliland’s Struggle for Nationhood
The second part of our report on Yemeni refugees in #Somaliland looks at how they have become part of the breakaway region’s struggle for international recognition, leaving them in awkward limbo.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2016/08/15/yemeni-refugees-caught-up-in-somalilands-struggle-for-nationhood
#nationalisme #réfugiés #asile #migrations #Yémen #réfugiés_yéménites
Refugee Journalism Project: Putting Displaced Voices on the Front Page
Refugees often lose professions as well as homelands. The Refugee Journalism Project in London is helping new arrivals to find work, rebuild careers and revive their skills in a new environment.
Long Read : The Paradise Camp
Syrian refugees sent to a seaside resort were told they were going to the best refugee camp in Greece. Six months on, people’s patience with a holiday no one wanted is wearing thin.
This Age of Migration: Europe’s Rising Militarization
As part of our series “This Age of Migration,” Paul Currion argues that increasing militarization in Europe in response to the refugee crisis is akin to an autoimmune response that could attack the very body it is supposed to protect.
Germany Seeks to Integrate Refugees Through Education
While Germany has made significant progress in providing education for refugee children regardless of their official status, more trained teachers, schools and housing facilities are needed.
Why Britain Chose to Partially Privatize Refugee Resettlement
Britain has agreed to private sponsorship of refugees. Tim Finch, one of the architects of the breakthrough, tells Refugees Deeply why it can help countries successfully expand resettlement programs.
Parrainage privé pour les réfugiés au Canada
Depuis maintenant près de quarante ans, outre les programmes de réinstallation du gouvernement fédéral, des groupes de citoyens privés canadiens ont parrainé la réinstallation de réfugiés en vue de leur réinstallation.
Private Sponsorship Is Not Panacea for Refugee Integration
A rush of international interest in the effectiveness of Canada’s private sponsorship of refugees often overlooks troubling aspects of relying on private citizens to fill gaps in integration, say researchers on Syrian resettlement in Canada.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2017/04/04/private-sponsorship-not-panacea-for-refugee-integration-researchers
Et en #Irlande...
Syrian refugee family welcomed by Ireland’s first community
A tiny town in Ireland has welcomed a Syrian family into its fold, becoming the first group to initiate a community sponsorship programme for refugees.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LhYSqdn_0E&feature=youtu.be
Immigration minister says Canada is playing a ’truly transformational’ role in #private_sponsorship of refugees
Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino says Canada is serving as a model for other countries with a successful program that resettles refugees through sponsorship by private citizens.
Mendicino is in Geneva to take part in the inaugural World Refugee Forum, an event hosted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Switzerland that brings together thousands of political leaders, refugee advocates and refugee leaders to discuss ways to deal with the global migration crisis.
Mendicino, who was named minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship on Nov. 20, said Canada is sharing its “depth of experience” in the private sponsorship program, which has successfully brought 320,000 newcomers to the country who were fleeing conflict, disaster or persecution.
“By refining those processes, by frankly making them more robust, we’re in a position to share those experiences with other countries,” he told CBC News.
“I’ve had some very constructive conversations, countries who themselves are now sprouting up community sponsorship initiatives that are looking to Canada as a leader.”
Asked if the government is considering lifting a cap on privately sponsored refugees, Mendicino said, “We’ll keep an open mind.”
The global forum comes as a steady flow of asylum seekers continues to cross into Canada outside of official border points, mostly at Roxham Road in Quebec.
The opposition Conservatives have said the Liberal government’s handling of the issue has eroded public confidence in the integrity of Canada’s immigration system. Mendicino rejected that claim.
“I will tell you that vast majority of Canadians that I speak to believe in our immigration system. They believe in being fair and compassionate towards refugees who, through no fault of their own, have lost their home,” he said.
Success through collaboration
Mendicino said the success of Canada’s refugee resettlement programs can be credited to collaboration between all levels of governments, civil society and faith communities. He said that the leadership is something Canadians should be “collectively proud of.”
“The work that is being done at the grassroots level is truly transformational and Canada is in that space, and we are playing a leadership role,” he said.
UN Secretary General António Guterres opened the World Refugee Forum by calling on member countries to do more to “shoulder the responsibility” of the global migration crisis.
“I urge you to be bold and concrete in the pledges you will make. This is a moment for ambition,” he said.
