Browsing by Author "Gannon, Ariana L."
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Item AMMAN’S TRANSITION FROM TENTS TO CONCRETE: BUILDING IDENTITIES OF OLD AND NEW IN AMMAN’S ‘SETTLEMENT CITY’ THROUGH ITS PALESTINIAN AND SYRIAN INHABITANTS(University of Delaware, 2019-05) Gannon, Ariana L.The last century has seen massive movements of Palestinian refugees seeking harbor in the ‘Transjordan region’—initially an area created in 1921 under the British Mandate system, the area is a crossroads of migration and settlement where Palestinians sought refuge for more than 70 years. More recently, over the past two decades, Amman, the capital city of Jordan, has experienced a massive influx of 660,393 Syrian migrants to date, seeking refuge and settling in both similar and different ways (UNHCR 2019). This thesis looks at the process of how communities become what they are to migrants and locates how their settlement patterns connect back to their identities as refugee settlers. The more permanent the experience of settlement structures become in Jordan for Palestinian and Syrian refugees, the more permanent their past national identities become. The presence of these refugee-settlers is ultimately shaping Amman, through the gradual shift in permanence of their dwellings, that start with tents and end with concrete buildings that make up small commercial/residential hubs, but are still living in a state of flux. Based on 6 months of participant observation in Jordan and primarily conducting in-depth interviews with architects, activists, and the city’s migrant inhabitants, it is possible to look at how Palestinian and Syrian migrants share related experiences in the shared ways they develop infrastructure, social relations, and in turn affirm their identities through and within these spaces, shaping Amman, Jordan, into a ‘Settlement City.’