“It is a moment to jettison a model of support that too often left refugees for decades with their lives on hold, confined to camps, just scraping by, unable to flourish or contribute. It is a moment to build a more equitable response to refugee crises through a sharing of responsibility.”
According to the UN, more than 70 million people have been displaced from their homes, including 25 million refugees. The UNHCR calls these numbers the “highest levels of displacement on record.”
In 2018, Canada resettled 28,100 refugees through government, private sponsorship or blended programs.
Mendicino announced that Canada will contribute $50.4 million over the next four years to the UNHCR, providing “flexible and predictable” multi-year funding to help the agency respond to global refugee needs.
Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), said she’s pleased to see Canada’s experience with private sponsorship being shared around the world, but warned that governments must find solutions for the refugee crisis and avoid shifting the responsibility to private citizens.
“The efforts that civil society makes to resettle refugees should be additional to the contributions of governments, not instead of them,” she said. “The Canadian government could and should do much more to resettle refugees. We have the capacity and the need worldwide is greater than ever.”
The CCR is calling on the government to commit to resettle 20,000 government-assisted refugees each year.
Ad Atene gli afgani sono profughi di seconda classe
Mustafà non trattiene le lacrime: la sua famiglia è stata decimata dai taliban in Afghanistan. Un sabato notte è esplosa una bomba vicino casa sua, i familiari sono morti e lui è dovuto scappare insieme a sua moglie per le continue minacce. “Sono fuggito per salvarmi la vita, non avevo altre possibilità. Ora qui non siamo considerati nemmeno dei profughi, ma solo dei migranti di serie B”, afferma tra i singhiozza. È giovane Mustafà, ha poco più di vent’anni.
▻http://www.internazionale.it/reportage/annalisa-camilli/2016/06/24/grecia-profughi-afgani
#Athènes #Grèce #réfugiés #asile #migrations #réfugiés_afghans #catégories #catégorisation
This Is How Europe’s Rules Discriminate Against Afghan Refugees
As Europe struggles to handle its refugee crisis, people running from the 14 year-long war in Afghanistan find themselves left on the outside. BuzzFeed News’ Jina Moore reports from Lesbos, Greece.
▻https://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/this-is-how-europes-rules-discriminate-against-afghan-refuge
Flight for Life : Afghans Are Now Second-Class Refugees
Since the Syrian refugee crisis, Afghan asylum seekers in Europe have had to work harder to prove their lives are in danger. But for many of the more than 55,000 who applied for asylum in Germany in the past five years, deportation means a death sentence.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2016/08/24/flight-for-life-afghans-are-now-second-class-refugees
How Afghans became second-class asylum seekers
When it comes to being a refugee, your nationality really matters. Syrian asylum seekers are routinely prioritised over Afghan ones in what has become a deadly and dangerous hierarchy for Afghans seeking sanctuary in the West.
▻https://theconversation.com/how-afghans-became-second-class-asylum-seekers-72437
After Eu-Turkey deal, how to become second-class refugees
In 2015, one quarter of asylum seekers in Europe came from Afghanistan and Iraq. The 8 March agreement between the EU and Turkey might create a double class of refugees: those who will have the right to pass and those who will have to go back.
▻http://openmigration.org/en/analyses/after-eu-turkey-deal-how-to-became-second-class-refugees/?platform=hootsuite
#accord_UE-Turquie
Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’
ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work.
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/resettling-the-first-american-climate-refugees.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=c
Commentaire reçu via la mailing-list critical geo forum:
Regarding ’America’s first climate refugees’, the label was also used for Hurricane Katrina evacuees; for example, ▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-worlds-first-climate-refugees-5330221.html and for Alaska ►http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/may/13/newtok-alaska-climate-change-refugees How many firsts can there be?
A large body of literature exists which deconstructs and critiques the entire ’climate change refugees’ discourse showing how problematic it is and why it can do more harm than good—especially doing a disservice to the very people affected. My own contributions to the literature are listed under ’Migration, Islands, and Climate Change’ at ▻http://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/islandsclimatechange.pdf with many of the papers free to download. Here is a video ▻http://metaceptive.net/footprint-modulation/conference summarising a conference last year which provides up-to-date perspectives on the issue of climate/environmental migrants/refugees.
The science on this topic does not denigrate the real experiences which some Americans and others are having, in terms of being forced to move solely due to climate change, with devastating and unfair impacts. But not all of those identified as ’climate (change) migrants/refugees’ are moving solely due to climate change—or even have climate change as any influence on their migration decisions.
In this Louisiana case, it is more about the apparently first US federal government funding provided for relocating a community due to climate change. Then, we need to ask: What about the communities in Alaska which have been asking for similar support for more than a decade and have not received it? And do the people themselves wish to be called “refugees”? They certainly are not “refugees” by the international law definition, but that is not the only definition to consider. In Alaska, it is clear that climate change is the principal, if not only, reason for the relocation. In Louisiana, how much has urban development, coastal (mis)management, and below-ground resource extraction influenced the wider-scale environmental changes which then affect the local level? Perhaps the answer is “not all at”; perhaps there is influence.
We can help those affected (by climate change and, more importantly, by vulnerability, injustice, and inequity) much more by moving beyond the rhetoric which the media picks up uncritically, thereby ignoring the science which challenges those perspectives and which offers much more robust and meaningful approaches.
Ilan
Twitter @IlanKelman
First US climate refugees get $48 million to move
A first-of-its-kind, $48 million federal grant aims to move the entire community of the sinking Isle de Jean Charles, La., to a drier place.
▻http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0503/First-US-climate-refugees-get-48-million-to-move?cmpid=TW
First U.S. Climate Refugees Fear Rising Seas Will Drown Their Heritage
Native American coastal communities around the U.S. have begun planning moves to higher ground, but worry their ancient ways of life will be lost in the relocation.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2016/08/25/first-u-s-climate-refugees-fear-rising-seas-will-drown-their-heritage
Ikea’s Newly Designed Refugee Shelters Are a Game Changer
The units are spacious, have solar panels, and can last an average of three years.
▻http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/IkeaForRefugeesMAIN1b.jpg?itok=JvfX8R7P
▻http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/10/ikea-refugee-shelters-iraq?cmpid=organic-share-twitter
#Ikea #architecture #réfugiés #asile #migrations #architecture_humanitaire
Elle est pas belle la vie ! On peut même y rester trois ans !
Le fondateur du groupe suédois Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad toujours aussi jeune : Ses cabanes pour migrants inflammables, comme dans les camps
Les autorités zurichoises et argoviennes (#Suisse) ont renoncé vendredi à utiliser ces installations d’urgence pour les requérants d’asile.
La #Fondation_Ikea a défendu samedi la sécurité de ses cabanes pour #migrants après la décision de la ville de Zurich d’y renoncer en affirmant qu’elles sont inflammables.
Zurich a dévoilé vendredi des tests montrant que ces cabanes conçues par le géant suédois de l’ameublement prêt-à-monter étaient « facilement inflammables ».
Les autorités ont donc décidé d’annuler l’accueil de migrants dans 62 de ces petites maisons à partir de janvier. Le canton d’Argovie, qui envisageait lui aussi d’acquérir ces maisonnettes pour accueillir 300 demandeurs d’asile, a annoncé qu’il recherchait d’autres solutions.
Niveau de sécurité supérieur
« Nous ne pouvons faire aucun commentaire avant d’avoir reçu la traduction du rapport sur les résultats et la méthode utilisée pour conduire ces tests d’incendie », a indiqué la responsable de la communication du projet « Better Shelter », fruit d’une collaboration entre la Fondation Ikea et le Haut Commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés (#HCR).
Les cabanes Ikea, dont la réaction au feu a été testée selon les normes européennes, présentent un niveau de sécurité supérieur à ce qui se fait ailleurs en matière d’hébergement d’urgence, a souligné la responsable, Märta Terne. « Les tests réalisés sur les murs et les panneaux de
couverture ont montré que le matériau dépasse les niveaux requis de sécurité pour ces logements provisoires ».
►http://www.lematin.ch/suisse/ikea-defend-cabanes-face-critiques-suisses/story/13419837
Dans le même temps que se développent des habitats-containers dont se félicitent certains designers et urbanistes, ces logements précaires pour les migrants d’aujourd’hui seront le standard de tous les pauvres de demain. Pour ce faire on insistera bien sur l’aspect bon marché et recyclage de la chose, et on fera des reportages cool et fun montrant des étudiants, pour mieux masquer la #paupérisation généralisée et la baisse des standards de vie que cette évolution entraîne.
Bientôt on n’en sera plus à exiger un logement digne pour tous, on en sera à se satisfaire de caissons en tôle avec 3 gadgets marketing, pendant que la bourgeoisie rira dans ses villas.
Comme le dit un type que je n’aime pas mais qui sur ce point a raison :
Rien de ce que décident les capitalistes n’est bon pour toi. Même si de prime abord ça a l’air sympa.
Surtout si ça a l’air sympa.
Experts to Watch: Innovating Refugee Response
Several organizations and projects are at the forefront of seeking solutions to the unparalleled levels of global migration. In the first installment of our “Experts to Watch” series, we look at five that are rethinking refugee aid.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2016/08/03/experts-to-watch-innovating-refugee-response
Dans le #film / #documentaire « Bienvenue au #Réfugistan », une critique de l’#innovation en matière de #réfugiés :
▻http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/060822-000-A/bienvenue-au-refugistan
Citation tirée du film :
Alexander BETTS : « Ce qui inquiète dans le débat actuel autour de l’innovation c’est qu’il renforce avant tout les logiques d’une réponse humanitaire imposée par le haut. Il y a de la part des unités chargées de l’innovation une réticence à aborder frontalement ces questions, à poser les vrais problèmes, à confronter les gouvernements des pays hôtes, les gouvernement des pays donateurs et à remettre en question le cadre légal. Il faudrait remettre en cause ces logiques de #gouvernance_totalitaire imposée par le haut que vous trouvez dans les camps. Il faudrait se battre contre cette culture de la #surveillance et apporter des solutions qui transformeraient beaucoup plus en profondeur la manière dont nous concevons les défis des réfugiés aujourd’hui ».
Why Ikea’s flatpack refugee shelter won design of the year
Ikea’s solar-powered Better Shelter lasts six times longer than a typical emergency tent and has already changed the lives of thousands of refugees around the world
Ikea to provide jobs for Syrian refugees in new Jordanian project
Homeware chain looks to make hand-woven rugs and textiles for export and local sale
▻https://www.ft.com/content/35cb00ce-e6ed-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539
#Jordanie
IKEA Foundation and UNHCR put ‘Better Shelters’ to the test in the #Diffa region
In the region of Diffa, UNHCR have been providing emergency shelter assistance to vulnerable refugees and displaced persons since the first refugees crossed the border fleeing Boko Haram violence in Northern Nigeria in 2013. In 2016 alone, over 65,000 people in the Diffa region benefitted from UNHCR emergency shelters.
▻http://unhcrniger.tumblr.com/post/157015341304/ikea-foundation-and-unhcr-put-better-shelters-to
Ikea donerà mobili per arredare la #Casa_Valdese di Vittoria e due casa di #Lampedusa
Ikea Italia arrederà la Casa Valdese di Vittoria, il centro destinato alla prima accoglienza di donne migranti minorenni, non accompagnate, che formalizzeranno richiesta d’asilo. C’è il patrocinio della Prefettura di Ragusa. Si tratta di un’iniziativa di solidarietà Ikea con tre progetti in collaborazione con Unicef, a sostegno dei bambini migranti in fuga dalle guerre e dalla povertà. Interessato anche il Comune di Lampedusa dove saranno arredati due appartamenti di proprietà dell’ente civico che ospiteranno i minori non accompagnati.
▻http://www.radiortm.it/2017/03/16/ikea-donera-mobili-per-arredare-la-casa-valdese-di-vittoria-e-due-casa-di-l
#Italie
Why IKEA’s Award-Winning Refugee Shelters Need A Redesign
Fire safety concerns halted the rollout of Better Shelter and the IKEA Foundation’s portable, flat-pack refugee shelters to camps. The Swedish social enterprise is working on a redesign to launch later this year. We speak to their director about the lessons learned.
https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20170519113234/Z5A9145.jpg 
https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20170519113024/Z5A8840.jpg
Dossier : un monde de camps — Les réfugiés, une bonne affaire, par Nicolas Autheman (@mdiplo, mai 2017) ►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/05/AUTHEMAN/57444
Pour faire des économies, l’agence a créé en 2012 une branche intitulée « Laboratoire Innovation », destinée à lancer de nouveaux partenariats : Ikea pour l’habitat, la société de livraison américaine United Parcel Service (UPS) pour la logistique d’urgence, et bientôt Google pour l’apprentissage scolaire. Interrogé sur le risque de voir ces sociétés prendre une place croissante dans les processus de décision, le HCR répond invariablement que leur participation financière reste encore marginale comparée à celle des États. Pour autant, les partenariats conçus à l’origine comme de simples donations prennent de nouvelles formes. Selon M. Parker, l’agence a mis le doigt dans un engrenage dont il devient difficile de sortir : « La Fondation Ikea a promis des dizaines de millions de dollars au HCR. Et, maintenant, elle a envoyé quelqu’un en Suisse pour voir ce qu’il advient de son argent. Au début, je crois que le HCR imaginait pouvoir simplement recevoir du personnel bénévole et des dons. Il est en train d’apprendre que ce n’est pas vraiment comme cela que fonctionne le secteur privé. (...) Les entreprises ne viendront pas sans contreparties. Que dire si Ikea, par exemple, décide de tester du matériel dans les camps de réfugiés ? » Et comment réagir lorsque des parlementaires européens révèlent, comme cela s’est produit en février 2016, qu’Ikea est impliqué dans un vaste scandale d’évasion fiscale, échappant à l’impôt dans des États qui financent le HCR (La Tribune, 13 février 2016) ? L’agence de l’ONU n’en a jamais entendu parler...
A Slightly Better Shelter?
The Shelter
On January 26, 2017, the IKEA refugee shelter was declared the worldwide Design of the Year in a unanimous decision.[1] When I interviewed one of the jurors about the process I was told that they’d chosen the “obvious winner”: the IKEA shelter was high profile, it had featured widely in the media, it was a positive story with a clear social purpose, and it offered a practical solution to the so-called “refugee crisis,” one of the most significant issues of the previous twelve months.[2] The London Design Museum has been awarding the “Design of the Year” for a decade now, celebrating examples that “promote or deliver change, enable access, extend design practice, or capture the spirit of the year” (Beazley 2017). The IKEA refugee shelter seemed to match all of these aims, claiming to be modular, sustainable, long lasting, recyclable, easily assembled, affordable, and scalable. It was installed on the Greek islands to shelter newly arrived refugees in 2015, and it came with the backing of the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency, who purchased 15,000 units for distribution around the world.
The juror I spoke to explained that the shelter won because it “tackles one of the defining issues of the moment: providing shelter in an exceptional situation whether caused by violence and disaster…. [It] provides not only a design but secure manufacture as well as distribution.” A statement described the project as “relevant and even optimistic,” concluding, “it shows the power of design to respond to the conditions we are in and transform them” (Beazley 2017; personal interview, April 25, 2017, Design Museum, London).
It is easy to understand why this shelter has generated so much interest since it was first announced in 2013. It has received funding from IKEA, a company that has shaped so much of everyday life in the Global North and whose minimalist modernism has populated so many domestic environments. As Keith Murphy points out, there is a social democratic spirit underpinning so much of Swedish design, a combination of simplicity, affordability, and universality that both reflects and promotes a more egalitarian social order (Murphy 2015; see also Garvey 2017). When applied to refugee housing, this has all the makings of positive story. The media are given something their readers can relate to—the experience of unpacking and constructing IKEA flat-pack furniture—and can connect it to a problem that concerns us all: how to house the millions of refugees we see on the news. The IKEA refugee shelter, the story goes, can be assembled in four to six hours with a basic manual and no specialist tools. Everything comes in two compact boxes, much like those that contain your new bed and table from the IKEA store. More attractively, the design arrives with a number of innovative little tricks, including a photovoltaic panel that provides sufficient electricity to power a small light and mobile phone charger. It seems like a heartwarming example of philanthro-capitalism, good design, and humanitarian innovation (Scott-Smith 2016). What’s not to like?
For anyone who has actually seen the shelter up close, it looks rather mundane after this hyperbolic description. It has a rectangular floor plan, vertical walls, and a pitched roof. The shelter is fairly small, covering an area of 17.5 square meters, and it is designed to house a family of up to five people. When inside, you can look up and see the entire structure laid bare: a standalone steel frame with imposing horizontal beams, onto which foam panels are clipped. These panels are made from polyolefin, a light, flexible plastic, and they have the feeling and texture of swimming floats. They have been attached to the frame with hand-tightened bolts and brackets, and the shelter has four small ‘window’ openings, ventilation slots, and a lockable door. The main designer described its chunky, basic appearance as the kind of house “a 5-year-old would draw” (personal interview, May 18, 2017, Stockholm). It is, indeed, visually uninspiring, but this is because it is meant to be basic. Like much of IKEA’s product line, it is mass-produced, economical modernism. It is meant to offer a shelter that is immediate, quick, affordable, and easily transportable, staying as close as possible to the price and weight of the main alternative: the tent.
Tents have been the go-to shelter for humanitarian organizations for more than 50 years. The UN Refugee Agency distributes tens of thousands of them annually, and they are still valued for their lightweight, inexpensive simplicity. To be taken seriously as a humanitarian product, therefore, the IKEA shelter needs to be comparable to the tent in terms of price and weight while making some crucial improvements. There are four, in particular, that can be found in this design. First, the IKEA shelter provides increased security through a lockable door. Second, it provides greater privacy through firmer and more opaque walls. Third, it provides improved communication with a mobile phone-charging station. And fourth, it lasts considerably longer: up to four years rather than just one. These improvements encapsulate the basic requirements for dignified living according to the designers, combining security, privacy, durability, and connection to the outside world. These features, the narrative goes, are particularly important given the protracted nature of so many contemporary refugee situations and the likelihood of a lengthy exile.[3]
When I spoke to the designers about dignity, they came back again and again to the same material expressions, which were fascinating in their tangibility and their conception of refugee social worlds. Dignity meant being able to stand up in the IKEA shelter, which is impossible in a tent. Dignity meant having walls that were “knocky”: firmer, more secure, more resonant when tapped, which distinguished the materials from tarpaulin. Dignity meant privacy: whereas silhouettes can cause a problem in tents, the IKEA shelter does not reveal activity inside when the lights are on at night; its material is more opaque and disperses the shadows. Such improvements, however small, allow the design team to mobilize a more expansive, idealistic rhetoric. In its publicity materials, the shelter has become a “safer, more dignified home away from home for millions of displaced people across the world.” It has channeled “smart design, innovation and modern technology” to offer “a sense of peace, identity and dignity.” It is “universally welcoming”, a “home away from home” that balances “the needs of millions of people living in different cultures, climates and regions with a rational production—a single solution” (Better Shelter 2015; personal interview, May 19, 2017, Stockholm, Sweden). Far from being a better tent, this shelter has some revolutionary ambitions. But is it a better tent? Does it live up to its aims of producing a compact, cheap, lightweight product for meeting a basic human need?
The Reaction
The day after the announcement of the prize I sensed a collective sigh of despair among my colleagues working on refugee issues, which was tangible in personal conversations, snarky asides, and exasperated emails. The failures of the shelter were, for many of them, far too obvious. It was meager, limited, with no proper floor, no insulation, no natural light, and with a structure that let in drafts and dust. It had been oversold, under-ordered, and was described as sustainable when in fact it involved flying piles of metal and plastic around the world. It ignored established practice in the humanitarian shelter sector, which advocates the use of local materials and abundant local labor, and, above all, it was accompanied by an insistent triumphalism, with media reports pushing the narrative that an intractable problem had been solved. It had not. Managing refugee arrivals is a complex political issue that requires sustained political engagement, legal reform, and advocacy in host states to ensure investment in welfare and protection. Although these were not the aims of the IKEA refugee shelter, such lavish praise and attention, my informants felt, were a distraction. Many such “innovative designs” have become a fetish, creating a mistaken reassurance that circumstances can be controlled while obscuring a series of more serious, structural issues that remain unaddressed (Scott-Smith 2013).
The most tangible criticisms of the IKEA shelter, I soon realized, came from two opposing directions. On the one hand, there were those who argued the shelter did too little. It was a mean little space, they suggested, that looked like a garden shed or, due to its plastic panels, a chemical toilet. This line of critique usually came from architects, who filed the object contemptuously under “product design” and declared that it involved no architectural thinking at all. Architecture, they pointed out, should respond to the site and local environment, not mass-produce a universal design with no adaptability or control. Architecture should create sensitive and carefully planned responses to specific problems, not ignore basic elements such as insulation, proper flooring, and natural light. Architecture should also be pleasing to the eye. If you took the Vitruvian triad of architectural virtues, the IKEA shelter seemed to fail on every count. Firmitas, utilitas, and venustas was the aim, but the shelter was flimsy rather than firm, flawed rather than useful, ugly rather than beautiful.[4] It was particularly galling for this group of critics that the shelter won not just Design of the Year, but that it won the architectural category as well.
The other type of criticism came from humanitarians. They argued not that the shelter did too little, but that it did too much. It provided a fully integrated, flat-pack solution when this was rarely required or appropriate. It flew in a prefabricated house when there were better opportunities to work from the bottom up. It lionized designers when design was rarely a priority. Unlike architects, humanitarians were working in a context of limited time and limited resources. They worked with the mantra that “shelter is a process not a product,” a slogan that derives from the work of Ian Davis (1978), one of the founding thinkers of the humanitarian shelter sector, who argued that humanitarians needed to focus on the way people shelter themselves. Davis said that disaster-affected communities had their own techniques for finding and building shelter, suggesting that humanitarian shelter should mean discouraging designers and other outside “experts.” The priority should be to provide materials such as wood, nails, tarpaulin, and tape that help people build their own homes. These could be used and reused as people expanded their accommodation. The crucial task, in other words, was not to provide finished shelters, but to support people in their own process of sheltering.[5]
The Tension
In the middle of May 2017, I took a trip to Stockholm to meet the IKEA shelter’s design team and see how they navigated these two very different criticisms. I arrived at their headquarters on the 11th floor of the old Ericsson building in a southern suburb of the city, and spent some days learning about their brief, their aims, and their ways of thinking. The first thing that became clear was that this was not, in fact, an “IKEA shelter.” It was a designed by a group of independent Swedish industrial designers who had met at college and developed the basic idea in discussion with humanitarians in Geneva. They later received substantial financial support from the IKEA Foundation, which allowed them to refine, test, and iterate the idea, eventually leading to a commitment from the UN Refugee Agency to purchase a large number of units.
As I learned more about the project, it soon became clear that the story of the shelter seemed to be constantly swinging like a pendulum. It was caught between the expansive utopian idealism that so often underpins the announcement of new humanitarian designs and the restricted, mundane implications of their actual implementation. Both types of criticism, in other words, were basically correct: the IKEA shelter is both ‘too much’ and ‘too little’. It is clearly a product rather than a process, so it ends up being overwrought, top-down, and “too much” for aid workers who are skeptical of universal solutions. At the same time, it has been designed to be cheap and lightweight, so it will always be “too little” for those with bigger ideas about what design can achieve (especially as it lacks many of the basic elements that are crucial to architecture, such as proper flooring, insulation, light, strength, and beauty). The formal name for the shelter seems to encapsulate this tension. It is properly called the “Better Shelter”, and I was reprimanded in Stockholm for using the name “IKEA shelter,” which remains in common parlance but has never been formally adopted.[6] This name emphasizes the restricted horizon of improvement. The product aspires to be better, but it is no more than shelter. It idealistically attempts to improve the world, but pursues this by providing basic shelter rather than engaging with a more expansive terrain of housing.
The problem of doing too much and too little was powerfully illustrated in December 2015, when the Swiss city of Zurich conducted a fire safety test on the IKEA shelter. The video of the test was screened on the news and subsequently circulated online: it featured a series of terrifying images in which a small fire, illuminating first the translucent sides of the shelter, suddenly engulfed the scene in an explosion of flames and molten plastic. The media picked up on the story, Zurich cancelled its intended use of the shelters for new migrant arrivals, and distribution of the shelter began to slow. This was perhaps the biggest challenge the design had faced since its inception, and the fire test led to more than a year of additional work as the team made changes to the shelter’s design – mostly adjustments to the panel material. During this process, however, the design team found no clear code to work. Fire retardancy standards and testing procedures could not be found in the usual humanitarian handbooks, and so the team felt hostage to unrealistic criteria. The Swiss tests had compared the shelter with a permanent residential building, which seemed unfair (as a tent, which was the closest equivalent, would fare no better), yet it seemed impossible to object when the Swiss fire tests were released. The shelter was meant to be “better,” and the whiff of double standards would drift over the scene very quickly if they argued this was a shelter for a different population. The idea that refugee accommodation should be held to lower standards would not be good publicity for a product so concerned with the promoting dignity.
The fire tests raised a number of questions. Is this a “slightly” Better Shelter? Or is it “sometimes” a better shelter, depending on location and context? And when, exactly, is it a better shelter – in which times and places? One thing is clear: most people would not choose to live in one of these structures because of its obvious limitations. It has no floor or insulation, barely any natural light, and a tiny living space, even if its three or four tangible improvements certainly make it better than a tent. But then again, it should be better, as it costs a good deal more than a tent: currently twice the price of a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) standard family model. Is this a problem? Don’t we expect a better shelter to be a more expensive shelter? Yet how much is too much? What if twice the price means aiding half as many people? Is this a “better” result?
As the IKEA shelter becomes more widely used in different locations, a clear lesson has begun to emerge: that the whole product is deeply dependent on context. It is only “better” in some times and places. It may be “better” when compared with a tent, but not when compared with a Swiss apartment building. It may be “better” in a Middle Eastern refugee camp, but not in a Western European reception facility. It may be “better” when funds are plentiful and refugee numbers limited, but not when refugees are plentiful and funds limited. It might be “better” when there is an urgent need for emergency shelters, but not when there is scope for people to build a home of their own.
The Lagom Shelter
Perhaps this, in the end, defines the wider world of little development devices and humanitarian goods: they are simultaneously too much and too little. They are vulnerable to the charge of being too limited as well as the charge of being too expansive. They fail to tackle fundamental global injustices, but they still make numerous ideological assumptions about human life and human dignity beneath their search for modest improvements. The little development device oscillates between its grand visions of human improvement and its modest engineering in a tiny frame. The humanitarian good balances a philanthro-capitalist utopia with the minimalist aim of saving lives. All of this is encapsulated in the slightly Better Shelter. When I discussed these thoughts with the team in Stockholm, they basically agreed, and reached for the Swedish word lagom to describe their aims. It is tricky to translate, but means something like “the right amount,” “neither too little nor too much.” The Better Shelter is lagom because it has to be viable as well as adding value. It has to negotiate with the critics who claim it is “too much” as well as those who say it does “too little.” The shelter could never please architectural critics because it was only designed as a cheap, short-term home, and it would never please bottom-up humanitarian practitioners because it was too top-down and complete. Lagom captures the search for balance while reflecting a wider ethos of democratic Swedish design.[7]
Yet aspiring to be lagom does not make the central tension disappear. Just like being “better,” being lagom depends on context. What counts as “just enough” depends on where you are, who you are, and what you are doing. Something lagom in Sweden may not be lagom elsewhere. This became apparent just before the Better Shelter was launched, when a handful of units were shipped to Lebanon for a practical test with refugees. On their arrival in the Bekaa Valley, a group of armed and angry Lebanese neighbors appeared. The shelters, in their view, were too permanent. It did not matter that they had no foundations. It did not matter that they could be removed in less than a day. It did not matter that the walls and roof would degrade in just a few years. The structures were too solid, and the authorities agreed.[8] The Better Shelter had become “too much” for the Lebanese political context, just as in Switzerland it had become “too little.” The same features that made it insufficient in one country made it extravagant in another.
So although the Better Shelter tries to be better everywhere, it can never hope to adapt to the infinite complexity of refugee crises and its scales became disrupted when butting up against hard political realities. Since 2013, the designers have been working assiduously in Stockholm to optimize every component: changing the clips and panel material, redesigning the bolts and vents, refining the door and frame. They think an improved product can overcome both the Swiss fire tests and the Lebanese resistance. But what is “better” will always change with context. The Lagom Shelter can only be truly Lagom on the 11th floor of the old Ericcson building in Stockholm. As soon as it moves, the balance changes. Lagom cannot be built into any universal form.
▻https://limn.it/articles/a-slightly-better-shelter
Avec cette bibliographie :
Bibliography
Beazley. 2017. “Flat-packed refugee shelter named best design of 2016”. Beazley Design of the Year Press Release, 26.01.2017. Available at link: ▻https://www.beazley.com/news/2017/winners_beazley_designs_of_the_year.html
Better Shelter. 2015. Better Shelter: A Home Away From Home. Better Shelter Promotional Leaflet. Available at link: ▻http://www.bettershelter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/About_Better-Shelter.pdf
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———. 2017. “The Humanitarian-Architect Divide.” Forced Migration Review 55:67-8.
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